- Bitcoin rose to $86,639.13, up over 14 percent for the week on momentum.
- Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5, its first model since calling for a slowdown.
- Binance invested $100 million in Circle, renewing a five-year USDC deal.
The global crypto market cap rose 1.2% to $3.04 trillion over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin traded at $86,639.13, up 1.2% on the day and up 14.3% over the past week. Ethereum changed hands at $2,768.62, up 1.3% in 24 hours and up 15.6% over seven days.
BNB rose 0.7% to $794.12, up 11.8% weekly. XRP jumped 6.7% to $1.61, up a sharp 25.5% over the week. Solana gained 2.0% to $118.86, up 22.6% over seven days. Zcash surged 10.8% to $1,603.45, up 43.6% on the week after briefly breaking above $1,650.
Trending Searches
Pearl led trending searches, up 69.2% to $1.67. Edel followed, down 0.7% to $0.0305, and Uniswap rose 14.6% to $10.47. Among top gainers, Neon surged 260.3% to $0.04821, Mubarak climbed 77.6% to $0.0813, and Aurora rose 69.7% to $0.08618.
Anthropic Ships Opus 5.5
Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, the first model in its Claude 5.5 series, matching the performance of Claude Fable 5.1 on most tasks while cutting operating costs by roughly 40% compared to Opus 5 and improving inference speed by more than 30%, with gains in agentic coding, computer use, and knowledge work.
The company said it is the first new model released since Anthropic called for a slowdown in the frontier model race, and that it was tested by external evaluators including METR and Frontier Design.
Binance-Circle Deal
Binance spent $100 million to acquire 1.237 million shares of Circle Class A common stock at $80.84 per share, below market price at the time, under a two-year lock-up during which it retains voting rights but cannot sell or hedge the position, according to an 8-K filing.
The two companies expanded their commercial relationship into a new five-year agreement in which Binance will promote USDC on its platform in exchange for monthly incentive fees tied to its USDC holdings. The transaction closed September 17.
AI Regulatory Scrutiny
Chinese regulators are investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot over possible data or sensitive information leakage risks tied to their cooperation with Anthropic, according to foreign media reports. Separately, DeepSeek is expected to brief a UN Security Council meeting on AI and international security risks this week, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman planning to attend and senior Anthropic executives also expected to participate; DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng does not currently plan to attend in person.
Regulatory Developments
The CFTC issued new guidance flagging high manipulation risk in prediction market “mention” contracts tied to whether public figures say specific words, requiring exchanges offering such contracts to implement strict monitoring and risk controls.
The CFTC extended its review of CME’s proposed Nvidia GPU rental price futures, making an early October launch unlikely as regulators study the fragmented underlying compute market. Andreessen Horowitz and the DeFi Education Fund jointly proposed that the SEC create a safe-harbor exemption for non-custodial, permissionless decentralized exchanges, alongside a separate proposal for a Reg ATS-style registration framework for centralized crypto platforms.
The People’s Bank of China reiterated that virtual currencies hold no legal tender status and that domestic entities may not issue RMB-pegged stablecoins overseas without approval.
Institutional Moves
CME plans to launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on October 19, pending regulatory approval, expanding its crypto derivatives lineup beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and SOL. Crypto VC firm Hashed anchored a $300 million digital asset private credit fund managed by Thoro Capital Management, targeting institutional financing gaps in the sector. Canada’s six major banks, including RBC, TD, and Scotiabank, announced a joint effort to develop a Canadian dollar tokenized deposit solution.
Whale Activity
The FTX/Alameda liquidation estate resumed asset disposal following the market rebound, transferring 27,372 ETH worth approximately $75.32 million to market maker Wintermute through six wallets.
An OTC whale address that had accumulated 37,000 ETH at an average price of $1,923 two months ago bought another 15,000 ETH at $2,751, bringing its total holding to roughly 52,000 ETH with unrealized gains of about $31.1 million.
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