🤑 Stellar Development Foundation Makes Strategic Investment in Marketnode to Expand Institutional Tokenized Real-World Asset Adoption in Asia-Pacific

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a strategic investment in Marketnode, Asia-Pacific’s trusted digital market infrastructure (DMI) operator backed by Euroclear, HSBC, SGX Group, and Temasek. 🤝

The investment will support Marketnode’s work to expand institutional access to tokenized real-world financial products on the Stellar network across Asia-Pacific—connecting asset managers, issuers, distributors, and eligible investors with a growing ecosystem of digital assets and financial institutions.

➡️ Marketnode provides institutional market infrastructure across funds, credit, and structured products — supporting the issuance, distribution, and servicing of tokenized assets, providing institutions with the infrastructure to bring products onchain and connect them with established distribution channels and investors.

➡️ Most recently, Marketnode announced that it would offer onchain access to select BNY Investments funds on the Stellar network.

➡️ Marketnode also distributes tokenized investment products from regional and global asset managers including CGS International, Franklin Templeton, Maybank Asset Management, and WisdomTree that are available on the Stellar network.

For SDF, the investment reflects a continued focus on growing institutional adoption of the Stellar network in Asia-Pacific, as financial institutions across the region move digital asset initiatives from experimentation toward commercial deployment. 🚀

#Stellar

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🚫 FTC shuts down 19 imposter websites, secures more than $80 million for consumers in scam crackdown

The Federal Trade Commission has secured more than $80 million in consumer redress and helped shut down 19 websites impersonating the agency as part of its ongoing crackdown on government and business impersonation scams.

❗️The FTC announced the enforcement results as it continues efforts to combat fraudulent operations that deceive consumers by falsely claiming to represent legitimate businesses or government agencies. Impersonation scams have remained the most frequently reported category of fraud in recent years, with consumers reporting billions of dollars in losses.

“Imposter scams have been the top reported fraud category over the past several years with consumers reporting billions in losses,” — said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“The FTC takes these scams very seriously and will continue to vigorously enforce the law against bad actors. If you pretend to be, or to be affiliated with, an entity to deceive consumers, you should expect to hear from the us.”

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🤑 Ripple has just released a new video!

Trust or innovation? Why choose when you can have both? 🤔

Ripple is showing how blockchain technology can bring together the trust financial institutions rely on and the innovation shaping the future of finance.

It's happening with Ripple. 🚀

#Stellar

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🚓 The City of Starbase has officially unveiled its Tesla Cybertrucks, which will be part of the city's first municipal police department.

The futuristic patrol vehicles will serve residents, workers and visitors in Starbase, Texas.

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🤑 XRP Ledger developers tighten the rules for who can hold 'restricted' tokens

Some tokens on the XRP Ledger are only supposed to sit in accounts their issuer has approved, and developers have found a few ways around that rule.

✅ Issuers of regulated assets, such as stablecoins or tokenized funds, can require approval before anyone holds their tokens, often so they can run identity checks first. That approval sits on the so-termed trust line, or the connection an XRP Ledger account sets up to hold a token issued by someone else.

❗️Four proposed code changes, updated this week, would close the remaining exceptions. All four are bundled into a single network upgrade called fixCleanup3_5_0, and none has been activated on mainnet.

🟠One proposal would require approval for both tokens in a trading pool before an account can buy into it. These pools, called automated market makers, trade tokens automatically, and a share in one is itself a token.

🟠Another closes an exemption where the approval check only kicked in on trust lines with a zero balance, so a line that already held tokens could keep receiving more.

The XRP Ledger Foundation said developers have been examining these exceptions, including how tokens could reach unapproved accounts through NFT trades before an August 2025 fix. ⚒️

“The developer discussion is about what the protocol should guarantee, not a report of affected users,” — Hussein “Vet” Zangana, director of community and product at the XRP Ledger Foundation, said.

#Stellar

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🇦🇺 ‘Emotional intimacy’ from AI chatbots would be banned under Australia’s digital duty of care laws

The federal government wants to ban AI chatbots which seek to create “emotional intimacy” after prime minister Anthony Albanese raised the alarm in a heartfelt speech about children treating these agents as their “best friend”.

The planned framework would apply new online safety standards to social media, games, apps and chatbots. Labor said it would place “an overarching obligation” on tech platforms “to provide a safe online environment for all Australians” and replace a range of existing online codes and standards with a broader duty-of-care requirement to protect users from certain “harmful” content.

It would also require social media platforms to offer an “opt-out” feature for its algorithm and suggested content. The digital duty of care bill passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday and will be debated by the Senate in coming weeks. The government hopes to pass the bill by the end of 2026.

@QSIMedia

🛰 Google's Satellite AI Writes Haiku from Orbit in Historic Test

Google's Project Suncatcher prototype, launched October 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 with Planet Labs, successfully ran a TPU chip and Gemma model to process prompts like haikus and limericks.

The satellite responded during a pass over Svalbard, Norway, with lines like 'Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core.'

