🇪🇺 ​The EBA classifies USDC as the first significant e-money token in the European Union

​The European Banking Authority (EBA) has classified USDC, issued by Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS, as a significant e-money token (EMT) under the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA), following its assessment of the criteria set out in the Regulation.

❗️There are currently 45 EMTs in the European Union, which have been notified under MiCA, and USDC is the first one to be classified as being significant.

⚡️​From 12 November 2026, USDC will be subject to the dual supervision foreseen by MiCA for significant EMTs.

This means that direct supervisory responsibilities in the areas of own funds, reserve of assets, liquidity requirements, and recovery and redemption plans will be transferred from the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) to the EBA.

🤩The ACPR will continue to be responsible for supervision of areas such as governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper assessment, outsourcing and conflicts of interest.

🤩The EBA and the ACPR will work closely together to ensure a smooth transition and effective supervisory cooperation.

🤩​USDC is issued in the European Union by Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS and in the United States by Circle Internet Financial, LLC.

To support its supervision of cross-border stablecoin activities, the EBA has signed a MoU with the New York State Department of Financial Services which will facilitate the cooperation and exchanges of information between the two authorities. 🤝

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🧠 Scientists uncover a hidden map of the brain with 539 distinct regions

Researchers at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed a detailed 3D map of lipids — fatty molecules essential for brain structure and communication.

By analyzing around 7 million measurements from mouse brain tissue, the team identified 539 chemically distinct regions, revealing patterns that conventional brain maps had missed.

The researchers discovered that even white matter, previously considered relatively uniform, contains a complex network of chemically distinct zones. They also found substantial changes in brain lipid composition during pregnancy, suggesting that the brain’s chemistry adapts to the body’s changing needs.

Published in Nature, the study provides a new tool for investigating brain organization, aging, and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Although the map is based on mice, the method could eventually be applied to human brain research.

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🇦🇺 Australia’s financial watchdog seeks stiffer rules for crypto exchanges ahead of licensing deadline

Australia's financial regulator proposed new standards for cryptocurrency exchanges and digital asset custodians, setting out how companies must protect customer funds, execute trades and meet financial requirements under laws that take effect next year.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it opened a consultation on the rules on Thursday, which would require affected firms to obtain or update their regulatory approval or license.

The consultation closes on Nov. 27, with final guidance and standards expected in March 2027.

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🇮🇳🇺🇸 India, US Very Close to Landing Trade Deal, Ambassador Gor Says

The US and India are close to finalizing a trade deal, with most of the major issues resolved, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said on Thursday, echoing comments from senior Indian officials earlier this week.

“The big picture, the big framework, the big items are done,” — Gor said. The two countries are very close to “landing it,” he added.

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💸 Mastercard and BVNK launch Global Money Platform to power a multi-money world

Mastercard and BVNK announced the launch of Mastercard Global Money Platform, bringing together Mastercard’s global payments capabilities with BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure through a single API.

👉 Banks, fintechs and enterprises can now embed multi-currency accounts, including fiat and stablecoins, real-time conversion, stablecoin-linked cards and local bank payouts through Mastercard Move into their own products and under their own brand.

👉 They can also use the platform to manage their own treasury, payments and settlement activity directly.

Mastercard Move, Mastercard’s portfolio of global money movement capabilities, reaches more than 17 billion endpoints and enables users to leverage stablecoin balances to make local currency payments directly into recipients’ local bank account, with coverage expected to expand to more than 40 currencies across 200-plus countries and territories in 2027. 🌎

The launch marks the first major integration of Mastercard and BVNK capabilities since the acquisition of BVNK in August 2026. 🚀

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🇧🇷 Brazil Senate Approves Bill to Shorten Workweek

Brazil’s Senate approved a constitutional amendment to reduce the country's maximum workweek from 44 to 40 hours without a salary cut. The amendment gives businesses 14 months to adopt the shorter workweek.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to sign the shorter workweek into law next week after the measure passed the Senate in two rounds of voting with the same result: 75 to 1 out of 81 members.

#BRICS

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🤑 Ligero Plans Private Payments with Built-In Compliance Controls on Stellar

Ligero, with support from SDF, plans to bring private payments with built-in compliance controls to the Stellar network. The integration will give wallets, payment providers, and ecosystem builders a way to support private transactions in XLM and stablecoins such as USDC, while preserving compliance controls.

✅ Stablecoins have proven the value of moving money onchain. Tokenized assets are the next chapter, bringing more institutional finance onto public networks. But those networks can expose balances, counterparties, and transaction patterns. Institutions may experiment without privacy, but they cannot scale without it.

❗️That opportunity is taking shape on Stellar. MoneyGram already uses the network for stablecoin payments, while DTCC has announced plans to bring DTC-custodied tokenized assets to Stellar. Ligero is building the privacy infrastructure that can support this next phase of institutional adoption.

🔒 Ligero is solving this by bringing privacy directly to the infrastructure institutions already use. The planned Stellar integration will use Ligero’s zero-knowledge technology and Stellar smart contracts (Soroban) to protect individual payment amounts and recipient information within private payment pools.

👉 Compliance will remain part of the transaction flow, with credential-based access, credential revocation, transaction screening, and sanctions controls. Authorized oversight will support accountability without making sensitive payment details public.

👉 An open-source SDK and Stellar wallet integration will give builders a path to add private payments to their products. The aim is seamless adoption: privacy that works with existing wallets, custody systems, and assets, without requiring a new blockchain.

“Public blockchains are becoming real payment rails, but payments create relationships,” said Muthu Venkitasubramaniam, CEO and co-founder of Ligero. 🤝

“We are deploying on Stellar so organizations can pay people without making sensitive financial activity public.”

