CoinPhoton

U.S. cybersecurity firm Socket has uncovered a large-scale attack by North Korean state-backed hackers, who uploaded more than 300 malicious code packages to the npm registry — a core platform used by millions of developers to share JavaScript software.


These seemingly harmless packages secretly installed malware capable of stealing passwords, browser information, and crypto wallet keys. The campaign, dubbed “Contagious Interview,” involved hackers pretending to be tech recruiters to target developers working in blockchain and Web3.


Socket traced the operation through fake package names mimicking popular libraries like express, dotenv, and hardhat, as well as through code patterns linked to known North Korean malware. Around 50,000 downloads of the infected packages occurred before most were removed, though some remain active.


Experts warn that this attack exposes the vulnerability of the software supply chain, urging developers to treat every npm install as potentially unsafe, thoroughly scan dependencies, and use automated tools to detect tampered code.


The openness of the open-source ecosystem — once its greatest advantage — has now become a critical weakness when weaponized by hostile actors.

Ripple CEO: “There’s no going back to the anti-crypto era”


Brad Garlinghouse said the crypto industry in the U.S. will never return to the restrictive environment seen under Gary Gensler’s leadership at the SEC. He emphasized that “the ship has sailed” and crypto has become an irreversible part of the U.S. financial system.


Garlinghouse criticized traditional finance (TradFi) as “hypocritical” for blocking crypto firms from accessing Fed master accounts, despite their compliance with AML/KYC standards.


He also revealed that he met with President Donald Trump to discuss crypto policy and expressed optimism about upcoming regulatory frameworks, even amid political disagreements in Congress.


After winning its case against the SEC, Ripple achieved legal clarity, which Garlinghouse said is what the entire industry needs — adding that Ripple will continue fighting for clearer recognition of crypto.

Bitmine buys 104,336 ETH worth $417 million amid market downturn


Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that Bitmine (@BitMNR) has purchased an additional 104,336 ETH, worth around $417 million, transferred to three new wallets within the past seven hours from Kraken and BitGo.


The massive accumulation comes amid a sharp crypto market decline. Despite the downturn, analyst Tom Lee remains optimistic, predicting that ETH could reach $10,000 by the end of the year.

A record number of companies increased their Bitcoin exposure in Q3 2025, signaling growing institutional confidence despite market volatility.


According to Bitwise, the number of public firms holding Bitcoin surged nearly 40% to 172, collectively owning over 1.02 million BTC worth around $117 billion. The figure has since climbed to $118.4 billion, per Bitcoin Treasuries data.


Public companies led the accumulation, adding 193,000 BTC (up 20.68% from last quarter), while private firms and ETFs saw modest gains of 2.21% and 6.7%. MicroStrategy remains the largest holder with 640,031 BTC, followed by newcomers like Metaplanet, which doubled its holdings.


Institutional inflows remain robust, with $2.67 billion entering Bitcoin products last week and total crypto investment inflows hitting a record $48.7 billion year-to-date, according to CoinShares.


Bitget CEO Gracy Chen attributed the surge to a favorable regulatory environment under President Donald Trump, citing new accounting reforms and SEC standards for commodity-based trust listings. She predicts continued ETF inflows and corporate adoption could push Bitcoin toward $160,000 in Q4.


Analysts say the accumulation is largely driven by digital asset treasuries focused on long-term crypto acquisition. Despite short-term selloffs and geopolitical tension, experts describe the pullback as a “recalibration,” not a reversal—indicating the long-term bullish trend remains intact.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX exchange, claims his 2022 arrest was a politically motivated act by the Biden administration after he shifted his donations toward the Republican Party.


In a GETTR post on Wednesday, Bankman-Fried said he had leaned center-left in 2020 but moved to a centrist position by 2022 after witnessing increased regulatory crackdowns on the crypto industry by then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the U.S. Department of Justice.


“I was a centrist and (privately) donated tens of millions to Republicans,” he wrote. “Weeks later, Biden’s anti-crypto SEC and DOJ went after me — just weeks before the crypto bill I was working on was set for a vote, and the night before I was due to testify before Congress.”


