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Stablecoin settlement volume between South Korean companies and overseas counterparts reached about $620 million, or 853.9 billion won, from January 2021 through September this year, IT Chosun reported. The figure excludes exchange deposits and withdrawals as well as investment-related transactions, covering only payments for goods and services such as raw materials. The report indicates corporate demand for stablecoins is expanding beyond investment use into real-world payment and settlement activity.

Zest, a Stacks-based Bitcoin lending protocol, has launched a Bitcoin-backed leverage staking vault on Stacks, Crypto Briefing reported. The protocol’s first automated Stacks vault product, the zvstBTC vault, aims to put Bitcoin to work in DeFi to generate yield. Users can deposit assets such as stBTC or BTC into the vault to earn rewards, after which the vault automatically runs the leverage strategy.

Bitcoin Core developer Niklas Gögge warned on X that AI-driven vulnerability detection is changing Bitcoin’s security landscape. As large language models lower the cost of finding flaws, attackers may be able to uncover critical vulnerabilities with computing costs of only a few hundred dollars, Gögge said. In the case of Bitcoin Core, Project Loop and individual developers have so far generated more than 1,000 vulnerability-related reports, although no high-risk or critical-severity flaws have been found so far.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed higher today. - S&P 500: +1.14% - Nasdaq: +1.69% - Dow Jones: +0.61%

Billionaire investor Kevin O'Leary said Congress is likely to revisit the CLARITY Act next year after the Digital Asset Tax Clarification Act (H.R.10357) was passed, CoinDesk reported. O'Leary said the bill had a 0% chance of passing this time, and that is what happened. He expects discussions on the measure to resume as early as the first quarter of next year. With tax rules for digital assets now in place, Congress will face pressure to revive the CLARITY Act, he added, stressing that once taxes are imposed, policy is necessary.

San Francisco startup Bloxtel has built onchain private 5G infrastructure on Avalanche (AVAX), according to Crypto Briefing. The company aims to decentralize private 5G networks, and disclosed the development alongside the launch of its AP201 equipment.

StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said on X that Zcash's recent rise was partly driven by concerns that Bitcoin has become overly rigid. Ben-Sasson added that some Bitcoin supporters may not welcome the view, but said he was making the point as someone who loves and cares deeply about Bitcoin. Ben-Sasson previously took part in the Zcash project as its Founding Scientist. According to CoinMarketCap, ZEC was trading at $1,464.1, up 9.27%.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed sanctions on Iranian cryptocurrency exchange BitBank. The Treasury said the exchange processed transit fee payments for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz and supported transfers worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury said the exchange is owned by Iranian financier and OFAC-sanctioned figure Babak Zanjani. The sanctions also cover the exchange, its developer, and associates linked to Zanjani. The sanctioned Iranian BitBank is a separate company from Japan’s cryptocurrency exchange bitbank.

Dubai-based crypto trader Royal Kane, who has about 32,000 followers on X, said he would not invest in Ripple’s XRP at this stage, arguing its market capitalization is excessively large at more than $81 billion despite having no clear product or revenue. Kane added he personally prefers to invest in coins with what he sees as undervalued market caps and strong narratives. He had previously pointed to Solana’s 500-fold rise from its lows in 2021 on the “Ethereum killer” narrative, PEPE’s 1,000-fold gain from its lows in 2024 on the “next SHIB” narrative and community strength, and ZEC’s 70-fold climb from its lows this year on a “next Bitcoin” narrative tied to limited supply and privacy advantages. Kane stressed investors should look for coins with narratives that can capture market attention over the coming years.

Bitcoin could see relatively stronger investor support than gold if investors scale back hedge positions tied to Bitcoin ETFs, The Block reported, citing JPMorgan analysts including Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. The analysts said inflows moved into Bitcoin and gold ETFs after the Fed’s late-July meeting. Gold ETFs have fully recovered the outflows seen earlier this year, while Bitcoin ETFs have regained only about half, according to the report. Institutional positions in gold and Bitcoin futures remain elevated, but the gap between the two assets is more visible in ETF short positions. Despite recent inflows and a rise in futures positioning, Bitcoin still shows stronger investor caution and more conservative positioning than gold, which the analysts said may reflect greater hedging demand for Bitcoin. If those hedge positions are reduced, Bitcoin could receive relatively greater support than gold, they added.

The next phase of the real-world asset tokenization market depends on demand and participation from traditional finance investors, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said at the Avalanche summit in New York on Sept. 17. Existing crypto investors alone cannot take the tokenization market to the next stage, Domingo said, adding that broader RWA adoption will require attracting buyers from traditional finance, including investors who have never used a hardware wallet.

The expansion of trading in tokenized real-world assets such as stocks and bonds is pushing the crypto market into a more mature stage, Dragonfly Capital Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said in an interview with The Block. Qureshi added that meeting institutions’ regulatory compliance requirements now calls for a structure in which multiple specialized blockchains coexist, rather than a single general-purpose blockchain such as Ethereum, Solana, or Avalanche dominating the market. He said blockchains have network effects similar to cities, but cannot scale indefinitely.

