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Lloyds Bank announced on its official website that it has completed a real-time cross-border payment pilot based on stablecoins with Visa. In the seven-day pilot, Lloyds Bank bought USDC through Archax, an exchange under the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and settled $750,000 with Visa. The transaction took one hour. The pilot marks Visa’s first stablecoin settlement program with a major UK banking group.

A16z Crypto’s head of policy, Miles Jennings, said the U.S. GENIUS Act has established a key legal framework supporting the shift to on-chain finance. Jennings said, according to The Block, the law would make it much harder for a future administration hostile to the crypto industry to reverse the on-chain transition already underway.

Amazon Web Services will shut down its fully managed blockchain service, Amazon Managed Blockchain, according to Digital Asset. The company will stop accepting new customers on Oct. 29 and plans to end the service for existing customers in September 2027. Amazon Managed Blockchain has provided fully managed blockchain infrastructure that lets users build applications based on public and private blockchains. The service has allowed companies to access blockchain networks or query data within the AWS environment without building and operating blockchain nodes and related infrastructure themselves.

Euler Finance V2 has deployed its Multi-Collateral Vault Engine on the Ethereum mainnet, Bitcoinist reported.

Binance announced the addition of CT/USDT perpetual futures at 7:45 a.m. UTC today, with support for up to 20x leverage.

Hana Card has signed a three-way memorandum of understanding with Tether and Hana Bank to explore potential cooperation on digital asset services, The Asia Business Daily reported today. Hana Financial Group also completed regulatory acceptance of a virtual asset service provider filing from South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit on Sept. 18 through BitGo Korea, a joint venture established with digital asset custody specialist BitGo, giving it an institutional foundation for digital asset custody services for domestic institutions and corporations. According to the report, the group appears to be building a digital asset value-chain ecosystem spanning issuance, custody, payments, remittances, and tokenized securities, including payment-sector cooperation with the world’s two largest stablecoin issuers, overseas remittances based on Dunamu’s GiwaChain, and early infrastructure development for security token offerings, or STOs.

A proposal has been raised to let South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit freeze assets held on domestic exchanges for up to six months at an early stage when criminal proceeds are converted into virtual assets, Digital Asset reported. Kim Byung-jin, a prosecutor at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, outlined the measure in a paper titled “Criminal Proceeds Converted Into Digital Assets and Ways to Introduce an Early Freeze System,” published in the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office journal New Trends in Criminal Law. The paper proposed adding an FIU-led early freeze system for digital assets to the Act on Reporting and Use of Certain Financial Transaction Information. Under the proposal, the process would follow a structure of an investigative agency request, an FIU review, and a freeze by a virtual asset service provider. If an investigative agency requests a freeze based on a specific case and supporting materials, the FIU would separately review whether there are reasonable grounds to determine the digital assets are linked to criminal proceeds or other illicit property and whether a freeze is needed to prevent transfer or concealment. If the FIU recognizes those conditions, South Korean virtual asset service providers would be asked to restrict withdrawals, transfers, or disposal of the assets.

Bitcoin spot demand remains weak, according to on-chain analyst Darkfost. BTC apparent demand now stands at negative 112,500 BTC, indicating newly issued supply is still not being fully absorbed by long-term holding and accumulation across the network. Still, that marks an improvement of about 94,500 BTC from negative 207,000 BTC on Sept. 20. With the demand gauge still in negative territory, Darkfost said spot buying remains difficult to view as strong and added that Bitcoin could face a further pullback as the market looks for a level where genuine buying demand emerges.

Bitcoin has posted an average gain of 18.52% in October from 2013 through 2025. The median gain was 12.73%, with rises in 10 of the 13 Octobers and declines in three.

South Korean exchange Bithumb announced it will suspend Stellar Lumens (XLM) deposits and withdrawals, along with Aqua (AQUA) withdrawals, from 10:00 a.m. UTC today to support the Stellar Lumens network upgrade.

A South Korean court has dismissed a lawsuit by CP Labs, formerly Coinplug, challenging an administrative order from South Korea’s Financial Services Commission after the company failed to return customer assets following the shutdown of its digital-asset exchange service. The Seoul Administrative Court’s second administrative division, led by Presiding Judge Kong Hyun-jin, on Oct. 1 rejected CP Labs’ request to cancel the corrective order. CP Labs had operated the exchange and continued to hold and manage user balances after ending operations on Nov. 30, 2020. After the assets were not properly returned, the Financial Services Commission in November last year ordered the company to notify users about the asset return process, return user assets and transfer them to a foundation, submit details on its compliance with the order, and cooperate with an inspection by the Financial Supervisory Service. CP Labs filed the administrative suit in December last year, but the court rejected the claim.

A U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has dismissed a class action lawsuit filed against Hayden Davis, Kelsier Ventures, and former Meteora CEO Ben Chow over the issuance of the LIBRA memecoin and the M3M3 token tied to Argentine President Javier Milei. The court found that the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently establish Meteora as a legally liable party and that the defendants’ alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act did not meet key requirements, including a pattern of ongoing criminal activity.

Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager for crypto and global business, said at Korea Blockchain Week 2026 in Seoul today that it was an honor for Mirae Asset Securities, one of South Korea’s leading financial platforms, to take interest in Robinhood and use it as a reference in developing its business. According to IT Chosun, Kerbrat added that demand has been rising this year as interest in South Korean equities, including semiconductors and AI, has grown, and said tokenization and blockchain technology could become key tools for expanding market liquidity. In that context, Kerbrat said there could be room for collaboration if blockchain becomes more active in South Korea, where demand for stocks is strong.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $84,000. BTC is trading at $84,011.46 on the Binance USDT market.

