Fed's Moussa Lam: Further interest rate hikes may be needed in the next six to nine months.

Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is demanding Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald explain its relationship with Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer. If Democrats make further gains in the November elections, Blumenthal and his colleagues could soon gain expanded investigative authority. On Thursday, Blumenthal sent a letter to Cantor CEO Brandon Lutnick, son of Howard Lutnick, who served as U.S. President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary and handed over management of the firm to his son after joining the administration. Blumenthal has been investigating Tether’s role in Iran’s financial system, and noted that Tether, the issuer of USDT, has a lucrative business relationship with Cantor Fitzgerald, which manages its U.S. reserve assets. In the letter, Blumenthal wrote: “Just as Tether has reaped incalculable interest income and investment gains from stablecoins used in these illegal activities, Cantor Fitzgerald has also profited from its partnership with Tether.” He also asked Brandon Lutnick to explain the firm’s banking operations and sanctions compliance safeguards, and inquired about his father’s prior dealings with Tether during his tenure at Cantor.

Three U.S. aircraft carriers are expected to converge in the Middle East in the coming weeks, and the Pentagon has drafted plans to strike Iran’s missile, drone, and energy facilities. However, Trump said U.S.-Iran talks are still making progress and has no intention of launching an attack before the November midterm elections. The Iranian president stated that Iran will not withdraw from the negotiating table. According to BIT (bit.com) market data, U.S. stocks closed Thursday: the Dow Jones rose 0.1%, the S&P 500 fell 0.47%, and the Nasdaq dropped 1.25%. During U.S. trading hours, news that OpenAI’s annual revenue is $20 billion lower than prior reports pressured tech stocks lower. Nvidia (NVDA.O) slid nearly 3%, while SpaceX (SPCX.O), Micron Technology (MU.O), and SK Hynix (SKHY.O) fell over 4%; Oracle (ORCL.N) and Intel (INTC.O) declined more than 5%. Per HTX market data, Bitcoin rebounded slightly after a pullback, now trading at $81,862, with its 24-hour loss narrowing to 1.81%.

IMF schedule indicates that Federal Reserve Chair Waller will attend and deliver a speech at the IMF Annual Meeting in Bangkok at 11:30 AM Beijing Time on October 16. This date also marks the final day of the Federal Reserve’s pre-meeting blackout period ahead of its October 27-28 policy meeting. Markets are currently pricing in an approximately 80% probability that the Fed will pause interest rate hikes at the October meeting, followed by a rate hike in December.

According to a New York Times report, U.S. officials said that despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambivalent stance on resuming war, the U.S. military is preparing options to launch large-scale operations against Iran again. Three aircraft carriers are set to arrive in the Middle East, and per Trump’s directives, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to strike Iran’s drone and missile depots, energy facilities, and other military targets. Officials revealed that over recent months, Trump’s national security team and the Pentagon have put forward large-scale military operation plans targeting Iran or the Houthis five times, all of which were rejected by Trump. Meanwhile, Trump has once again ordered the launch of the strike plans. Senior national security officials led by Vice President J.D. Vance held a meeting at Camp David last Friday to discuss the relevant plans. Sources familiar with the matter disclosed that the core of these plans is a short, high-intensity operation lasting approximately three days, focusing on Iran’s missile and drone depots, with other potential targets including Iran’s energy facilities and command posts and headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The latest development comes as Trump said the U.S. and Iran are holding productive discussions, and that the U.S. will not attack Iran ahead of the midterm elections.

Whale "Set 10 Big Goals" (@jasonleo) posted late at night, noting that the most notable aspect of Bitcoin’s (BTC) current correction is not the magnitude of the drop, but rather "why it only fell this much". He pointed out that recent macro headwinds include the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield approaching 5.7%, the 10-year yield around 5.3%, rising market expectations for another interest rate hike this year, and resurfacing oil price and inflation pressures. Despite this confluence of negative factors, BTC has only corrected by roughly 5% so far. Jasonleo argues that an asset’s price reaction to news is meaningful in itself. In the past, a single macro headwind could trigger a BTC drop of over 10%; this time, however, under the combined pressure of multiple headwinds, the price has not suffered significant damage—an indication that the current uptrend has notable resilience. Comparing BTC’s current trajectory to its prior bottom near $58,000, he says both periods share the trait of "selling pressure easing after all negative factors are fully priced in", while the market remains in a strong trend. He added that he does not expect BTC to plummet directly to $78,000 or even $74,000, setting $79,000 as the watch level for position adjustments: if BTC breaks below $79,000, he will start reducing positions; if it closes below $78,000 on a daily basis, he will exit all remaining long positions to wait for the next entry opportunity; if the key level holds, he will continue holding long positions.

Synthetic perpetual protocol Papertrade, built on HyperEVM, officially announced its pre-deposit feature is now live. Users can complete deposits and account creation within the next two days. The official noted that account creation and deposits will be significantly restricted once trading launches; depositing early helps avoid opening congestion, though there are no additional benefits for depositing during the pre-deposit period. Papertrade is a fully on-chain synthetic perpetual trading platform deployed on HyperEVM. It fetches prices from the Best Bid/Offer (BBO) mid-price of Hyperliquid’s order book, allowing users to trade directly against the protocol’s liquidity providers (LPs) instead of relying on traditional order book matching. The protocol’s key features include high leverage, zero slippage, and no funding fees. Its native token PAPER has an initial supply of zero, with no pre-mining, team, or venture capital (VC) allocations. The only source of token minting is user losses or liquidations. During the initial launch phase, the token cannot be freely transferred and is primarily used for staking. Per the official timeline, full trading will begin approximately one hour after the expected HyperEVM network upgrade on October 10. The exact time will be announced via Hyperliquid’s Discord. During the opening phase, trading must be conducted through the official website frontend and whitelist relays; direct contract interactions will be opened once congestion eases. For more related reading, see: "Hyperliquid Is Getting Its Own Layer 2: Key Details You Need to Know".