Author: Jeremy Ryan

South Korea has ordered the blocking of domestic access to 27 crypto websites, including KuCoin and MEXC, extending its crackdown on unregistered operators and raising concerns about existing customers’ ability to withdraw.The country’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) disclosed the decisions on Oct. 13. South Korea’s communications standards regulator made them following two deliberations on Oct. 6-7, at FIU’s request.Both exchanges appear in the official list of websites covered by the decisions. FIU says foreign providers serving Korean customers face the same registration requirements as domestic businesses.The requirements include certification under Korea’s Information Security Management System (ISMS), and they consider Korean-language…

Index, Valve’s PC VR headset released in 2019, is officially on its way out. And to see it along, Valve has dropped the price of everything Index-related. The News Valve Index is no longer being produced, which means this could be your last chance to get new stock of the company’s landmark PC VR headset. Everything is now 20 percent off on the Valve Index page, including: Valve Index Headset was $499.00, now $399.20 Valve Index Replacement Left Controller was $149.00, now $119.20 Valve Index Replacement Tether was $129.00, now $103.20 If you’re in the US, you’ll notice that Valve…

Ripple has partnered with Stripe-owned Privy to bring XRP and RLUSD wallet tools into apps on the XRP Ledger, where Ripple says AI agents have already made 13 million payments. Summary Privy will let developers create XRPL wallets, manage them through software, and sign transactions. Embedded wallets will support stablecoin payments without requiring consumers to manage their own keys. Ripple says agent payments now account for roughly 25% of activity on the XRP Ledger. The integration will support XRP, RLUSD and other digital assets issued on the network. Privy announced that it is bringing its programmable wallet infrastructure to the…

Coinbase has joined a four-day operation with U.S. and UK law enforcement to disrupt West African scam networks by tracing illicit funds, supporting asset freezes and sharing intelligence. Summary The Oct. 6–9 London operation targeted West African scam networks and the services supporting them. Coinbase’s investigators traced financial activity and shared intelligence with law enforcement and industry partners. Targeted schemes included fake crypto investments, police impersonation, and staged arrests conducted over video calls. The operation involved the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force and the UK’s National Crime Agency. Coinbase said in an Oct. 13 post that its Global Intelligence team…

YGG launched vibecode.game on July 13, 2026, positioning it as a discovery and hosting layer for games built with AI tools The VibeBlitz game jam is the platform’s inaugural competition, run in partnership with Minds by Animoca Brands The total prize pool is $5,000, split evenly between YGG tokens ($2,500) and Minds Cognition Credits ($2,500) The top-ranked entry wins $1,000 in YGG and $1,000 in Minds Cognition Credits Submissions must incorporate the “Game Designer Mind” AI agent from Animoca Minds for at least 50% of the production process Judging criteria include plot coherence, playability, originality, and technical execution, with community…

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Eleven years in crypto is not simply an anniversary. It means navigating multiple boom-and-bust cycles, changing asset narratives, exchange failures, and the growing convergence between traditional finance and onchain markets. At its 11-year mark, LBank reports more than 30 million registered users and $23.81 billion in daily trading volume. In an exclusive interview with Bitcoinist, Eric He, LBank’s Community Angel & Risk Management Advisor, looks beyond the next hot token to discuss a more consequential question: how an exchange can balance speed, access, security, and durable trust…

“AI is driving one of the largest investment cycles in history, despite the financial infrastructure around it remaining quite underdeveloped,” said Max Killberg of Village Global. He said the firm sees an opportunity to develop financial markets around AI, rather than simply back another prediction market.Manifold Markets co-founder Stephen Gruggett told CoinDesk that MNX’s approach is better suited to private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, whose shares trade infrequently and are difficult to price.”OpenAI, Anthropic secondaries are illiquid and hard to price,” he said. “A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless: it doesn’t behave…

René Wolf is the CEO of RIB Software and a former sales executive at Siemens. On the first day of AVEVA World 2025, he joined me to discuss RIB’s role within the Schneider Electric umbrella of companies and how the software development company is reshaping the engineering and construction industry. René impressed me with his energy, enthusiasm, and passion for RIB as a catalyst for enhancing efficiency and sustainability in these sectors. Construction firms are grappling with inefficient workflows in an industry with stagnant productivity for over two decades. RIB aims to change this by utilizing its suite of software…

“Know Your Customer” (KYC) checks are often seen as an obstacle to bringing traditional finance onchain and to growing DeFi overall. For anyone unfamiliar, these checks are a necessary part of financial institutions’ obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The process requires coordination among issuers, verifiers, and regulators with different incentives, timelines, and legal requirements. For banks, broker-dealers, and other BSA-covered institutions bringing tokenized products onchain, the challenge is reaching more customers and accessing liquidity, while meeting compliance requirements that can add time and complexity. Onboarding a new customer, for example, often…

Bitcoin BTC$83,696.96 climbed back above $83,000 on Tuesday, shaking off an early drop as a sharp selloff in Asian chip stocks and U.S. tech futures weighed on risk appetite.The largest cryptocurrency by market value fell to just under $81,000 at 00:50 UTC before recovering above $83,000, according to CoinDesk data. Ether ETH$2,532.21 bounced from five-day lows, while XRP (XRP) turned higher after touching three-week lows. Zcash (ZEC), solana (SOL) and several other major tokens followed a similar pattern.Asian tech routThe early crypto weakness came as South Korea’s KOSPI plunged more than 6% intraday, falling below 6,000 and hitting its lowest…