Bitcoin breaks below its 50-day average as leveraged bets unwind

Bitcoin weakened into the weekend, with Bitcoin.com News reporting a price around $80,800 on Saturday morning, October 24, after its first daily close below the 50-day moving average since August. The report put that average near $81,784 and cited a CoinGlass snapshot of roughly $496 million in cryptocurrency liquidations over 24 hours, including $318 million in long positions. The move came amid renewed U.S.–Iran tensions and higher oil prices, linking the cryptocurrency selloff to wider pressure on financial markets. These figures describe the report’s publication-time snapshot rather than a live price feed. Source: Bitcoin.com News, October 24.

Ethereum postpones the Hoodi upgrade while developers investigate contract risks

Ethereum’s planned October 26 Glamsterdam activation on the Hoodi testnet has been postponed, with no replacement date announced. In its October 22 notice, the Ethereum Foundation said developers need more time to investigate how EIP-8037 interacts with existing mainnet smart contracts; the postponement also removes the planned increase of Hoodi’s gas limit to 200 million. The Foundation asks Hoodi node and validator operators to check updated instructions for both execution and consensus clients and remove configurations that still schedule the old activation. The notice concerns a future testnet upgrade and does not change Hoodi’s past transactions or set a mainnet activation date. Source: Ethereum Foundation, October 22.

HSBC launches its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin through PayMe

HSBC announced the launch of RedCoin, its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin with ticker RCHKD, on October 23, making a regulated digital currency available through its PayMe app. According to the bank, more than 3.3 million PayMe users will be able to activate wallets in the coming days for payments to friends and purchases at more than 100,000 merchants. HSBC says the stablecoin is licensed and regulated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, with further plans for access through its mobile banking app and subscriptions to tokenised investment products later this year. Those investment features remain planned additions; the initial rollout focuses on everyday payments. Source: HSBC launch announcement, October 23.