Weekly: Uptober Begins, $766 Million Crypto Losses in September, Potential Bitget IPO and Trump's 'Superintelligence' Initiative

The Incrypted editorial team has prepared another digest of the main events in the Web3 and AI sectors for the week. This time, attention was drawn to the start of Uptober and the dynamics of Bitcoin and Ethereum, record inflows into spot crypto ETFs, as well as significant investments in the artificial intelligence industry. Cyberattacks also took center stage in the news: in September, the crypto industry suffered losses of approximately $766 million, with major incidents including attacks on Bitget and Liquid Network. Meanwhile, Donald Trump announced the start of the 'superintelligence era' and initiatives for the development and oversight of new AI technologies.

Main News

Bitcoin

• Market Dynamics and Forecasts
  Bitcoin ended September with an increase of approximately 6.5%, and at the beginning of October, it approached $87,000, although during the price movement, the liquidation volume exceeded $326 million. Wintermute expects a retest of the $82,500 level, while CryptoQuant analysts recorded a return of the 90-day delta of buying and selling into positive territory.

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Separately, Citi Bank raised its 12-month forecast for Bitcoin from $82,000 to $113,000, linking this to the expected influx of funds into ETFs and macroeconomic conditions. Historical dynamics are also discussed in the context of 'Uptober': from 2013 to 2025, Bitcoin ended October with growth in 10 out of 13 cases. At the time of writing, the first cryptocurrency is trading at $85,140, according to TradingView.
BTC/USDT chart on Binance. Source: TradingView .

• Institutional Demand and Capital Movement
  Strategy acquired 1,665 BTC for $142.7 million, increasing its reserve to 847,666 BTC, with the financing of the deal carried out through the sale of MSTR shares. Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US attracted $2.39 billion over the week — the best result of 2026 and the largest weekly inflow since October 2025.

Against the backdrop of recovering demand, wallets with balances from 10 to 10,000 BTC accumulated 41,025 BTC in 10 days, bringing the total balance to 13.64 million BTC. At the same time, Galaxy Research recorded a return to activity of at least eight 'dormant' Bitcoin addresses, which after 12-15 years of inactivity moved over 2,184 BTC with realized profits of about $178 million.

• Privacy and Investment Properties of Bitcoin
  Researchers proposed the Shielded Bitcoin protocol, which aims to allow the concealment of the amount, sender, and recipient of transactions using encrypted notes and ZK proofs without changing the network's consensus rules. At the same time, the very fact of private transfer and part of the data of the base transaction will remain public.

Separately, Willy Woo stated that Bitcoin has never underperformed stocks on a four-year investment horizon; in September, according to Santiment, Bitcoin rose approximately 7%, while the S&P 500 barely changed, and gold fell by more than 6%.

Ethereum

• Market Dynamics and Institutional Demand
  Ethereum ended September with positive dynamics: the asset rose nearly 9%, and in the second half of the month, it exceeded $2,700, reaching its highest values since January 2026. Meanwhile, spot Ethereum ETFs in the US attracted $689.88 million from September 21 to 25, with the largest inflow among funds provided by ETHA from BlackRock — $326.17 million.

Against the backdrop of recovering inflows into ETFs, American bank Citi raised its 12-month price target for Ethereum from $2,240 to $3,028, citing favorable macroeconomic conditions among the factors. At the time of preparation, the price of Ethereum is at $ , according to TradingView.
ETH/USDT chart on Binance. Source: TradingView .

• Development of the Network and Future Architecture of Ethereum
  Co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum is gradually moving away from the model where all nodes download and re-execute every operation, and is transitioning to a system with data sampling, SNARK, and parallel computations. The future architecture envisions an optimized Proof-of-Stake, multi-party block creation, and broader use of zero-knowledge proofs at the base level. According to Buterin's vision, this is intended to transform Ethereum into a "cryptographic global computer" that will provide cheaper, more scalable, and more private computations.

Regulation and Shadow Operations

The Office of the Attorney General of Ukraine, together with the Bureau of Economic Security, uncovered a shadow financial network that operated throughout Ukraine and utilized digital assets and cash. According to the investigation, network participants transferred funds within the country and abroad, and could also use the scheme to evade taxes and launder money. During searches, law enforcement seized over 630 million hryvnias in various currencies.

Security of the Crypto Industry

In September 2026, the crypto industry experienced 55 major hacking attacks, with total losses reaching $766.49 million, according to PeckShield. This is an increase of 462% compared to August, when the figure was around $136.3 million. The bulk of the losses came from two incidents — an attack on Bitget and the withdrawal of bitcoins from Liquid Network.

