The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

According to BIT (bit.com) market data, Bloom Energy is down over 5% in pre-market trading. The news catalyst: Oracle has issued a force majeure notice for its New Mexico data center, seeking to defer related payment obligations if its data center codenamed "Project Jupiter" is shelved and fails to launch as scheduled in 2028. It is reported that Project Jupiter uses Bloom Energy's fuel cells.

Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Oracle is issuing a "force majeure" notice to the developer of its large-scale data center project in New Mexico, a subsidiary of Blue Owl Capital. Oracle is not seeking to exit as the primary tenant; instead, it aims to delay related payment obligations if the data center, codenamed "Project Jupiter," is put on hold and fails to launch as scheduled in 2028, to avoid accumulating ongoing costs. This move adds new uncertainty to the project, which has already faced opposition and regulatory setbacks. According to BIT (bit.com) market data, Oracle (ORCL) saw a pre-market decline of over 5%.

Digital asset investment firm RockawayX has announced the launch of its Catapult initiative, committing $150 million to tokenize private credit and other income-generating assets, as it positions lending tied to the real economy to become one of the largest markets in crypto. RockawayX said Catapult will provide venture capital, product structuring, liquidity, market making, and distribution services for tokenized credit products. The firm currently operates across multiple crypto investment segments, including an early-stage venture fund, a market-neutral fund that provides liquidity to DeFi protocols, and a treasury business with around $3 billion in deployed capital, and it acquired crypto hedge fund Relayer in August. RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer stated: “We believe that after trading, yield will be the largest use case on-chain. For this, we need new sources of yield: returns above 12% that are uncorrelated to crypto.” Catapult will focus on areas such as trade and supply chain finance, specialty asset-backed securities, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), and real estate-related credit. The current size of tokenized real-world assets is approximately $380 billion, with more than half coming from money market funds. RockawayX projects this market will reach $10 trillion to $20 trillion by 2030, a more aggressive forecast than Citigroup’s prediction of $5.5 trillion.

According to official announcements, Ondo Finance has launched a new on-chain product category: "Ondo Intelligent Portfolios", presented as a single transferable on-chain token that grants non-US qualified investors access to professionally designed portfolio exposure via one single on-chain token. The three portfolio tokens launched today are all built on portfolio strategies custom-developed by BlackRock for Ondo, targeting three core investment needs: - BLKHIon: Ondo High Income Powered by BlackRock (high-yield strategy) - BLKDIGon: Ondo Diversified Growth Powered by BlackRock (diversified growth strategy) - BLKGRWon: Ondo High Growth Powered by BlackRock (high-growth strategy) Ondo Intelligent Portfolios will also unlock a suite of new capabilities, including an automatically executed rebalancing mechanism at the smart contract level, programmatically composable portfolios that integrate with the broader on-chain economy, and the ability to combine multiple asset classes within a single token. Holding these portfolio tokens provides economic exposure to the portfolio’s underlying asset basket. Each portfolio token is issued by Ondo Global Markets and tokenized by Ondo Finance. Investors only need to mint or redeem the single token to hold a basket of weighted tokenized assets, eliminating the need to individually purchase, weight, or rebalance separate positions. Holdings, weights, and every rebalancing event are visible in real time on-chain, and the tokens can be freely transferred peer-to-peer between wallets, trading platforms, and DeFi protocols. Ondo plans to continuously expand this product line going forward, rolling out additional on-chain portfolio products.

US initial jobless claims for the week ending September 19 came in at 197,000, beating expectations of 201,000, with the prior week’s figure revised from 196,000 to 198,000.

Chairman Tom Lee of Ethereum treasury firm BitMine stated that crypto-themed stocks led third-quarter gains, viewing this as a signal of a bull market’s launch. Unlike past cycles driven by ICOs, NFTs, meme coins, and stablecoins, the current cycle incorporates tokenization, AI, and a more favorable regulatory landscape, with a wider pool of participating capital. After years of consolidation, the market may see a more decisive breakout, with upside potential exceeding that of prior cycles. Lee also expressed optimism that Ethereum will strengthen amid the rollout of tokenization on Wall Street, noting ETH has a chance to challenge its all-time high this year.