This week’s crypto news covers Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP memecoin disclosure, Sui’s reported 40 million transactions per second stress test, and Conduit’s lawsuit against Tether over frozen USDT. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins have filed for a spot Zcash ETF, and the NFL is challenging Kalshi’s sports event contracts before the US Supreme Court.
Top gainers and losers of the week
- Starknet (STRK) – led the market gains with a massive breakout, surging 62.61% over the last seven days to reach $0.07108;
- Raydium (RAY) – built up strong buying momentum, advancing 22.01% throughout the week to settle at $2.39;
- JUST (JST) – recorded steady upward motion, climbing 11.41% across the seven-day period to lock in at $0.142.
- Venice Token (VVV) – experienced strong selling pressure, falling 26.47% over the course of the week to drop to $21.99;
- Mantle (MNT) – took a significant hit, sliding 20.02% to close the seven-day stretch at $0.5463;
- Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) – drifted lower under market pressure, losing 19.50% of its value to finish trading at $0.007965.
Hunter Biden discloses $LAPTOP memecoin trading data
Hunter Biden published a full accounting of the $LAPTOP memecoin he helped launch on September 9, confirming via blockchain data that 300 million tokens held by the project's founders "haven't moved since launch."
Biden said the token's price chart "looked like every celebrity rug ever" shortly after launch, with two hired market makers pulling funds seconds after the price peaked around $317. One market maker earned $686,000 from liquidity positions, while the other "took in about $2.18 million more than it spent" through trading. A launch report from Groom Lake confirmed similar figures, noting one market maker withdrew funds 84 seconds after the peak.
Biden framed the project as a deliberate contrast to the Trump family's crypto ventures.
"Trump's coin was max extraction, and I wanted to troll every grift like it. So we were transparent, committed the team to a lock up and published a MiCA disclosure," he wrote, adding he was motivated partly to "piss off Don and Eric."
He said 5% of tokens were earmarked for charity, with founder tokens locked for six months.
15/
— Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) October 7, 2026
And hey, if this is the first you're hearing about any of this, welcome. Everything about the coin, the airdrop and the charities is here: https://t.co/KFpXvpzE3b
The disclosure arrives as Trump prepares to host a November 22 dinner for top TRUMP memecoin holders, a token Public Citizen estimates has cost investors $3.2 billion since its 2025 launch.
Sui hits 40M TPS in live Singapore stress test
Sui tunnels processed 40,614,180 transactions per second during a live stress test at Sui Basecamp in Singapore on October 7, surpassing the network's own 20 million target and dwarfing its July 4 record of just over 6 million TPS. The test ran on the Summit Stage at Marina Bay Sands, alongside Token2049 Singapore.
A world record.
— Sui (@SuiNetwork) October 7, 2026
40,614,180 transactions per second. Live at Sui Basecamp, independently analyzed by @CertiK.
AI agents paid, played, and chatted in programmable tunnels. Executed offchain, settled on Sui.
Sui is ready for the agentic economy.https://t.co/KcWmlNpgaq
Sui tunnels, introduced during the July 4 demonstration, function similarly to Lightning Network's offchain payment channels, settling to Sui mainnet only when closed. Every closed tunnel is mutually cosigned and independently verifiable onchain. Unlike Lightning, Sui tunnels are programmable, supporting a far wider range of activity than payments alone. During the test, participants and AI agents opened more than 10,000 tunnels across chat, games, and payments categories, all gaslessly and offchain.
"In an agentic economy, Sui doesn't need to process every interaction. It needs to be the trust layer for all of them," said Adeniyi Abiodun, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder at Mysten Labs, who ran the test. "Think of Sui as a court. Agents agree on the rules when they open a tunnel and reach a conclusion when they settle."
Abiodun said tunnels require just two transactions, one to open and one to close, keeping intermediate costs near zero.
"At 40 million TPS, onchain gas fees would cripple agent commerce," he noted. "No market in the world needs 6 million transactions per second, let alone 40 million: people just don't move that fast. Agents do."
CertiK, serving as independent auditor, will examine proofs, execution logs, and supporting evidence, with a report expected in the coming days.
"Transparent and independently verifiable performance measurements will become increasingly important," said Yuannan Yang, Director of Security Engineering at CertiK.
Conduit sues Tether over frozen $2.76M USDT
The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, states Conduit began holding USDT in its digital treasury wallet in May 2025, and that Tether froze the full amount on September 24 with "no justification." Conduit alleged the action "materially impacted its business."
"The funds are unequivocally Conduit's, but Tether has taken them and is denying Conduit access to them," the complaint states. "Tether is not allowed to take money from businesses just because they chose to store that money in Tether's currency."
Conduit says the freeze stems from a 2024 Brazilian federal police investigation into Bull Intermediação de Negócios and Onix, with Tether allegedly linking Conduit's wallet to those companies "on its own initiative using its own criteria." Conduit said repeated requests to unfreeze the funds went unanswered. Tether did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit follows a similar case filed roughly a month earlier, where two Thai nationals sued Tether over a $42.4 million freeze tied to a $61 million pig butchering investigation.
Winklevoss files spot Zcash ETF with Gemini custody
Winklevoss Capital filed a registration statement with the SEC for a spot Zcash ETF, seeking to list on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK and holding ZEC directly without leverage or derivatives.
Winklevoss Asset Services would sponsor the fund, while affiliate Gemini Trust Company would custody the ETF's ZEC holdings, charging an annual sponsor fee of 0.25%. Winklevoss Capital Fund has indicated non-binding interest in purchasing up to $100 million in shares of the proposed ETF, according to the filing.
The fund would give investors exposure to Zcash through a traditional brokerage account without directly holding the privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable shielded transactions that conceal amounts and participant identities.
This filing arrives weeks after ZEC crossed $1,000 for the first time in its history, a move that caught at least one large short seller off guard, with a trader losing more than $18.5 million on a Hyperliquid position as the token's price broke through that threshold. ZEC has since climbed further, surging more than 735% over the past year to a market capitalization of roughly $23 billion, trading near $1,350 and ranking as the 10th-largest cryptocurrency.
The Winklevoss fund would join Grayscale's Zcash ETF (ZCSH), already trading in the US, which recently announced a 3-for-1 share split.
Matvii Diadkov
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