Odaily Report: South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance has convened a symposium on virtual asset taxation with five exchange operators—Dunamu, Bithumb, DigitalX, Coinone, and Streami—as well as institutions including the Financial Services Commission, to discuss the current tax regulations, market conditions, and tax preparation work, as well as delaying or abolishing the taxation, but no clear decision has been made on the relevant measures.

It is reported that South Korea's virtual asset taxation policy was established in 2020 and was originally scheduled to take effect in 2022, but has since been postponed to 2023, 2025, and 2027. The National Tax Service is currently preparing the relevant detailed rules, but matters such as staking still require consultation with the Ministry of Economy and Finance. If the detailed rules are announced next month, only about two months will remain before the planned implementation date. (Yonhap)

Odaily reports: Augnition Global Investors, a tech hedge fund founded by Jeff Wang, former global equities head at Sequoia Capital, has announced the completion of over $1 billion in fundraising. According to disclosed regulatory filings, the fund had at least $570 million at launch, of which approximately 45% was internal capital. Jeff Wang led Sequoia's global equities business for a decade, and during his tenure at Sequoia, he participated in investments in late-stage private companies including ByteDance, SpaceX, Stripe, and Airbnb. Augnition Global will primarily invest in both public and private technology companies. (Bloomberg)

According to Odaily, Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, posted on X that over 12% of LAPTOP tokens have been permanently burned, and another 30% of the tokens are tied to real-world prediction events. According to Hunter Biden, if the relevant prediction events come true, the corresponding tokens will be burned; if the predictions do not materialize, the tokens will be donated to charity.

Odaily reports: On-chain analytics platform Arkham has announced the launch of Arkham Enterprise, an enterprise-grade crypto analytics platform aimed at professional investigators, compliance teams, and trading researchers, offering features such as on-chain fund tracing, risk scoring, case management, and transaction analysis.

At the same time, Arkham has also adjusted the feature permissions of its free platform: Tracer 2.0, transaction filtering, full transaction history, creation of custom labels and entities, and the counterparty section on explorer pages will be available exclusively to enterprise users. Free users viewing the transaction history of a single address or entity will be limited to the most recent 100 transactions, but will still have access to features such as Visualizer 2.0, the block explorer, prediction markets, and Arkham labels.

Odaily: Sui announced on X that DeepBook Predict trading is now live and offers a 20% fee discount.

Odaily reports: Layer-1 blockchain Qubic has restarted its network and initiated a fund recovery process. Previously, attackers exploited a wallet seed vulnerability to drain approximately $1.4 million in QU tokens from 1,404 accounts; network validators Computors have approved a recovery plan, and affected users can submit claims until May 1, 2027.

Qubic's block explorer shows the network resumed processing ticks at 20:00 on October 19, surpassing the previously paused progress of 85,371,949. The vulnerability affects wallet seeds generated by certain Apple devices and browsers. Qubic recommends creating new wallets using version 4.26.4 or above and transferring funds as soon as possible. (Cointelegraph)

According to Odaily, digital hardware wallet manufacturer NGRAVE disclosed on October 19 that attackers hijacked a third-party notification service used by its LIQUID companion app and sent fake security alerts to users, resulting in approximately 70 wallet addresses being stolen for about $2.56 million across 4 blockchains. Among the losses, Bitcoin accounted for approximately $1.77 million, XRP approximately $454,000, Ethereum assets approximately $316,000, and Stellar approximately $18,000.

The attackers lured users into clicking on counterfeit websites and entering their 24-word recovery phrases or Perfect Keys, after which automated scripts transferred the assets within minutes. NGRAVE stated that the ZERO hardware wallet and private keys were not directly compromised, and that victims voluntarily handed over their recovery credentials during the phishing process.

The unauthorized access may have begun on October 11. After obtaining one access key, the attackers acquired a key with broader permissions and sent fake notifications on October 17. NGRAVE detected the anomaly approximately 1 minute after the notifications appeared, but the first wallet had already been drained 6 minutes later, and the notification system was shut down that evening.

NGRAVE's CEO stated that the company failed to fulfill the most basic security responsibilities of a crypto security company, and said that the affected keys have been replaced, with two-person approval, domain restrictions, and emergency shutdown mechanisms added. The company also reminded affected users to create new wallets and contact the support team, noting that some device information, wallet activity, IP addresses, and approximate locations may have been exposed. (Bitcoin.com News)

Odaily reports: Stuart Alderoty posted on X platform that Ripple has submitted a comment letter on the U.S. SEC's proposed crypto asset regulatory rule, Regulation Crypto Assets, and expressed support for the proposal, stating that the SEC has clear authority to adopt the rule. Alderoty said that for years, the "case-by-case, coin-by-coin" enforcement approach has pushed innovation overseas, and the industry needs holistic rules for digital assets; the proposal is faithful to the Howey Test, under which it is the investment contract rather than the token itself that constitutes a security. Alderoty also stated that Ripple has spent over $150 million to clarify the relevant rules.

