abobka

$6.3 million
According to the WSJ’s calculations, that’s how much Nxum earned from its deal with Tether, with a third going to Bo Hines

Hines led the White House’s digital assets council from January to August 2025
the first tranche, $2.49 million, reportedly arrived on May 11, 2025, while he was helping promote the GENIUS Act
WSJ also reports that he pushed to double the law’s transition period to three years. Tether stood to benefit the most
Hines later became CEO of Tether’s U.S. division

what here is a claim, and what are the responses:
- the amount, tranche, and push to extend the period are WSJ claims
- Nxum: Hines did not participate in Tether-related matters while he was in government
- Tether did not respond

There’s no case. But I can’t ignore money and legislation appearing on the same timeline

My stablecoins, including USDT, are in Simple Earn Flexible. I’m not moving them based on the news

What do you think: a normal career move or a conflict of interest?

#Tether #BoHines #GENIUSAct

€162.9 million in assets
That’s the entire bank Kraken is buying. Lithuania’s Saldo Bank; the deal was signed by its parent company, Payward. The price wasn’t disclosed, and closing is expected in 2027.

Here’s what’s inside:
- Saldo only turned a profit for the first time in 2025, earning around €962,000, after posting a loss of €2.4 million the year before
- CET1 fell from 19.0% to 14.9% — its capital cushion is getting thinner
- Loans overdue by 90+ days rose from €1.62M to €3.51M — non-performing loans are piling up

In other words, Kraken isn’t buying a business so much as a Lithuanian banking license. Saldo already operates with it in Finland, Sweden, and Germany, and has permission to operate in the Netherlands.

No one has confirmed that Saldo will offer crypto-backed loans yet. The announcement mentions interest-bearing deposits, loans, cards, and SEPA transfers — all subject to approvals.

Basically, a smart move if regulators give it the green light. But don’t expect banking from Kraken before the deal closes in 2027.

#Kraken #SaldoBank #Banking

$4 million and 64 watches. Or $600,000 and 24
That’s what was seized from Richard Heart, according to two different reports in the Turkish media. On October 14, police and the intelligence agency MİT detained him in Istanbul.

The figures differ by a lot, so I’m not treating either as fact. Neither the Turkish police nor Interpol has officially confirmed anything yet.

But the story is more interesting than the watches.
In 2025, the SEC’s lawsuit against him was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and the SEC didn’t refile it.
But the Finnish case hasn’t gone away: an Interpol Red Notice has been in place since 2024 for aggravated tax fraud. It’s not yet known whether Finland is seeking extradition.

HEX fell 25% in a day and is already more than 99% below its 2021 peak. PLS, the PulseChain coin, dropped 35% in 24 hours and is down nearly 98% since launch.

He beat the SEC on jurisdiction. Finland? Who knows.
What do you think: extradition, or will he wriggle out of it again?

#RichardHeart #HEX #Pulsechain

$6.3 million
According to the WSJ’s calculations, that’s how much Nxum made from its deal with Tether, with a third going to Bo Hines

From January to August 2025, Hines led the White House Council on Digital Assets
The first installment, $2.49 million, arrived on May 11, 2025, according to the WSJ, while he was helping promote the GENIUS Act
The WSJ also reports that he pushed to double the law’s transition period to three years. Tether stood to gain the most from that
Hines later became CEO of Tether’s U.S. division

What here is a claim, and what are the responses?
- The amount, installment, and pressure to extend the transition period are WSJ claims
- Nxum: Hines did not participate in dealings with Tether while he was serving
- Tether did not respond

There’s no case. But I can’t ignore the money and the law appearing in the same timeline

My stablecoins, including USDT, are in Simple Earn Flexible. I’m not moving them based on the news

What do you think: an ordinary career move or a conflict of interest?

#Tether #BoHines #GENIUSAct

€162.9 million in assets—that’s the entire bank Kraken is buying. Lithuania’s Saldo Bank; the deal was signed by its parent company, Payward. The price wasn’t disclosed, and closing is expected in 2027.

What’s inside:
- Saldo only turned a profit for the first time in 2025, at around €962,000, after a €2.4 million loss the year before
- CET1 fell from 19.0% to 14.9%—the capital cushion is getting thinner
- Loans overdue by 90+ days rose from €1.62M to €3.51M—there are more bad loans

So they’re not buying a business, but a Lithuanian banking license. Saldo already operates under it in Finland, Sweden and Germany, and has permission to operate in the Netherlands.

No one has confirmed crypto-backed loans through Saldo yet. The announcement mentions interest-bearing deposits, loans, cards and SEPA—and all of it is subject to approvals.

