📍 If you only catch up on crypto once this week, start here.
A quieter week for Bitcoin headlines, but it's still making all the big moves. Let's get into it! 🚀
As the name suggests. The top 6 quick and dirty.
🟢 The US crypto rulebook is happening anyway — After the Senate sank the CLARITY Act, the US futures regulator (the CFTC) has drafted its own rules: any exchange offering leverage, meaning trading with borrowed money, would need a federal licence and would have to keep customer funds separate. Read more →
🟢 The company that owns the NYSE wants to trade stocks on a blockchain, 24/7 — OKXICE, a 50-50 venture between crypto exchange OKX and NYSE owner ICE, has told the SEC it plans round-the-clock trading of blockchain versions of 63 US shares, including Nvidia, Apple and Tesla, priced in stablecoins. Read more →
🟢 A crypto detective spent $350k of his own money going undercover — Blockchain investigator ZachXBT posed as a customer of a Chinese money-laundering crew to trace funds tied to North Korea's Lazarus Group, taking roughly a 5% hit on every order to gather evidence. The trail led back to the US$1.5 billion Bybit hack, and Tether froze 442,000 USDT off the back of it. Read more →
🟢 Robinhood just put Bitcoin on its own balance sheet — Robinhood has bought US$25 million of Bitcoin for its own books, which crypto boss Johann Kerbrat called a symbolic move to line the company up with the crypto community. He admits that on a roughly US$100 billion company it won't change much, but it's still a big-name app backing Bitcoin with its own money. Read more →
🟢 Coinbase Pro is coming back, with Deribit bolted on — Coinbase will relaunch Pro by year's end as "Coinbase Global Exchange", combining spot, futures, perpetuals, options and shares in one place, with up to 10x margin on spot. It folds in Deribit, the options exchange Coinbase bought for about US$2.9 billion. Read more →
🟢 Citi lifts its Bitcoin forecast by more than a third — Citi raised its 12-month Bitcoin forecast from US$82,000 to US$113,000 and nudged its Ether target up too, expecting around US$5 billion more to flow into crypto ETFs. It's a forecast, not a promise, but it's notable when a bank this size moves its number this far. Read more →
For users of the Bamboo App.
Crypto and metals split again this week. Bitcoin remains in a fairly stable to modest position after a weak US jobs report wiped out most bets on an October US rate rise. Gold and silver didn't get the same lift: a strong US dollar and high bond yields kept them under pressure.
For all cryptocurrency prices by market cap visit CoinMarketCap
Stories of interest — B side!
🟢 AI agents could pry loose the sleepy deposits US banks depend on — Your checking account probably pays you close to nothing. For decades, banks have counted on you not caring enough to move it. Read more →
🟢 BlackRock reckons crypto's next big buyer might not be human — The world's biggest asset manager has published a report, "The Machine-Native Economy", arguing that AI agents could drive the next wave of crypto demand. Read more →
🟢 Bitcoin ads are coming to the Avengers and Dune — Jack Dorsey's Block has launched its biggest push yet to get people spending Bitcoin, not just holding it, with cinema ads running before Avengers: Doomsday and Dune 3. The campaign runs until 31 December. Read more →
🟢 U.S. Government Moves $103 Million in Seized Bitcoin and BNB, Sending BTC to Coinbase Prime — US government wallets moved about 834 BTC (roughly US$71.6 million) to Coinbase Prime on Tuesday, along with about US$31.6 million of BNB seized from FTX and Alameda. No sale has been announced. Coinbase Prime is used for storage as well as trading, and the Bitcoin comes from forfeiture cases, including the HashFlare scheme, whose seized assets were meant to compensate victims. Read more →
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Australia's No.1 crypto podcast
Episode 252
TIMESTAMPS:
1:58 Swift - the plumbing of global crypto finance - switches on its blockchain
7:09 Blast announces its shutting down
9:22 Tether gets super uncomfy!!!
12:02 Short, sharp news bites
The podcast covers three main stories this week:
🏦 SWIFT goes blockchain — The system that connects more than 11,000 banks around the world has switched on its own blockchain ledger, with 17 major banks — including Australia's ANZ — now testing it. Is this what blockchain adoption actually looks like?
💀 A $2.3B blockchain is shutting down — Blast once held more than $2.3 billion in user funds. Now it's closing its doors, with users given three weeks to withdraw. At its peak it made $3.5 million a month. Last month? $1,793.
💵 Tether's Iran problem — A US Senate investigation says 84% of hundreds of sanctioned crypto wallets relied primarily on USDT, and claims Iran's central bank accumulated $507 million in the stablecoin. Tether says it has already frozen $550 million in Iran-linked USDT at the request of US authorities.
This week's term: Exploit
Imagine finding a loose window at a bank, climbing in, walking out with $3.8 million… then reading a public message that says "We have identified you, sir." And handing the lot back.
That's roughly what happened to Near Intents, a service that lets people swap tokens across 35 different blockchains.
An exploit is when someone finds a bug in a crypto project's code and uses it to pull money out in ways the builders never intended.
No password stolen, no door kicked in. The code technically let them do it.
Near Intents' general manager, Alex Shevchenko, gave the attacker 48 hours. Every dollar came back, with a note left on the blockchain: "We've returned all the funds, we were in the wrong."
They even suggested others use bug bounties (where projects pay you to report flaws) instead.
Source: Decrypt
If a Bitcoin ad rolls before Dune 3, just remember you heard it here first!
If a Bitcoin ad rolls before Dune 3, just remember you heard it here first!
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