Real-world asset (RWA) protocol stUSDT has begun winding down operations, nearly three years after reaching a $2.3 billion total value locked (TVL), ending rewards and opening a six-month redemption window for tokenholders. 

The team said that interest accrual on stUSDT ended on Saturday, with holders of stUSDT and its wrapped version, wstUSDT, able to redeem through its official portal until May 14, 2027. The team said requests submitted after the deadline will be handled through customer support in monthly batches through August 2027.

The team did not provide a reason for the shutdown but said all underlying assets remain fully backed. Holders with tokens on exchanges or DeFi platforms must transfer them to personal wallets before redeeming.

Cointelegraph reached out to stUSDT for more information but did not receive a response before publication. 

Meanwhile, JustLend DAO said it would phase out supply and borrowing functions for its wstUSDT market as part of the transition.

Launched in July 2023 on Tron, stUSDT allowed users to deposit USDT and earn yields from investments in real-world assets, including short-term government bonds. The protocol later expanded to Ethereum.

According to DefiLlama data, stUSDT’s TVL peaked at about $2.3 billion in November 2023 before declining substantially in subsequent years. It stood at about $8.6 million on Sunday, down from roughly $60 million a year earlier.

Despite its name, stUSDT is not affiliated with stablecoin issuer Tether. In September 2023, Tether denied any affiliation with stUSDT, saying the protocol was an independent project.

Related: Tron and Tether bring in Chainalysis after T3 crime unit folds

Microsoft said it had restored Microsoft 365 services after a global outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and other applications for more than 24 hours, reiterating that the disruption was not caused by a cyberattack.

On Saturday, the company said it had “restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,” directing customers to incident MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

On Friday, Microsoft said that the outage stemmed from a problem introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade that emerged after a recent network change. “This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents,” the company said.

The company said it had addressed the underlying issue and restored services gradually, checking stability before proceeding to the next stage. Microsoft apologized for the disruption and said it would publish a full post-incident report once its review is complete.

The outage began Thursday, disrupting access to Exchange Online mailboxes and features linked to Outlook, Teams and Microsoft Copilot. Government agencies in Japan, Singapore and the United States experienced email problems, while connections between Microsoft 365 and AI assistants were also affected.

OpenAI said the Microsoft 365 connector in ChatGPT was operating normally again, while Anthropic also marked its Microsoft 365 connector and Claude for Outlook incident as resolved.

Related: Coinbase restores trading after AWS outage disrupts markets

MEGA, the organization behind Ethereum layer-2 network MegaETH, has reduced its workforce by 20% following months of restructuring as it expands into artificial intelligence products. 

On Friday, MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong said the organization had reorganized its teams, resulting in the departures of staff who worked on its blockchain, wallet, ecosystem support and communications. Kong did not disclose the number of employees affected or when the layoffs occurred. She said MEGA’s founders, early employees and core engineering team remain committed to the organization.

“We’ve brought together new capabilities and reorganized our teams, a process that has resulted in a 20% reduction in our staff,” Kong said. “These are people who helped build MEGA from its earliest days.”

The workforce reduction comes as MEGA shifts its focus toward developing products on the MegaETH network, including artificial intelligence services. The organization has committed $30 million to the initiative, although Kong did not directly link the layoffs to its new strategy.

In a whitepaper, MegaETH co-founders Yilong Li and Lei Yang outlined a proposed inference market aimed at giving users access to competing AI service providers. Their approach seeks to address concerns about whether providers use the advertised models and how they handle customer data.

Kong said MEGA plans to launch a public inference market in December.

Related: MegaETH mainnet to launch Feb. 9 after clocking 35K TPS in testing

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $2.35 billion in net outflows over two consecutive weeks, as redemptions reached more than $1 billion each week. 

According to Farside Investors data, spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $1.07 billion between Nov. 9 and Nov. 13, following $1.28 billion in outflows the previous week, the largest weekly redemptions since late June. 

The funds recorded $185.4 million in net outflows on Friday, down from $284.1 million on Thursday and $299.8 million on Wednesday. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $143.5 million of Friday’s withdrawals, while Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) shed $41.9 million. 

Friday marked the seventh consecutive trading session of net withdrawals, with about $1.71 billion redeemed since Nov. 5. The sustained outflows coincided with broader market weakness as Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $70,000 on the same day. 

