Daily Briefing

ICE Data Services data showed CoreWeave's five-year credit default swap cost rose by as much as 74.5 basis points to 1194.5 basis points on Thursday, a record intraday high that implies the swap market is pricing more than a 60% probability of default within five years. CoreWeave bonds were among the biggest decliners in the US high-yield market the same day, as the AI cloud company plans to expand its borrowing further.

The report attributes the move to unease among bond investors over the AI financing boom, prompting a reassessment of credit risk at some large technology companies, reflected in surging credit-default insurance prices, heightened market volatility and weak bond performance.

CoreWeave is described as an early entrant to AI cloud computing that relies heavily on the high-yield bond market to finance its business expansion, making it a particular focus of investor attention. The CDS and bond data come from ICE Data Services.

Ledger suspended its reseller network across South East Asia after thieves stole more than $103.4 million from 530 addresses using tampered Ledger devices inserted into the supply chain. Chainalysis reported that one of the affected holders was itself a task scammer who lost 60 Bitcoin (about $4.8 million) after buying three new Ledgers containing spyware that records seed phrases.

Ledger has asked resellers in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong to remove its devices from sale, meaning buyers in those markets lose the local reseller channel while the tampering is investigated. Trezor also decided to shut some of its more far-flung resellers from Jan. 1, saying it cannot guarantee the same level of vigilance it applies closer to home.

Ledger insists that all confirmed thefts to date are from Asia, even though reports of tampered Ledgers in Europe prompted electronics retailer MediaMarkt to suspend sales. The roundup also notes that South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit approved measures to block domestic access to 27 websites of unregistered exchanges and other virtual asset service providers including KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex and Bitrue, and that Thailand's SEC finalized rules allowing Bitcoin and Ether ETFs to begin trading Friday.

Charles Schwab has finished rolling out retail Bitcoin and Ether trading across its client base and has begun letting customers transfer crypto into and out of their Schwab accounts, according to The Defiant.

Adding transfers, not just buy-and-sell, changes what clients can do with digital assets once they are inside a large US retail brokerage account. The rollout extends spot crypto access to Schwab's retail client base.

The rollout covers Bitcoin and Ether for retail clients, with crypto transfers described as the newest part of the offering.

Bitcoin fell below $80,000 on Thursday for the first time in over a month, extending Wednesday's inflation-driven slide. CoinGlass data cited by Decrypt shows $948.22 million in crypto liquidations over 24 hours across 177,440 traders, with long positions accounting for $858.96 million, or 90.6%.

The move put U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF holders back underwater: Bitcoin is trading roughly 2% below that cohort's average cost basis near $82,300, a level it had closed above on 21 of the 24 days since September 21. Nexo analyst Iliya Kalchev called reclaiming that line "the first test of any rebound."

Ethereum led liquidations at $282.03 million, with Bitcoin just over $200 million, and the day ranked third-heaviest for long liquidations in 90 days behind October 8 and August 22. The largest single order was a $12.03 million Bitcoin long on Binance force-closed at $80,208.96; Bitcoin hit a low of $79,711 before buyers pulled it back near $80,925, with the RSI around 44.

Mastercard and BVNK launched the Global Money Platform, a single-API product that lets banks, fintechs and enterprises embed multi-currency accounts holding fiat and stablecoins, with real-time conversion between them, stablecoin-linked cards and local bank payouts via Mastercard Move. The platform is already available through BVNK and is the first major integration of the two companies' capabilities since Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK in August.

It puts stablecoin balances directly inside Mastercard's card and payout rails rather than beside them, giving banks, fintechs and enterprises a single connection for holding, converting, sending and spending both forms of money. Nuvei and Marqeta, alongside Ontop, Beem and Almond FinTech, are among the first to integrate.

Mastercard said coverage for local-currency payouts through Mastercard Move is expected to reach more than 40 currencies across over 200 countries in 2027, with card issuing available in more than 130 countries. The company said the platform will add support for agentic commerce and tokenized deposits down the line.