Bottom line: smart move if regulators let it through. But don’t expect banking from Kraken before the deal closes in 2027.

#Kraken #SaldoBank #Banking

$4 million and 64 watches. Or $600000 and 24
that’s what Turkish media reported was seized from Richard Heart, according to two different accounts. On October 14, police and MİT intelligence detained him in Istanbul

the figures differ by a lot, so I’m not taking either as fact. Neither the Turkish police nor Interpol has officially confirmed anything so far

and the story is more interesting than the watches
in 2025, the SEC’s lawsuit against him was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and the SEC didn’t refile it
the Finnish case hasn’t gone anywhere: an Interpol red notice has been in place since 2024 for aggravated tax fraud. It’s not yet known whether Finland is seeking extradition

HEX fell 25% in a day and is already more than 99% below its 2021 peak. PLS, the PulseChain coin, dropped 35% in 24 hours and is nearly 98% below its launch price

he fended off the SEC on jurisdiction. With Finland—who knows
what do you think: extradition, or will he wriggle out of it again?

#RichardHeart #HEX #Pulsechain

On October 13, Ledger said confirmed incidents had occurred only in Southeast Asia.
Karpeles’s database now lists 12 devices with a confirmed implant, and in 8 of them the seller wasn’t CryptoBilis.

The sellers include MediaMarkt in Germany, Ozon, Amazon Japan, and Metapod at Singapore Airport.

To be clear about the difference:
- “Confirmed” is a label Karpeles applies himself, not Ledger.
- Ledger talks about verified data leaks; the database is about boards that have been found. It says nothing about leaks from these 8 devices.

But a board with its own antenna, which on devices taken apart in detail can read the seed phrase off the screen, doesn’t care which country you bought your wallet in.

And MediaMarkt, for its part, took the affected devices off its shelves and website after a single complaint in Germany. An odd move if it’s “Asia only.”

Buy hardware directly from the manufacturer only. I’ll take a closer look at how Ledger responds to this database separately—subscribe so you don’t miss it.

#Ledger #CryptoSecurity #HardwareWallets

~12010 RLUSD on the “13 million AI agent payments” Ripple counts on XRP Ledger. Add ~6982 $XRP
—and that’s the whole amount

Ripple is now partnering with Privy, a wallet infrastructure provider owned by Stripe. Developers are promised wallets on XRPL with XRP and RLUSD, plus x402 payments for agents. No date for the announcement yet.

The counter here is honest, but the conclusions drawn from it aren’t. Agents are already making payments on XRPL, but the amounts are microscopic: for now, these are micropayments and experiments.

The XRPL AI Hub tracker shows 13489468 transactions and 168 merchants—real activity.
Divide the amount by the number of transactions, and it’s pennies per payment.
RippleX said “a quarter of network activity” without providing a method or timeframe, so I’m not counting that share.

I don’t hold XRP. I have $BNB , and my stablecoins are earning separately in Simple Earn Flexible.

I’m watching ~12010 RLUSD: when the amount starts growing faster than the counter, then we’ll have an economy.

#Ripple #XRPledger #Stripe

5M ACX and $0.04375. While Polymarket hints at its own token, Across is offering a way out of its own

The first is the threshold for swapping tokens directly for shares.
The second is the price at which you can simply sell ACX for USDC instead of swapping.
Through an SPV, you can get shares with as little as 250k ACX, but spots are limited to the first 100 US investors and around 500 others.

Centrifuge is also 1:1: directly from 100000 $CFG
, smaller amounts go through the CoinList trust. The CP172 vote passed, but the swap isn’t available yet.

CoinGecko calculates that from January 2025 to February 2026, fewer than 10% of tokens on top exchanges closed in profit. A share looks fairer than a token, but only for those who meet the threshold.

Meanwhile, Polymarket’s CEO is talking about an onchain asset. There’s no token: no name, ticker, or date. There are POLY trademarks.

In short, “token → stock” is a door for funds. Small bags can’t fit through it; a buyback is all that’s left for them.

