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A member of technical staff on OpenAI’s Safety Oversight team put the odds of human extinction at 70% within three years unless AI labs slow down or regulators step in.

Marcus Williams, who joined the company in May 2025, made the call on X. He posted the warning first, then attached a number when another user pushed him for one.

How the Human Extinction Estimate Landed

Without AI regulation or a coordinated slowdown between labs, Williams wrote, human extinction in the next few years looks very likely.

Another user then turned it into a wager, offering $10,000 in Microsoft shares against OpenAI stock over five years. Williams answered with a percentage.

“70% in the next 3 years if there isn’t regulation/slowdown although i think regulation/slowdown is very possible”

However, the hedge matters as much as the number. Williams calls a regulation or a slowdown very possible, so he does not treat the outcome as settled.

Washington Is Already Moving on AI Risk

The post lands in a week that pushed lab safety into mainstream politics. On September 9, an Anthropic researcher resigned and accused Anthropic and OpenAI of gambling with human lives.

US lawmakers responded within a day. A fresh push to pause AI followed, including a Senate bill that would ban superintelligence outright.

Voices outside the labs have echoed the alarm. The UN human rights chief called advanced AI an existential risk earlier this week in Geneva.

Williams still sits at the extreme end of these forecasts. Evan Hubinger, who leads alignment science at Anthropic, puts the odds above 10% this decade. Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton has cited a range of 10% to 20%.

Meanwhile, crypto traders now track these warnings directly. Polymarket pushed Williams’s post to its own followers within hours, and its bettors already price elections and macro events alongside token odds.

Therefore, the near-term test is political rather than technical. Whether regulators act inside Williams’s three-year window remains open, and his own answer so far is that they still can.

The post OpenAI Safety Researcher Puts Human Extinction at 70% Within 3 Years appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the AI cybersecurity scare serves the industry that is selling the cure. He made the claim Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco.

The timing is awkward. Security vendors and AI labs have warned for months that AI-driven attacks are accelerating. Crypto platforms absorbed much of that damage.

Huang Reads the AI Cybersecurity Panic as a Sales Pitch

Huang offered a blunt explanation for the noise. Vendors talk loudly about threats, he argued, because they are preparing product launches.

“The reason why there’s so much conversation today about cybersecurity is because the industry is getting ready to launch some products, and what better way to create demand than to create a problem?” Huang said, per Axios.

He pushed the point further. Huang asked who would not want a hysterical market queuing around the corner for their product.

However, he called cybersecurity the next major use case for AI and a strong business opportunity. His complaint targets the fear, not the market itself.

Crypto Keeps Paying for the Threats He Dismisses

The record complicates his reading. Attacks on crypto platforms climbed roughly 50% in the first half of 2026 even as stolen sums shrank, SlowMist found.

More than 100 companies signed an open letter in August warning that AI-enabled attacks would spread within months. OpenAI and Anthropic both added their names.

Budgets followed that warning. CrowdStrike stock jumped 20.5% in late August after record earnings showed AI threats lifting enterprise security spending.

Security researchers see the same pressure inside crypto. OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz argues that AI agents probe contracts faster than human reviewers can clear them.

Huang has a habit of confident calls that happen to suit Nvidia. Days earlier he declared human-level AI had arrived, before OpenAI claimed anything of the sort.

Both readings can hold at once. Vendors do sell fear, yet the attacks keep landing. Crypto security teams will judge Huang by the next quarter of loss reports.

The post Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Calls AI Cybersecurity Panic a Sales Pitch appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Bankman-Fried’s lawyers challenged the exclusion of evidence about customer losses and argued that his $11 billion forfeiture was excessive.

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Ethereum developers have tentatively scheduled the Glamsterdam upgrade for Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53 UTC, even as private devnet testing continues to uncover bugs.

The date gives developers a path toward a December mainnet release, but it remains conditional on whether the next testing phase can produce a stable network.

Glamsterdam Date Depends on Devnet Testing

Protocol specialist Christine D. Kim noted in her latest newsletter that developers agreed to the October 6 Sepolia date while acknowledging several caveats, the biggest of which is that Glamsterdam has yet to run successfully on a stable private devnet.

Glamsterdam-Devnet-9 launched on September 1 with 1,000 validator nodes, making it the largest devnet of its kind by node count so far. But the network is not finalizing, meaning too few validators are correctly proposing and attesting to the chain head.

Ethereum Foundation (EF) developer operations engineer Stefan Starflinger said the size of the network exposed problems, noting it “showed that there are still quite a few edge cases and issues” left to address. He added that the previous devnet, Devnet-8, had an even more serious flaw, a bug that could freeze the entire network if a validator proposed a block sharing its parent’s hash.