Stripe announced it is partnering with Plasma to develop multi-currency stablecoin cards, with Plasma acting as a design partner on Stripe's stablecoin card-issuing infrastructure. The cards let individuals and businesses spend directly from balances they already hold — including USD, BRL, EUR, MXN, COP, USDC, OUSD and stablecoins compliant with the GENIUS Act — and are available in more than 30 countries today.

Stripe says the arrangement is intended to cut unnecessary currency conversions and foreign-exchange costs for cross-border payments, for example letting a user who holds euros spend directly in euros instead of converting to USD first.

Stripe also plans to let cardholders spend from multiple account balances with automatic selection of the appropriate currency at the point of purchase, and businesses will be able to issue cards matching their own spending currencies. The service is expected to expand from more than 30 countries today to over 100 countries in 2027; no transaction volumes or per-market launch dates were disclosed.

Ripple's prime brokerage arm Ripple Prime is rolling out real-world asset (RWA) perpetual contracts to institutional clients, covering more than 100 reference markets including stocks, indices, ETFs and commodities, according to a Bloomberg report dated Oct. 15. The contracts are offered through Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid and support shared margin across positions, extending Ripple Prime's earlier opening of crypto perpetual trading to clients.

Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said the arrangement can help institutions improve capital efficiency and position management. Clients can pair the perpetual contracts with the underlying assets for basis trades or use them for directional exposure, including during traditional market closures and weekends.

Higgins also said traditional hedge funds are "very close" to directly participating in tokenized RWA markets, with the key being infrastructure that meets their counterparty and anti-money-laundering requirements. Over the past year, open interest in RWA perpetual contracts across major trading venues has grown from near zero to $9 billion, according to the report.

Binance Pool is winding down its Bitcoin mining pool operation, with reports pointing to a shutdown on Nov. 10 after the pool's hashrate fell roughly 65%. Its miner base must now migrate hardware, payout settings and accounts to alternative pools.

The closure forces a redistribution of hash rate among the remaining Bitcoin mining pools, a shift that bears directly on mining concentration and on pool economics as displaced miners choose new operators.

The closure notice does not address the $500 million lending program Binance announced through the pool in October 2022, according to Mempool Brief. Alternative pools, including EMCD and OCEAN, are actively courting displaced Binance Pool miners.

Anthropic has given METR researchers employee-level access to its internal systems so the independent nonprofit can conduct its own risk and incident evaluations. Anthropic has also agreed that it cannot block METR from publishing those findings.

METR will publish its own assessments of Anthropic's risks, incidents and practices, with the frontier lab surrendering the right to block publication — a structural change in third-party AI safety oversight and accountability.

Anthropic's stated commitment is to provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access, an arrangement meant to let them inspect safety protocols and model behavior from inside the company. METR — Model Evaluation and Threat Research — is a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit that evaluates frontier models' ability to carry out long-horizon, agentic tasks.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Intelligence will integrate Alibaba's Qwen large model, with a test version to be released in China by the end of October. Siri AI is not included in this rollout for now.

The arrangement determines which model powers Apple Intelligence on the Chinese mainland, and for Alibaba, integration with Apple's built-in software could broaden Qwen's reach beyond its own applications and cloud services, according to Reuters. It also confirms Apple's use of a domestic model partner rather than its own models in that market.

The statement came from Cook and concerns a test build, not a full commercial release, with the end-of-October timing given for China. Siri AI is explicitly excluded from this phase.

Bloomberg reported that Binance.US is seeking to raise up to $100 million in a private funding round at a target valuation of roughly $1 billion, in order to expand its US operations. World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture linked to the Trump family, was made aware of the fundraising but is not participating.

The reported round would give the US affiliate fresh capital to expand at a time when it has lost significant market share following Binance's 2023 settlement with US authorities. The raise is being sought, not completed, and no terms have been disclosed.

Binance.US is exploring expansion into prediction markets, seeking to restore certain state money transmitter licenses, and considering external sources of trading liquidity that could potentially include Binance's global exchange, though no final decision has been made.