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

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), US stock index futures continue to edge lower: Nasdaq 100 futures have fallen by 1%, S&P 500 futures dropped 0.44%, and Dow Jones futures declined 0.4%. Per Bitget’s market data, spot gold has broken below $4,170 per ounce, with an intraday drop of more than 2.6%.

Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL), the creator of USDC, has filed an 8-K form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Co-founder and board member P. Sean Neville, who has served on the board since 2016, resigned immediately for personal reasons. The company described the move as a normal board transition, noting no disagreements over operations, policies or practices, which cuts the board’s size from 8 to 7 members. On the same day, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jeremy Fox-Geen submitted his resignation, and will remain in his post until the end of December 2026 or until a successor is appointed. The company has launched a replacement search via a headhunter. Both Neville and Fox-Geen signed separation agreements: during the transition period, they retain their $500,000 annual salary plus 110% of their 2026 target bonus, with equity remaining vested. Post-departure, they will receive $1.05 million paid over 12 months, an additional two months of accelerated vesting for restricted stock units (RSUs), a 12-month extension to their option exercise periods, and are bound by a 24-month non-solicitation clause and 12-month non-compete restriction. The company confirmed Fox-Geen’s departure also involves no disagreements.

Official announcement from ThorChain states that the network outage is an emergency security mechanism intended to protect the protocol’s security. The suspension is not selective freezing of specific funds, nor individual swaps for targeted parties. During the May 2026 security incident, $10.7 million was stolen from its liquidity pools. At the time, the attacker’s address was not blacklisted, allowing transactions to continue on THORChain. THORChain is a permissionless blockchain platform built to avoid any form of censorship. On September 26, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen noted that attacker addresses linked to the exchange’s security incident had been made public and were under ongoing tracking. Bitget is now formally demanding that THORChain cut off services to these addresses. “Decentralization is a design principle, not a shield to facilitate the flow of known stolen funds,” she said, adding that the entire crypto industry is monitoring THORChain’s response to the issue. Recently, THORChain has sparked controversy over hackers using it as a channel for money laundering, yet it continues to refuse to block such activities, citing its decentralized and permissionless design.

According to an official announcement, Huobi HTX will launch JPYC/USDT spot trading and grid trading at 21:00 (UTC+8) on September 28. JPYC deposit services will open at 15:00 on September 28, while withdrawal services will open at 21:00 on September 29. JPYC is a Japanese yen stablecoin issued by Japan’s JPYC Inc., regulated under Japan’s Payment Services Act as an electronic payment instrument. It is pegged to the yen at a 1:1 ratio, with reserve assets held in bank deposits and Japanese government bonds. Users can complete KYC via the JPYC EX platform to issue or redeem JPYC, and the token can be used for payments, transfers, DeFi and other scenarios on blockchains including Ethereum and Polygon. The project is designed to provide a compliant, transparent digital yen solution.

According to official announcements, CleanSpark (Nasdaq: CLSK) has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary CSDC Finance I, LLC has completed the previously announced offering of $2.276 billion in aggregate principal amount of 7.875% senior secured notes, which mature in 2031. The notes have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the U.S. unless registered or an applicable registration exemption applies.

Beating AI Express News: A Financial Times investigation finds that open-weight models are spreading from tech companies to traditional U.S. enterprises. AlphaSense data shows that U.S. firms mentioned open-weight or open-source models around six times more year-on-year in earnings calls and investor meetings in August and September this year. PNC Financial, logistics firm CH Robinson, and Siemens have all recently publicly discussed related applications. The most direct driver for enterprises switching models is cost. Tinder’s annual AI spending jumped from roughly $1 million in January this year to around $10 million in July, and it has now started routing some regular requests to open-weight models. Larger telecom firm AT&T currently offloads about 40% of its AI tasks to open models, with plans to raise that share to roughly 70%. Its internal AI system processes around 45 billion tokens daily: simple tasks are assigned to cheaper models, while complex tasks remain with leading models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other providers.