Tether leads $15 million funding round for AI-focused payment startup Mural

Oct 21, 2026, 6:34 a.m. EDT4 min read(CoinDesk)SummaryBitcoin rose to around $83,500, up 0.6% since midnight UTC and its highest level in a week, as an earnings-led rebound in Asian technology stocks lifted risk assets. SpaceX and Tesla formed special committees to discuss a merger that would combine more than 30,000 bitcoin, while South Korea’s Kospi index rose 3.29% and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.44%. Near led the CoinDesk 100 Index with a 6.0% gain, while zcash extended a jump of about 11% over the past day after developers set a November date for the privacy-focused blockchain’s upgrade. Bitcoin BTC$83,384.26 reached its highest level in a week on Wednesday, trading around $83,500 and adding 0.6% since midnight UTC, as an earnings-led rebound in Asian technology stocks lifted risk assets. SpaceX SPCX and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) set the tone with strong results on Tuesday in the U. S. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 3.29% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.44%. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla TSLA, said the two companies have formed special committees to discuss a merger, which would combine more than 30,000 bitcoin ($2.5 billion) held on their balance sheets.

Bitcoin is hanging just above $82,500 on Wednesday, the level XS.com’s Simon-Peter Massabni calls its most important support, as stock futures climbed on SpaceX’s blowout results and oil pushed back above $110. Bitcoin’s fate is tied to tech again. It fell in lockstep with the Nasdaq last week after the hot U. S. inflation report and a selloff in AI and chip stocks, and Massabni, XS.com’s head of business development, said that link is getting stronger. “In the short term, this development challenges the notion that Bitcoin can consistently serve as an independent safe haven from traditional market volatility,” he said. A “decisive and sustained break” below $82,500 could hand control to sellers and expose bitcoin to a drop toward $70,000, Massabni said. That’s the downside case laid out by market maker Wintermute, and it would mean a further 15% slide from here. Tech gave bitcoin some cover on Wednesday. Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.4% and S&P 500 futures 0.2%.

Good morning. The future of one Western province has become, for now, a little more certain. The spotlight turns next to the path British Columbia will choose in a high-stakes election this weekend. In focus today, we look at the fiscal reckoning that awaits the winner. Up firstIn the newsManufacturing: Trump walks back his threat to ban Bombardier sales in the U. S. Tech: Shopify chief technology officer Mikhail Parakhin leaves after two years. Health care: Grifols reopening two Canada locations after a series of health inspections spurred a two-month pause. Resources: Alberta’s agricultural sector embraces referendum result, but fears Ottawa will return to old habits. Open this photo in gallery:A paddleboarder off Kitsilano Beach, beneath low clouds over Vancouver’s North Shore mountains. DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and MailIn focusHow B. C.’s picture became so cloudyRegardless of which party comes out on top in this weekend’s election, the next government faces the grinding task of putting the province’s troubled fiscal house back in order. Over the last four years, under Premier David Eby’s New Democratic Party, the B. C.

The companies will assess safeguards for travelers and whether stablecoins can speed up trade settlement between South Korea and Japan. South Korea’s Shinhan Card announced Wednesday that it signed an agreement with Japan’s SBI VC Trade and SBI XDC Network APAC to test yen stablecoin payments for travelers and cross-border trade settlement. Under the pact signed Tuesday, the companies will test stablecoin card payments, wallet-to-wallet payments and cross-border trade settlement. They will also assess anti-money-laundering and fraud-detection controls. Shinhan Card is one of South Korea’s biggest credit card companies. SBI is a Japanese financial heavyweight that runs banks, brokerages, insurers and crypto exchanges. The latest initiative is intended to support cross-border payments and settlement between the East Asian nations and improve payment convenience for travelers. Travel between the two countries generated more than 10 million visitor arrivals in the first eight months of 2026, according to official tourism figures from both countries. South Korea was Japan’s largest source of foreign visitors with 7.42 million arrivals.

Zcash (ZEC) surged about 12% over the past 24 hours, as developers agreed on a mainnet activation block for the network’s NU7 upgrade, expected in early November. The token traded around $1,270 at last look on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko. The rally coincided with a Tuesday GitHub proposal by Zcash developer Sean Bowe setting the activation at block 3,543,405, expected around Nov. 5. The value of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency that uses advanced trustless zero-knowledge proofs is up more than 148% year to date. “Height agreed at ZIP editor meeting,” Bowe wrote, adding that the team still needed to finalize the upgrade specifications before merging the proposal. Two developers approved the changes. The Zakura NU7 dashboard also lists the upgrade as pending on mainnet at block 3,543,405, with activation expected around Nov. 5. NU7 aims to reduce Zcash’s target block time by two-thirds to 25 seconds, allowing transactions to receive confirmations more quickly. The upgrade from 75-second block time has been undergoing testing since early October.

Wallets linked to the $295 million April hack still held $138 million in Ether after sending another $46 million to the mixer Wednesday. A Drift exploiter-linked wallet transferred 18,800 Ether, worth about $46 million, to Tornado Cash on Wednesday. The exploiter transferred $61 million in Ether to the crypto mixer on Tuesday, taking its two-day total to 44,510 ETH, or $109 million, as blockchain data tracker Onchain Lens said on X. The transfers to Tornado Cash make the funds harder to trace and represent nearly 37% of the $295 million stolen from decentralized exchange (DEX) Drift in April. The attack ranks as this year’s third-largest crypto hack, according to DefiLlama. The Drift exploiter-labelled wallets still held 56,569 Ether, worth roughly $138 million after Wednesday’s flurry of transfers, Arkham data shows. The Solana-based DEX reported about $295 million in losses from the April 1 hack, which its security consultant Mandiant attributed to a North Korean threat group. Drift opened claims and redemptions for DFX recovery tokens on Oct. 1, giving affected users a claim on a pool that launched with about $3.1 million and receives exchange revenue and recovered funds.