Citigroup: The US-Iran situation still faces short-term escalation risks, and Brent crude oil may drop below $70 by 2027.

According to Bloomberg Terminal, Kazakhstan has invested approximately $100 million in crypto funds, including Brevan Howard Digital.

Binance released a statement that in response to potential security issues reported by third-party platform SignalPlus, it has taken preventive measures and actively revoked all API keys linked to SignalPlus. The exchange emphasized its own systems were not compromised and user funds remain secure. Binance reminded SignalPlus users to log directly into their Binance accounts to check holdings and open orders, avoid re-binding API keys until SignalPlus confirms the issue is fully resolved, and recommended always enabling IP whitelisting. Furthermore, Binance called on all third-party service providers integrated with its platform to audit their security controls, monitor abnormal activities, and contact Binance immediately upon identifying any risks.

Beating AI News Flash: Anthropic has fixed a Claude Code issue that was wasting API credits. Previously, developers found that background sub-agents consumed large volumes of tokens even when not executing new tasks, solely for frequent progress updates. Claude Code allows multiple sub-agents to run in parallel in the background for tasks like code review, bug fixing, and test runs. To display task progress, each sub-agent updates its status roughly every 30 seconds. The problem was that prior to the fix, the model had to re-read the entire conversation history for every status update, even when only a few words were generated, leading to more token waste the longer a task ran. In late October, a developer discovered their team spent around 16.4% of weekly model costs on these status updates. Anthropic engineers later confirmed the mechanism, noting it was a relatively extreme edge case. Now, Claude Code uses the cheaper Haiku 5.5 model to generate status prompts from short notes, instead of repeatedly reading the full conversation. The company reports each status update costs roughly 99% less, with overall credit savings of around 5% for sessions using background sub-agents — equivalent to about 6% more requests for the same credit amount. This optimization is limited to the Claude Code command-line version and does not apply to the desktop app. It is now available to most Pro, Max, and Ultra users, plus all Team and Enterprise users, requiring an update to version v2.1.316 or newer.

US companies announced layoffs in October, falling to their lowest level for the same period since 2023, while hiring plans have risen as businesses prepare early for the holiday shopping season. Data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. shows U.S. firms announced 43,994 layoffs last month, a 71% drop from the same period a year prior. That October last year, U.S. corporate layoffs hit a 20+ year record high. Challenger’s data also indicates U.S. employers announced plans to hire nearly 445,000 people last month, a 57% year-over-year increase, marking the highest October hiring total since at least 2009. The rise in hiring plans is driven entirely by staffing needs for the holiday peak season. Amazon plans to hire 300,000 people, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the total seasonal hiring plan; United Parcel Service (UPS) has also announced plans to hire 100,000 people. The layoff and hiring plan figures reflect the current characteristics of the U.S. labor market: fewer layoffs, but relatively limited job opportunities. Markets expect the U.S. government’s October employment report, to be released Friday, will show nonfarm payrolls rose by 65,000, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.2%. (Jinshi)

Beating AI Express (Insight) reports: AI startup Atmanity has launched real-time video model Atmee v2. With just one photo and a 10-second audio clip, users can create an AI character capable of face-to-face chat. The model generates real-time facial expressions, gestures and body movements based on conversation content, and can interact with its surrounding environment. In official demos, a cartoon character actively leans toward the camera to amuse users, while two AI hosts hold unscripted, real-time conversations. The team also used an alley photo to have the model generate controllable street scenes continuously, though the output still has visual distortions. To enable natural character interaction, the team trained two models: one determines when the character speaks, listens and what actions to take, while the other generates real-time video frames. Atmanity states the entire system can run on a single GPU. Founder Yu Zhengping previously founded AR navigation firm Phiar, which was acquired by Google in 2022. Since then, he has launched another startup, spending two years researching real-time video AI to let people interact with AI directly, just like in a video call. Atmee v2 can also generate standard videos like Seedance 2.5 and Wan 3.0. For human-centric video generation tasks, it is up to 50 times faster and reduces costs by 10 to 100 times. Currently, Atmee v2 requires an invitation code for access, with a beta version and API set to launch soon.

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms has signed a 15-year, approximately $28 billion agreement with Anthropic to provide 910 megawatts of data center capacity at Anthropic’s campus in Corsicana, Texas, U.S. Once fully operational, the project is expected to generate around $1.8 billion in annual rental revenue. However, total construction costs are projected to reach $5.5 billion, with roughly $1.8 billion allocated to Riot’s own site and power infrastructure, and up to $3.6 billion to cover Anthropic’s data center construction expenses. Riot plans to finance 80% to 90% of the project via debt, with its own contribution estimated at $500 million to $1.1 billion, and the financing initiative is set to launch in 2027. Notably, per Riot’s quarterly filings, Anthropic can recover eligible facility construction costs by offsetting future rent, plus a 12% annual interest rate. This means Riot may need to bear billions in interest expenses related to construction costs in addition to rental payments. Riot has previously been selling Bitcoin to fund its data center transition: in the first nine months of 2026, the company sold a total of 20,264 BTC, generating around $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of the end of September, it held only 2,418 BTC, and plans to continue selling nearly all newly mined Bitcoin going forward. The first batch of data center capacity for the project is scheduled to be delivered in June 2027.