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF extends losing streak to 11 sessions

IBIT’s $143.5 million in net outflows on Friday extended the fund’s withdrawal streak to 11 consecutive trading sessions since Oct. 30. 

The latest losses brought IBIT’s total net outflows over the 11-session streak to about $2.35 billion, extending withdrawals after outflows crossed the $2 billion mark on Wednesday.

IBIT shed $908.4 million during the latest week, following approximately $1.21 billion in withdrawals the previous week. Its November outflows reached $2.12 billion, accounting for roughly 90% of the broader Bitcoin ETF market’s net withdrawals during the month.

Related: Adam Back makes case for simpler security as Blockstream launches Bitcoin custody system

Federal regulators are opening more avenues for crypto companies to operate under US rules, while congressional investigators are asking to see the records behind those decisions. Lawmakers want to know how regulators justified new trust charters, how crypto companies handled compliance and what dealings they had with people tied to President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Nov. 9, Coinbase announced that its national trust company had received final approval to open. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval in April. The company said the charter gives its custody business a consistent federal framework.

Lawmakers had been questioning how federal regulators were using their existing authority to expand crypto companies’ reach. In a May 18 letter to the OCC, Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenged at least nine crypto trust-charter approvals, including Coinbase’s earlier conditional approval. She asked for the applications, the legal analyses behind the approvals and any related communications between OCC officials and the White House or Trump family.

Four days before Coinbase’s announcement, Sen. Richard Blumenthal renewed demands for records from Binance, Tether and two Trump-linked ventures. He gave them until Jan. 4, 2027, to turn over the requested records voluntarily and warned that his subcommittee could take other steps to obtain them.

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Adam Back’s Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream has launched a new institutional digital asset custody solution developed with French technology group Thales, as the cryptographer pushes for simpler, offline security systems to protect Bitcoin against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.

The solution, announced Friday, combines Thales’ hardware security modules (HSMs) with Blockstream’s Secure Multi-Party Computation (Secure-MPC) technology, allowing institutions to authorize transactions while keeping sensitive cryptographic operations within dedicated security hardware, according to the company.

Unlike conventional MPC implementations that may perform portions of the signing process outside dedicated security hardware, Blockstream said its architecture executes the entire signing protocol within the protected environment of Thales’ HSMs.

Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back, a pioneering cryptographer whose Hashcash system helped lay the groundwork for Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism, told Cointelegraph that conventional MPC protocols are often too complex and require too much communication between devices to be practical for fully offline cold storage.

“When people talk about MPC, they’re talking about some very esoteric and complicated protocols that are hard to secure and are very interactive. So you can’t really use them in a cold storage setting,” Back said.

Related: Blockstream rejects ransom as Liquid hackers hold nearly 600 BTC

Adam Back makes the case for simpler Bitcoin custody

Back pointed to the Binance $6.3 billion hack as an example of the risks facing internet-connected custody infrastructure, arguing that keeping signing devices offline can help prevent unauthorized access.

According to Binance’s investigation, attackers compromised employee devices and obtained credentials that allowed them to access the exchange’s wallet-signing infrastructure.

If you connect equipment to the internet, even if it’s via firewalls and so on, there is risk that you can get unauthorized access. You can get hackers into the network, get hackers with access to logins they shouldn’t have and so on.

He also said that AI could make existing security challenges more difficult to manage, particularly by helping attackers discover subtle flaws in complex MPC implementations.

“The AIs can help attackers find small implementation errors and things like that, which may not be obvious,” he said.

Asked whether the broader custody industry would adopt similar offline security models, Back said he hoped so, arguing that institutions should “adapt to the environment” by moving assets into cold storage to reduce exposure to potential AI-assisted attacks.

“Complexity is the enemy of security. And going back to basics is the answer, you know, just cold-store it,” Back added.

Magazine: NK hackers join memecoin trenches, xStocks adds Hong Kong equities: Asia Express

OpenAI on Friday introduced a new feature allowing AI agents to make purchases on behalf of users directly within ChatGPT through existing payment networks, in collaboration with American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

The wallet lets users authorize transactions using biometric verification, such as facial recognition or fingerprints. Payment networks generate tokenized card credentials for each approved purchase, keeping users’ actual card details from merchants and AI agents, the company said.

