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Robinhood has unveiled new features aimed at active traders, including AI agent-based trading, cryptocurrency perpetual futures and weekend trading for some U.S. stocks, CoinDesk reported. At the HOOD Summit in Houston, Texas, Robinhood said users will be able to create AI agents within the app and choose models from OpenAI or Anthropic to analyze and trade stocks, options and cryptocurrencies. The company also said it plans to expand its crypto derivatives offering by providing perpetual futures to eligible U.S. users through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp. BTC and ETH will carry leverage of up to 10x, while other supported cryptocurrencies will initially offer leverage of up to 3x. Robinhood also plans to enable weekend trading for some U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds.

Raphael Zagury, CEO of U.S.-listed Bitcoin accumulation company Twenty One Capital (XXI), said Bitcoin will surpass gold’s market capitalization over the long term. Zagury argued Bitcoin allows holders to move assets worth billions of dollars from anywhere in the world by remembering 12 or 24 seed words. Unlike physical gold, Bitcoin offers access to and transfer of large-scale assets in that way, which he said will make it more competitive than gold over the long run.

Leverage in the Bitcoin futures market has shrunk sharply, pushing the ratio of futures notional value to spot market value down to 0.24x, the lowest level in two years, Crypto Briefing reported. Futures notional value refers to the total dollar value of open futures positions. A lower ratio relative to spot indicates the relative size of leveraged futures positions has declined from past levels. Crypto Briefing said Bitcoin futures open interest has fallen about 47% to 55% from its peak, while offshore Bitcoin futures trading activity is down about 97% from the 2021 bull-market high. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or CME, which is widely used by institutional investors, Bitcoin futures open interest and trading volume had previously fallen to their lowest levels in 14 months. The outlet added annualized returns from basis trades, in which traders buy spot BTC and sell premium-priced futures to capture the spread, have narrowed to about 3% to 5% from more than 20% in the past. As a result, the benefits of leveraged futures trading have also diminished compared with earlier periods.

President Donald Trump is considering Jay Clayton as a candidate for the next AI czar, Axios reported. Clayton is currently serving as U.S. Director of National Intelligence. Clayton previously served as chairman of the U.S. SEC. On the final day of Clayton’s tenure in December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple and its executives, alleging XRP sales amounted to an unregistered securities offering.

Major institutional investors did not sell even as Bitcoin fell from $125,000 to $60,000, and many increased their holdings instead, Bitwise research analyst Ryan Rasmussen said in an institutional crypto adoption report. Among 15 major institutions interviewed, none sold during Bitcoin’s price decline, while a significant number added to holdings, Rasmussen said. He added that these institutions tend to view Bitcoin not as an asset for betting on short-term price swings, but as a hedge against fiat currency debasement alongside gold. Some sovereign wealth funds are also reducing gold allocations and shifting those funds into Bitcoin, he said. The survey included pension funds, university endowments, foundations and sovereign wealth funds.

Volmex Finance has launched perpetual futures on Hyperliquid based on the Bitcoin Volmex Implied Volatility Index, or BVIV. The index tracks the expected 30-day implied volatility reflected in the Bitcoin options market, and the BVIV perpetual futures listed on Hyperliquid support leverage of up to 5x.

Illinois has released a draft of the Digital Asset Privilege Tax Act, which would impose a 0.2% tax on cryptocurrency transactions, and said it will gather public feedback through Oct. 30, according to the source. Last month, the crypto industry filed a lawsuit against Illinois seeking to block the implementation of the 0.2% crypto transaction tax.

Balancer (BAL) token holders approved a plan to wind down the DeFi protocol, while rejecting a proposal to launch an official fork, The Defiant reported. With the shutdown proposal passed, liquidity pools will become withdrawal-only starting Oct. 30. BAL holders will be able to exchange tokens for the protocol treasury through late May 2027.

Bastion CEO Nassim Eddequiouaq said the world’s largest companies want to own their own payment rails rather than hand them over to Visa or Mastercard, according to an interview with CoinDesk. Eddequiouaq said those companies want to become their own banks and build their own payment systems.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed lower today. - S&P 500: -0.16% - Nasdaq: -0.09% - Dow Jones: -0.25%

