➡️ Russia is legalizing crypto for everyone except Russians

🔔 The crypto law reaching its final votes in the State Duma legalizes digital assets for cross-border trade while capping ordinary Russians at $3,800 a year and banning crypto payments at home. It is the most honest crypto law ever written, because it does not pretend to be for citizens at all.

⚠️ There is a version of crypto legalization that every country’s industry lobbies for: open access, clear rules, low friction, the state stepping back so markets can step in. The law reaching its final votes in Russia’s State Duma this week is the other version, and its clarity is what makes it worth reading closely. Licenses its exchanges, recognizes digital assets as property, and writes them into the tax code. It also caps what an ordinary Russian can buy at roughly $3,800 a year, keeps the ban on paying for anything with crypto inside the country, phases out peer-to-peer trading, and reserves the law’s one genuinely open channel, unlimited cross-border crypto settlement, for companies paying foreign counterparties.

📊 One of the bill’s architects described that channel’s purpose without euphemism: it lets Russian firms pay partners abroad while circumventing sanctions restrictions. Strip away the licensing scaffolding and the design is legible in a sentence. This is a law that legalizes crypto for the Russian state’s problems and rations it for the Russian public, and understanding why it is built that way explains more about where crypto regulation is heading globally than a dozen friendlier frameworks.

🚨 Breaking: Morgan Stanley Ethereum and Solana ETFs Approved to List & Trade on NYSE Arca

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➡️ Ripple-era SEC chair Jay Clayton confirmed as DNI

📣 The U.S. Senate confirmed former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton as Director of National Intelligence on July 28 in a 51-47 party-line vote. Clayton will replace acting Director William Pulte after completing the formal transition. President Donald Trump nominated him on June 11, and the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced the nomination 9-8 on July 21.

🔖 The Senate invoked cloture on Clayton’s nomination by 51-43 on July 27 before approving him the following day. Republicans supported the confirmation, while Democrats opposed it. Clayton previously won Senate confirmation as SEC chair by 61-37 in 2017.His latest confirmation was more divided. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner said he had “serious reservations” about Clayton’s willingness to resist political pressure. The criticism represents Warner’s assessment, not a finding about Clayton’s conduct as intelligence director.

❗️ Clayton’s confirmation hearing also focused on his limited traditional intelligence experience, his answers about the 2020 election and subpoenas issued during his time as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Supporters cited his work involving cyber threats, illicit finance, sanctions and national-security prosecutions.

⚡️ CleanSpark reports $239M quarterly loss as revenue falls 30.5%, misses estimates

👀 CleanSpark has reported a $239 million quarterly loss as revenue fell 30.5% year over year, while its latest AI data center lease has added a long-term revenue stream outside Bitcoin mining.

🌐 According to CleanSpark’s fiscal third-quarter results published on Thursday, the Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company generated $138 million in revenue for the three months ended June 30, down 30.5% from $198 million in the same quarter last year. The figure also came in below Wall Street expectations, with Yahoo Finance analyst estimates placing the consensus forecast at $142.2 million. For the quarter, the company posted a net loss of $239 million, or $0.89 per basic share, reversing from net income of $257 million, or $0.90 per share, recorded a year earlier.

🔗 Alongside the decline in revenue, CleanSpark’s quarterly sales narrowly missed analysts’ expectations compiled by Yahoo FinanceInvestors reacted by sending the stock lower. Shares fell 5.5% during Thursday’s trading session before recovering about 3% in pre-market trading on Friday to trade above $13.10, according to Yahoo Finance market data. The latest earnings follow a similar market reaction after the previous quarterly report. Following the May results, CleanSpark shares dropped more than 10% in pre-market trading after closing the previous session at $14.30. Google Finance data at the time showed the company carried a market capitalization of about $3.66 billion, with shares trading within a 52-week range of $8.00 to $23.61.

🌐 HTX and FCA seek settlement in UK crypto marketing lawsuit

🔗 HTX and the UK Financial Conduct Authority have entered settlement talks over allegations that the crypto exchange illegally promoted its services to British consumers, with High Court proceedings paused until late August while negotiations continue. The discussions concern a lawsuit filed by the FCA in October against Panama-incorporated Huobi Global and unidentified people alleged to operate and control HTX. In February, the regulator accused the exchange of breaching financial promotion rules that have applied to cryptoassets in the UK since October 2023.

⚡️ HTX, formerly known as Huobi, is one of the world’s largest crypto trading platforms and has been linked to Tron founder Justin Sun, who acquired a controlling interest in the exchange in 2022. The company is also dealing with separate sanctions imposed by the UK and European Union while maintaining that its services are not intended for British customers. Court orders reviewed by Reuters show that discussions between HTX and the FCA began after months of unsuccessful attempts by the regulator to engage with the exchange.

❗️ The FCA had alleged that HTX ignored repeated requests to communicate and operated through what the regulator described as an “opaque operational structure.” Following email exchanges in March, however, the two sides entered settlement discussions that initially ran for three months.