The service is being rolled out to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US with eligible cards issued in the country. OpenAI said it plans to eventually support purchases within preset spending limits and other restrictions without requiring approval for each transaction.

The launch comes as AI companies seek to move beyond product recommendations into executing transactions, potentially changing how consumers interact with online merchants. OpenAI said it is working with payment processors and fraud prevention firms to support AI purchases through existing checkout systems.

OpenAI joins a growing field of companies developing payment systems for AI agents. Google introduced its Agent Payments Protocol in 2025, while Visa and Mastercard have launched initiatives to support AI-initiated transactions.

Crypto companies are also developing payment infrastructure for AI agents. Coinbase introduced its x402 protocol in 2025, enabling autonomous stablecoin payments for digital services, while Circle launched its Agent Stack in May, allowing agents to hold and spend USDC within predefined limits. Crossmint, which provides stablecoin infrastructure, has taken a different approach, combining stablecoin wallets with traditional card networks.

Global agentic commerce transaction value is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, according to an April report from Juniper Research, up from an estimated $8 billion in 2026.

Magazine: NK hackers join memecoin trenches, xStocks adds Hong Kong equities: Asia Express

Kraken’s parent company Payward nearly doubled its share of global crypto spot trading to 6.5% in September from 3.3% a year earlier, even as weaker trading activity weighed on its earnings.

The market-share gain means Payward captured a larger portion of spot trading relative to competitors, rather than an increase in trading activity across its platforms. The company handled $353 billion in transactions in the third quarter, down 30% from a year earlier, according to financial results released Friday.

The two figures measure different things. The market share tracks its portion of global spot trading across its platforms in September, compared with a year earlier, while Payward’s quarterly transaction volume includes activity across multiple products, including spot, margin, equities, payments and certain derivatives.

Adjusted EBITDA fell to $60 million from the $178.6 million reported a year earlier. Total platform margin fell 12% to $487 million. Payward introduced that measure this quarter to replace adjusted revenue, adding a deduction for staking rewards paid to customers.

Acquisitions expand Payward beyond spot trading

Payward has spent the past two years expanding beyond its core cryptocurrency exchange business through acquisitions in derivatives, proprietary trading, tokenized assets and payments. The strategy aims to diversify revenue beyond transaction fees, which fluctuate with market activity.

Its purchases include futures broker NinjaTrader and proprietary trading firm Breakout in 2025, followed by the acquisition of US-regulated derivatives platform Bitnomial in May 2026. The company also expanded into stablecoin payments with its purchase of Reap in July.

Those businesses contributed to a broader mix of trading and service-based activity in the third quarter. The number of derivatives contracts on which Payward charges a per-contract fee rose 84% to 66 million. Margin from subscriptions, trader evaluations and other paid services rose 59% to $125 million.

Breakout, which charges traders for evaluations that can qualify them for funded trading accounts, was included for the full quarter after joining in September 2025. The July purchase of Reap added a stablecoin payments and card-issuing business. The company did not quantify either acquisition’s contribution to the quarter.

Related: Kraken parent Payward acquires Magic Labs’ wallet business

Earnings recover from second-quarter lows

Results improved from the second quarter despite remaining below year-earlier levels. Total transaction volume rose 22%, while total platform margin increased 12% to $487 million from $436 million.

The improvement was not driven by trading alone. Margin earned from assets customers hold on Payward’s platforms, including staking-related services, rose 26% to $128 million. That accounted for roughly half of the $51 million quarterly increase in total platform margin.

Adjusted EBITDA climbed to $60 million from $23 million, while its margin relative to total platform margin rose to 12% from 5%. Compared with a year earlier, however, adjusted EBITDA was down 66%, underscoring the pressure on profitability despite a growing contribution from services less directly tied to trading activity. Asset- and access-based services accounted for 52% of total platform margin, up from 46% a year earlier.

That shift could matter for an eventual public listing. Payward confidentially filed for a US IPO in November 2025 but paused its plans in March as market conditions weakened. By September, the earliest potential listing window under consideration was the second quarter of 2027.

Magazine: Are Alt-L1s over? Security, costs drive smaller chains to Ethereum

A global Microsoft 365 outage continued into Friday, disrupting Outlook email and some Teams features.