Separately, EF researcher Maria Silva flagged a bug tied to EIP-8037, the State Creation Gas Cost Increase, which will require every execution-layer client to update its code.

Because of those fixes, another devnet is coming, and as of this week, the one to watch is Devnet-11, not 10 as originally planned. Parithosh Jayanti, the Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer who chaired the call, said that if the new devnet fails again, “we’d have to take it case by case” on whether October 6 still works.

Hoodi and Mainnet Dates Remain Uncertain

Developers have also held off on setting a date for Hoodi, Ethereum’s second public testnet in the rollout, with Enrico del Fante of Consensys arguing that waiting a few more weeks before committing to Hoodi would be sensible given the problems found on Devnet-9.

The uncertainty extends to the main network. Developers still hope that the upgrade can reach Ethereum mainnet before the end of 2026, but the Sepolia date does not make the outcome more certain, especially since client implementations are not yet considered ready for mainnet.

As CryptoPotato reported previously, Ethereum’s broader roadmap has penciled in Glamsterdam’s mainnet activation for December 2026, ahead of a separate push toward quantum-resistant infrastructure targeted for 2029.

That plan, tied to the Hegotá upgrade that follows Glamsterdam, points to Ethereum shipping major changes roughly twice a year, a pace it kept last December when Fusaka activated on schedule.

The post Ethereum Targets October 6 for Glamsterdam Sepolia Fork appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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August 2026 was the month Zoomex took its expansion story from announcement to delivery. Where July was about rolling out new stock perpetual contracts and locking in event partnerships, August was about crossing the finish line on both fronts.

The platform pushed its tokenized equity lineup past the 50-contract milestone and backed it with a week-long Zero-Fee TradFi promotion, while its Coinfest Asia 2026 Gold Sponsorship in Bali moved from a save-the-date press release to an actual beach-side gathering of traders, builders, and Web3 community members. 

Beneath that marketing calendar, Zoomex’s verified on-chain reserves continued to sit in the same well-managed, multi-chain range that has defined its transparency reporting all year. This report reviews Zoomex’s on-chain reserves, chain and token composition, and platform metrics as tracked through DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap, and CoinGecko, alongside the product and partnership developments that shaped the month. 

Zoomex Overview

Founded in 2021, Zoomex has grown into a global cryptocurrency trading platform serving over 3 million registered users across more than 35 countries and regions. The platform operates on its core philosophy of “Simple – User-Friendly – Fast,” a guiding principle that informs everything from its matching engine architecture to its user interface design.

July was defined by continued expansion of ZoomexStocks, the platform’s tokenized-equity perpetuals line. Building on the initial rollout of 50 USDT-settled stock contracts covering names like TSLA, NVDA, AAPL, META, MSTR, and COIN, Zoomex added further pairs through the month, including names such as GE, JPM, WMT, SONY, COST, and meme-adjacent tickers like GME and AMC all trading 24/7 with leverage up to 20x and entry from as little as 5 USDT.

This steady cadence of new listings underscores Zoomex’s push to position itself as a unified trading ecosystem bridging digital assets and traditional equity markets, rather than a single-product exchange.

The platform’s technical backbone is engineered for performance. Zoomex maintains sub-10ms order matching latency, and execution tests confirm that a 1 BTC market order on Zoomex results in approximately 0.03% slippage. This infrastructure maturity, combined with Zoomex’s regulatory registrations and third-party security audits, forms the foundation for everything documented in this report.

Exchange trade volume

Zoomex’s exchange trade volume through August followed a shape almost the inverse of July’s choppy, range-bound pattern, a quiet first half of the month gave way to one sharp, sustained spike around the Coinfest Asia window, followed by a longer grind back down to baseline. Volume opened the month subdued, holding in a tight $210-230M band from August 12 through 15, before easing to the month’s low point of roughly $130-140M around August 16-17.

From there, it climbed back to around $230M by August 19, still well within the quiet range that had defined the first half of the month. 

The real move began on August 20, the opening day of Coinfest Asia 2026 and the Zoomex Summer Bay Party in Bali, when volume broke sharply higher, roughly $650M on August 20 and $730M on the 21st, before peaking at approximately $1.02 billion on August 22, by far the highest single reading of the period and more than four times the mid-month baseline.

That peak lines up closely enough with Zoomex’s Bali activations that the timing is hard to ignore, though a single exchange’s volume spike coinciding with a sponsorship event isn’t proof of causation on its own. The move unwound quickly: volume fell to around $430M by August 24, then spent the rest of the month oscillating in a lower, choppier band between roughly $370M and $600M through August 25-30, closer in character to July’s cyclical swings, before dropping to a secondary trough of about $260M on August 31.

