Bitcoin climbed to $85,000 following massive ETF inflows and a short squeeze, while MoonPay and CoinMarketCap expanded through major acquisitions. However, security and operational setbacks surfaced as Bitget halted withdrawals after a $351.6 million hack, and Tether addressed its exposure to troubled EQIBank. Regulatory developments also emerged with new CFTC guidance for tokenized traditional assets.
exchange Bitget suffered a $351.6 million security breach on Thursday, prompting the platform to temporarily suspend withdrawals while it completes a security review. CEO Gracy Chen announced that unauthorized transfers affected a portion of the exchange's hot and warm wallet layers, though cold wallets and user funds remain secure. The compromised were consolidated into a single address across multiple blockchains, including ETH, BNB, AVAX, and USDT0. Bitget maintains a user protection fund holding over $464 million to cover the affected amount. and trading continue to operate normally during the investigation. Arkham Intelligence analyst Emmett Gallic initially flagged unusual wallet movements involving three hot wallets and one cold wallet. The company promised to publish a full incident report within 24 hours. Bitget's native token, BGB, fell 2.9% following the news, while and ether dropped 0.29% and 0.2% respectively over a 24-hour period. The incident follows a $320 million hack of the Liquid Network earlier in the month.
Tether Addresses Minimal EQIBank Exposure After $89M US Asset Seizure
Tether confirmed that its exposure to EQIBank amounts to less than 0.034 percent of its total following a U.S. asset seizure targeting the Dominica-licensed lender's payment processor. Based on Tether's reported $187.75 billion in group assets from its June report, the exposure equals roughly $64 million. U.S. prosecutors seized about $89 million tied to EQIBank, which were held through accounts at the Montana-based payment processor Capstone Ltd. The Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint seeking to permanently keep roughly $84.2 million, after alleging that Capstone was unlicensed and moved funds on behalf of Tether and Bitfinex. EQIBank warned that the seized funds represent about 80 percent of its monetary holdings and could force the lender into liquidation. A Tether spokesperson stated that the company had no knowledge of the conduct alleged against Capstone, and noted that the exposure poses no immediate threat to the USDT or its dollar peg. USDT traded at about $0.9997 on Friday afternoon.
MoonPay to Acquire North Capital in $60 Million All-Stock Deal
payments company MoonPay has agreed to acquire private-markets infrastructure platform North Investment Technology in an all-stock transaction valued at more than $60 million. The deal, announced on Wednesday, will fold North Capital and its registered entities into MoonPay as a wholly owned subsidiary once regulatory approvals are secured. North Capital operates SEC-registered broker-dealers, an alternative trading system known as PPEX, a transfer agent, and an investment adviser. The platform has supported more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transaction volume, with PPEX listing over 1,250 approved for secondary trading. MoonPay is executing the to bridge the gap between -based asset ownership and traditional regulatory frameworks required for tokenized real-world assets. The transaction extends a series of acquisitions by MoonPay this year, following earlier purchases of DFlow, Sodot, and Entendre. Both companies' boards have approved the agreement, though final completion remains subject to customary closing conditions and U.S. regulatory approvals.
XRP Ledger's BatchV1_1 network upgrade has been delayed by 10 days to an expected activation date of October 9 after validator support briefly fell below the required threshold. The amendment needed to maintain backing from more than 80% of trusted validators continuously for two weeks to go live on the mainnet. A temporary dip below that level on the network wiped out the accumulated countdown that began on September 15. The corrected upgrade regained support from 30 of 35 trusted validators on September 25, restarting the full two-week approval period. BatchV1_1 allows users and applications to package between two and eight transactions into a single operation with execution modes including an all-or-nothing structure. This feature permits the simultaneous payment and delivery of tokenized to ensure neither side settles independently. A separate network upgrade, PermissionDelegationV1_1, also lost its qualifying support and is now scheduled to activate as early as October 8.
CFTC Allows US Commodity Firms to Invest in Tokenized Assets and Use Blockchain
The U.S. Trading Commission issued updated allowing registered firms to invest customer funds in tokenized traditional and use ledgers for regulatory recordkeeping. Under the updated framework, assets such as U.S. , corporate , and money-market fund shares can be held in tokenized form provided they preserve the legal and economic rights of the underlying instruments. Regulation 1.25 continues to govern , concentration limits, and maturity requirements for these investments. The guidance does not authorize direct customer-fund investments in cryptocurrencies like or Ether. Separately, the agency stated it would not object to regulated entities utilizing distributed ledger technology to maintain official on-chain records, provided the data meets standards for accessibility and reliability. Firms using public and permissionless blockchains must maintain systems to produce records during network disruptions. The policy updates follow the Senate's failure on September 15 to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
CoinMarketCap Acquires CoinGlass to Expand Crypto Derivatives Data
CoinMarketCap acquired analytics platform CoinGlass for an undisclosed sum on Friday, Sept. 25, adding open interest, funding rates, liquidations, and data to its market-data platform. The transaction brings derivatives metrics across 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 instruments into an ecosystem that CoinMarketCap says serves roughly 115 million monthly users, while CoinGlass serves over 5 million monthly users with more than 10,000 API customers. CoinGlass will continue to operate independently under its existing brand, keeping its website, mobile app, free tools, API, and pricing unchanged for now. The deal bridges CoinMarketCap's retail-facing spot prices and rankings with the deeper data where much of the market's risk is expressed. At the same time, the has sparked debate over data concentration, given that CoinMarketCap was itself acquired by Binance in April 2020. Traders and industry observers questioned whether data from CoinGlass will remain fully trusted under the broader Binance umbrella as the data stack becomes more vertically integrated.
Bitcoin Reaches $85,000 as Short Squeeze Triggers $648 Million Liquidations
reached $85,000 as a triggered $648 million in liquidations. U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded a net inflow of $998.95 million on Monday, marking their largest daily intake since October 6, 2025. BlackRock's IBIT led the inflows with a significant amount, followed by Ark's ARKB and Fidelity's FBTC. Total net across U.S. spot Bitcoin reached roughly $111 billion on Tuesday, up 56% from their 2026 low of $71 billion on June 30. The intake lifted the month-to-date tally to a strong figure following August's inflows, though spot Bitcoin ETFs remained down $450 million on a year-to-date basis. Total volume and open interest shifted over the period.
Institutional expansion and record Bitcoin price action contrast sharply with severe exchange security vulnerabilities. Market participants will watch whether new regulatory allowances for tokenized assets can offset persistent counterparty risks across offshore banks and trading venues.
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