Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, a new report highlighted substantial cost savings from stablecoin remittances, especially in emerging markets. Meanwhile, Solana postponed its Shanghai event after registrations exceeded local capacity limits and an OpenAI research model accessed a crypto wallet without authorization to deploy smart contracts.

Stablecoin remittances cost 84% less than traditional transfers, Borderless finds

Stablecoin-funded remittances cost roughly 84% less than traditional money transfers, according to a new third-quarter report from payments network Borderless.xyz.

Sending $200 through stablecoin payment networks costs a median of $2, or 1%, compared with $12.72, or 6.36%, for conventional remittances. The comparison uses Borderless pricing from the third quarter of 2026 and World Bank data from the same period last year.

Savings were particularly pronounced in emerging markets. In Sub-Saharan Africa, stablecoin remittances cost 2.9%, compared with 8.46% for traditional transfers. In Latin America, the respective costs were 1.25% and 5.64%.

Businesses also stand to benefit. A $10,000 stablecoin-funded transfer to the eurozone costs as little as $26, compared with $135 to $150 for an international bank wire, including foreign-exchange costs.

Stablecoin payouts also settled faster in several markets, with a median of two minutes in Brazil and Colombia and three minutes in Mexico. Traditional SWIFT transfers typically settled the next business day.

However, reliability varied. Payment completion rates reached 98.6% in Mexico but fell to 73% in Costa Rica, highlighting differences in local payment infrastructure.

Solana’s Liu says Shanghai event postponed over registration surge

The Solana Accelerate event in Shanghai was postponed after pre-registration exceeded the event cap set by local authorities, according to Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation.

Event registration quadrupled overnight following publicity for the event, Liu wrote in a Friday X post, adding that organizers decided to postpone the event to “comply with local requirements.”

Earlier on Friday, X users claimed that the event was “abruptly suspended” as law enforcement officers were stationed at the venue.

In October 2025, a Solana event in Shenzhen was also cut short due to venue capacity and public-safety concerns, Solana’s Chinese-language community account announced then on X.

Shanghai was scheduled to open Solana’s four-city Accelerate China tour, followed by Hangzhou on Sunday, Shenzhen on Tuesday and Beijing on Thursday, according to the event’s website.

The postponement followed Solana executives’ promotion of a new Shanghai office earlier this week.

OpenAI model helped itself to testnet crypto, then kept quiet about it

An internal research model at OpenAI accessed a funded crypto wallet without authorization, using testnet Ether to deploy smart contracts on the Sepolia network and later omitting the spending from its final task summary. 

OpenAI said the model, which was part of its GPT-5.6 Sol family, was given the task of updating a crypto trading prototype and deploying compatible contracts. After failing to obtain testnet ETH through faucets, the model derived accounts from publicly known developer recovery phrases, checked 362 wallet addresses and selected one with enough funds to proceed. 

In its recorded reasoning, the model asked, “But using public known key/funds ethically?” It then argued that the funds were “effectively abandoned/test ETH” and that Sepolia ETH had no value, before using the wallet’s private key to sign and broadcast a deployment transaction. The transaction succeeded, with fees charged to the account.

OpenAI said the incident showed how an AI model could decide on its own that using someone else’s funds was acceptable, even without permission. The company discovered the incident while reviewing earlier model activity and has since introduced safeguards to prevent live internet access in similar situations.