September opened in that same $260-460M range, with volume drifting between roughly $300M and $460M through the first week before climbing back to around $350M by September 9, the most recent reading available. On the pair side, BTC/USDT continues to dominate Zoomex’s trading activity at 43.4% of volume, followed by USDC/USDT at 15.7% and ETH/USDT at 12.4%; HYPE/USDT, SOL/USDT, XRP/USDT, and ENA/USDT together with a longer tail of “Others” round out the remainder.

Notably, essentially all of that volume, 100% by CoinGecko’s currency breakdown, continues to settle in USDT, underscoring the stablecoin’s role as Zoomex’s near-exclusive quote and settlement currency across both spot and the newer stock-perpetual products.

On-chain reserves 

Where July’s reserve story was a sharp, double-peaked spike that fully unwound within about a week, August looks like a genuine, sustained step-up in Zoomex’s treasury floor. DefiLlama’s CEX Transparency tracker shows total assets opening the month right around the $21 million baseline that had held since June, essentially flat through the first eleven days of August. The first move came around August 12-13, when total assets stepped up sharply from roughly $20 million to about $27-28 million, a jump that held rather than reverted, plateauing in that $27-28 million range through August 20.

A second, larger step followed from roughly August 21 through 25, when reserves climbed steadily from about $28 million to a peak near $37 million. Unlike July’s spikes, this level has proven durable: total assets have held in a tight $34-37 million band for the two-plus weeks since, through August 29, into September, and up to the $35.37 million reading as of this report on September 9. 

Taken together, the two-step climb suggests a deliberate rebuild of the treasury’s on-chain float rather than a one-off deposit that came and went, a meaningful contrast to the mid-year pattern of the reserve base snapping back to its $21-24 million baseline after each spike. As always, this figure reflects verifiable cold and hot wallet holdings tracked by DefiLlama and sits alongside, not in place of, Zoomex’s separately maintained $50 million insurance fund. 

Assets by chain

Ethereum remains Zoomex’s largest chain by a clear margin, holding $15.93 million, or close to 45% of tracked assets. XRPL is the second-largest chain at $6.76 million, followed by Tron at $3.05 million, Mantle at $2 million, BSC at $1.87 million, Base at $1.45 million, Solana at $1.38 million, and Arbitrum at $1.22 million.

Bitcoin holds $763,180.61, OP Mainnet $412,250.10, and Polygon $389,585.74. Vaulta, Doge, and Sonic round out the smallest positions at $78,480.02, $55,887.70, and $10,270.57, respectively. 

In total, Zoomex’s on-chain reserves remain distributed across 14 separate blockchain networks, the same multi-chain footprint the platform has maintained throughout 2026, though the specific smaller chains represented, OP Mainnet, Polygon, Vaulta, Doge, and Sonic among them, point to some rotation at the margins even as the larger Ethereum, XRPL, and Tron positions anchor the total.

Token balances

Read purely in unit terms rather than USD value, the picture shifts: PEPE dominates by raw count (7–9 billion units, consistent with its low per-unit price) and shows a stepped upward trajectory through most of the month, likely tracking deposit volume rather than any deliberate accumulation strategy, since meme-coin balances on an exchange typically mirror user activity more than treasury decisions. 

TBY’s intermittent, block-shaped presence, appearing and disappearing rather than persisting, is the more analytically interesting signal here, as it’s more consistent with temporary custody, a bridging/settlement cycle, or a recurring but non-continuous product flow than with a held position.

The sharp late-window drawdown in USDT0/TRON balances (dropping from roughly 4b to a markedly lower level in the first days of September) stands out as an active reallocation rather than passive drift, and would be worth flagging for the report as the most recent notable balance-sheet movement, even though it falls just outside the August window proper. 

USD inflows

The aggregated inflow series is the clearest single confirmation of the month’s underlying dynamic: three large, concentrated deposit events (~$5m, ~$3.5m, ~$2.9m across mid-to-late August) account for the overwhelming share of net inflow, against a noisy but low-amplitude baseline of ordinary daily activity (peak single-day outflow of -$879,979). 

This structure, a small number of large events driving total growth, rather than a rising baseline of everyday flow, is worth naming explicitly in the report, since it has a direct implication for how growth should be framed to readers: August’s balance-sheet expansion was event-driven and front-loaded into three identifiable windows, not the product of sustained organic momentum.

