Important News from Last Night and This Morning (September 20–21)

Saudi Arabia exits mBridge, the cross-border payment platform co-built by multiple central banks

The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has withdrawn from the cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform mBridge, a move not previously disclosed. SAMA said it joined as an observer in 2023, participated in minimum viable product development in 2024, and ceased to be a member after completing the proof of concept on May 13, 2025, while denying that the move was related to U.S. pressure. mBridge was initiated in 2021 by the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, with co-builders including the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the UAE, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The BIS handed the project over to central bank partners in October 2024, and the Monetary Authority of Macao joined this year and went live in June.

Coinbase single-stock futures rules set a $100 billion market cap threshold, and COIN itself does not qualify

According to the SEC-published SR-COIN-2026-002 document, Coinbase Derivatives submitted the relevant rulebook on September 18, proposing to launch single-stock perpetual contracts. Based on current market capitalization, Coinbase and Strategy have market caps of about $51.2 billion and $59.1 billion respectively, both falling short of the proposed $100 billion underlying threshold, while smaller crypto-related stocks such as MARA, Hut 8, and Strive also fail to qualify. If implemented under the existing standards, the initially covered underlyings would mainly be concentrated in large U.S. stocks such as Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, and Nvidia.

Report: Revenue of Chinese AI models is only one-tenth that of top U.S. companies

Research firm Rhodium Group estimates that the combined ARR of seven Chinese AI model vendors, including DeepSeek, Moonshot, Z.ai, and MiniMax, totaled about $10.7 billion from March to August, only 10% of the combined revenue of OpenAI ($40 billion) and Anthropic ($65 billion). Among them, ByteDance led with $4 billion in ARR (as of July), and Alibaba was at $2.4 billion (as of August).

Data: Tokens such as XPL, H, and SOSO will see large unlocks next week, with XPL unlocking about $158 million in value

Token Unlocks data shows that tokens such as XPL, H, and SOSO will see large unlocks next week, including: Plasma (XPL) will unlock about 1.76 billion tokens at 8:00 p.m. Beijing time on September 25, representing about 63.20% of circulating supply and worth about $158 million; Humanity Protocol (H) will unlock about 266 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on September 25, representing about 7.34% of circulating supply and worth about $19.2 million; SoSoValue (SOSO) will unlock about 23.46 million tokens at 5:00 p.m. Beijing time on September 24, representing about 5.97% of circulating supply and worth about $6.8 million; STBL (STBL) will unlock about 210 million tokens at 6:00 p.m. Beijing time on September 26, representing about 4.42% of circulating supply and worth about $5.3 million; SOON (SOON) will unlock about 20.24 million tokens at 4:30 p.m. Beijing time on September 23, representing about 3.62% of circulating supply and worth about $3.8 million; Big Time (BIGTIME) will unlock about 333 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on September 25, representing about 13.34% of circulating supply and worth about $2.7 million; SPACE ID (ID) will unlock about 69.88 million tokens at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on September 22, representing about 4.56% of circulating supply and worth about $2.4 million; MBG By MultiBank Group (MBG) will unlock about 23.6 million tokens at 8:00 p.m. Beijing time on September 22, representing about 5.04% of circulating supply and worth about $2.4 million.

gmgn transfers over $17 million in fee revenue to Pionex exchange within a week

Over the past week, the meme trading platform gmgn has successively transferred 23,550 BNB (about $17.34 million) in fee revenue to the exchange Pionex.

Qwen open-sources image model Qwen-Image-2.1, integrating generation and editing

According to the official Qwen blog, Alibaba's Qwen team has open-sourced the image model Qwen-Image-2.1, whose visual generation component has only 7B parameters, integrating text-to-image and image editing into a single model. It natively supports transparent image generation and editing, can accept up to 10 reference images for multi-image composition, supports local editing methods such as selection and inpainting, and enhances fidelity in portrait and product editing as well as text layout effects.

Zhao Changpeng says his personal X account is entirely operated manually by himself

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) said that over the past several years, his personal account has not been managed by a team or interns, nor has he used any AI automation tools; all tweets and replies were completed manually by himself.

Vitalik confirmed to appear at ETHShanghai 2026 and will deliver a keynote speech

ETHShanghai 2026 will be held in Shanghai on September 22. Themed "The Renaissance of Ethereum," this year's conference will feature discussions on hot topics including Ethereum's development, AI × Web3, decentralization and personal sovereignty, prediction markets, stablecoins, and putting U.S. stocks on-chain. Notably, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin will attend the event online and deliver a keynote speech on EIP-8288. The event is co-hosted by ETHPanda, Tapbit news, and The Excited Few, with special support from Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, GCC, and ETH HK Hub. Registration is now open; click the original article link for details and to sign up.

U.S. Treasury Secretary responds to "capital flight" doubts: U.S. assets still favored by overseas funds

U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said in remarks that if the so-called "capital is fleeing the United States" were true, the data would not show that foreign investors' demand for U.S. assets remains strong, nor would U.S. Treasury auctions continue to be robust. Bessent said the U.S. dollar accounts for 89.2% of global foreign exchange transactions, and foreign investors still hold large amounts of U.S. assets. The latest data shows that U.S. employment continues to grow, corporate investment and capital spending are expanding, and equipment investment in the second quarter of 2026 grew nearly 20% compared with the end of the Biden administration. He emphasized that the Treasury's buyback operations are aimed at increasing market liquidity and optimizing the debt maturity structure, rather than directly intervening in the U.S. Treasury market, which exceeds $30 trillion in size.

