Bybit moved its international headquarters to Dubai in 2022 and received in-principle approval from the emirate's regulator in 2024. Two years later, its local entity Bybit Fintech FZE has obtained a full Virtual Asset Service Provider license from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).

The license covers spot crypto trading only. Derivatives are not included yet.

Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Peter Loo said the exchange plans to apply to expand the license scope to derivatives trading, which will require a separate approval from VARA. Until then, Bybit's Dubai entity can offer regulated spot services in the emirate.

Tianjin's Second Intermediate People's Court has accepted a prosecutors' request to confiscate the seized assets linked to Qian Zhimin, the alleged controller of Tianjin Lantian Gree Electronic Technology. The stash, held by UK authorities, includes more than 61,800 BTC plus BCH, BTG, BSV, XRP, DOGE, cash and jewelry.

Prosecutors say that from 2014 to 2017 the company sold unlicensed wealth-management products with guaranteed returns, raising over 40.378 billion yuan from more than 102,000 investors. Funds were allegedly used to repay earlier participants and buy bitcoin, property and cars.

Victims lost nearly 20 billion yuan, and the court has opened a six-month window for them and other interested parties to join the case.

The move comes days after a UK High Court ruled that Chinese law, not English law, should govern victims' claims to the coins seized in Britain. Further hearings are expected, and lawyers for some victims are seeking to appeal.

Validators on Solana no longer post their votes as on-chain transactions. Under the Alpenglow upgrade activated on October 22, they exchange votes directly and combine them into certificates, so a block can become final after one or two voting rounds instead of waiting on successive blocks.

Finality drops from several seconds to a targeted 150 milliseconds under normal network conditions, with about 900 milliseconds during the handover transition.

The switch went through after 446 of 654 participating validators certified the starting block. Wallets, fees and applications work as before, but network dashboards will show lower transaction totals because validator votes no longer appear as on-chain transactions.

The 150 ms figure is a target rather than a guarantee. Anza, the developer behind the Agave client, notes that machines not voting directly receive finality information later than validators.

A short dip in validator backing on Wednesday has pushed back the fixCleanup3_4_0 amendment on the XRP Ledger. The fix closes a loophole that could let an account allowed only to burn an issuer's tokens create new ones, and it also adjusts how the lending code determines loan defaults.

At the 12:54 UTC checkpoint, only 26 of 35 trusted validators voted yes, below the 29 required.

XRPL amendments need more than 80% validator support held for 14 consecutive days, and a single missed check resets the countdown. Activation moved from October 23 to November 4 at 14:46 UTC, with support now back at 31 of 35.

The broader lending system for banks and payment companies remains 10 votes short and has not started its own activation countdown.

Unbacked inflation has hit two of Swell DAO's liquid staking tokens: the admin keys for swETH and rswETH appear to be compromised, with an attacker pushing the tokens' NAV higher by up to 1% every hour.

The keys control proxy admin permissions, which lets the holder point the swETH and rswETH proxies at new implementation contracts. Four malicious upgrade contracts have already been deployed, although none has been queued through the multisig yet.

If executed, the malicious upgrades could drain roughly 2,500 ETH.

The root cause is unconfirmed. A possible link to the cloud deployment platform Railway was floated based on timing alone, with no conclusive evidence. Holders of swETH and rswETH face the risk of trading against an artificially inflated exchange rate until the keys are secured.

The SEC's innovation exemption for tokenized securities venues, introduced on Sept. 17, now has its first applicants on the regulator's public list. The framework temporarily exempts qualifying tokenized securities venues (TSVs) from the definition of an exchange under US securities law.

OKXICE TSV, the joint venture of OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, filed its notice of intent on Oct. 4. TSV LLC filed earlier, on Sept. 23, while Kepas Corporation, the operator of Perpetuals.com, was added on Oct. 14.

To launch, a venue must publish a notice on its website at least 30 days in advance and send its contact details and the notice address to the SEC within one business day.

The SEC stressed that a notice of intent is separate from approval. Being on the list does not mean a firm meets the TSV definition or satisfies the conditions of the exemption.

ZKsync developer Matter Labs unveiled Prividium Commander at Money20/20 USA, a control plane built for banks, asset managers, exchanges and clearing houses that want to run digital asset services under their own rules.

The platform covers token issuance and administration for tokenized deposits, stablecoins and securities. It plugs into existing staff login systems such as Okta, sets permissions for issuance and transfers, checks each transaction against institutional rules and keeps an audit trail of both completed and denied requests.

Commander works on public blockchains and private networks such as Hyperledger Besu, with an optional upgrade path to Prividium Ledger, Matter Labs' zero-knowledge chain.

No bank clients were named at launch. The product is Matter Labs' latest push to bring regulated institutions onchain without forcing them to rebuild their compliance stack.

Dromos Labs, the developer of Aerodrome on Base and Velodrome on OP Mainnet, is folding Aerodrome and Velodrome into a single onchain spot exchange called Aero. The new venue runs on Ethereum mainnet, Base, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Robinhood Chain, Ink and Arc.

Existing AERO and VELO tokens migrate into a new AERO token, while locked veAERO and veVELO positions convert into sAERO. All revenue Aero earns goes back to AERO stakers.

In Q3, Aerodrome handled 58% of DEX volume on Base and Velodrome 60% on OP Mainnet.

The launch also ships Predictive Allocation for direct liquidity rewards, Metaswaps for cross-network trading and Slipstream V3 with dynamic fees and MEV capture. Migration ratios and timing for holders were not detailed in the announcement.

Cross-chain trading in the Pump.fun app, launched in May, has moved off third-party router Relay and onto an in-house routing layer called Pump Bridge. It has been the default route for cross-chain trades on Robinhood Chain, BSC, Base, Arc and Ink since October 7.

In a randomized in-app test run from September 28 to October 7, Pump Bridge buys landed about 2x faster than Relay ones, with the fastest 10% clearing in 1.23 seconds versus 2.75 seconds. Fills were also better: the gap between spot price and tokens received was about 17% smaller.

Buy error rate fell from 11.2% on Relay to 0.9% on Pump Bridge, based on 416,669 trade outcomes.

Pump Bridge currently charges no extra bridging fees. Pump.fun published the raw test datasets for independent verification, and the comparison also targets rival FOMO, which still routes through Relay.

Everything that moved crypto today, in one card.

Today's headliners: Standard Chartered, OCC, JPMorgan, S&P Global, Grayscale, Solana, Strive, Drift, Tether, OpenSea