That framing also dovetails with the broader market backdrop, a month in which both gold and Bitcoin staged well-documented breakouts, making it plausible the platform’s large depositors were repositioning in step with, rather than independently of, the wider risk-on shift. 

Inflows by token

August’s inflow pattern was not organic accumulation, but a series of discrete, large-ticket deposit events layered on top of routine low-volume activity.

The standout was the ~$5.7m XAUT inflow around August 12 — notable given that gold itself was mid-rally through the month, gaining roughly 10% from near $4,000 to post its best monthly performance since January, and pushing to its highest level since early June by mid-month on Treasury liquidity support and a weakening dollar. 

That timing suggests the deposit may reflect a counterparty or treasury repositioning into a gold-tracking asset precisely as the metal was breaking out of its summer range, rather than a coincidental transfer.

The subsequent ~$3.5m USDT/TRON inflow (~Aug 15) and ~$2.9m inflow (~Aug 24) point to at least two further concentrated settlement events, likely institutional deposits, OTC settlements, or a market maker topping up working capital ahead of the BTC breakout later in the month.

Outside these three spikes, day-to-day flow stayed shallow and mixed, with small net positive and negative days, with a maximum single-day outflow of -$990,382, which is consistent with normal client withdrawal/deposit churn rather than any stress signal. The overall read is a platform whose net asset growth in August was driven by a handful of large, identifiable deposit events rather than broad-based retail inflow. 

Token values (USD)

Viewed by asset rather than by chain, the same mid-August inflection is visible: USDT roughly doubled (~$6m to ~$12m) in a matter of days before plateauing, confirming that stablecoin liquidity, not a directional token bet, absorbed the bulk of the new capital.

More interesting is the shape of the XAUT and WETH curves, both of which show sustained, gradual accumulation across the full month rather than a single jump, implying steady programmatic buying or repeated smaller deposits rather than a one-off transfer. 

The XAUT build in particular lines up with gold’s broader August tailwind, during which the metal reached a three-month high near $4,710 by late August, so the token’s rising USD value on the balance sheet reflects both accumulation and price appreciation, a distinction worth flagging in the report since it affects how “growth” should be attributed.

Taken together, the composition, a stablecoin base for liquidity, XRP as a stable core holding, and a growing gold/ETH allocation, reads as a fairly conservative treasury posture: liquidity-first, with measured diversification into a macro hedge (gold) and a blue-chip base asset (ETH) rather than into higher-beta altcoins. 

Token breakdown

The composition snapshot reinforces that read: USDT (27.96%), XRP (19.10%), XAUT (14.94%) and WETH (12.45%) together account for nearly three-quarters of total holdings, meaning the portfolio’s risk profile is dominated by a stablecoin, a large-cap payments token, a gold-backed asset, and ETH exposure — a combination weighted toward capital preservation and liquidity rather than speculative upside. 

The remaining quarter is spread thinly across MNT, ETH (additional native holding beyond WETH), USDT0, USDC, BTC, AAVE, SOL, BNB, and a handful of smaller tokens (ASTER, RENDER, TRON, and an “Others” bucket at 3.34%).

Notably, direct BTC exposure is modest (2.16%) despite Bitcoin’s own strong August, which broke out of a stagnant low-$60,000s range with an 8% single-session jump on August 19–20 and continued to a surge above $80,000 by late August on Treasury buyback news and heavy short liquidations, suggesting the platform’s treasury did not meaningfully lean into that rally, which is either a conservative choice or simply reflects that BTC isn’t a primary deposit asset for its user base.

This long-tail structure, a handful of core holdings plus dozens of marginal positions, is typical of an exchange balance sheet that reflects genuine user deposit diversity rather than a curated investment portfolio. 

Proof of reserves

Zoomex’s publicly disclosed reserves stand at $30,237,863.65, reported directly by the exchange and cross-referenced against on-chain wallet addresses across at least four networks, Ethereum, Tron, XRPL, and Bitcoin, which gives the disclosure a verifiable, multi-chain backbone rather than resting on a single custodial address. 

By allocation, stablecoins remain the anchor of the reserve base at 35.73% (USDT), split across an Ethereum-based wallet, a Tron wallet, and a smaller Arbitrum/Optimism-tagged position, a deliberate liquidity spread across chains that reduces single-network dependency for withdrawals.

Notably, gold-backed XAUt (19.62%) and ETH (19.26%, split across two wallets) together represent nearly 39% of reserves, a materially larger allocation than the 10.41% held in BTC or the 10.56% held in XRP, indicating the exchange’s reserve composition leans toward gold and ETH as its principal non-stablecoin backing rather than Bitcoin. The remaining 4.42% (“Others,” including a smaller AAVE position) rounds out a portfolio that is broad but concentrated at the top: five assets account for over 95% of total reserves. 

