Digest | Crypto

HEX founder Richard Heart detained in early morning raid in Istanbul, Starknet plunges almost 50% as it votes to become an L1, and Bitwise says all signs point to Crypto Spring. The HEX market cap fell from $561 million to $315 million this week after founder Richard Schueler — better known to the crypto community as Richard Heart — was detained by authorities in Istanbul on October 14. Police seized $7.15 million in cash along with firearms and ammunition during an early morning raid in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district, alongside searches of 15 related addresses according to Turkish Justice Minister Akın Gürlek. Police impounded nine luxury vehicles registered to Schueler’s wife according to news agency Anadolu. The haul reportedly included 28 watches, 300 bags and 19 graphics cards. Read more

An user reports buying a tampered Ledger from a big retailer in Europe. Security researchers use AI to uncover a “$94 billion” XRP bug — but receive just a $250K bounty. A tampered Ledger attack that has already seen an estimated $93.4 million taken from Asian hardware wallet users, has reportedly spread to Europe. X user Johannes has presented photographs of a tampered Ledger he said he purchased two weeks ago from the European consumer electronics chain MediaMarkt. The implant inside appears to be an earlier version of the one found linked to CryptoBilis shipped devices in Asia, and no funds have been taken. “Either the device didn’t work, or they were waiting for a more widespread usage of the compromised devices,” he said. Former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, whose investigations into the tampered Asian Ledgers helped bring the problem to light, said the antenna in the device says it is the “Eurasian version” suggesting separate versions of the implant have been sent to regions that use different mobile frequ...

Roman Storm and the XRP army aren’t happy former SEC boss Jay Clayton is Trump’s new AI czar, Peter Brandt flips bullish and says Bitcoin may reach as high as $600K by 2029. President Donald Trump has named Jay Clayton, US director of national intelligence, to lead the country’s new Super Intelligence Force, according to a post on Truth Social on Sunday. The announcement followed media reports on Friday of the appointment. Cointelegraph reported Sept. 20 that Trump planned to create an “AI Force” modeled after the Space Force and appoint an artificial intelligence czar. “The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence,” Trump wrote in his post. Read more

THORChain refuses to blacklist addresses linked to the Bitget hack. Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum is evolving from being a mere blockchain, into a world cryptographic computer. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A centralized exchange with lax security gets hacked by the North Koreans for $387.5 million, and then somehow shifts the blame game onto a decentralized exchange for not blacklisting the addresses. The drama began on September 25 when the Asian focused exchange Bitget revealed $351.6 million in “unauthorized transfers” but it later upgraded the tally to $387.5 million. It said a preliminary investigation had linked the IP addressees to VPN services used by a North Korean hacking group. While that isn’t firm proof, CEO Gracy Chen said its investigators had flagged other similarities with previous thefts. North Korean hackers were believed to be behind the $1.5 billion Bybit exchange hack, and much of the funds from that attack were then swapped on the decentralized exchange THORChain (which is not a...

Crypto missed out CLARITY, but tokenized stocks were legalized and the Bitcoin Reserve advanced. Meanwhile Standard Chartered says Arbitrum’s price could increase 70 times by 2030. After a year’s buildup, the US Senate failed to pass a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act. The motion received just 49 votes in favor and 50 against, well short of the 60 votes required. However, Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s “no” vote was not all it seemed, and he confirmed he’d only switched sides at the last minute to enable him to call a new vote in future. Read more

Crypto’s moment of CLARITY finally arrives with a key Senate vote on Tuesday. AI swarm fears prompt development slowdown, with some predicting big falls in AI stock prices. The CLARITY act heads for a crucial Senate vote on September 15, with Politico reporting that Democrat senators were called to a meeting on Sunday by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss their position. While Polymarket puts the odds of CLARITY becoming law this year at just 24%, the odds of there being 60 votes in favor of the cloture vote on Tuesday are higher, as it would simply move the bill into the amendment and debate phase. That’s where the rubber would hit the road on issues that have drained support so far including ethics provisions for elected officials, stablecoin yield, and protections for decentralized developers. The bill has now doubled in size to more than 630 pages since the first draft was released in May 2025. It follows a year’s worth of work by both Democrat and Republican senators. A new draft was released last ...

