US stocks closed with broad declines in the optical communications, storage, semiconductor, and Neocloud sectors, with CIEN and LITE falling nearly 10%.

As the market dropped, $NEAR bull 0xb4a3 was fully liquidated on his 500,000 $NEAR ($2.64M) long position.

According to Bitget data, South Korea’s stock index plummeted 5%, with SK Hynix’s intraday decline widening to 7% and Samsung Electronics falling 5.89%. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix shares extended their recent sell-off, as market concerns over Chinese competitors and overextended AI stock rallies intensified. On October 13, both companies’ shares dropped more than 5%, marking their fifth consecutive trading day of declines, which dragged down the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (Kospi) by 5%. U.S. chip stocks also fell overnight, with memory chip maker Micron Technology down 3.9%. On the news front, China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has made progress on a new memory architecture that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are also developing. Additionally, comments from Broadcom’s CEO that AI stock investments have gambling-like characteristics further amplified market concerns. Ha SeokKeun, chief investment officer at Eugene Asset Management, said: “The market is uncertain whether this upward cycle can last until 2028 and beyond, which appears to be weighing on the valuations and share prices of South Korean chipmakers.”

According to Bitget data, South Korea's stock index plunged sharply, triggering the exchange's circuit breaker mechanism for the KOSPI index.

Per HTX market data, Bitcoin’s pullback below $82,000 has triggered sharp declines across altcoins. Key 24-hour performance figures: BOME down 30.04% to $0.000768; BLUR down 29.48% to $0.01349; STRK down 28.35% to $0.08599; CKB down 22.50% to $0.0014796; PONS down 20.35% to $0.281; USELESS down 16.82% to $0.16969; ENA down 15.55% to $0.204; NEAR down 13.44% to $5.039.

The New York Times reports that since early July, Elon Musk has quietly poured over $276 million into Republican groups and their Super Political Action Committees (PACs), launching a large-scale mobilization effort to help the GOP address unfavorable conditions in the midterm elections. This massive sum makes Musk the largest single donor in U.S. midterm election history. To preserve the Republican Party’s Senate majority, Musk donated a total of $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund this summer—one of the largest individual political donations in U.S. history. Musk also built a key Republican voter mobilization operation through America PAC, the Super PAC he founded in 2024. He contributed over $76 million to the group this summer to develop an extensive get-out-the-vote (GOTV) program aimed at mobilizing hard-to-reach Republican voters. In the 2025-26 election cycle, Musk has donated approximately $366 million to federal committees, far exceeding the roughly $290 million he spent in the 2024 election. According to sources familiar with the matter, he has also provided additional undisclosed donations to both election cycles.

Meta has launched two AI models, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, stating that they match or outperform top-tier products from OpenAI and Anthropic across multiple benchmark tests, and will be used to boost retention for its Muse assistant. Muse Wonder surpassed Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1, and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra in select technical benchmarks, and is capable of handling complex tasks including lease understanding, financial or health information analysis, and more. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company has caught up to the "cutting edge" of artificial intelligence, will continue to invest heavily in AI development, and rejected calls to slow down AI progress. Following the news, Meta’s US stock closed up 3.38% at $742.96, according to market data from BIT (bit.com).