This test explores solar-powered AI in space for potential large-scale compute, with plans for interconnected satellites in 2027 despite challenges like cooling and radiation. 🚀

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🤑 Moody's assigns investment-grade ratings to Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin

Moody’s Ratings assigned Ripple's U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin A2 long-term and P-1 short-term deposit ratings, both investment-grade marks. 🏆

🟠The agency said the A2 long-term deposit rating reflects its assessment of the credit quality and market value of RLUSD's reserve assets, reserve coverage, liquidity and redemption arrangements.

🟠It also pointed to the segregation of the reserve and its custody with third parties, as well as operational, technological, legal, regulatory and other structural considerations. The P-1 rating aligns with the long-term rating, Moody's said.

"The Reserve is predominantly invested in highly liquid, short-duration U.S. government assets and cash," — Moody's said.

"[Standard Custody & Trust Company] targets 103% Reserve coverage, which exceeds the minimum coverage level associated with the rating."

#Stellar

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🇨🇦🇪🇺Canada and EU announce new alliance open to like-minded countries

Canada and Europe have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations to serve as both a “protective canopy under which our citizens can thrive” and a powerful hedge against the unpredictable nature of geopolitics, while welcoming other countries to join.

The prime minister, Mark Carney, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, called the new partnership the Alliance for the Future and said the “deepest possible partnership between Canada and the 27-member bloc had the potential to offer unprecedented stability and opportunity”.

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🧑‍⚖️ One month ago, President Trump launched America.gov, a government built around you.

It puts you first. Respects your time. And actually works for YOU.

See the historic launch yourself in Hello, America. 🇺🇸

@QSIMedia

🇫🇷 French Assembly backs internet data tax that could raise streaming and download costs

Streaming services and game downloads could become more expensive in France under a proposed tax approved by the National Assembly.

Content providers would pay €0.055 per gigabyte sent to French internet users. A 210-gigabyte game download would generate €11.55 in tax before applicable caps. Companies could pass costs to customers or advertisers.

The government opposes the proposal, warning that smaller French businesses would also face costs. The amendment passed by 11 votes to 10. It remains part of the proposed 2027 budget and could still be changed or removed before final approval.

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🤑 VIA cross-chain messaging is live on Stellar mainnet

Soroban smart contracts can now exchange messages with EVM smart contracts. Teams can use it to:

🟠Send their stablecoins across chains for cross-border payments
🟠Move RWAs between chains
🟠Trigger contract actions on another chain 💫

#Stellar

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💊 Estonia to call all women aged 40 for breast cancer risk analysis screening

Estonia is set to become the first country in the world where people are invited to screening programs based on genetic data. Next week, all 40-year-old women will receive an invitation for genetic testing to determine their individual breast cancer risk, regardless of whether or not they have health insurance.

Around 3,000 genetic variants are taken into account when calculating the risk. However, the study does not include BRCA gene mutations, which led actress Angelina Jolie to decide to have her breasts removed 13 years ago to prevent developing the disease.

"These are hereditary forms of cancer, which are assessed through separate tests as needed if there has been breast cancer in the family," — Steven Smit, head of the biobank laboratory at the Estonian Genome Center, said.

There are almost 10,000 40-year-old women in Estonia, and invitations will be sent both to those who have already donated their genes to the Estonian Genome Center and to those who have not.

@QSIMedia

🕵🏼‍♂️ White House Releases Scooby-Doo Parody Following Influencer’s Arrest in $4 Million Fraud Case

The White House shared an animated short featuring Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine on X. The video depicts the arrest of an Atlanta-based content creator accused of committing $4 million in federal fraud.

The video was posted with the caption: “Scooby-Doo and the Mystery of Fraudster Shawty Dred. Fraudsters are getting unmasked this Halloween. 👻”

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🤑 30 million people just got a Stellar address. MetaMask announced Stellar as a default network.

👇 Alex Greinacher, Director of Business Development & Partnerships, MetaMask, on what this partnership unlocks for MetaMask users and the Stellar ecosystem.

That means all 30 million people that we have sort of plugged into Stellar, it's a default network. Everybody gets a Stellar address.

Yeah, it unlocks two things. So Stellar is the rails, right? Like you've been around since 2014, been really focused on global payments and stablecoins and RWAs and sort of we are the reach.

So our user base is now essentially able to plug in and it means that Stellar users can bring their funds into Metamask now. So XLM, Trustline, Soroban assets, they're all part of Metamask. You don't have to enable anything. It's completely automatic. 🤝

You're able to swap and bridge those assets from and to different chains and different cryptocurrencies and of course hold, send and receive assets. So basically the whole spectrum of crypto capabilities. 🚀

#Stellar

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📹 Flock ignores Minnesota city’s orders not to reinstall AI surveillance cameras

Flock's AI surveillance cameras are continuing to cause controversy, this time in Dayton, Minnesota, where it is alleged that the company reinstalled two cameras despite express orders from the city not to do so.

The city's local government posted on Facebook to explain, claiming that the Police Department was made aware of a maintenance work order on September 17, to which Dayton responded the next day, stating the program had been put on hold and no work orders were to be completed. However, Flock went ahead and reinstalled them anyway without authorization from the city.

@QSIMedia