Purported white hat hackers have taken 4000 Bitcoin from the Liquid sidechain in a major security breach. The Bitcoin ETFs see the best three weeks of inflows in 2026. A shade under 4000 Bitcoin worth $319 million has been taken from Liquid Network — with purported “white hat” hackers claiming responsibility. An unverified OP_RETURN message read: “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.”   The Blockstream-run Bitcoin sidechain has paused bridge nodes and told exchanges to pause LBTC deposits and withdrawls as the team attempts to contact the attackers and identify the security holes. The Liquid explorer shows the balance of its federation wallet dropped from 4,200 BTC down to just 207.275 BTC. Under normal Liquid mechanics, LBTC is burned on the sidechain before Bitcoin is withdrawn. In simple terms, the transaction needs to be authorized by an 11 of 15 multisig with funds sent to an approved whitelist.     Read more

Bitcoin moves toward a post quantum future, Solana validators agree to curb rampant inflation and the bull case from Bernstein is for Bitcoin to peak at $500K this cycle. Despite considerable skepticism among Bitcoiners about how close the quantum threat to Bitcoin is, two stories this week highlighted the progress being made toward upgrading the blockchain and protecting outputs from attack. StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy tested an experimental quantum-resistant transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet that protects it during the brief period when public keys are exposed in the mempool. Onchain data shows that StarkWSare spent a 10,000-satoshi output protected by Levy’s Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme which combines hash-based one-time signatures with computational searches that bind an authorization to a specific transaction. It’s more of a last resort than a practical measure, as each transaction takes hours and costs $150 to $200. Read more

The US may face a debt crisis within three years according to Ray Dalio, and debt-related issues helped fuel a rally in Bitcoin that could mark the beginning of a new cycle. Confidence has returned to crypto markets after Bitcoin saw a sudden rally to gain more than 23% this week to trade around $77,559 at the time of writing. It was the best weekly percentage gain (23.5%) since March 2023 and the largest weekly gain measured in US dollars. The price briefly topped $79,000 on Friday. Charting platform Barchart highlighted on Thursday that Bitcoin’s (BTC) price had crossed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025. The 200-day moving average is widely used to gauge longer-term market trends, with moves above the indicator viewed as a sign of bullish momentum. Many now believe/hope the cycle has finally flipped positive. Read more

Owners of Trezor and SafePal crypto wallets at high risk of phishing attempts after separate data leaks, CLARITY odds at 10% despite White House meeting this week. Galaxy Digital has lowered its estimate of the CLARITY Act’s chances of passing in 2026 to just 10%. In May it had estimated the chance of passage at 75%. Multiple political issues remain unresolved and the Senate only has 14 days in session to pass the bill after it reconvenes on Sept. 14. Unless an initial motion to proceed vote occurs immediately upon lawmakers’ return to Washington, there would only be enough time for the CLARITY Act to pass if it “dominates basically the entire working session,” wrote Galaxy head of research, Alex Thorn. Read more

BIP-110 forks itself into oblivion with a “2-block chain” and CLARITY will finally get a Senate vote in September. The odds say that vote will be a No. Supporters of the BIP-110 soft fork hoped to eradicate spam from the blockchain, but after a lengthy and heated debate the proposal has been pronounced DOA or Dead On Arrival. After securing just 2.5% support ahead of entering mandatory signaling on Saturday, it split off into a minority chain that mined just two blocks in eight hours before stalling. This is probably no surprise given it’s just as difficult and expensive to mine on the new chain as it is on Bitcoin — but without any hope of being able to sell the block reward to recoup the costs. The difficulty would have adjusted downward if they’d managed to mine through another 2,014 blocks. BIP-110 aimed to rid Bitcoin of non financial transactions, such as Ordinals, but opponents saw it as imposing censorship on the chain and it faced opposition from prominent Bitcoin advocates. Strategy executive chairm...