Microsoft said in a 7:25 am UTC update that a patch had improved stability on some servers and that it was working to deploy the fix more widely. The update, republished by the University of Pennsylvania, gave no timetable for restoration.

The outage began Thursday, leaving some users unable to access their Exchange Online mailboxes. Microsoft said a process that handles secure connection became overloaded, causing affected servers to stop processing requests.

The company said it attempted to restore services by restarting infrastructure, redirecting network traffic and expanding server capacity. Microsoft said there was no indication of a security breach.

The outage also affected features in Microsoft Copilot and Defender for Office 365. In Teams, users had trouble scheduling meetings and sending invitations. Microsoft said most Teams calls and chats continued to work.

Businesses and government agencies worldwide use Microsoft 365 for email and scheduling. Microsoft reported more than 450 million paid commercial seats for the suite in an October filing. Exchange Online hosts the mailboxes and calendars those organizations use, and outside apps, including AI assistants, rely on the same service to retrieve that data when users connect their work accounts.

OpenAI reported errors in ChatGPT’s Microsoft 365 connector. Anthropic said the outage caused most email, calendar and search requests through Claude’s Microsoft 365 connector to fail.

The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said its clerk’s office could neither send nor receive email for much of Thursday. Japan’s Finance Ministry said it was unable to receive email on Friday and Singapore’s Government Technology Agency told CNA that government email was among systems affected.

Related: Amsterdam protesters break into Microsoft data center construction site: Report

Metaplanet swung to a $170 million net loss in the first nine months of 2026, hit by a decline in the value of its Bitcoin holdings and a loss on the sale of 10,000 coins to demonstrate its ability to raise cash.

The Japanese company, the world’s second-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin (BTC) holder, posted a net loss of 27.16 billion yen (about $170 million), compared with a profit of 13.53 billion yen ($84.6 million) in the same period last year. A 19.17 billion yen ($119.8 million) loss on the Bitcoin sale and an 8.04 billion yen ($50.3 million) loss from a decline in the value of its Bitcoin holdings outweighed gains in the operating business.

Over the quarter, Metaplanet sold the 10,000 BTC for 124.7 billion yen and temporarily held the proceeds in cash, stablecoins and other liquid assets. It then spent 149.9 billion yen to buy 11,000 BTC, paying 9.3% more per coin on average. The company said the sale was meant to show rating agencies and bond investors that it could turn its Bitcoin into cash to meet financing obligations. At the end of September, holdings rose by a net 1,000 coins to 44,000 BTC.

Top 10 largest Bitcoin treasury companies. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET

Metaplanet borrowed against its Bitcoin holdings during the quarter, increasing the amount it owed under the credit line to $649.5 million at the end of September from $414 million at the end of June.

The company said it funded Bitcoin purchases from the second quarter onward with money borrowed under the credit line, proceeds from bond sales and the exercise of stock acquisition rights, and revenue from its Bitcoin options business.

Metaplanet’s interest expense rose 56% from the previous quarter to 1.36 billion yen ($8.5 million). Short-term borrowings and bonds payable totaled 110.5 billion yen ($691 million) at the end of September.

For the nine months through September, revenue rose 30.5% to 5.9 billion yen ($36.9 million), while operating profit increased 26.5% to 3.48 billion yen ($21.8 million). The company cut its full-year revenue forecast to 6.5 billion yen ($40.6 million) from 16 billion yen ($100 million).

Related: Metaplanet to take 93.7% stake in Super League through 2,100 BTC deal 

Bitcoin treasury companies face pressure from falling prices, index removals

Metaplanet’s earnings come as Bitcoin treasury companies face mounting pressure from incoming stock index removals and falling Bitcoin prices.

Index provider MSCI confirmed Wednesday that Strategy, Metaplanet and Upexi would be removed from its equity indexes at the Nov. 30 market close, potentially prompting funds that track those benchmarks to sell the shares. JPMorgan previously estimated that Strategy’s removal could result in roughly $2.8 billion in selling pressure from MSCI-linked funds.

Bitcoin fell below $70,000 on Friday and was trading around $68,600 as of 4:51 p.m. UTC, down about 9% over the previous week, according to CoinGecko data.

Magazine: NK hackers join memecoin trenches, xStocks adds Hong Kong equities: Asia Express