Crypto-related stocks extended their gains in early US stock trading, with BitMine rising 9.01%.

According to GMGN market data, Artificial Inu (AI), a meme coin linked to crypto-stocks on the Robinhood chain, saw its market capitalization briefly approach $300 million, hitting a recent high. It is now trading at $265 million, with a 38.1% 24-hour gain and $30.2 million in trading volume. Artificial Inu is issued via Long.xyz, the issuance platform on the Robinhood chain, and is paired with Nvidia (NVDA) stock. Long.xyz has launched LongX Expansion, which supports packaging 3x leveraged NVDA positions on Lighter into ERC20 tokens, enabling minting/burning, DEX pool trading, and liquidity pairing. The platform has also explicitly stated that transaction fees will flow back to the AI token, making Artificial Inu effectively the de facto "platform token" of Long.xyz at this stage. BlockBeats Note: Stock Meme is an emerging concept that combines traditional meme coins with tokenized U.S. stocks. Unlike meme coins paired with USDT or ETH, these tokens are directly paired with on-chain U.S. stock tokens (such as NVDA, TSLA, AAPL), retaining meme coins' high volatility and community-driven speculative traits while anchoring the popularity and narrative of real stocks. A portion of transaction fees typically flows back to the community treasury to accumulate corresponding stock tokens, forming a dual-driven model of "sentiment speculation + real asset anchoring". BlockBeats reminds users that token prices are highly volatile, so investment requires caution.

According to CNBC, the hedge fund Situational Awareness, run by self-styled "AI stock guru" Leopold — who nearly faced liquidation this summer — appears to be staging a comeback, resuming its activity in the options market. A source familiar with the development said founder Leopold has been repurchasing options since last weekend through early this week, with underlying assets largely matching its prior "AI infrastructure/storage" investment thesis: SK Hynix, SanDisk, AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, plus the storage-themed Roundhill Memory (DRAM) ETF. The options position totals hundreds of millions of dollars. It remains unclear whether these new options purchases are backed by newly raised public market capital or leftover funds from the July sell-off. In July, the hedge fund Situational Awareness, managed by Leopold, a former OpenAI researcher nicknamed the "AI stock guru," suffered a severe setback. The fund, which once held over $45 billion in assets under management (AUM) at the start of the month, faced mounting margin pressure as AI-related stocks in storage, power and computing sectors plunged this summer. It was forced to offload nearly all its public market stock positions at a discount to Citadel Securities, cutting its total size to roughly $10 billion, while retaining private positions — particularly its stake in Anthropic.

Well-known trader Bonk Guy stated in his prediction that PON will become the first utility token to reach a $1 billion market cap in this cycle, while USELESS will be the first meme coin to hit that milestone in the same period. GMGN data shows PON currently has a market cap of $650 million, having previously peaked at $990 million. USELESS reached a cycle high of $330 million, and now stands at a $250 million market cap. BlockBeats reminds users that token prices are highly volatile, so investment should be approached with caution.

INDEX and COOPERATIVE have been added to Robinhood’s tradable assets, allowing users to trade them directly via the Robinhood App. INDEX (The Index) is an RWA protocol token built on Robinhood Chain. After users hold a certain amount of INDEX, the protocol uses 3% of generated transaction fees to purchase a basket of tokenized U.S. stocks (including AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, etc.), which are automatically airdropped to holders’ wallets every 15 minutes—no staking or manual claiming required.

According to GMGN data, the Robinhood Chain ecosystem token INDEX has seen a short-term rally, pushing its market capitalization above $45 million, with a 24-hour gain of 17.8% and trading volume of $5.5 million over the same period. INDEX has been added to Robinhood’s tradable assets, allowing users to trade directly via the Robinhood App. INDEX (The Index) is an RWA protocol token on Robinhood Chain. After holding a certain amount, the protocol uses 3% of transaction fees to purchase a basket of tokenized U.S. equities (such as AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, etc.), which are automatically airdropped to holders’ wallets every 15 minutes—no staking or manual claiming is required. BlockBeats reminds users that such tokens are highly volatile, so investment should be approached with caution.

Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl published an analysis noting that Zcash (ZEC) is a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin but with additional privacy features, with both networks secured via proof-of-work (PoW) mining. Driven by Zcash’s strong token price performance, its mining has become highly profitable. While Bitcoin’s network is far larger—with daily total miner rewards of roughly $35 million versus Zcash’s ~$2 million—Zcash is more favorable for individual miners. Grayscale estimates that Zcash offers around twice the daily reward per mining rig and four times the reward per megawatt-hour (MWh) compared to Bitcoin, though their mining hardware is not interchangeable. Additional data shows Zcash’s current per-MWh mining yield is even higher than that of some AI/high-performance computing cloud services. This higher profitability is spurring more mining activity: measured by standard hashrate metrics, Zcash’s total network mining activity has grown over 2.5 times this year. This forms a virtuous cycle: higher token prices drive more mining, which enhances network security, and stronger security in turn helps sustain elevated prices. Grayscale concludes that at current valuation levels, Zcash mining is very profitable, attracting more hashrate and supporting network security.