🔌 AWS Outage, AI Trading, & Crypto Markets Rebound

Good Afternoon,

Let’s jump right into some of the major headlines! Coinbase and Robinhood were hit by hours-long outages due to a widespread AWS failure, while AI-driven trading flooded Wall Street, with the NYSE recording 1.2 trillion order messages in a single day. As markets rebound on dovish Fed signals, Polymarket traders grow more sophisticated ahead of its token launch, and confidence slowly returns to crypto.

Dive into some more headlines below! 👇

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News Roundup

Artificial Intelligence

• Police Warn Against Viral ‘AI Homeless Man’ Prank That Sparked 911 Calls (Decrypt)

• Wikipedia Traffic Falls 8% as AI and Search Engines Bypass the Site (Wikimedia)

• AI Trading Floods Wall Street as NYSE Hits 1.2 Trillion Daily Order Messages, Says President Lynn Martin (Fortune)

• Jay A, Founder of AI Lab nof1, Launches “AI Trading Showdown” as Deepseek Overtakes Grok4’s 500% Surge (X)

• CleanSpark Hires Former Humain Exec to Lead AI Data-Center Expansion Amid Bitcoin-to-AI Pivot (The Block)

Decentralized, Centralized, & Traditional Finance

• Robinhood Tokenizes Nearly 500 U.S. Stocks and ETFs on Arbitrum for EU Users (Cointelegraph)

• Hyperliquid Founder Dismisses Revenue-Driven Claims, Defends ADL Mechanism (X)

• Decentralized Perp Exchange StandX Surpasses $200M TVL in First Month, Launches Alpha Program (X)

• Anonymous ‘Dark’ Exchange HumidiFi Becomes Solana’s Largest Trading Venue With $34B Volume (DL News)

• Gemini Launches Solana Credit Card With Auto-Staking SOL Rewards (Decrypt)

• DeFi Aggregator Turtle Raises $5.5M to Expand Programmable Liquidity Network (The Defiant)

• Wyoming Issues FRNT Stablecoin Across Seven Blockchains to Fund Education (Dune)

• Michael Saylor Points to Yield Gap Between Strategy’s STRF and STRD Preferred Stocks (CoinDesk)

• Blockchain.com Reportedly Exploring SPAC Deal to Go Public in the U.S. (CoinDesk)

• Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko Building Onchain Perps DEX ‘Percolator,’ GitHub Shows (The Block)

• Wise Seeks Stablecoin Payments Lead to Drive $10B Fintech’s Crypto Expansion (DL News)

Exchanges

• Upbit Lists Bioprotocol (BIO) for KRW, BTC, and USDT Trading (Upbit)

Exchange-Traded Funds

• From October 13–17, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.23 billion in net outflows, the second-largest weekly withdrawal on record.

• U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $312 million in net outflows from October 13-17.

• 21Shares, BlackRock, Bitwise, and WisdomTree Open UK Retail Access to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs as FCA Lifts Four-Year Ban (The Block)

• VanEck Files for First U.S. ETF Offering Exposure to Lido Staked ETH (stETH) (Lido)

Infrastructure

• OneKey Warns of Critical Flaw Exposing 120,000 Bitcoin Private Keys (X)

• Vitalik Buterin Proposes New Metric to Measure ZK and FHE Efficiency (X)

• Vitalik Buterin Unveils GKR Protocol for Faster ZK-EVM and zk-ML Proofs (Vitalik.eth.limo)

• Coinbase and Robinhood Suffer Hours-Long Outages Amid Massive AWS Failure (Decrypt)

Markets

• Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP Slide as Traders Revisit the Four-Year Cycle Theory (Decrypt)

• Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn Identifies Three Tailwinds for Crypto’s Next Rally (CoinDesk)

• Crypto VCs Say $20B Liquidation Was a Wake-Up Call for Market Structure, Not the End of a Cycle (The Block)

• Crypto Markets Rally as Trump Confirms Oct. 31 Summit With China’s Xi Jinping (Cointelegraph)

• Bitcoin Rebounds Above $110,500 on Fed Rate Cut Hopes, but US-China Risks Loom (The Block)