Platform community and user metrics

Zoomex ended August 2026 with over 3 million registered users across more than 35 countries and regions. The platform’s Telegram community has grown from 74,199 members to 76,277 reflecting active engagement among Zoomex’s core retail trading base.

Zoomex’s daily active trader count consistently exceeds 1 million users according to independent review data, TradersUnion, making it one of the most actively used mid-tier exchanges globally by session volume.

The platform regularly adds new assets based on market demand combined with rigorous vetting, as of this report, Zoomex lists 486–495 cryptocurrencies and operates across 518–575 trading pairs depending on the market segment (spot or derivatives), a figure that has grown steadily through 2026.

The post Zoomex Monthly On-Chain Report: August 2026 appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Six weeks after AI bets nearly wrecked his hedge fund, Leopold Aschenbrenner is putting money into the same companies again. His hedge fund, Situational Awareness, bought call options on AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, SK Hynix and SanDisk, CNBC reported, citing sources. The trades ran from late last week into this week.

The former OpenAI researcher became famous for a 2024 essay arguing that AI could reach human-level intelligence by 2027. He built an investment business around that belief, backing companies supplying the computing capacity and electricity AI needs.

July exposed how dangerous that bet had become. Borrowed money magnified falling share prices, triggering demands for cash the fund could not meet. Assets shrank from a peak above $45 billion to roughly $10 billion, according to CNBC.

What July Cost Leopold Aschenbrenner

Ken Griffin’s Citadel bought distressed holdings at a discount. Situational Awareness kept private investments, including Anthropic. The SEC later subpoenaed Wall Street banks over their dealings with the fund. The reported inquiry carried no allegation of wrongdoing.

His return uses call options: contracts that let buyers purchase shares at a fixed price before a deadline. When paid for upfront without borrowing, their losses are capped at the purchase cost. That entire amount can still disappear if the options expire worthless.

The familiar names have drawn attention. On Friday, CNBC’s Jim Cramer wrote:

“Someone is shooting against all the Situational Stocks!”

Friday’s trading was mixed: Bloom rose nearly 7% and AMD almost 3%. SanDisk and CoreWeave fell.

AMD’s outstanding put options also recently outnumbered calls, though those contracts can reflect investors protecting existing holdings.

It remains unclear whether Aschenbrenner is using surviving cash or fresh investor money. He is again betting on the companies behind the AI boom, with contracts that put a deadline on the payoff.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens.

The post Former OpenAI Researcher Bets on AI Stocks After $35 Billion Wipeout appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Crypto asset manager Bitwise is shutting down its spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund roughly 10 months after the product launched, as the firm moves to optimize its product range to meet changing investor needs.

The fund, BWOW, currently trading on NYSE Arca, is expected to continue trading until October 14, its final trading day.

Investor Demand Dries Up

According to the official press release, investors can sell their shares on the secondary market until trading closes that day, after which BWOW will cease operations. The remaining shareholders will receive the net asset value of their shares as of October 21 in cash on October 22, and Bitwise said investors do not need to take any action during the process.

The firm has also coordinated with NYSE to facilitate the fund’s delisting and liquidation.

Back in November 2025, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley had stated,

“DOGE is simply a 12-year-old coin based on a picture of a cute dog, people doing good, and the common ideal in crypto that people should have the freedom to do as they choose. And, against the odds, it has kept its relevance – and its value – longer than just about anything else in crypto.”

Bitwise’s decision comes as the market for spot Dogecoin ETFs struggles to attract steady investor demand. The first DOGE ETF launched in September 2025 and generated significant attention at the time. But the products have since seen limited interest.

Data compiled by SoSoValue revealed that Dogecoin ETFs posted about $318,000 in net inflows last month, reversing the small outflows recorded in July. September has been considerably weaker, however, with more than $343,000 already leaving the funds. The fund saw more money leave than come in. Its lifetime net outflow stood at $1.23 million.

Fresh Bullish Signal

The past month has been relatively steady for the OG meme coin. It gained nearly 20% over the past month as the broader crypto market rallied. After reaching a recent high of $0.09, though, it slipped back to around $0.084.

Ali Martinez thinks DOGE could be ready for another bounce. The analyst identified a buy signal from the TD Sequential on the asset’s four-hour chart. Martinez said the signal has worked well recently. The last three times it appeared, DOGE went on to rebound 6.96%, then 2.71%, and 11.25%.

The post Bitwise Pulls the Plug on Dogecoin ETF Just 10 Months After Launch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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