U.S. CPI: +2.9% YEAR-OVER-YEAR (EST. +2.9%); U.S. CORE CPI: +3.2% YEAR-OVER-YEAR (EST. +3.3%)

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (handle @ai_9684xtpa), a certain address purchased 1,470.94 ETH at an average price of $2,582 roughly 3 hours ago, spending 3.803 million USDC.

According to Fortune, retail proprietary trading startup Vest Labs announced it has closed a $13 million seed round, led by Portal Ventures, with Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and several KKR executives participating as individual investors. The company did not disclose its post-money valuation. Vest allows eligible traders to use the firm’s capital to trade perpetual contracts in real markets around the clock, with traders retaining up to 80% of profits and the rest going to the company. The firm noted that unlike some retail proprietary trading firms that rely on fees from simulated trading accounts, this model lets Vest benefit from traders’ success rather than betting on their failure. The funding will be used to develop a mobile app, expand its current 22-person team, and add more assets available for round-the-clock trading. Per Vest’s own disclosure, as of late September, roughly 26% of the platform’s around 27,000 traders had received cash payouts, with month-over-month growth exceeding 300% in both monthly active traders and trading volume.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), address 0x6f4…52F67 withdrew 3,583.2 ETH from Binance over the past two hours, valued at $9.27 million at an average price of $2,587.32. The address has transferred all the tokens to a new wallet address 0x991…4fa70 via two intermediate transfers.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told attendees at Singapore’s Token2049 conference that chasing the next 100x token has become a “game of irrational exuberance and hot potatoes”. He noted that traders may buy tokens even if they deem them to have no intrinsic value, solely for their potential to surge 100x, hoping to sell before the price collapses. While some people do accumulate wealth this way, Coplan argued that inflated asset prices will eventually correct. Coplan added that Polymarket’s user growth reflects that some traders are seeking opportunities with more predictable odds rather than chasing the next hot token. He emphasized that prediction markets do not offer exponential upside, though traders with relevant information are still willing to participate. DefiLlama data shows Polymarket recorded roughly $1.21 billion in trading volume over the past seven days, ranking second among prediction markets, while Kalshi saw around $2.3 billion. However, prediction markets also face risks. A prior report from 10x Research pointed out that data-driven professional traders may exploit information asymmetry and price spreads to turn a profit. Additionally, more than a dozen U.S. states have taken legal action against Polymarket, Kalshi, or both over sports event-related contracts.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: Nous Research completes a $90 million Series B funding round, with valuation hitting $1.5 billion. Robot Ventures led the round, and participants include Nvidia, Microsoft M12, Samsung, USV, etc. The company has raised approximately $158 million in total to date. The new capital will primarily be used to bring Hermes – an open-source agent that has gone viral among developers this year – to the enterprise market. Since its launch in February, Hermes has been downloaded 22.7 million times. Data from OpenRouter shows its usage has surpassed OpenClaw. As of mid-September, Nous’ annualized revenue stood at around $36 million, and the company projects it will exceed $100 million later this year. Nous does not offer another closed agent for enterprises. Hermes remains free and open-source under the MIT license, allowing enterprises to select their own models or deploy on their own cloud or on-premises servers. Nous adds enterprise-focused features on top, including SSO, employee access permissions, workspace isolation, auditing, cost management, and integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams. The first enterprise deployments have already begun. Its business model is now clear: Hermes is free and open-source, while Nous generates revenue from models, tools, cloud hosting, and enterprise management services. An open-source agent originally targeted at developers has already achieved $36 million in annualized revenue, and now it aims to validate whether this model can scale in the enterprise space.

Glassnode’s report notes that Bitcoin’s breakout above the $85,000 sell wall occurred with low trading volume and limited new capital inflow, followed by a subsequent pullback. The 7-day average of combined daily trading volume on spot exchanges and U.S. spot ETFs stands at roughly $6.8 billion, lower than about 90% of trading days since January 2024. In the 30 days ending October 5, new capital from ETFs, stablecoin growth, and corporate treasury purchases totaled around $4.9 billion, less than 40% of the $12.8 billion realized market cap increase over the same period. On October 4, profitable short-term holders contributed approximately 86% of total inflows to trading platforms that day — a 1-year high — indicating recent buyers are taking profits. The options market has shifted back to a bullish bias, with the put-to-call open interest ratio at around 0.56. Recent liquidation levels are primarily concentrated below the current price; the nearest large liquidation cluster is at $81,700 to $83,300, while Binance’s largest buy order range sits at $81,000 to $81,250. If spot trading volume and ETF buying demand rebound, and Bitcoin firmly closes above $85,500, it will confirm the breakout has gained tangible support, potentially bringing the short liquidation cluster near $92,000 within reach. If the $81,000 buy level is broken, the underlying liquidation cluster could be triggered; altcoin leverage remains elevated, and a continued downturn may spark forced liquidations.