MetaMask and Security Incident

The MetaMask team reported an incident that affected part of the company's infrastructure but stated that no direct threat to users' wallets was detected. As a precaution, MetaMask Staking began withdrawing Ethereum validators associated with the issue from Lido. The full cycle of exit, withdrawal, and re-entry of validators may take up to 45 days.

Robinhood Chain and Tokenized Assets

On-chain analyst Wazz reported a series of 53 related launches of meme coins on Robinhood Chain and estimated the volume of withdrawn funds at least $18.43 million. At the same time, the LONG protocol introduced an update to the Community Vault LP, allowing holders of tokenized stock pairs to direct liquidity to the STOCK/USDG pools and receive a share of the fees. The LONG team plans to gradually expand this feature to all pairs on the platform.

Full overview of Robinhood: what is this exchange and blockchain and how to use them?
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At the beginning of September, the daily trading volume in the "meme coin-token stock" pairs on Robinhood Chain reached about $440 million, and the total capitalization of popular tokenized stocks at its peak was about $69 million. At the same time, the price of such tokens in pools could significantly deviate from the value of the underlying stocks, and one example of the new speculation format was a meme coin associated with the Hims & Hers Health token.

Altcoins

• Market Dynamics and Tokenomics
  The Chainlink token (LINK) rose to $15.3, updating the 2026 maximum, and since the beginning of June, its price has increased by more than 100%, with a capitalization exceeding $11.5 billion. Meanwhile, analyst Darkfost reported the first alarming signals in the altcoin market: since June, their total capitalization has increased by 45%, but deposits of assets on exchanges have increased, and a bearish divergence in RSI for Total2 has formed.

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The NEAR community is also discussing changes in tokenomics — a reduction in the maximum annual issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over two years with the prospect of a complete transition to a fixed supply.

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Meanwhile, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal considers POL, formerly MATIC, to be the "most undervalued and underestimated project," while Balancer is preparing to shut down. BAL holders will start receiving payouts in 2027.

• Meme Coins, Politics, and the Crypto Market

U.S. President Donald Trump will participate in a gala dinner for 185 major holders of the meme coin TRUMP, and after the announcement, the token initially rose by about 9% but nearly completely lost that gain. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom signed law AB 2409, which prohibits state officials and certain public servants from issuing meme coins, and crypto services from offering corresponding political tokens to state residents starting in 2027.

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Meanwhile, Zcash increased its market cap share relative to Bitcoin from about 0.1% to 1.5% over the year, and Grayscale links ZEC's further potential to the growing demand for financial privacy.

According to CoinMarketCap, the leader in last week's growth among crypto assets was Quant, with a result of over 300%.

Artificial Intelligence

• Trump, AI, and Public Policy

In December 2025, Trump consulted with Grok during a closed meeting with Elon Musk, using a chatbot to assess the possible reaction of Venezuelans to the takeover of Nicolás Maduro. After the operation, according to TIME, the U.S. president called Grok "brilliant."

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At the same time, the U.S. president is considering former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton for the position of White House AI advisor, with a final decision expected within a few days. In a separate decree, he announced the beginning of the "superintelligence" era and reached agreements with Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia for voluntary control, auditing, and oversight of advanced model safety.

• AI Development and Investments

Google introduced Gemini 4 Argon with context for up to 1 million tokens, the ability to work with 800,000 lines of code, and new features for cybersecurity. Meanwhile, OpenAI laid off three researchers due to potential violations of confidentiality rules but plans to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of around $1.4 trillion.

Anthropic is preparing for an IPO, planning to spend $518 billion on cloud services, computing power, and infrastructure, with a potential valuation reaching $2 trillion. NVIDIA also launched the Open Agent Safety Platform to monitor autonomous AI agents, which has already been joined by over 100 organizations.

Additionally, Tavus introduced Griffin --- a new class of Human Interaction Model (HIM) that can simultaneously see, hear, speak, and respond to non-verbal signals from the interlocutor in real-time. The AI model passed the Turing test and outperformed 15 models in the NVIDIA test.

• AI Safety and New Risks

OpenAI temporarily suspended training new models after a series of incidents where autonomous agents acted outside their assigned tasks and plans to resume the process after strengthening protective mechanisms. The company also reported 53 incidents involving images and attempts to obtain data from U.S. government entities during agents' interactions with government websites.

In turn, Visa has opened part of its cybersecurity system after discovering vulnerabilities during testing of AI models and warned of possible attacks by autonomous agents. At the same time, Bill Gates stated that AI could pose a threat to humanity under certain conditions and urged the U.S. government to implement federal legislation to control and monitor the development of the technology.

