Rising concerns over AI financing push SoftBank’s credit risk to a near four-year high.

Solana to Launch Alpenglow Upgrade on October 21, One of Network’s Largest Underlying Overhauls Since 2020 Solana will roll out its Alpenglow upgrade on October 21, marking one of the most significant foundational overhauls the network has undergone since 2020. The upgrade will replace the existing validator voting mechanism, aiming to cut transaction finalization time from roughly 6 seconds to 150 milliseconds—an approximate 40x speed boost. At the core of the upgrade is shifting validator voting from on-chain to off-chain, consolidating votes into certificates that enable transaction finalization within 1 to 2 consensus rounds. If mainnet performance meets expectations, Solana’s transaction confirmation speed will approach that of credit card payments or centralized exchanges, enhancing user experiences for meme coin trading, stablecoin payments, and on-chain platforms. The upgrade will also reduce validator costs. Currently, validators pay around 2 SOL in daily voting fees. Post-upgrade, voting fees will be eliminated, replaced by a fixed validator access fee per epoch: 0.8 SOL per ~24-hour epoch, an estimated cost reduction of roughly 60%. However, the testing process faced hurdles. According to Galaxy Digital, since the testnet launched in early May, it has been wiped and restarted from scratch six times. One migration attempt caused a full testnet failure requiring a rollback; subsequent migrations ultimately succeeded, paving the way for the mainnet launch. All issues occurred on the testnet, with no impact on real funds. Per the announcement, the upgrade will begin at the start of Epoch 1064 on Wednesday, and complete the switch at Slot 459,653,000 after a 5,000-slot transition phase.

Dragonfly Management Partner and early Polymarket investor Haseeb Qureshi posted that claims Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan was caught using company funds to cover private jet flights and other expenses are "total nonsense" and an unsubstantiated smear report. Qureshi added that Coplan founded Polymarket at age 21, took no salary at the time, ran the company from an apartment and lived frugally. Dragonfly was one of the first firms to extend an investment term sheet to Coplan, and even proposed a personal loan to him. Coplan disclosed all his expenses, with the annualized total roughly equivalent to a software engineer’s salary; the flight costs in question did not involve personal travel. Qureshi also emphasized that Coplan voluntarily initiated the accounting review and refund process, not after investors discovered the issue and demanded repayment. Coplan has since fully reimbursed the company, and now receives a regular salary like other employees. Qureshi characterized the matter as an accounting error, not an integrity lapse, and stated that Dragonfly retains full confidence in Coplan and his leadership. He noted that Polymarket has grown from a small startup to one of the fastest-growing and most impactful consumer brands in the U.S., and called on the public to stop spreading the negative reports.

Former Bank of Japan (BOJ) Executive Director Eiji Maeda said the BOJ may continue raising interest rates every three months to curb the risk of inflation deviating from its price stability target. Maeda stated, "I expect the next rate hike to come in December, followed by another possible increase in March or April next year. The pace of rate hikes has now accelerated to roughly every three months, which I believe is appropriate." This assessment is largely in line with market expectations. Maeda did not rule out the possibility of the BOJ implementing consecutive rate hikes at back-to-back monetary policy meetings in the future, such as in the event of sharp yen depreciation. However, he noted that this scenario is unlikely at present. Maeda said, "If the BOJ announces rate hikes at two consecutive meetings, markets may increasingly expect further hikes at subsequent meetings, which would pose considerable risks. Therefore, the BOJ has reason to avoid raising rates at back-to-back meetings." (Jinshi)

According to Yonhap News Agency, individual investors have accumulated losses exceeding 6 trillion won in roughly two and a half months since the listing of single-stock exchange-traded products (ETPs, including exchange-traded notes, ETNs). The 40-something age group recorded the largest total losses, while investors aged 70 and older saw the highest average losses per account. Per data submitted by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) to lawmaker Park Seong-hoon, between May 27 and August 14, 2026, accounts that traded single-stock ETPs at least once across 10 securities firms posted total losses of 6.313 trillion won, including 2.3242 trillion won in realized losses and 3.9888 trillion won in unrealized holding valuation losses. Investors in their 40s had around 165,200 accounts posting losses of 2.053 trillion won; those in their 50s and 30s lost 1.8655 trillion won and 1.0912 trillion won respectively. Approximately 9,800 accounts of investors aged 70 and older recorded an average loss of 29.94 million won per account, 2.6 times the overall average loss, while investors in their 60s had an average loss of around 13.21 million won per account. From late July to August 14, realized losses increased by 360.4 billion won, and unrealized holding valuation losses decreased by 50.7 billion won, leading to a total loss expansion of 309.7 billion won. The report notes this trend may be linked to investors selling loss-making products, though stock price volatility and new trades also impact the statistics. The FSS data alone cannot confirm the reasons for sales or whether forced liquidations occurred.

India-based digital certificate authority eMudhra’s 8 private keys were cracked by researchers due to insufficient security strength. Attackers could use these keys to forge digital certificates, impersonate trusted websites, and intercept or tamper with users’ communication data. Researchers disclosed that eMudhra used simple integers including 4, 56, and 237 as private keys instead of high-strength random numbers, resulting in all 8 private keys being recoverable in less than one second. After the vulnerability was reported on October 17, Mozilla and Chrome implemented blocking measures the same day; Apple and Microsoft followed suit on October 19 and 20 respectively, and eMudhra has also revoked the relevant certificates. Additionally, this vulnerability may affect cryptocurrency trading bots, trading platform API connections, wallet backends, and other systems, especially software that fails to timely verify certificate revocation status. Currently, there are no public reports of attacks on cryptocurrency users exploiting this vulnerability.

Per an official announcement, OKX will launch DOOD USDT-margined X-Perpetual (X-Perp) contracts on its web platform, mobile app, and API at 16:00 UTC+8 today.