Inflation pressure continues to build, as U.S. September PPI data surges.

According to Bloomberg, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine sent a letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Wednesday, urging the company to delay its initial public offering (IPO) until it adequately addresses risks related to AI safety, governance, and development speed, prioritizing the unprecedented risks posed by the technology. Levine oversees public pension assets totaling over $325 billion. He argued that the "morally binding" security agreements the Trump administration reached with AI firms including Anthropic remain insufficient. Levine urged Anthropic to establish corresponding governance mechanisms, specifically disclosing how it will implement appropriate audits and control measures, the scope of these measures, their expected timeline, and explaining whether and how these measures align with Amodei’s prior call to slow the development of AI model capabilities. Anthropic plans to go public as early as next month, with a potential fundraising amount matching or exceeding SpaceX’s previous record IPO. The company met with some investors at its headquarters on Wednesday and disclosed third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion this year. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As chip stocks lose $1 trillion in market value, ETF investors are pouring billions into the dip, with one fund offering triple daily exposure to the semiconductor sector on track to log a record weekly inflow. Compiled data shows the $72 billion VanEck Semiconductor ETF has attracted over $430 million in inflows over the past three trading sessions, poised for its largest weekly inflow since early September. Some investors are taking a bolder approach: despite the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF — a triple-leveraged fund — falling nearly 21% this week, it still drew around $3.8 billion in inflows. For the $19 billion fund, this inflow amount is enough to set a new all-time weekly record. However, the market backdrop is far from optimistic. Amid persistent investor concerns over AI spending and intensifying global competition, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has dropped 12% over the past six trading sessions, wiping roughly $1 trillion off its market capitalization. Concerns over overvaluation and rising interest rates have further amplified sector volatility. Todd Sohn, chief ETF strategist at Baird Strategas, said: “The pullback in semiconductor stocks has accelerated again, but this has not truly curbed investors’ demand for leveraged dip-buying.”

Crypto.com Exchange has announced the launch of Predict Pro, a prediction market feature for US users, offering real-time order books, probability charts, risk management, and portfolio trading tools. The feature is provided by Foris DAX, an NFA-registered introducing broker, with trading products being CFTC-regulated prediction contracts supplied by OG.com Markets. Predict Pro supports market, limit, stop-market, stop-limit, and post-only orders, and allows users to combine 2 to 6 predictions into a single position, including same-event parlays, cross-event parlays, and in-play trading. Tradable events cover elections, sports, cryptocurrency prices, Federal Reserve decisions, climate, and cultural events, among others.

According to HTX market data, XPL surged more than 6% in a short period following news of Stripe and Plasma’s partnership to launch a multi-currency stablecoin card, and is now trading at $0.08223. Earlier reports noted that Stripe announced a collaboration with Plasma to develop the multi-currency stablecoin card, designed to allow individuals and businesses to spend using currencies already held in their accounts, reducing unnecessary currency conversions and foreign exchange costs. Plasma will serve as a design partner, integrating with Stripe’s stablecoin card infrastructure to enable customers to use their account balances for payments via the multi-currency card. The expanded infrastructure will support fiat currencies including the U.S. dollar, Brazilian real, euro, Mexican peso, and Colombian peso; stablecoins include USDC, OUSD, and eligible stablecoins compliant with the GENIUS Act. Stripe’s stablecoin card service currently covers over 30 countries, with plans to expand to more than 100 countries by 2027.

Elon Musk responded on X to a post alleging Amazon was blocking Grok bots from placing orders and urging him to launch X Shop, saying, "Maybe we should start a company to compete with Amazon."

NEAR Foundation announced that Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Solana infrastructure firm Helius, has joined the foundation’s board of directors. He will assist in advancing product strategy, ecosystem growth and governance, while supporting NEAR’s expansion into the privacy-focused on-chain market. The board is responsible for overseeing the foundation and its major decisions. Mumtaz will also serve as a judge for the NEAR Hackathon held from November 1 to 14. Helius offers RPC nodes, data feeds, transaction relaying and validator services, with its infrastructure used by teams including Phantom, Jupiter, Coinbase and Bitwise. An early user of NEAR Intents, Mumtaz once referred to the protocol as a "market of markets". According to the NEAR Foundation, NEAR Intents has accumulated over $33 billion in total trading volume, with its privacy-focused total value locked (TVL) exceeding $160 million. Other board members include NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin, Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Mónica, former NEAR Foundation COO Chris Donovan and NEAR One founder Bowen Wang.