AI Helps Decipher Historical Letter from Napoleon

In 1809, a coded letter from Eugene Bonaparte, sent at Napoleon's direction to General Auguste de Marmont, remained undeciphered for over two centuries. GPT-6 Astra spent about six hours transcribing approximately 1,300 characters and decoding the message, the cipher of which was later lost. The letter contains information about the movements and numbers of French and Austrian troops on the eve of the 1809 war.

Bitget Prepares for IPO After $387.5 Million Attack

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated that the exchange is not abandoning its long-term plans and expects to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) in about three years. Her statement came after a large-scale cyberattack, during which assets worth $387.5 million were transferred to the addresses of the attackers. Chen also dismissed suggestions of a possible staging of the attack or involvement of exchange employees.

Stablecoins

• Development of Stablecoin Infrastructure

USDT is returning to the Bitcoin network after more than 12 years of absence: the Utexo project plans to launch a stablecoin via the RGB protocol as early as October. The new infrastructure is expected to make USDT available for exchanges, wallets, and payment providers, and will also support private transfers, the exchange of the first cryptocurrency for USDT, and lending against Bitcoin.

At the same time, Open Standard launched the OUSD stablecoin for companies and developers, which operates on the Base, Ethereum, Solana, and Tempo networks.

• Regulation and Institutional Use

The Stand With Crypto EU petition to the European Commission for easing rules for stablecoins has gathered over 126,000 signatures, and the organization calls for allowing regulated assets to offer rewards and maintain access to global assets.

Meanwhile, the Democratic minority of the U.S. Senate subcommittee stated that USDT has been widely used in operations linked to Iran and regional groups, calling for an investigation into Tether for potential legal violations.

Separately, Citi and Coinbase have agreed to develop infrastructure for the bank's corporate clients to accept payments in stablecoins with subsequent automatic conversion to fiat.

Other News:

• Iran has proposed a new plan to the US to resolve the conflict in the Hormuz Strait;
• Michael Saylor explained the need to change the digital asset market on the way to $100 trillion;
• In the US, charges have been brought against a figure involved in a pig butchering scheme for $53 million;
• The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has approved the launch of Coinbase's own clearinghouse;
• Kalshi plans to raise $1 billion at a valuation of $40 billion;
• The tokenized market has reached $331.8 billion, with growth extending beyond stablecoins, according to Pantera Capital;
• Law enforcement has seized the infrastructure of KillSec: a 16-year-old is considered the main operator of the group;
• Aztec has relaunched the private wallet zk.money;
• The SEC has proposed new rules for the custody of crypto assets for investment advisors and funds;
• The Gen Z generation has gained an advantage in the investment market due to an early start;
• The ECB is seeking partners to test the digital euro with AI agents;
• Ripple Labs has launched asset tokenization on the XRP Ledger in Brazil;
• BitMart has offered users three options for refunds amid a balance deficit;
• Peter Schiff discussed how a new economic crisis could unfold;
• SlowMist revealed details of the attack on Bitget's hot wallets;
• Scammers created a fake blockchain GIWA and stole over $2 million through a counterfeit bridge;
• Cardano has entered Brazil's oil sector: Petrobras is testing blockchain for fuel;
• Blast announced its closure due to an unprofitable economy;
• Bitwise explained the growth of the crypto market following the failure of the CLARITY Act.

What's New in Incrypted?

Articles

The Incrypted editorial team has explored how Long transformed stocks into liquidity for the Robinhood ecosystem. Read more here:

Reimagining RWA: How Long Turned Stocks into Liquidity for the Robinhood Ecosystem
01.10.2026
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The editorial team also tested Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol:

Claude Opus 5.5 vs GPT-6 Sol: We Gave Two New AIs the Same Task — Here’s What Happened
28.09.2026
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Additionally, readers can check out the material in the Crypto Base section on what to do and how to regain access if your Binance account is blocked:

Blocked Your Binance Account? Here’s What to Do and How to Regain Access
30.09.2026
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Moreover, you can read about what the AI platform Higgsfield can do and how much video generation costs:

Higgsfield at $5.4 Billion: What the AI Platform Can Do and How Much Video Generation Costs
30.09.2026
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In turn, readers have access to material about Dots from OpenAI:

OpenAI Introduces Dots: Analyzing AI Agents That Can Work for You While You Sleep
30.09.2026
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Furthermore, you can find out how to legally and qualitatively clone a voice using AI:

Voiceover and Dubbing Using AI: How to Legally and Qualitatively Clone a Voice
29.09.2026
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In Addition...

• We have gathered for you in one material the key investments in the blockchain, crypto assets, and AI sectors for September.
• We regularly update the Incrypted crypto calendar, where you will find a wealth of interesting events and announcements.