Bitcoin remains in a bull market, but a short-term correction may be nearing as short-term traders’ unrealized profit margins have climbed to their highest level in 21 months, according to a CryptoQuant assessment cited by The Block. CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno said in a report that short-term traders’ on-chain unrealized profit margins recently rose to 33%, the highest since December 2024. Historically, margins at that level have encouraged profit-taking, Moreno said. On Sept. 22, Bitcoin holders realized profits on 25,700 BTC, the largest daily amount so far in 2026, he added. Moreno also said Bitcoin demand is slowing in both spot and futures markets, and the uptrend may be difficult to sustain without fresh demand. While the bull market remains intact, signs of fatigue are emerging, he said, pointing to elevated profit margins, the largest profit-taking of 2026, explosive inflows into altcoins, and cooling demand as signals of a possible short-term correction. If Bitcoin enters a pullback, Moreno said the 365-day moving average near $80K would serve as the first support level. Additional support could come from the 200-day moving average near $71K and the on-chain traders’ realized price near $67K. As long as those support levels hold, such a correction would be a healthy pullback within an early-stage bull market, Moreno added.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, speaking at the Sibos conference, said AI, stablecoins and tokenization will be central to the future of payments, according to Crypto Briefing. Waller said there was no reason to fear new technologies or payment service providers, adding that distributed ledger technology, or DLT, and AI are tools that can address problems in global transactions. He also said DLT and tokenization have the potential to make payment systems faster and more transparent, while smart contracts that execute automatically when certain conditions are met could largely eliminate the manual reconciliation work that slows inter-institutional settlement.

Coinbase announced the addition of CT spot trading.

El Salvador’s government denied a Bloomberg report that it is building Sivar, an app designed to support remittances using dollar-pegged stablecoins. The government said it has no plans to launch or operate an app for Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, or stablecoin remittances.

The Ethereum Foundation said it plans to carry out the Glamsterdam upgrade on Sep. 6 on Sepolia. The upgrade aims to improve block creation, state growth and execution limits, while laying the groundwork for expanding Layer 1 capacity.

Whale addresses holding between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC added 41,025 BTC over the past 10 days, according to Santiment on X. Their combined holdings reached 13.64 million BTC, or 67.93% of total supply, marking the highest level since the rally in mid-August. By contrast, holdings among small-scale investors with less than 0.01 BTC showed little change. Santiment said the current pattern of whale accumulation and stagnant retail positioning is positive, but does not guarantee further price gains.

Prediction market platform Kalshi is in late-stage talks to raise $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation, Reuters reported. Tiger Global and Dragoneer are among the investors said to be discussing participation. The valuation would mark nearly a doubling from $22 billion in May in about four months.

U.S. crypto mining firm Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) has fully repaid its $200 million Bitcoin-backed credit facility from Coinbase Credit and terminated the agreement, Bitcoin News reported. Riot repaid all principal and accrued interest, with no early termination fee. The loan carried a 6.15% interest rate after an amendment to the agreement in April. As of June 30, Riot had pledged 5,821 BTC as collateral out of its 11,380 BTC holdings, valued at about $340.7 million at the time, and the repayment has released that collateral.

A survey of U.S. banks commissioned by digital asset platform Uphold and conducted by American Banker found 75% of respondents are pursuing blockchain-based financial programs. Of those, 22% have already launched related projects or are expanding them, while 53% are piloting or reviewing specific use cases. The survey also found 66% have allocated budgets to build digital asset infrastructure, and 54% have issued requests for proposals (RFPs) to select related companies and partners. Key use cases included digital asset wallets and custody at 72%, digital asset trading and holding services for asset management at 70%, and stablecoin-based institutional payments at 64%.

Demand is growing in the options market for call options betting on Bitcoin rising above $90,000 while BTC trades around $83,238, Walter Bloomberg said. Walter Bloomberg said calls with strike prices of $95,000 and $100,000 are also seeing strong demand, while institutional fund flows appear to be improving. Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted net inflows for eight straight trading sessions, including $31 million yesterday. Despite weaker short-term sentiment toward BTC, Walter Bloomberg said the options market still reflects expectations for further upside.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said Chen is not optimistic about the chances of freezing and recovering funds from a recent $388 million hack, according to Cointelegraph. Citing Bybit’s $1.5 billion hack last year, Chen said that after about a year, only around 3.5% of the stolen funds had been frozen, and none of that had actually been recovered. Bitget is offering separate 5% bounties to parties that help freeze and recover the stolen funds.

Blockchain quantum-resistant security infrastructure firm Project Eleven has acquired post-quantum cryptography company Riva Labs, according to Crypto Briefing. The deal value was not disclosed.

Whale Alert reported that 5,035 BTC has been transferred from Coinbase Institutional to an unknown wallet. The transaction is valued at about $419 million.

A whale wallet known as qianbaidu.eth deposited 25.75 million USDT to Binance and withdrew 7,500 ETH worth about $20.5 million over 30 minutes, according to on-chain analytics firm Hupzy, formerly Spot On Chain. A CoinNess analysis said the move appears to reflect active accumulation rather than a simple asset transfer, as the stablecoins were converted into spot ETH and then moved to a self-custodied wallet. Lower ETH supply on exchanges can also reduce sell-side liquidity, the analysis added.

Crypto exchange Gemini has launched a “Politics Hub” within its prediction market platform ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November, according to Crypto Briefing. The hub allows users to view and track in real time major election-related prediction markets in one place, including races for the Senate, House of Representatives, and governorships.