• Bittensor and Zcash Lead Altcoin Rally as Traders Rotate Out of BNB (Decrypt)

• Over $431 Million in Token Unlocks Coming This Week, Including ZRO, SOL, and AVAX(Tokenomist)

• Crypto Markets Rebound as Fed Signals Rate Cut and End of QT (The Defiant)

Meme Coins

• BNB Chain’s Four Meme Platform to Introduce Token Name Protection for Fairer Launches (X)

Mining

• Bloomberg: Bitcoin Miners Shift to AI Computing—and Leave Bitcoin in the Dust (Bloomberg)

• Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops 2.7% as Hashrate Hits Record 1.2 Trillion — Relief May Be Short-Lived (Cointelegraph)

• Professor Coin: Bitcoin’s Energy Debate Shifts Toward Sustainability and Green Innovation (Decrypt)

Politics & Regulation

• UK Plans to Finalize Stablecoin Rules by End of 2026 to Match U.S. Standards (Bloomberg)

• UK Tax Authority Doubles Crackdown on Crypto Traders With 65,000 Warning Letters (The Block)

• SEC Chair Says U.S. Is ‘10 Years Behind’ on Crypto, Calls Regulation Overhaul ‘Job One’ (Cointelegraph)

• Japan’s Financial Services Agency Weighs Allowing Banks to Hold and Trade Bitcoin (Livedoor)

• Beijing Orders Ant Group and JD.com to Halt Stablecoin Plans in Hong Kong (The Block)

• NYC Mayoral Candidate Andrew Cuomo Pledges to Create Chief Innovation Officer Role to Lead Crypto and Blockchain Growth (The Block)

• NY Democrats Introduce Companion Bill to Tax Proof-of-Work Mining Based on Energy Use (Decrypt)

• Top Crypto CEOs to Meet Senate Democrats on Wednesday to Discuss Market Structure Bill (The Block)

Token Generation Events

• Polymarket Airdrop Farmers Get “More Sophisticated” Ahead of Token Launch (Decrypt)

Treasuries

• Retail Investors Lost $17 Billion on Bitcoin Treasury Stock Collapse (Bloomberg)

• BitMine Buys 379,271 Ether After Market Crash as Tom Lee Stays Bullish Despite DAT Bubble Warnings (Cointelegraph)

• Strategy Inc. Buys 168 More Bitcoin for $18.8 Million, Bringing Holdings to 640,418 BTC (Strategy)

• BitMine Immersion Reaches $13.4B in Assets, Now Holds 3.24 Million ETH (PR Newswire)

• Greenlane Holdings Launches $110M Berachain Treasury Strategy, Backed by Polychain Capital and Kraken (Greenlane)

• Ripple-Backed Evernorth to Raise Over $1B in Nasdaq Listing to Build XRP Treasury (Reuters)

Other News

• Jack Dorsey Mocks Tether’s $250K Donation to Bitcoin Devs: ‘Why Only $250K?’ (Decrypt)

• Bitcoin Miner Proposes $450M, 450-Foot Prometheus Statue for Alcatraz Island (The Block)

• Astra Nova (RVV) Hacked—or Inside Job? $2M Transferred Sparks Controversy (BscScan)

• Grayscale Highlights Solana’s $5B Annualized Fee Revenue and Growing Developer Base (X)

• Binance Bans 600+ Accounts for Using Unauthorized Tools, Warns of Permanent Disqualification (X)

• From Starbucks to Emirates: Where You Can Spend Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP in 2025 (Cointelegraph)

• ZachXBT: U.S. Investor Loses $3M in XRP After Ellipal Wallet Hack (X)

• Astra Nova Blames $10M Token Dump on Market Maker Hack, Pledges Buyback to Restore Confidence (The Block)

• Federal Reserve’s Oct. 21 Payments Innovation Conference to Feature Panelists from Chainlink, Fireblocks, Paxos, Circle, and Coinbase (FRB)

• Insider Says MIT Brothers Planned $25M Ethereum Exploit for Months, Dubbed ‘Omakase’ (Decrypt)

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The purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen over 85% since 1970, according to FRED and River data. If only we had a solution that couldn’t be inflated, debased, or printed at will... 🟧💡

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