U.S. Senator Lummis: The CLARITY Act required audits for crypto projects raising over $25 million from the public

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis posted that Democrats had previously required crypto projects raising more than $25 million from the public to provide audited financial statements, a requirement that was written into the CLARITY Act, but Democrats ultimately voted against advancing the bill. Earlier, the Senate held a procedural vote on September 15 to advance the CLARITY Act, which failed to pass.

ZetaChain proposal passes by a large margin, ZETA to migrate to Solana

According to the ZetaChain governance page, Proposal 68 passed with 99.4% in favor, 0.3% against, and a 58% participation rate (exceeding the 40% quorum). ZETA will be converted 1:1 into Solana-native SPL tokens, with the total supply unchanged; the specific migration plan (snapshot height, claim process, and L1 shutdown timeline) still needs to be determined by a second proposal. Anuma, a private AI application with over 300,000 users, will also migrate to Solana simultaneously.

Wall Street expects short-term U.S. Treasury issuance to reach $1 trillion

Wall Street banks expect the United States to borrow about $1 trillion over the next year through short-term Treasury bill issuance to meet growing government financing needs. Bank of America expects that in the new fiscal year ending September 2027, new U.S. borrowing excluding funds used to repay maturing debt will be about $1.07 trillion; JPMorgan expects 2027 Treasury bill issuance of about $1.09 trillion, and Goldman Sachs expects $961 billion. The increase in short-term debt issuance comes as long-term U.S. borrowing costs have risen to their highest level since 2007. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had previously hoped to lower long-end rates by expanding buybacks of 10- to 30-year Treasuries. Bank of America expects that by next September, outstanding U.S. Treasury bills will rise to about $8 trillion, accounting for 24.3% of tradable Treasuries; Goldman Sachs expects that ratio to be 24.3% next year and to rise to 24.9% in 2028. This level is close to the pandemic-era peak, while the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee previously recommended maintaining the short-term debt share at about 20% over the long term. Analysts said increasing short-term debt issuance helps lower current financing costs but also raises future refinancing risk. Bank of America rates strategy head Mark Cabana said the Treasury is balancing supply and demand in the bond market, but large-scale short-term debt issuance could lead to "larger and more volatile" interest expenses. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has purchased a large amount of short-term Treasuries this year, and money market funds' roughly $8 trillion in assets also provide demand support for short-term debt.

TRUMP team transfers $18 million worth of tokens to BitGo

The official TRUMP allocation wallet transferred 8.73 million $TRUMP (about $17.99 million) to BitGo custody services. Over the past two weeks, the team has transferred about 31 million $TRUMP (about $70.64 million) to BitGo.

Galaxy research head: BTC weekly close above the 50-week moving average confirms the bear market bottom

Galaxy research head Alex Thorn posted on X that BTC's weekly close above the 50-week moving average is the first time in 45 weeks. Based on historical experience, reclaiming the 50-week moving average strongly confirms that the bear market bottom has been established. Bitcoin rose 29% in 35 days.

Canary Capital files second amended S-1 for its staked SEI ETF

Canary Capital has filed a second amendment to the S-1 registration statement for its Staked SEI ETF. The ETF will hold spot SEI. The new amendment substantially adjusts the staking mechanism, with about 90% of assets expected to be staked and exclusively custodied by BitGo.

Garrett Jin closes his three-month ZEC short position, losing $36.13 million

Garrett Jin closed his three-month ZEC short position, ultimately losing $36.13 million, with a cumulative loss of $12.77 million. He currently holds a long position of 1,330 BTC worth $107.77 million, with an unrealized profit of $3.71 million.

Zhipu responds to data privacy controversy: ZCode will be officially open-sourced and undergo security audits

Zhipu's AI programming tool ZCode is about to be officially open-sourced. After completing rectification of the previous issues, Zhipu invited the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and NSFOCUS to conduct security audits. Zhipu said this open-sourcing is the first step in responding to external concerns about ZCode's data processing; in the future, it will further push ZCode toward a more thorough community-based approach, welcoming the public to download and inspect the code and jointly participate in improvements.

Russian central bank proposes capping banks' crypto exposure at 1% of their own capital

The Russian central bank has proposed a new draft rule requiring commercial banks to limit their own holdings of crypto assets and related instruments' risk exposure to within 1% of their own capital. The draft covers exposure linked to crypto or foreign digital instruments, including direct holdings, derivatives, loans, and bonds. The rules are still in the draft stage, with plans to officially release them in the fourth quarter of 2026, taking effect 10 days after release, and banks are expected to report relevant data starting January 2027.

Uniswap founder: SBF once bought the Uniswap.com domain at a high price and pointed it to a fork project; the team ultimately obtained the domain for free

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said on X that the original holder of the Uniswap[.]com domain had demanded a seven-figure price, but the team refused to pay. SBF subsequently bought the domain for seven figures and pointed it to a fork project. Because the domain was used maliciously, the legal team ultimately obtained the domain for free.

Whale that made $3.7 million selling ETH in August buys back $20 million in ETH

The whale that made a $3.7 million profit selling ETH in August chased the rally and bought ETH again today. Over the past hour, the whale transferred 40 million USDC into Binance and has now withdrawn 7,567 ETH, worth $20 million, from Binance.