Scouting October: Crypto's Biggest Hack, a $25B Bet, and Solana's Leap

TL;DR. October ended with a bang: Binance was hacked for about $6.3 billion — the largest crypto heist on record — sending Bitcoin to a six-week low near $76.5K. The Fed held rates at 3.75–4.00%, Ethereum ETFs bled $1.32 billion, and the whole market turned red. The month's bright spots came earlier: OKX raised at a $25B valuation, and Solana shipped sub-second finality with Alpenglow while Ethereum's Glamsterdam stalled on the testnets.

Industry Headlines

Binance Hacked for $6.3B — the Largest Crypto Heist on Record

On October 30, Binance disclosed a security incident affecting roughly $6.3 billion in crypto assets — the largest crypto hack on record, eclipsing the 2025 Bybit heist. Binance tied the breach to a compromised engineer laptop that let an attacker push withdrawals from hot wallets; some researchers instead suspect abuse of Ethereum's EIP-7702 account-delegation feature. The post-mortem is ongoing. Around $3 billion was frozen by Tether, Circle and partners including Ripple, and Binance's co-CEO said the exchange will cover all hacking losses. Deposits and withdrawals were suspended. Forensics firm TRM flagged similarities to past North Korea-linked attacks. Polymarket was separately drained of about $2.6 million over the same stretch.

CoinDesk on the $6B Binance hack

Red October: Bitcoin Hits a Six-Week Low as the Fed Holds

The late-month shock capped an already-weak stretch. Even before the Binance news, Bitcoin had slipped under $80,000 — down on the month, with whales on Hyperliquid turning net short for the first time since June. On October 28 the Fed held its benchmark rate at 3.75%–4.00% in a hawkish 10–2 vote. Then the Binance hack dragged total crypto market cap down 3.7% to about $2.67 trillion, pushed Bitcoin to a six-week low near $76,500, and liquidated over $1 billion in leveraged positions. The ETF split persisted: spot Bitcoin funds ended October near breakeven, while spot Ether ETFs shed about $1.32 billion — their heaviest outflows since November 2025.

Coingabbar on the October 30 market drop

OKX Raises at a $25B Valuation — Infra Partners Become Investors

On October 6, OKX announced a strategic raise at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, with Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and hedge fund QRT taking part. The amount wasn't disclosed — it extends a March round that saw Intercontinental Exchange put in ~$200M at the same valuation. CEO Star Xu framed the capital as fuel for real-world-asset tokenization, and pitched the round as choosing long-term partners rather than chasing cash. OKB rose about 6% on the news.

Bloomberg Law on the OKX raise

Solana's Alpenglow Goes Live — Finality Drops to ~150ms

Around October 21, Solana activated Alpenglow on mainnet — described as its "most ambitious upgrade since Ethereum's Merge." The headline number: finality moved from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. It's the clearest proof yet that sub-second confirmation on a major Layer-1 is here to stay.

Decrypt on the Alpenglow launch

Ethereum's Glamsterdam Stumbles on the Testnets

Ethereum's answer is still in the lab. The Glamsterdam Sepolia fork went live October 6, and the network began testing blocks over three times larger. But the Hoodi testnet fork — planned for October 26 — was pulled after a security issue tied to consensus bugs. Mainnet remains a Q4 2026 target with no confirmed date.

AMBCrypto on the Glamsterdam setback

Regulators Keep Moving — Without Congress

With the CLARITY Act dead after September's 49–50 Senate cloture failure, agencies filled the vacuum. On October 5 the CFTC issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on retail crypto commodity transactions and sent a crypto framework to the White House for review. The SEC's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets closed its public comment period on October 20 — if adopted, it would preempt state registration for certain exempt offerings. US crypto rules are being written at the agencies, not on the Senate floor.

Orrick on what's next for digital-asset regulation

Blockscout Updates

Blockscout v12 Ships — 41% Smaller Event Logs

On October 7 we shipped Blockscout v12.0.0. The headline: event log storage is down 41%, so instances index more history on less disk. v12 also adds ERC-8056 support and brings ENS names into advanced filters, so you can search and slice on-chain activity the way people actually think about it. Heads up for integrators — v12 includes breaking API changes, so check the release notes before you upgrade.

Three New Free Pro API Endpoints

v12 adds three new endpoints to the free tier of the Pro API, plus clearer labels for OP Stack transactions and support for Swarm (bzz://) URLs in token metadata. More of the explorer's data is now queryable without touching a paid plan — and OP Stack rollups read more clearly out of the box.

Patched and Ready for Glamsterdam

The v12.0.1 patch is already live. It fixes an advanced-filters bug, adds historical CoinGecko prices, and — notably — ships Glamsterdam consensus-node fixes. When Ethereum's next hard fork does land, Blockscout instances are already prepared to follow it.

What's next month

• Binance's cleanup — withdrawals will reopen and how much of the ~$3B frozen actually gets clawed back.
• Ethereum Glamsterdam, take two — watch for a rescheduled Hoodi fork and any firm mainnet date after the October setback.
• Solana Alpenglow in the wild — the first full month of sub-second finality under real mainnet load.