Vlad Novakovski, CEO of Lighter, said at Korea Blockchain Week that fixed income markets, including bonds and interest rates, could become DeFi’s next growth opportunity. Lighter has already launched a related product, introducing its US10Y perpetual futures in August to track the 10-year U.S. Treasury, with up to 20x leverage. The product allows users to take positions on U.S. interest rates and Treasury prices on a DeFi platform without a brokerage account.

European Union regulators are investigating whether Binance has continued to provide services by using the reverse solicitation exemption for offshore customer requests after failing to secure an EU Markets in Crypto-Assets license and having to scale back its regional business, the Financial Times reported. Under EU rules, crypto asset service providers that did not obtain a MiCA license were required from July 1 to immediately reduce operations in the bloc and halt services except those intended to support customers’ crypto transfers or sales. The European Securities and Markets Authority and regulators in France, Germany and Greece have requested related materials from Binance, according to the report. If regulators reject Binance’s explanation, penalties including fines could follow. Binance said it is complying with regulatory requirements in each jurisdiction where it operates and is continuously reviewing its services and products in line with those obligations. The exchange added it is making active efforts to obtain a MiCA license.

South Korea’s cryptocurrency market reacts more sensitively to moves in U.S. stocks than to changes in the KOSPI, Digital Asset reported, citing a Bank of Korea study. The study found that when the S&P 500 moves 1%, BTC moves about 0.57% and ETH about 0.80% over the same period. By contrast, when the KOSPI moves by 1 percentage point, Bitcoin moves just 10.14 basis points, or 0.1 percentage point, and Ethereum 12.52 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point. The link to U.S. stocks was about 5.6 times stronger than the KOSPI for Bitcoin and about 6.4 times stronger for Ethereum. The paper said this may reflect the influence of shared factors such as global risk appetite and liquidity on both U.S. equities and South Korea’s digital asset market.

U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs saw a net outflow of $59.58 million on Sept. 30, according to SoSoValue, marking a second straight trading day of net outflows. - Fidelity FETH: -$26.6 million - Grayscale ETH: -$25.48 million - Grayscale ETHE: -$7.5 million

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a net outflow of $148.69 million on Sept. 30, ending a nine-session net inflow streak, according to SoSoValue. - Fidelity FBTC: -$125.58 million - Bitwise BITB: -$13.63 million - BlackRock IBIT: -$9.48 million

Joseph Chee, chairman of Solana Company, said at Korea Blockchain Week that China’s sustained interest in cryptocurrency suggests the government will eventually find a way to manage and regulate the sector rather than maintain a blanket ban. Chee cited continued interest in crypto among investors, academics, and developers in China despite regulatory pressure. Chee added that Beijing’s concerns are centered on speculation, fraud, capital flight, and financial instability, making oversight and supervision a more realistic option than a full ban, although a policy shift does not appear imminent and could take considerable time.

The Polygon Foundation said PIP-92 has been activated. As a result, staking rewards on the Polygon chain are set to rise to around 7.7%, with the higher reward rate remaining in place until Dec. 1.

A limited unwind of restaked ETH positions exposed to Lido could occur, The Rollup founder Andy said while commenting on the MetaMask infrastructure security incident, and Andy advised investors to take preemptive action across all ETH staking positions with Lido exposure. Although the situation appears to be under control, Andy said discussions with multiple parties indicated no one yet clearly understands exactly what happened.

Liquid restaking protocol Renzo Finance announced today the launch of Renzo Basis, a new product designed to strengthen on-chain verifiability. The product is structured so users can verify holdings in real time on-chain, without combining risk and liquidity into stablecoins or separate vaults. Renzo also disclosed that its liquid restaking token ezETH fully transitioned from Lido’s stETH to a 100% native ETH collateral model on April 26, 2026.

Large outflows have hit Morpho vaults managed by Sentora following MetaMask’s staking-related security incident, Crypto Briefing reported. The RLUSD vault fell from $426.4 million to $350.4 million in four hours, while the PYUSD vault dropped from $408.9 million to $349.3 million. Morpho uses a structure in which third-party curators set each vault’s collateral and lending terms, as well as the markets where funds are deployed. If the outflows continue, vault utilization could rise. Higher utilization could push up borrowing rates and make it harder for remaining depositors to withdraw funds immediately.

Democratic Party lawmaker Min Byoung-dug proposed raising funds for an FC Anyang soccer stadium through token securities, Edaily reported. Speaking at a discussion session during the "Edaily Global STO Summit 2026" held at the Korea Exchange conference hall in Seoul on Oct. 1, Min suggested that Anyang could finance stadium development not through taxes but through token securities, while giving nearby residents and Anyang citizens the first chance to invest. Min said that when discussions on using tokenization to raise stadium development funds first began in 2020, the conversation was still at the stage of questioning why coins were needed, but has now shifted to how quickly to move ahead. Min added that proposals to build a dedicated stadium often face opposition on the grounds that there are many other demands on the budget. If passionate local fans can hold token securities at low prices, Min said, those residents could become strong supporters willing to tolerate construction dust, noise, and traffic congestion. More specifically, citizens could participate with small-scale investments, receive part of the returns under a prearranged structure, and obtain parking passes, facility-use rights, or a share of operating revenue from the completed development in token form.