He also reiterated Republican lawmakers’ suspicions that his arrest was timed to prevent him from testifying and accused Gary Gensler of “conveniently losing” related internal messages.


According to a report from the SEC’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), text messages between October 2022 and September 2023 were lost due to an “automated data deletion policy” on Gensler’s government-issued phone.


During that period, the SEC also launched major enforcement actions against crypto firms such as Coinbase and Binance.


After being arrested in the Bahamas in December 2022, Bankman-Fried was convicted in November 2023 on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy for stealing billions in customer funds from FTX. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence and has appealed the conviction, while seeking clemency from President Donald Trump — who previously pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht.


In another GETTR post, Bankman-Fried said he cannot post directly and instead “dictates to a friend via approved BOP phone or email.”

BitMine chair Tom Lee and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes remain firm on their prediction that Ethereum (ETH) will hit $10,000 by the end of 2025, despite a recent crypto market crash and limited time left in the year.
Lee said on the Bankless podcast that Ethereum could reach $10,000–12,000, emphasizing that the asset has been “basing” since 2021 and is now entering a new phase of price discovery rather than forming a market bubble.
Hayes echoed the same outlook, saying he’s “staying consistent” with his $10,000 target. At around $4,129, a move to $10,000 would represent a 142% gain — which both investors view as achievable.
However, historical data paints a more moderate picture. According to CoinGlass, Ethereum has averaged 21.36% gains in Q4 since 2016, which would bring it closer to $5,000–6,500 by year-end.
Analysts like James Harris (Tesseract) expect a rise to around $6,500, while Michael van de Poppe (MN Capital) sees potential for new highs once ETH forms a higher low against Bitcoin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpO2RllR7b8

SOL Strategies purchases 88,433 SOL after raising C$30 million


SOL Strategies Inc. (CSE: HODL, NASDAQ: STKE) — the first publicly listed company to combine a large Solana treasury with a revenue-generating validator business — announced the purchase of 88,433 SOL tokens using proceeds from its C$30 million LIFE offering, at an average price of USD 193.93 per SOL.


The purchase includes 79,000 locked SOL tokens acquired from the Solana Foundation at a 15% discount, along with spot SOL tokens bought on the open market. The locked tokens will fully unlock after 12 months and have been immediately staked to the company’s validators.


Interim CEO Michael Hubbard stated that this capital deployment demonstrates the company’s commitment to expanding its Solana treasury at attractive valuations while leveraging staking rewards and discounted acquisitions to execute its DAT++ strategy.

Ethereum L1 is experiencing record-high levels of daily transactions and active addresses, even as gas fees hover near all-time lows. The network’s scalability improvements appear to be boosting activity without driving up transaction costs.

Binance announces 51st HODLer Airdrop project – Euler (EUL)
Binance has announced that Euler (EUL), a DeFi Super App combining lending, trading with any asset as collateral, custom markets, and deep liquidity, will be the 51st project on the HODLer Airdrops page.
Airdrop eligibility period: Users who subscribed BNB to Simple Earn (Flexible or Locked) and/or On-Chain Yields from 2025-10-04 00:00 UTC to 2025-10-06 23:59 UTC.
Airdrop distribution: EUL tokens will be credited to users’ Spot Accounts within 24 hours, at least 1 hour before trading starts.
Listing date: 2025-10-13 14:30 UTC with trading pairs USDT, USDC, BNB, FDUSD, and TRY. Users can deposit EUL starting from 2025-10-13 10:30 UTC.
EUL token details:
Total supply: 27,182,818 EUL
HODLer Airdrop: 543,657 EUL (2% of total supply)
Circulating supply at listing: 19,809,653 EUL (72.87% of total genesis supply)
Smart contracts: Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum
Listing fee: 0
HODLer Airdrops program:
Rewards BNB holders who subscribe to Simple Earn or On-Chain Yields.
Calculations are based on historical snapshots of user BNB balances.
Tokens are automatically credited to Spot Accounts, with no continuous action required from users.
#EUL #AirdropHODLer

A major crypto whale who previously earned $192 million shorting the market before Trump’s tariff announcement has opened new bearish positions. The trader (wallet 0xb317) on Hyperliquid opened a $163 million leveraged short on Bitcoin at $115,433 and is already up $3.5 million in profit. The crypto community calls him an “insider whale” due to the suspicious timing of his trades.