#Polymarket #Across

Binance is delisting QuickSwap and EpicChain: spot pairs $QUICK
and $EPIC
will close on October 28 at 03:00 UTC. No specific reason was given

Here’s the calendar, because it matters more than the chart:
October 20, 09:00 UTC — futures will be closed and automatically settled
October 28, 03:00 UTC — spot trading ends
October 29, 03:00 UTC — deposits will no longer be credited
December 28, 03:00 UTC — final withdrawal deadline

after December 29, Binance may convert remaining balances into stablecoins. May. Not guaranteed

“crashed in minutes” is the headline. QUICK’s -19.67% and EPIC’s -10.54% are their 24-hour changes on CoinGecko. In the first few minutes, EPIC even rose 5.61% above its pre-announcement level

a delisting is a deadline, not a setup. If you’re holding out for a rebound, you’ll be left with a coin you can no longer sell on Binance

#Binance #delisting

Strategy sold Bitcoin at $59256 and is buying again at $86194

On October 13, Saylor told Bloomberg that the bottom was slightly below $60000, and that the company needs to be able to both buy and sell $BTC

And now, the 8-K:
1363 BTC at $59256 and 2225 BTC at $60773 — late June, early July. They sold right at the bottom he now talks about.
Their average cost basis is currently $75444. So they sold for less than they paid.

And the more interesting question is why: the money went toward preferred stock payments. Even a buyer with accounts like that can be under pressure, so I wouldn’t count on him to set a floor for the market.

I’m not in Bitcoin myself: I hold $BNB , and my stablecoins are in Simple Earn Flexible. I don’t touch anything on news like this.

I’m watching $75444: if the price falls below their cost basis, we’ll see whether they sell again to cover the payments.

#bitcoin #strategy

On October 2, Pacman announced he was shutting down Blast. Now it’s Blur’s turn.

On November 12, the marketplace website will be taken offline, and Blend will stop issuing new loans. The protocol will remain on-chain, but without the website, it’ll be a tool only for people who know how to work with contracts.
Blur didn’t explain why. Blast at least said outright: expenses are higher than revenue.

$BLUR
Within a day of the announcement, it fell 29.1% to $0.01341, according to CoinGecko.

What really matters:
If you have a loan on Blend, by that date you either repay it or your collateral goes into default. There’s no third option.

For one of the founders, this is already the second shutdown. I’d treat deadlines from teams like these as immediate from the day they’re announced.

On November 12, I’ll check how Blur is doing without the website and post here—if you have a Blend loan, follow me so you don’t miss it.

#BLUR #NFT #Blast

Korean regulator blocks websites of 27 exchanges on the worst possible day

Market action that same Tuesday:
KOSPI fell 5.46% at the close
Foreign investors sold 4.51 trillion won
Retail investors bought the dip for 2.23 trillion

The block came at FIU’s request. KuCoin, MEXC, BingX and others were affected. They blocked the apps before; now they’ve moved on to the websites.
FIU admits that people who already have accounts there may find it harder to withdraw their money.

People are buying the dip, while anyone using these exchanges risks hitting a closed door when they try to withdraw. Smart move by the regulator, I’ll give them that.

Tom Lee warns that the crash looks likely to spill over into crypto. “Short-term pain,” he says. I’m watching $BTC and keeping my hands off.

No bitcoin or ether. There’s $BNB
, and the stablecoins are earning in Simple Earn Flexible

#Korea #CryptoRegulationBattle

$4.88B. That’s how much is sitting in Strategy’s USD Reserve as of October 11. Exactly the same amount was there on October 4.

On October 5, I promised here: when the next 8-K came out, I’d look at the reserve first, then Bitcoin. I did.

No one touched the reserve this week. But USD Cash went from $833.4M on October 4 to $640.5M on October 11.

Because $192.4M went toward buying back its own STRC preferred shares. On $BTC : $21.5M, 250 coins, and $21M of that came from selling MSTR shares.

Almost 9 times more went to preferreds than to Bitcoin. A week ago, it was six times more.

Just don’t read this as “the reserve is untouched.” Last week, they took $142.5M from it for dividends and interest. This week, they simply took nothing.

Bottom line: now you need to watch cash too, not just the reserve.

I don’t hold Bitcoin. BNB, yes, and stablecoins in Simple Earn Flexible.

#StrategyBuys250Bitcoin #strategy #STRC

Evernorth got its Nasdaq day. 16.91 at the close, and the tag calls it a -1.05% debut

promised last week to bring the October 12 numbers. here

there was no clean debut. XRPN had been trading for days as the SPAC, Armada Acquisition Corp. II:
- October 2: touched 53, closed 39.42
- October 9, Friday, merger closed: 17.09, -29.38%
- October 12, as Evernorth: open 16.68, high 19.39, close 16.91

the -1.05% is against that Friday wreck. one outlet had it up as much as 5% intraday. depends which minute you screenshot

what's inside: roughly 473 million $XRP
, bought at $2.37 per XRP at signing, $1.43 reference at closing. about 80.3% of Armada public holders cashed out. thin float

not my trade, I hold neither XRP nor XRPN

#EvernorthNasdaqDebutClosesDown1.05% #xrp

what matters more tomorrow, 3.7% or 2.4%? I’m betting on the latter

#fomcвідстеження : September CPI comes out on October 14

3.7% is the consensus for headline inflation year over year; it was 3.4% in August. It will almost certainly come in hot, since gasoline prices are up 32.1% year over year, according to Truflation