Grayscale assessed the latest Federal Reserve rate hike as a mid-cycle adjustment rather than a cyclical shift, and said a similar rate increase in 1997 also had only a limited effect on asset markets. The firm said the latest hike is unlikely to have a major impact on the cryptocurrency market, while stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether warrant closer attention. Grayscale explained these companies derive a large share of earnings from interest income on reserve assets, giving them a structure in which profits rise as interest rates increase.

Hugo Philion, founder of EVM-compatible layer-one blockchain Flare (FLR), has proposed allowing RLUSD loans backed by XRP collateral on Ripple’s layer-one blockchain XRPL, with proceeds sent directly to XRPL wallets. Philion explained that by using Flare’s "Smart Accounts," users could keep XRP on XRPL, convert it into FXRP, borrow RLUSD against that collateral, and then send the funds back to an XRPL wallet. He added that the structure would require Wormhole’s (W) RLUSD bridge to be operational and approval from XRPL validators.

JPMorgan said the best path to comprehensive crypto regulation has stalled in the Senate, and a regulator-led fallback centered on the U.S. SEC and CFTC may not prove durable, according to Crypto Briefing. In a recent report, JPMorgan analysts including Kenneth Worthington said some expect the SEC and CFTC to fill the regulatory gap left by the failed cloture vote on the Clarity Act through their own rulemaking, but cautioned such measures could be reversed by the next administration. If that happens, the crypto industry would lose the bill-based regulatory clarity it has spent years lobbying to secure, the analysts said. They added that the Clarity Act has not technically been abandoned because the current congressional session has not yet ended, but the outlook remains pessimistic. After the vote failed, the odds of the Clarity Act passing before year-end fell sharply to about 6.6%, the report said.

Whale Alert reported that 199,899,999 USDC has been transferred from Zero Hash to an unknown wallet. The transaction is valued at about $200 million.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the war with Iran is nearing a major turning point and a decision is needed on whether to resume large-scale military operations to end the conflict, according to Axios.

Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said spot Bitcoin ETFs’ assets under management are likely to grow to around three times the size of gold ETFs over the long term. Speaking on Bitcoin Magazine TV, Balchunas said younger investors are expected to accumulate more wealth over time and increasingly adopt Bitcoin as a store of value. According to CoinMarketCap, BTC was trading at $76,599.92, up 1.12%.

Coinbase said it has partnered with banking infrastructure firm Stablecore to help U.S. regional and community banks, as well as credit unions, offer digital asset services through their existing banking platforms. The two companies expect the partnership to enable more than 3,000 banks and credit unions to provide digital asset trading, custody and stablecoin payment services. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, said, "미래에는 모든 은행이 디지털 자산을 활용할 것이다. 이같은 추세를 가속화할 시간이다".

Circle has deployed $649 million worth of USDC and $7 million worth of EURC on its Arc mainnet, Crypto Briefing reported. USDC is used to pay gas fees on the Arc mainnet. Circle had also completed the issuance of 10 billion ARC tokens alongside the Arc mainnet launch, but said a public token launch and specific use cases have not yet been decided.

Crypto market sentiment has cooled to near-neutral levels after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, according to on-chain analytics platform Santiment. Santiment said extreme FOMO spread across the crypto market on Sept. 14, when traders increased positions on expectations the Clarity Act would pass in a market-friendly direction, rapidly fueling bullish sentiment. Santiment added that regardless of the eventual outcome, the optimism and overheated mood dominating the market were themselves a warning sign. After the Senate failed to move the Clarity Act forward on Sept. 15, investors who bought amid the FOMO were hit by declines, Santiment said. The platform added that another risk-off factor emerged on Sept. 16 when the Fed raised its benchmark rate. Following those events, market sentiment is now close to neutral, with a healthier environment for taking on additional risk than earlier this week, Santiment said. It added that much of the excessive optimism and heat has faded, fear is starting to reappear, and the market needs close monitoring.

Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, the digital asset arm of global asset manager and spot Bitcoin ETF issuer Franklin Templeton, said on its official X account, "TradFi and DeFi are now simply finance."

Securitize’s market capitalization of tokenized real-world assets on the Avalanche blockchain has jumped to $770 million, up 628.4% from the previous tally, Crypto Briefing reported. The increase made Securitize the largest issuer of tokenized assets on Avalanche, with roughly half of the blockchain’s overall RWA market cap. Avalanche’s total RWA market has also grown to around $1.7 billion, near a record high. Securitize previously listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a $400 million SPAC merger and has tokenized $295 million worth of its shares via Solana and Avalanche.

Bart Smith, CEO of Avalanche Treasury Company, a Nasdaq-listed company pursuing a strategic accumulation of AVAX, said AI agents could create a shortage of blockchain transaction capacity, or blockspace, once they begin entering financial markets in earnest, The Block reported. Smith said that even if AI agent activity reaches only the low end of current expectations as AI enters financial markets, the related activity would take place on blockchains. Smith added that blockspace would not be sufficient and is no longer unlimited. Smith also said technical differences among Layer 1 blockchains such as Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH) in throughput, scalability and fees would become more important. By mid-2027, Smith expects traditional financial markets to shift to a five-day, 24-hour trading system, while existing financial infrastructure may struggle to handle that change, making new infrastructure necessary.

Securitize shares rose more than 24% after the U.S. SEC approved a temporary conditional exemption, described as an innovation exemption, allowing limited trading of tokenized U.S. stocks in on-chain environments. SECZ was recently trading at $9.36, up 20.41%.