WTI Crude Oil Futures Soar 5.00% Intraday, Now Trading at $99.14 per Barrel

POLITICO reported on April 9 that former President Trump will attend a meme coin conference later this month. Earlier reports noted Trump will host a grand luncheon for TRUMP token holders, with 18 "superstars" joining him. Top 297 holders are invited to the April 25 Mar-a-Lago luncheon, while the top 29 will attend a special VIP reception and champagne toast—sharing the stage with Trump.

April 9 — Tether’s QVAC team today announced the launch of the QVAC SDK, a fully open-source, cross-platform software development kit built as a universal building block for artificial intelligence. The company frames the near future as the “Stable Intelligence Era,” where 10 billion humans, 10 billion autonomous machines, and 1 trillion AI agents will coexist globally. Tether positions itself as building the foundational layer for the next computing era, describing AI as a new “periodic table element” — a fundamental material to embed into the universe’s fabric — with QVAC as the “atomic unit” of this new landscape. QVAC is a modular, efficient AI platform designed with a local-first approach, capable of running on any device, platform, or operating system: from high-performance industrial servers to microchips in light bulbs. Tether envisions AI as a highly complex “plug-and-play intelligence system” — standardized, stackable, and infinitely scalable. As edge AI constraints

On April 9, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that Congress has spent nearly five years working to pass a framework to support the financial sector’s future growth. She added it is now time for Senate Banking Committee Republicans to review the CLARITY Act and send it to President Trump for his signature.

On April 9th, The Block reported that an independent Bitcoin miner successfully mined a Bitcoin block with extremely low odds early Thursday, earning the full block reward plus transaction fees. Data from Mempool block explorer shows the miner used CKpool’s independent mining software to mine the 944,306th block, netting a total of 3.128 bitcoins (roughly $222,012). That includes 3.125 bitcoins from the block reward (≈$221,800) and 0.003 bitcoins in transaction fees (≈$212). CKpool developer Con Kolivas posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Congratulations to the miner who mined the 313th independent block with just 70TH of hashing power. Miners at this scale have roughly a 1-in-100,000 chance of mining a block each day—and on average, it could take around 300 years for that to happen.”

Bloomberg reports that Hong Kong mortgage firms are weighing an inaugural digital bond offering of up to HK$12 billion (roughly $1.5 billion) — a deal that could be the world’s largest of its kind, according to people familiar with the matter. The firms are considering launching multiple bond tranches as early as next month, with issuance size expected to range from HK$10 billion to HK$12 billion, the people said. They added that terms are still under discussion and could change.

On April 9, Iranian Parliament Speaker Qalibaf said violating the ceasefire agreement would carry clear costs and consequences. (Gold10)