2.4% is Truflation’s forecast for core inflation; consensus is 2.4%–2.5%. And a softer core reading, according to Bitfinex, would weaken the case for a December hike

The October 28 rate decision is barely in play: CME FedWatch puts the odds of a hike at 18.8%. For December, it’s 70.6%

Basically, tomorrow’s CPI is about December. I’m still betting on a pause in October

for $BTC
the levels on BTSE are: hotter — below $80k, softer — $86k and above

I don’t have any BTC; I’m holding BNB, and my stables are in Simple Earn Flexible

after tomorrow’s CPI, I’ll break down here whether core keeps a December hike on the table. If you follow the tag, give me a follow

#FOMC‬⁩ #cpi

About $3. That’s how much they nudged the price $ETH on Hyperliquid spot, and about $1.28 million left the Papertrade pool

Papertrade is an app on HyperEVM with up to 1000x leverage. It takes its trade prices from the midpoint between Hyperliquid’s best bid and ask. It has no price of its own

On launch day, October 10, one wallet:
1. With a 1000x long on Papertrade, bought about 6060 ETH on spot, pushing the price up by $3
2. Sold about 6590 ETH
3. Paid about $52000 in fees and took the winnings from the pool

Papertrade says the position limits at launch were too high; they’re already cutting them

Hyperliquid itself was just the price source here: the order book worked like an order book. $HYPE
Over the day, by the way, +3.0%

There’s also a story going around about two wallets with $20 million in orders — for now, that’s just a claim from anonymous accounts on X, with no confirmation and no loss amount

Long story short, 1000x leverage on someone else’s price is a giveaway for anyone who knows how to move the order book

#Hyperliquid #Papertrade

The IMF calculated that tokenized stocks are about 1.5 times more volatile than the same stocks on exchanges. Sounds like a verdict—until you look at how they measured it.

The exchange was measured during US trading hours. Tokens were measured around the clock, including nights and weekends, when liquidity is low. The IMF itself says some of the difference comes from this.

More from the same report:
- More than 50% of token trading happens when the exchange is closed
- About 80% of trades are smaller than one share
- Ondo and Backed (xStocks) account for more than 70% of the market, and both are synthetic: there’s a price, but no ownership rights to the stock. They’re designed for people living outside the US

Meanwhile, at the open, traditional stocks reflect 87% to 99% of the overnight move in tokens. In other words, the overnight market is already hinting at where the day will open.

The overnight market isn’t a bogeyman—it’s a signal. Just read the fine print about synthetic assets.

#TokenizedStocks #IMF

about 18 trillion $XRP —that’s how much, according to Veria’s estimate, a single transaction could create. while the cap on the entire supply is 100 billion

A bug in XRPL’s payment code had been around since 2015: offer amounts were added up with a 64-bit counter, with no checks. It overflowed—and a huge number turned into a small one

Found by Veria’s AI agent; the team got a $250000 bounty
XRPL says it found no evidence of an exploit on public networks

But two things bother me more:
1. The “XRP can’t be created” check used the same counter. It overflowed too and only saw the fee. So the check stayed silent precisely where it should have sounded the alarm
2. The fix in xrpld 3.4.1 went out without a validator vote
And the code was published about two weeks after the binaries. Justin Bons puts it this way: XRP ran on closed-source code for two weeks

The fix was quick, good. But closed-source code on a network of validators? I don’t know, I don’t know

#XRPL #xrp

Ledger says its systems were never hacked. But the reseller it’s warning about was on its own list of authorized sellers

Ledger confirmed an implant in one victim’s device. One. It didn’t name the model or say how many people were affected

What’s known:
- On October 9, Karpeles showed a Ledger Nano X from Malaysia: an extra component behind the screen, while the box looked intact
- Tibane Labs’ analysis found a microcontroller, a cellular module, and wires connected to the screen ribbon cable
- Researchers suspect it could have read the seed phrase during setup. No one has verified this yet
- CryptoBilis (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines) halted sales of all wallets

$86 million and $92.9 million in losses are estimates from Specter and Bitquery. Ledger itself hasn’t confirmed these figures

Ledger’s advice: if you bought from this reseller, don’t set it up. Already set it up? Use a new seed phrase, not just a new device

An intact box guarantees nothing

#Ledger #HardwareWallets