Over 250 wallets lost millionaire status on Hyperliquid since Friday’s crash, while another trader opened a 40x $11 million long. Researcher Janis Kluge commented that the event highlights how unregulated markets breed insider trading and corruption.

Binance denied having any role in the crash, claiming it was only a “display issue” and that its systems remained operational. The exchange later compensated traders $283 million for collateral losses tied to depegged tokens. Meanwhile, BNB rebounded 14% in 24 hours to above $1,300.

Hyperliquid set to activate HIP-3, paving the way for decentralized perpetual markets

Hyperliquid (HYPE) surged 11.72% as the project announced it will activate HIP-3, a major protocol upgrade that will enable anyone to permissionlessly create perpetual futures markets, expected to go live later today (Oct. 13).

According to a Hyperliquid administrator on the project’s Discord channel, the upcoming network upgrade will include the activation of HIP-3:

“HIP-3 will be enabled during this network upgrade. There is no immediate change for users. Deployers meeting the onchain requirements will be able to deploy perps for trading once ready,” the administrator said.

HIP-3 (Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3) is seen as a key milestone toward fully decentralizing the perpetual listing process, allowing developers to launch new perpetual markets without permission.

According to the project’s documentation, to launch a perp DEX on HyperCore, deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE. HIP-3 is also integrated with HyperEVM to support smart contracts and governance, and introduces additional safeguards such as validator slashing and open interest caps.

The HYPE token has gained about 11% over the past 24 hours, trading around $42.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted on X: “Bitcoin and gold will outlast any other currency,” reaffirming the company’s long-term stance on holding both assets in its reserves.

This statement aligns with Tether’s strategy announced in May 2023, in which the company committed to allocating up to 15% of its realized operating profits to buy Bitcoin as a long-term reserve asset, rather than using it to directly back circulating USDT. At the same time, Tether has also expanded its exposure to gold through Tether Gold (XAUt) — a token backed by allocated physical gold. As of June 30, 2025, XAUt was backed by more than 7.66 tons of gold.

Tether has also reportedly held talks to invest across the gold value chain — from mining and refining to royalties — as part of a broader diversification strategy. Ardoino has previously grouped Bitcoin, gold, and land as “hedge assets” and denied rumors that Tether sold BTC to buy gold.

This latest eight-word post is not a policy shift but a reaffirmation: Bitcoin remains a strategic asset purchased with profits, while gold serves as a parallel pillar through tokenization and potential upstream investments. Meanwhile, most of Tether’s reserves remain in U.S. Treasury bills, according to previous attestations.

Investors now await the company’s next reserve report — expected later this month or early November — to see whether Tether’s allocations to Bitcoin and gold have changed.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has postponed the implementation of new prudential standards for crypto assets to early 2027, instead of 2026, following industry concerns over timing and blockchain asset classification.

The updated framework, based on Basel standards, will require banks to hold capital reserves according to the risk level of their crypto exposures — higher for public blockchain tokens and lower for stable, fully backed assets.

The delay is seen as a cautious move to maintain Singapore’s balance between innovation and financial stability. While the country remains a leading Web3 hub in Asia, it is facing growing competition from Hong Kong, the EU, and the UAE.

https://www.mas.gov.sg/-/media/mas-media-library/publications/consultations/ppd/2025/response-to-consultation-paper-on-crypto-at1-and-tier2.pdf

Solana sets new benchmark with 100,000 TPS during market turmoil

Solana continues to reaffirm its leadership in high-performance blockchain technology. According to SolanaFloor, the core development team Anza revealed that during Friday’s large-scale liquidation event, the Solana network underwent its most intensive stress test in history — yet remained perfectly stable, reaching a peak throughput of 100,000 TPS without any interruption.

