Stablecoin payment firm Noah closes $38 million seed funding round, with participation from Endeit Capital and other investors.

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.

The World Gold Council’s report shows that global gold ETFs pulled in $10 billion in inflows during September, pushing the third quarter’s total inflows to a record $31 billion, led by funds listed in Europe and North America. Even as gold prices fell, global gold holdings rose by 67 tons to a record 4,256 tons, while total assets under management (AUM) dropped 7% quarter-on-quarter to $574 billion. At the country and regional level, the third quarter’s record inflows were led by the United States, followed by strong contributions from UK-listed funds. The UK notched its strongest quarter ever, helping Europe hit the same milestone at the regional level.

Investors will closely watch the upcoming release of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting minutes for more clues about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision-making thinking during last month’s interest rate hike. BMO strategist Ian Lyngen noted that ahead of the last Fed meeting, a common view among investors was that Fed Chair Powell needed to raise rates to uphold the central bank’s policy credibility, not because recent economic data demanded further policy tightening. Lyngen said: “How extensively the committee discussed a similar 'credibility hike' framework will be very notable. If this line of thinking was indeed widely discussed, it could signal a more gradual future rate hike path, which aligns with Williams’ recent comments.” He added that focus will also be on how the FOMC assesses the risk balance of achieving its dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability. Such discussions could help gauge how committed the Fed is to further rate hikes, or whether markets have reason to treat September’s rate hike as a truly one-off policy move. (Jin10)

CoinDesk analyst Krisztian Sandor reports that Tom Lee, chairman of Ethereum treasury firm BitMine, told attendees at Singapore’s TOKEN2049 conference that the company will stop buying Ether (ETH) once its ETH holdings reach 5% of the total circulating supply, with roughly 100,000 ETH remaining to hit that target. Currently, BitMine holds 6,016,414 ETH, accounting for approximately 4.9% of circulating supply, worth around $15.5 billion based on Wednesday’s prices. The firm added roughly $41 million worth of ETH last week. At this purchase pace, it will take 6 to 7 weeks to reach the 5% target. BitMine also holds $643 million in cash and tradable securities, which is more than double the funds required to complete the remaining purchases at current prices. Lee noted that the accumulation goal, originally projected to take five years, is nearly achieved in just over a year. BitMine said it has been buying ETH weekly since launching its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025, providing consistent demand to the market. Lee added that while the purchases were made during the bear market, large volumes were acquired last year during the bull market when prices were higher. Data from DropsTab shows BitMine’s current ETH holdings are sitting on an unrealized loss of roughly $4.5 billion. ETH fell around 5% in the 24 hours ending Wednesday, hitting its lowest level since September 20.

Crypto trading and market-making firm GSR has committed $100 million to co-develop on-chain lending business Hare with liquidity distribution platform Turtle, which will be responsible for creating and managing on-chain vaults. This multi-year funding commitment will be provided primarily in the form of credit lines; GSR will first deploy its own capital into the Hare product to serve as initial liquidity before external investors come on board. Hare will launch two products built on the Aave lending protocol first: Hare USD Earn, which accepts major U.S. stablecoins via a single vault, and Hare Gold Earn, which allows holders of Paxos’ tokenized gold products PAXG and PAXGy to earn yields. Paxos Labs will partner on the gold product. Vault managers will allocate assets deposited into smart contracts to lending markets and other strategies. Hare CEO Connor Milner said that GSR’s committed capital will be deployed directly, enabling issuers to access liquidity from day one, while investors will see that GSR’s own funds are held in the same vaults as their capital. Hare will focus on evaluating collateral, counterparties, and the potential performance of related positions during periods of market stress.