Morning Edition · Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Crypto
Solana Switches to Alpenglow Consensus Today, Targeting 150-Millisecond Finality
The upgrade replaces the TowerBFT voting system Solana has used since 2020 and is due at epoch 1064, around 15:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), after testing that included a failed migration and a rollback.
Crypto
Liquid Network Enters Final Recovery Stage a Month After Consensus Bug Drained 4,000 Bitcoin
Attackers who say they are white hats returned about 3,400 BTC and kept roughly 598 BTC, so Blockstream's sidechain is still short of full one-to-one backing as swaps resume in phases.
Crypto
Aztec Says Proving-System Flaw Leaves Alpha V5 Funds Exposed Until V6
An internal AI-assisted audit found that an attacker could build a proof the network accepts for a transaction it should reject, and the same team now targets a full post-quantum migration by the end of 2030.
Tech
Eight eMudhra Certificate Keys Were Tiny Numbers Such as 4, and Browsers Blocked Them
The Indian certificate authority's intermediate keys could be cracked in under a second, which would have let anyone holding one issue a certificate that browsers trust for any website, including exchanges and wallet download pages.
Crypto
Zcash Sets November 5 for NU7 Upgrade With 25-Second Blocks, and ZEC Rises 11%
The upgrade cuts block time from 75 seconds to 25, disables version-4 transactions and adds a mechanism that takes 60% of fees out of circulation, after an encrypted poll backed by about 2.4 million ZEC.
Crypto
Drift Exploiter Moves About $63 Million of Ether Into Tornado Cash After Two Months Idle
The wallet made 258 deposits totaling about 25,700 ETH on October 20, and the attacker still controls roughly 81,454 ETH from the April hack that investigators attribute to North Korea.
Crypto
SEC Keeps Taking Comments on Regulation Crypto After Ripple Backs the Rule and Asks for an Issuer-Promise Test
Ripple's 20-page letter supports the Securities and Exchange Commission's power to adopt the rule but asks the agency to judge when a token stops being a security by what its issuer promised, not by a general decentralization test.
Crypto
Qubic Restarts Its Chain After Weak Apple-Device Wallet Seeds Let an Attacker Drain $1.4 Million
Validators froze about 87.1% of the stolen QU on-chain and MEXC froze the account that received the rest, and the 1,404 affected holders can file claims until May 1, 2027.
Crypto
Swiss Regulator FINMA Approves First Spot Bitcoin ETF for Retail Buyers
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) exempted the fund from its diversification rules, citing bitcoin's trading volume, while keeping custody safeguards, risk warnings and sales duties. Reports name BIT Asset Management as the issuer.
Crypto
Kazakhstan Court Bars Coinbase and Five Other Exchanges From the AIFC and Orders App-Store Curbs
The injunctions name Coinbase, HTX, BingX, BitMart, Bitcoin.com and WEEX and bind Apple and Google once served, but they apply only inside the Astana International Financial Centre, and it is not confirmed that they have been carried out.
Crypto
DeFiHackLabs Logs Three New Exploits, Including a $165,600 Interest-Accrual Drain on BiFi
The incident repository also added a price-manipulation proof of concept for TIPMine worth about 667 SOL and an EIP-7702 whitelist and reward over-claim flaw in AlpsCon AI Trade Hub, bringing its tracked total to 898.
Crypto
Fidelity Says Preferred Stock Has Funded 135,979 Bitcoin as Strive Lists a 15% Dividend Issue
BlackRock filed for a bitcoin fund that limits losses and caps gains, and JPMorgan Asset Management forecast about 10% a year for bitcoin over the next decade while still declining to recommend it.