US President Donald Trump said he plans to create an AI Force and appoint an artificial intelligence czar. He said the project would manage the fast-growing sector without regulations that could slow innovation, but gave no details or timeline.

Anthropic has chosen Accenture and its AI business Faculty as its first embedded evaluator to assess models and test safeguards as part of CEO Dario Amodei's proposal to slow AI development. The partnership is non-exclusive, and Anthropic and Accenture each expect to invest at least $1 billion over five years.

President Donald Trump said he is forming an AI Force and will soon name an AI czar while promising to support the industry and address wrongdoing without stifling growth. He modeled the force on Space Force and said AI could eventually account for up to 25% of US GDP, while claiming the United States leads China in developing it. Trump has not identified a budget, structure, candidate or announcement date, and said existing criminal and civil law is sufficient to address wrongdoing. The announcement came as researchers warned of severe AI risks, including a 70% chance of human extinction within three years without regulation or a coordinated slowdown, according to OpenAI safety team member Marcus Williams.

The same exploiter was linked to attacks involving Fetch.ai and NuNet, with about $2 million in assets involved. NuNet's NTX token fell more than 70% in 24 hours and reached an all-time low of $0.000328 on September 20. Security firms linked both events to the same wallet cluster.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $433 million in net inflows on Friday, Sept. 18, led by Fidelity's $310.7 million contribution. The inflow extended a two-day rebound, but the funds finished the five-session week with only $6.1 million in net inflows after earlier withdrawals. BlackRock's IBIT still attracted more capital than Fidelity's FBTC over the full week.

REX Shares and Tuttle Capital Management launched the T-REX 2X Long ASST Daily Target ETF, which began trading Friday on Cboe under the ticker ASSX. The fund seeks to deliver 200% of Strive's daily share-price performance before fees and expenses, but its daily reset means longer-term returns can differ significantly from twice the stock's performance.

Kalshi filed a proposal to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks, but the CFTC has not approved it. The contracts would have no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments to track the underlying stocks. The filing joins similar proposals from Coinbase and Bitnomial.

Hyperliquid's HYPE token rose 78% over 30 days, while Uniswap's UNI gained 142%, after the SEC granted temporary, conditional relief for venues trading tokenized stocks. The order allows tokenized securities venues to trade National Market System stocks through automated market makers and liquidity pools. The rally also reflects rising trading activity and expectations surrounding Hyperliquid's possible US expansion.

Crypto futures linked to Anthropic have reached about $79.27 million in open interest as traders position around a potential IPO that investors have discussed valuing at up to $2 trillion. The activity comes before Anthropic has disclosed an offering price, final valuation or number of shares, although the company confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the SEC in June. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic plans to stage the IPO in November, later than the October timetable previously expected by investors.

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs received $433 million on Friday, producing a $6.2 million net inflow for the week ending Sept. 18, according to The Block's analysis of SoSoValue data. Spot ether ETFs recorded a $140 million weekly outflow despite receiving $143.8 million on Friday, ending a four-week inflow streak. Fidelity's FBTC accounted for $310.7 million of the bitcoin funds' Friday inflow.

Solana rose to $111.78, its highest level since January and 85% above its year-to-date low, after breaking above the $110 resistance level. Spot Solana ETFs recorded more than $28 million in inflows this month, while more than 439 million SOL tokens worth $49 billion were staked. Technical analysis in the article identifies a $150 target and says a drop below $96 would invalidate the bullish outlook.

VanEck said Metaplanet's executive equity exposure remains far above that of its digital asset treasury peers, despite a 41% reduction in the company's potential share pool. The asset manager rated Metaplanet's compensation structure "Bad" and said its 8.2% officer exposure and 14.7% equity plan remain excessive. VanEck called for a shareholder-approved compensation plan and changes linking executive pay to Bitcoin per fully diluted share.

Grayscale’s Zcash ETF has accumulated $914.53 million in net assets, leaving it about $85 million short of $1 billion less than a month after its Aug. 25 listing. ZEC traded around $1,540 on Sept. 19, while futures open interest reached about $3.5 billion and trading volume exceeded $10 billion. Grayscale also announced a 3-for-1 forward split for ZCSH, with split-adjusted trading expected to begin Sept. 30.

Visa is moving to stop crypto payment processors from categorizing memecoin purchases as digital media, according to a Friday report from Crypto in America. The classification allowed users to buy memecoins with credit cards and earn ordinary points or cash back. The processors have an expected grace period ending next week, after which the purchases would be processed as typical cryptocurrency transactions subject to Visa's restrictions.

Charles Hoskinson argues that blockchain technology will eventually absorb artificial intelligence, with cryptocurrency serving as a coordination layer for payments, alignment, data provenance, governance and royalties. He expects this shift within five to 10 years and says data center spending is growing faster than electricity grids can support it while AI labs still need to become profitable. Hoskinson also predicts the CLARITY Act will not pass Congress until 2029, after the Senate failed to advance it on September 15 because it fell short of the 60 votes required.

Grayscale's ZCSH Zcash ETF filed for a 3-for-1 forward share split to reduce its per-share price as ZEC's value has surged. Shareholders of record at the close of trading on Sept. 28 will receive two additional shares for each share held, with split-adjusted trading scheduled to begin before market open on Sept. 30.

Ripple says asset managers and other commercial projects are preparing to use Batch V1.1, an XRP Ledger feature that can combine up to eight linked transactions into one operation. The rebuilt upgrade is expected to activate shortly after Sept. 29 if validator support remains above 80 percent. The redesign and security review followed a critical flaw in the original version.

Solana reduced its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, nearly a 17% speedup in block production. The change does not increase overall transaction capacity because each slot allows proportionally less computation and data. A planned further cut to 200 milliseconds has no mainnet activation date and depends on block-skip rates remaining stable.

Bastion said the OCC granted preliminary conditional approval for a US trust bank charter. The proposed bank would provide stablecoin custody, wallets, payment infrastructure and white-label issuance, but could not accept deposits or make loans.

Linera and Switchboard announced closures on September 18 and September 19, respectively, as RootData's 2026 list of dead crypto projects passed 260 entries. Linera said it stopped operations after a Sonar sale attracted close to $900,000 against a $1.5 million USDC minimum target, while Switchboard said remaining support will end on September 25, 2026. Switchboard directed developers to providers including Pyth and RedStone and cited recent exploits, cheaper AI tools, slower new-chain launches and reduced budgets.