October 12, 2026 | Finery Markets
The week's money moved in two directions. Fund investors pulled $1.25 billion out of US spot bitcoin, ether and Solana ETFs, yet the companies that handle everyday money kept connecting to crypto rails: Samsung put USDC into 82 million phones, Brevan Howard moved its prime brokerage onto Ripple, Coinbase merged Deribit into a single global exchange, and Standard Chartered set a year-end date for Singapore custody. Washington filled the gap left by a stalled Senate bill with agency rulemaking, from a new CFTC framework for leveraged retail trading to the withdrawal of two long-contested FinCEN proposals. Flows turned cautious while the institutional footprint kept widening.
Welcome to a new week in crypto.
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Red October for ETFs, with $50 billion of inflows still on the year
Bitcoin traded near $83,700 on Monday morning and ether near $2,550, after a week in which bitcoin dipped to roughly $81,100 on Thursday, according to Decrypt. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $681.1 million last week, ending a three-week inflow run and posting their worst week since late June, with $487.1 million leaving on Wednesday alone. Spot ether ETFs shed $542.1 million, their worst week since January and a nine-day outflow streak worth $697.2 million, while spot Solana funds lost $24.8 million and ended a record 14-week run of inflows. Across the three categories, about $1.25 billion left the funds.
The weekly figures sit against a more constructive backdrop. JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou estimated on October 7 that about $50 billion has flowed into digital assets this year, an annualized pace of roughly $66 billion, or about half of last year's. ETF flows have been positive for the year since August, and CME positioning in bitcoin has moved above its previous peak. The analysts wrote that the third quarter's ETF and futures activity points to "greater participation by both retail and institutional investors."
Bitcoin ETFs still show $494.1 million of net inflows for 2026, down from $1.18 billion a week earlier, and ether ETFs hold $931.8 million. Public miners remain net sellers at about $1.8 billion for the year, with some funding AI infrastructure spending.
Samsung puts USDC transfers inside its wallet for 82 million US phones
Samsung said on October 8 that Samsung Wallet and Samsung Pay will support USDC transfers on Solana for cross-border remittances, starting in the last week of October on eligible Galaxy devices in the US, which it counts at 82 million. The feature is built into the wallet with fiat on- and off-ramps rather than as a separate crypto app, and users can send to compatible external wallets or to bank accounts in more than 60 countries, with funds delivered in local currency. Samsung said it will not charge a fee on the transfers, though recipient wallets or exchanges may.
The framework runs through Bastion, a licensed stablecoin custodian, with Coinbase acting as its sub-custodian and holding the USDC through Coinbase Prime. Woncheol Chai, who heads Samsung's digital wallet team, said users can get started "without installing another app or managing private keys themselves." Solana Foundation president Lily Liu called it a moment when stablecoins "stop being a crypto product and start being how people move money."
The distribution story is increasingly about who controls routing and settlement behind the interface, the layer Finery Markets builds for institutional stablecoin and FX flow.
Moody's rates a stablecoin protocol for the first time
Moody's Ratings assigned Sky Protocol, the issuer behind the USDS stablecoin, a B3 issuer rating with a stable outlook on October 7, the first rating the agency has given a stablecoin protocol. Sky says it is now the only stablecoin protocol rated by both Moody's and S&P, which assigned a B- in August 2025 citing depositor concentration, centralized governance and thin capital buffers.
Institutional interest has followed the ratings. Galaxy added $100 million of sUSDS to its corporate treasury last month and approved it as collateral across its trading business, and Standard Chartered recently estimated that Sky's USDS business, staking rewards and buybacks could lift income to token holders fivefold by 2028. Greg Feibus of the Sky Frontier Foundation said independent ratings let investors "assess Sky through frameworks they already use across global markets" and that Sky remains focused on raising its reserves, a point Moody's flagged.
Securitize launches 1:1-backed tokenized stocks, and Base sees an equities supercycle
Securitize launched tokenized US stocks on October 8, starting with Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Tesla, Meta and Amazon, with SpaceX, Palantir, Circle and Strategy expected to follow. The tokens are backed 1:1 by shares held at Securitize's regulated brokerage, carry dividends and shareholder rights, settle in USDC on Solana, and trade in extended US hours with a stated plan to move toward 24/7. Tokenized stocks have passed $3 billion in onchain value, with Securitize accounting for much of the recent growth.
Base creator Jesse Pollak told The Block at Token2049 Singapore that equities will lead the next phase, which he called a "tokenization supercycle." Circulating tokenized equity supply rose roughly eightfold in 12 months, from about $400 million in September 2025 to $3.3 billion last month, he said. Coinbase's tokenized stocks on Base, launched six weeks ago, trade about $70 million to $100 million a day, with 50 stocks listed and 250 expected by the end of October. Pollak named non-dollar stablecoins as the second leg, noting Base already offers 32 stablecoins across 21 currencies.
Brevan Howard moves its prime brokerage to Ripple
Ripple Prime will provide multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing to Brevan Howard's funds, the firms said on October 6. The hedge fund manages about $35 billion and already invested in Ripple, including participation in the company's $500 million strategic funding round last year. Ripple Prime was formed when Ripple acquired prime broker Hidden Road.