The “sickening” loss of $90 million of Bitcoin from cold storage weighs heavily on sentiment, as the Clarity Act stalls with just five days left to hold a Senate vote. After $90 million in Bitcoin was drained from Coldcard wallet users, small hodlers desperately sought refuge on centralized exchanges and via alternative custody methods. Bitcoin transfers below 1 BTC climbed to their highest daily level since 2022 on Friday, with 39,600 BTC moved, according to data shared by CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno on Saturday. The figure was just 300 BTC below the 39,900 BTC transferred on Nov. 16, 2022, days after FTX filed for bankruptcy. Galaxy Research, the research arm of crypto investment company Galaxy Digital, reported Saturday that the third wave of attacks on users of the hardware wallet on the weekend brought estimated losses to 1,367 BTC ($88.6 million) across 4,585 addresses. Read more

Despite support from Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and law enforcement bodies, the Clarity Act’s chances dim. BitMEX to close as crypto consolidates into five big players. Despite wealthy memecoin entrepreneur President Donald Trump agreeing to an ethics deal, the Clarity Act (CLARITY) is floundering as the August recess deadline looms. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he doesn’t believe the act has the votes to pass just yet, but may bring it to a vote anyway to “get Clarity started. We’ll see where the votes are.” The ethics deal would prohibit all US officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, but contains some “get out of jail free” provisions for the President that the Democrats are unhappy with, including the fact the rules expire the day he is scheduled to leave office in 2029. Read more

The fate of the CLARITY Act hinges on Trump’s ethics, so the odds aren’t looking great. Prediction market volumes hit new highs, and more news. Polymarket suggests the odds of the CLARITY Act passing this year are just 40%, after a raft of Democratic Senators, including Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, spoke out against the bill. A crucial Senate vote could happen as early as this week, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune stating it will definitely be held before Aug. 10. Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren is trying to spoil the vote by highlighting how much money President Donald Trump has extracted from the industry. She demanded Trump voluntarily release his crypto earnings for this year, after his 2025 disclosure, showed he earned more than a billion dollars from crypto last year. The controversy means that Senate Democrats are unlikely to support the bill without a provision banning elected officials promoting or issuing cryptocurrency. Summer Mersinger, the CEO of the Blockchain Associ...

Even Ethereum's critics believe Robinhood Chain is bullish for ETH. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump become embroiled in crypto related scandals, and more. The successful launch of the layer-2 network Robinhood Chain has boosted investor sentiment around Ethereum. The newly launched blockchain uses ETH as its native gas token and around $141 million in ETH has already been bridged to the chain. More than half a million wallets holding ETH are now on the network, which surged past the Ethereum L1 and rival L2 Base over the past 24 hours, with DEX volumes of $877.56 million. The L2 is an offshoot of TradFi trading platform Robinhood, which offers tokenized stocks to customers in 120 countries, further strengthening the EVM-compatible ecosystem. L2s have been seen by many pundits as bearish for Ethereum as they take activity away from the L1 without returning much in the way of transaction fees. However even some former ETH bears are now reassessing that thesis. Influencer Ansem wrote: Mike Dudas from 6th Man Ventu...

Bollinger Bands creator John Bollinger says the charts suggest Bitcoin could take off from here. Vitalik Buterin unveils a new Ethereum strawmap, but why is it taking so long? Michael Saylor's Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin (BTC) to fund preferred stock dividend payments and replenish its cash reserves. Strategy sold the Bitcoin for $216 million, reducing its total holdings to 843,775 Bitcoin, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This included 1,363 Bitcoin sold at an average price of $59,256 between last Monday and Tuesday, and 2,225 Bitcoin sold at an average price of $60,773 between Wednesday and Sunday. Read more

Prediction market Polymarket eyes Japan entry, Harvard sells off its Ethereum holdings, and other news: Hodler’s Digest

Strategy CEO outlined conditions in a under which the company would sell Bitcoin, Trump Media posts $406M quarterly loss: Hodler’s Digest

US spot Bitcoin ETFs have extended their inflow momentum through late April, XRP set for a 30% price spike: Hodler’s Digest

Spot Bitcoin ETFs see nearly $1B in inflows as risk appetite returns, Worldcoin’s price slides: Hodler’s Digest