NEAR co-founder: On-chain tools are reducing demand for centralized exchanges; near.com will expand its fiat and tokenized stock features.

Sony Group announced on October 29 the launch of the global "Sony Onchain Entertainment Incubation Program", targeting creators and startups worldwide. The program supports the development of entertainment products and services built on the Soneium blockchain, and explores new models for creator-fan interaction, community building, and value creation. Selected projects will receive Soneium technical infrastructure support, collaboration opportunities with Sony Group subsidiaries, plus support in business development, marketing, community operations, and financing. Sony noted that since 2024, the company has selected and backed 43 global projects through its two previous incubation programs. The new initiative will focus specifically on on-chain entertainment, pushing related projects from technical validation to commercial deployment. The application period runs from October to December 2026, with project screening expected to conclude by March 2027. Applicant projects must have already launched or plan to launch on Soneium; evaluation criteria include originality of entertainment experiences, intellectual property utilization, community building, business expansion capacity, and market competitiveness, among others.

Euronext suspended trading of CoinShares’ newly launched Zcash ETP (ticker: ZCSH) on its Paris market on October 28, just hours after the product’s launch. An Euronext spokesperson stated the suspension stemmed from the central securities depository (CSD) being unable to support standard settlement operations, not regulatory concerns, and the product will resume once settlement conditions are met. The ZEC-backed, euro-denominated product carries an annual fee of 1.50%. Zcash ETPs from 21Shares, Virtune, and Valor remain actively traded in Europe. Meanwhile, Grayscale’s Zcash fund in the U.S. held approximately $686 million in assets under management as of late October, with a net inflow of around $41.1 million in the week ending October 23.

Hong Kong-listed company Ruihe Digital Intelligence sold 38.76 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $3.1219 million excluding transaction costs. The firm intends to use the proceeds for general working capital.

Binance Wallet has announced the participation threshold for predict.fun (PREDICT) Pre-TGE Prime Sale. Users need to reach 60 Alpha points to participate. Joining the TGE event will deduct 15 points. The event runs from 16:00 to 18:00 today.

Beating AI Express (from Dongcha) reports: A user spotted ChatGPT displaying a prompt reading "Chat and Work, all in one place", signaling users will no longer need to switch between chat and work modes. Selecting Medium or higher inference strength enables users to ask questions, create slides, and even operate other applications within a single conversation. However, Tibo quickly clarified that while the team plans to integrate Chat and Work this year, no official rollout has been launched, and a specific launch date remains undetermined. What has raised user concerns is the usage quota. Currently, quotas for regular Chat and Codex/Work are calculated separately. After integration, will daily chat activities start consuming the shared quota for Codex/Work? Tibo has not provided an answer to this question.

The U.S. state of Utah has brought 14 criminal charges against prediction market platform Kalshi and its two co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara. The charges include one felony count of alleged ongoing illegal activity, 12 counts of promoting internet gambling, and one misdemeanor gambling charge. Prosecutors said an undercover agent from Utah’s Attorney General’s Office accessed Kalshi in September using a local address, phone number and debit card, placing 12 sports event bets on the platform. On that basis, the state accuses the platform of promoting illegal gambling in Utah. The criminal proceedings come days after the Utah Attorney General filed a civil lawsuit, which seeks to bar Kalshi from accepting bets from Utah residents and recoup alleged profits the platform earned in the state. Kalshi has previously maintained that its sports event contracts are financial derivatives regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), not gambling, and thus not subject to state-level oversight. However, Utah and multiple other states argue prediction market platforms must still adhere to state gambling laws. The CFTC has also sued Utah, asserting such contracts should be regulated at the federal level.