Brevan Howard COO Alan McGroarty said the platform should provide "increased operational ease and capital efficiency." The prime brokerage is still scaling: KBRA rated it BBB earlier this year, Neuberger Berman provided a $200 million debt facility for institutional margin lending, and Ripple recently made Hyperliquid its first direct DeFi venue integration.
Coinbase merges Deribit into a Global Exchange and brings back Pro
At Token2049 Singapore on October 6, Coinbase said it has completed its Deribit integration, creating Coinbase Global Exchange, and will relaunch Coinbase Pro by year-end for spot, futures, perpetuals, options and equities. Coinbase Financial Markets, its US-regulated futures commission merchant, will connect eligible US clients to global derivatives liquidity under CFTC guidance issued in May. US institutions can trade Deribit options and perpetuals through Coinbase Prime, with onboarding open and options trading expected in the coming weeks.
Coinbase bought Deribit for about $2.9 billion in August 2025. Deribit held more than $30 billion in bitcoin options open interest as of September 30 and processed over $1 trillion of volume last year. The relaunched Pro adds a new matching engine and spot margin of up to 10 times on selected major assets and up to five times on others.
Standard Chartered plans Singapore custody for crypto, stablecoins and tokenized assets
Standard Chartered's Singapore unit said on October 8 that it plans to offer institutional custody for selected crypto assets, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, subject to regulatory requirements. "We aim to launch our custody offering to hold selected crypto, stablecoins and tokenized real world assets by the end of the year," Ying Ying Tan, the bank's global head of digital assets, told The Block. The service extends a custody footprint that already includes the UAE, Luxembourg and Hong Kong.
The expansion follows the bank's move to bring more crypto custody in-house. Standard Chartered said in May that its non-binding offer to fold parts of Zodia Custody, the custodian it incubated with Northern Trust in 2020, into its corporate bank had been accepted.
The CFTC proposes a leveraged retail crypto framework without waiting for Congress
On October 5, the CFTC opened a rulemaking to create a federal framework for leveraged and margined retail crypto trading, including a new "crypto asset market" category of registered exchanges, through proposals called Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM. The category would offer an alternative to state-licensed exchanges. Chairman Michael Selig said the agency lacks authority to require crypto assets to trade on CFTC platforms without congressional action, a mandate the Clarity Act would have supplied.
The move is part of a broader regulatory response after the Clarity Act failed to clear the Senate last month. The SEC has since released its long-awaited innovation exemption, and the CFTC had earlier sent crypto rulemaking to the White House. "Today's action is a critical step in the CFTC's ongoing efforts to ensure America remains the crypto capital of the world," Selig said.
FinCEN withdraws its mixer and self-hosted wallet proposals
FinCEN posted notices on October 5 withdrawing two proposals that had hung over the industry for years: a 2023 finding that international crypto mixing is a "primary money laundering concern" under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and a December 2020 plan to require identity verification and recordkeeping for transactions involving self-hosted wallets above $3,000. Neither was finalized, so existing obligations do not change.
The agency said commenters' concerns that the mixing definition could have "a chilling effect on legitimate activity" informed the decision, and cited a July 2025 President's Working Group report noting that lawful users may rely on mixers for financial privacy. FinCEN said it will keep monitoring mixer activity for illicit finance and may act again. Coin Center, which fought both proposals, said the mixing definition swept in "common techniques used by ordinary cryptocurrency users."
Thailand sets October 16 for its first bitcoin and ether ETFs
Thailand's SEC issued rules on October 8 for crypto exchange-traded funds that take effect October 16, initially limited to bitcoin and ether. Funds must hold average net exposure of at least 80% of net asset value to the tracked asset over each accounting year, use SEC-licensed custodians and list exclusively on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Investors must acknowledge the risks before trading, and securities firms are barred from offering margin loans to buy the funds.
Thai mutual and private funds will be allowed to buy locally listed crypto ETFs, where previously they could hold only foreign ones. The regulator also prohibited depositary receipts linked to foreign crypto ETFs during the initial phase and barred firms from arranging foreign crypto ETF investments for clients outside institutional and ultra-high-net-worth categories.
An AI agent finds a decade-old XRP Ledger bug, and Ethereum's Justin Drake urges "bunker mode"
XRP Ledger developers disclosed on October 9 a critical bug in the payment engine, present since 2015, that could have let an attacker mint XRP beyond the 100 billion cap in a single transaction. Veria Labs, whose AI agent found the flaw and built a working exploit, estimated one transaction could have created about 18 trillion XRP. Veria reported it on September 22, RippleX shipped a fix three days later, and the disclosure said there was no evidence of exploitation. Ripple paid the program's top $250,000 bounty. The patch skipped the usual validator amendment vote, a first in more than a decade, to avoid exposing the flaw, and RippleX said it would expand AI-assisted bug hunting and formal verification.
Separately, on October 7 Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake called on the industry to plan for "bunker mode," moving funds, starting with large holders, to fresh addresses whose public keys stay hidden behind a hash, in case ECDSA is broken sooner than expected. He framed it as a personal recommendation, did not say current cryptography has been broken, and warned against panic. Drake pointed to Project Eleven's Bitcoin Risq List of more than 14 million addresses with exposed public keys and asked exchanges including Binance, Bitfinex and Robinhood to consider stronger cold-storage protection.
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