Notably, the Agave validator client handled 6× the usual peak traffic and 60 million compute units (CU) per block without any sign of performance degradation.

This milestone underscores Solana’s exceptional scalability and reliability, reinforcing community confidence in a blockchain ecosystem capable of meeting the most demanding requirements of decentralized finance markets.

Ripple attracts strategic equity investment from NYSE-listed C1 Fund

Ripple has secured a strategic equity investment from C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE: CFND), a publicly traded closed-end investment company in the U.S., marking another milestone in strengthening institutional confidence in blockchain infrastructure, enterprise payments, and global tokenized asset adoption.

C1 Fund stated that this transaction is part of its strategy to invest in companies driving responsible digital asset adoption within institutional markets. The firm highlighted that Ripple’s blockchain platform is utilized by a diverse range of financial institutions and enterprises worldwide, particularly through its stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD) and the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Elliot Han, Chief Investment Officer at C1 Fund, said: “Ripple’s technology and global reach align perfectly with our strategy to support core infrastructure and institutional progress in blockchain finance.”

Based in Palo Alto, California, C1 Fund focuses on late-stage investments in blockchain infrastructure and digital asset technology firms, excluding those operating in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao. Industry analysts view this investment as a strong signal of growing institutional confidence that enterprise blockchain platforms like Ripple could play a central role in shaping the next generation of global financial systems.

C1 Fund CEO Dr. Najam Kidwai commented: “We are thrilled to welcome Ripple into the C1 Fund portfolio as part of our ongoing commitment to support world-class digital asset companies. This investment underscores our confidence in Ripple’s leadership and innovation in the blockchain space.”

Traders can rest easy from now on — Satoshi Nakamoto has awarded Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. He promised not to wreck the market anymore.

USDE, BNSOL, and WBETH experience severe depegging on Binance

Market data shows that three tokens — USDE, BNSOL, and WBETH — experienced major depegging events on Binance earlier today.

USDE plunged to as low as $0.6567, BNSOL dropped to $34.9, and WBETH hit a low of $430.65.

Binance has confirmed the incident, stating that its team is conducting a comprehensive review of affected users, liquidation details, and potential compensation measures.

The exchange also emphasized that it is enhancing its risk management controls to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Strategy’s market net asset value (mNAV) dropped to 1.174, its lowest level in nearly two years, signaling a sharp narrowing between the company’s market cap and the actual value of its Bitcoin holdings. The decline limits its ability to expand Bitcoin exposure since issuing new shares at premium valuations becomes harder. According to CryptoQuant, PIPE financing structures add selling pressure, potentially creating a “death spiral” scenario where companies are forced to sell Bitcoin to service debt, further weighing on the market.

Vitalik Buterin sells meme tokens, transfers 70 ETH via Railgun

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has sold over 40.25 billion SPURDO, 10.31 billion MARVIN, and 6 trillion DOJO tokens, earning 22.14 ETH (around $96,000). He later transferred an additional 70 ETH ($304,000) to a wallet linked to the Ethereum Foundation through the privacy protocol Railgun.

The move sparked speculation that Vitalik might be testing Railgun’s privacy features or preparing for charitable activities. Railgun is one of Ethereum’s leading privacy protocols, designed to conceal transaction details and enhance user anonymity.

Vitalik’s use of Railgun has led some in the community to believe that the Ethereum Foundation may be considering deeper integration of advanced privacy tools into the Ethereum ecosystem in the future.

Binance has announced Walrus (WAL) as the 50th project on its HODLer Airdrop page. Walrus is a decentralized data infrastructure platform that enables users to create, share, and trade data securely — serving as a foundational layer for next-generation AI applications.

Trading for WAL will open at 07:30 UTC on October 10, 2025, with pairs against USDT, USDC, BNB, FDUSD, and TRY.