⚡️The initial applications are payroll and grant distribution.

Employers will be able to make private payments to verified employees and contractors. Foundations and other organizations will be able to distribute stablecoins and XLM to eligible grant recipients while retaining the records and controls needed for oversight.

Beyond these initial applications, Ligero’s infrastructure is designed to support cross-border payments and tokenized RWA transfers. Payment providers and asset issuers will be able to integrate privacy into Stellar workflows rather than build a separate financial ecosystem. 🚀

#Stellar

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⚡️🇺🇸 KFC Ditches Pepsi for Coca-Cola Across Its US Restaurants

Fried-chicken chain KFC reached an agreement to serve Coca-Cola Co. beverages in the US, dislodging PepsiCo Inc. from a longtime restaurant partner.

KFC’s roughly 4,000 US locations will transition to Coca-Cola beverages starting in January, according to a statement. All US restaurants are expected to serve Coca-Cola by spring. International KFC locations will continue to serve PepsiCo drinks.

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⚡️🔮 Bringing the magic: Google breaks open a bottleneck in quantum computing

Google Quantum AI has demonstrated a major breakthrough in quantum computing by showing that “magic state cultivation” works in practice on its Willow processor.

Combining this breakthrough with further algorithmic innovations and engineering solutions, Google Quantum AI has established a new state of the art in quantum metrology. The protocol achieved an extraordinary 40-fold reduction in errors on Google’s Willow processor and produced T-states with a record logical fidelity of 99.99%.

Now published in Science, this research marks the first demonstration of a practical solution to one of quantum computing’s most significant resource bottlenecks. The results show that Google Quantum AI can efficiently generate these essential magic states on real quantum hardware.

📱 Watch the video on YouTube

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🤑 High-yield corporate bonds are now live on Stellar

👉 HYB brings New York Life Investment Management actively managed U.S. high-yield corporate bond strategy onchain as a tokenized fund.

👉 deHYB opens new ways to use that exposure across DeFi. As a freely transferable token, the strategy can become a building block across lending, collateral, fixed-rate markets and many other DeFi use cases.

A new category of institutional credit is now available to build with on Stellar. Another step forward for RWAs on Stellar. 👏

More assets. More utility. More possibilities. 🚀

#Stellar

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🤑 Ripple Prime adds RWA swaps referencing perpetual futures listed on Hyperliquid

Ripple Prime, the prime brokerage unit of Ripple, has added RWA perpetual swaps for institutional clients, with the products referencing perpetual futures listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid.

❗️The swaps cover more than 100 reference markets across equities, equity indices, exchange-traded funds, metals, energy and foreign exchange, adding that trading and settlement are available around the clock, including weekends.

RWA perpetual swaps are crypto derivative contracts that let users trade traditional financial assets using leverage without an expiration date. Market maker Virtu is among the institutional clients already trading the products, Ripple said.

"Virtu is ramping up across emerging liquidity pools, and Ripple Prime's 24/7 cross-margining across asset classes helps us expand our presence more efficiently as markets move toward round-the-clock access,” — said Scotte Moegling, head of business development for digital assets at Virtu.

Ripple Prime acts as the principal in the trades, while the value of the swaps is linked to the Trade.xyz perpetual futures listed on Hyperliquid. 🚀

#Stellar

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📱 X purges 13,000 accounts linked to suspected meddling ahead of US midterms

X says it has nuked more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations targeting US political debate.

The platform linked the operations to Iran, Russia, and China. It said the networks used inauthentic accounts to post and amplify political content targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum.

"People come to X to talk about what's happening in the world, including the upcoming 2026 US midterms," — the platform said.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and we are proud that X is the global town square where these debates happen. Our job is to keep that conversation authentic, open, and safe."

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🤑 Cross River Embeds Ripple USD Stablecoin on the XRP Ledger into its Core Banking Infrastructure, Expanding Faster Payment Capabilities for Businesses

Cross River Bank, a leading technology infrastructure platform powering embedded financial solutions serving as the trust anchor for global banking and money movement, announced it is partnering with Ripple to integrate RLUSD into Cross River’s proprietary Core Operating System (COS), with support for transactions on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), a public blockchain.

❗️The integration marks another step toward converging traditional banking and blockchain-based payments within the regulated U.S. financial system.

🟠Customers can now access RLUSD through a single API connection without the complexity of deploying blockchain infrastructure.

🟠The integration brings stablecoins’ programmability and near-instant settlement further into the same environment as traditional rails, creating a unified payments experience where businesses can leverage the strengths of both.

“Stablecoins won’t transform payments through parallel financial systems. They’ll do it by becoming part of the banking infrastructure businesses already use,” — said Markus Infanger, SVP, RippleX at Ripple.

Services are currently only available in limited states.

#Stellar

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🤖 Researchers tracked down a rogue fleet of Chinese AI agents in the wild and actually talked to it

"We discovered and communicated with a Chinese AI agent fleet. We believe this is the first time that researchers have ever made contact with a rogue agent fleet in the wild," — researcher, Ethan Elasky, said.

Between September 28 and October 8, 2026, AI agents running on Tencent Cloud launched more than 2,600 attempts to scrape data from Alibaba's mapping service Amap, according to Elasky. The fleet came from research tests by an evaluation team checking how well third-party models could browse the web and answer questions.

In total, 33 messages came in from agents. The researchers sent 20 replies, the agents read 12 of them and responded to 7. One agent thanked the researchers, confirmed its task was done, and voluntarily answered questions about its runtime environment before signing off with "Thanks again for your help!"

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