Odaily Report: NEAR ecosystem governance proposal HSP-029 has entered the voting phase, proposing to gradually reduce the maximum annual issuance rate of the NEAR token from 2.5% to 1.6%. The proposal, put forward by SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo, plans to decrease linearly by approximately 3.75 basis points per epoch over 24 months, while maintaining the 90/10 split between stakers and the treasury. If passed, a 90-day grace period will be implemented before the reduction officially begins.

Proposal estimates show that the plan is expected to reduce NEAR issuance by approximately 11.8 million tokens over two years, and by a cumulative total of approximately 66.1 million tokens over six years, equivalent to a 4.36% reduction in supply compared to the current state. The staking annualized yield will gradually decrease from the current 5.268% to 3.372%. The proposal must go through a dual process to take effect: after passing the House of Stake vote, validators must independently adopt it through the standard protocol upgrade process. Currently, the NEAR network has 406 active validators with a staking rate of 42.71%.

Odaily: A Fox Business crypto reporter posted on X that the comment period for the SEC's "Reg Crypto" proposal closes today, but an SEC spokesperson said the Commission will continue to accept public comments after the comment period ends. The proposal would establish a new fundraising exemption for crypto issuers raising funds in the United States.

Odaily reports: Prediction market platform Kalshi, along with its affiliates and two Susquehanna-owned trading firms, has been sued by Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, who alleges they facilitated illegal gambling in the state starting in 2024.

Brown stated that the state has asked the court to order the companies to disgorge approximately $30 million to $60 million in profits obtained through allegedly unlawful event contracts. Utah claims that Kalshi provided services to more than 32,000 users in the state and caused significant losses.

In February of this year, Kalshi sued the state of Utah after its legislature classified prediction market betting as gambling. In August, a judge ruled that relevant federal law governing the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) does not preclude the application of state gambling laws.

In September, an appellate court denied Kalshi's request for an injunction to block it from operating in the state during the appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to take up New Jersey's case against Kalshi over alleged illegal sports betting, a dispute concerning the regulatory authority of state governments versus the CFTC over event contracts. (Cointelegraph)

According to MSX.COM data, SMCI is up 14.0% in 24 hours and 6.0% in 1 hour, currently trading at 36.85 USDT.

Odaily reports: Bitcoin News posted on X that Super League shareholders approved the relevant transaction on October 16. Metaplanet will inject 2,100 BTC and $2.5 million to acquire 44.86 million shares at $3 per share. Upon completion of the transaction, the company will be renamed Superplanet, with its ticker changed to SUPA, and Metaplanet will hold over 90% of the shares during a five-year lock-up period. Superplanet plans to further purchase Bitcoin through the issuance of perpetual preferred stock, and the transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter.

Odaily reports: Asset management firm Bitwise Asset Management and the Hyperliquid Policy Center submitted comment letters to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, calling for changes to proposed crypto rules to clarify token classification, airdrops, and secondary market trading rules.

The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets would establish exemptions for qualifying crypto fundraising and provide a conditional safe harbor for tokens related to investment contracts. Bitwise is asking for clear standards by which investment managers can determine whether a token is subject to securities laws.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center is asking for an expansion of the safe harbor's scope and for clear rules on airdrops that reward network participants and on token buybacks. The organization also wants the SEC to clarify whether unregistered intermediaries can facilitate token trading, and whether tokens can be freely traded through on-chain protocols.

Former SEC enforcement official John Reed Stark and Duke University finance scholar Lee Reiners, meanwhile, are calling for the proposal to be withdrawn, arguing that it exceeds the SEC's statutory authority and weakens investor protection. The SEC will decide whether to revise, adopt, or withdraw the rule after the public comment period ends, and the final rule must take effect after a Commission vote. (Cointelegraph)

Odaily reports: Bitcoin Treasuries posted on X that Fidelity, which manages $7.8 trillion in assets, stated that perpetual preferred stock issued by Bitcoin treasury companies is the latest demand catalyst for BTC. Over the past year or so, preferred stock has provided funding for the purchase of over 135,000 BTC, equivalent to 0.5% of Bitcoin's total supply; Fidelity also stated that BTC's increasing scarcity makes it a strong complement to preferred stock.