Arc's newly launched Layer 1 network recorded approximately $127 million in 24-hour trading volume across its top 500 tokens, more than double the $57.91 million in on-chain liquidity. The chain has logged roughly 767,000 transactions and hosts over 30,200 listed tokens, with activity concentrated in newly issued, high-volatility assets. Argus and Tolly led volumes at $21.97 million and $9.12 million, posting gains of 915% and 679% respectively, while some tokens surged over 10,000%. The rapid expansion raises concerns about price slippage and liquidity risk for traders entering low-float, high-velocity markets.

ARC officially launched its mainnet on September 16 at 9:00 AM GMT+8, with OKX Wallet providing immediate support for asset management, market tracking, charting, trading, and cross-chain functionality. The network positions itself as an open Layer 1 built for financial markets, real-time capital flows, and the agent economy, supporting stablecoin gas payments with USDC as the initial option. The launch follows a pre-mainnet frenzy that saw 371.67 million USDC flow onto the chain within two hours and daily transfers exceed $300 million the day before launch.

Huobi HTX reported a 43% recovery in spot trading volume over the past two weeks compared with late August, marking two consecutive weeks of growth. The exchange framed the rebound as evidence of improving user sentiment and market depth despite broader market weakness and external headwinds. The data suggests the platform's spot business is regaining competitive momentum after navigating a period of volatility that tested its liquidity infrastructure.

TRON founder Justin Sun announced the Justin Sun Prize, a mathematics award that pays out only when proofs are fully verified by machines from first line to last. The prize fund is locked in a blockchain address that can only be appended to, not withdrawn, and has no age or annual quota limits. Sun said he will not participate in judging but will determine the problem list and bounty amounts, aiming to build a long-term bridge between pure mathematics and on-chain public incentives in the era of AI and formal verification.

Hong Kong's first five-year economic plan for 2026-2030 designates gold as the entry point for building a comprehensive commodity trading ecosystem. The strategy calls for coordinated development of clearing systems, warehousing, supply chains, and infrastructure, with the long-term goal of benchmarking against major international gold trading centers. Hong Kong aims to attract more bullion dealers and financial institutions, expand storage and refining capacity, deepen cooperation with mainland China's gold market, and build a one-stop storage, trading, clearing, and service center.

Average daily trading value on South Korea's KOSPI index fell to 20.6 trillion won (approximately $15 billion) in September, the lowest of 2026 and less than half the peak months of May and June. The index remains up roughly 59% for the year, making it the best-performing major global benchmark, supported by corporate buybacks. Analysts at Eugene Investment & Securities attributed the volume decline to rising domestic interest rates pulling funds into rate-linked savings products, while the index has struggled to hold above the 7,000 level after a 22% sell-off in July.

South Korean memory giant SK Hynix is reportedly in exploratory discussions with Intel to manufacture memory chips in the United States for the first time, according to Reuters. One scenario involves SK Hynix leasing part of Intel's planned Ohio fabrication facility, while another contemplates a joint venture with Intel and major cloud service providers seeking to lock in memory supply. A potential obstacle is Korean government opposition, as the technology is considered strategically sensitive. Negotiations remain preliminary with no decisions made.

Zhang Yiming, the 43-year-old founder of ByteDance, has overtaken India's Gautam Adani to become Asia's wealthiest person with a net worth exceeding $105 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune has grown roughly sevenfold since Bloomberg first tracked it at $13 billion in March 2019, driven by TikTok's global success and ByteDance's AI investments including the Doubao chatbot and Seedance video generation model. The milestone underscores how AI-linked wealth is displacing traditional industry billionaires across Asia.

Alibaba's Qwen3.8-27B has surpassed FLUX.1, DeepSeek-R1, Kimi-K3, and Meta-Llama-3 to become the most-liked open-source model in Hugging Face history. The milestone marks a significant shift in the open-source AI landscape, with Chinese-developed models now leading global community engagement on the world's largest AI open-source platform. The achievement follows a broader trend of Chinese open-weight models rapidly narrowing the performance gap with US closed-source systems.

Chinese AI company Zhipu (02513.HK) completed a $5 billion refinancing using a structure weighted heavily toward debt rather than equity, driven by urgent compute expansion needs. The company said model API demand surged tenfold within a week of its GLM-5 launch in February, exhausting its compute reserves and forcing it to halt sales of its main Coding plan product. After a $4 billion refinancing in July, this latest round positions Zhipu to support high-growth business operations and continued development of larger-scale models.