❗️ Bitcoin may offer an escape from the dollar’s reserve currency trap: Forbes

🌐 Bitcoin has been presented as a possible neutral reserve asset after an old video of U.S. Vice President JD Vance resurfaced in which he questioned whether the dollar’s reserve currency status ultimately benefits the United States. Vance, who was a U.S. senator when the video was recorded, described his position as “super heterodox” and questioned whether reserve currency status was necessarily good for the country. He argued that global demand for dollars allows U.S. consumers to purchase foreign goods cheaply and gives the country unusually easy access to borrowing.

🔖 The cost, according to Vance, falls elsewhere in the economy. Strong overseas demand for dollars can support a higher exchange rate, making American goods more expensive abroad while imported products become cheaper for U.S. consumers. Birnbaum argued that the arrangement creates a conflict between the benefits Americans receive from dollar dominance and the pressure placed on domestic manufacturers and exporters.

🔗 The dollar’s international position has traditionally been described as an “exorbitant privilege” because the United States can borrow in its own currency while foreign governments, banks and investors maintain large holdings of dollar-denominated assets.

🔖 Tokenized deposits could raise borrowing costs, Fed economists warn

🌐 Tokenized deposits could reduce U.S. banks’ capacity to hold long-term interest-rate exposure by $700 billion under one modeled scenario, according to research published Aug. 25 by Dallas Fed economists Rosie Levy and Srini Ramaswamy. The figure does not represent $700 billion of deposits expected to leave banks or an equivalent guaranteed decline in lending. It measures a possible reduction in banks’ duration risk appetite, expressed as the equivalent exposure to ten-year Treasury securities.

📊 Tokenized deposits are ordinary commercial bank deposits represented on a blockchain or another distributed ledger. They can support automated payments, programmable transactions and around-the-clock settlement while remaining liabilities of the issuing bank. Their speed could weaken the practical barriers that make deposits relatively stable. Customers seeking higher yields could move money between institutions faster than they can through many existing banking systems.

⚠️ Smart contracts could automatically transfer balances when another institution offers a better rate. Agentic artificial intelligence could theoretically monitor yields and initiate those transfers without requiring customers to act manually. The authors did not predict how broadly depositors would use such automation. They described large-scale adoption as uncertain and evaluated what could happen under specific assumptions.

📊 Strategy’s STRC remains below $100 despite $635 million in buybacks

➡️ Strategy has spent $635.2 million repurchasing its STRC perpetual preferred stock as the security continues to trade below its $100 par value despite recovering from a low near $71. The latest purchase covered 1.56 million STRC shares and came as the company returned to buying Bitcoin after a roughly two-month pause. Strategy acquired 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million at an average price of $80,318 per coin, taking its total holdings to 845,050 BTC.

🔖 STRC, known as Stretch, was trading at $97.34 on Tuesday, leaving the preferred stock below the $100 level Strategy has sought to restore through dividend increases, cash reserves and share repurchases. Since then, the company has steadily used the preferred stock authorization as STRC recovered from its June lows.

🔗 The company funded its latest transactions by selling 4.53 million MSTR shares through its at-the-market program for net proceeds of $602.8 million. Of that amount, $369.7 million funded the Bitcoin purchase, $151.8 million went toward STRC repurchases, $50.7 million was allocated to STRC dividends and $30 million was added to Strategy’s USD Cash account.

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📣 FBI traces Bitcoin to alleged darknet opioid ring

➡️ Federal authorities charged two Jacksonville brothers with allegedly operating a darknet narcotics vendor whose counterfeit pills were connected to at least 12 overdoses, including three deaths. Vladislav Chernyshov, 35, and Stanislav Chernyshov, 30, were arrested on Aug. 28 on charges of conspiring to distribute nitazenes. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced the case on Sept. 2.

👀 An FBI affidavit alleges that the brothers operated under the vendor name “BarbaraWhite.” Investigators used blockchain analysis alongside postal records, undercover purchases, surveillance and darknet marketplace data to identify the alleged operators. Investigators identified Bitcoin addresses allegedly used by BarbaraWhite to withdraw proceeds from Nemesis, Bohemia and Abacus. All three platforms operated as darknet marketplaces before being shut down or disappearing.

❗️ The total amount sent can exceed direct marketplace receipts because wallets can receive funds from other sources, transfer the same funds through several addresses or contain balances acquired before the period under review. The figures should not be treated as net profit or total drug-sale revenue.

🌐 Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill set for House committee vote Wednesday

🔗 The U.S. House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a markup of legislation that would put the federal Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law and require government-held Bitcoin to remain in the reserve for at least 20 years. Introduced by Republican Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska in May, the bill has Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine among its cosponsors and would establish two separate structures within the Treasury Department for federal crypto holdings. The bill was referred to the House Financial Services Committee after its introduction.

👀 The committee’s official calendar confirms a full committee markup for Wednesday, though the public event page lists it under the general title “Markup of Various Measures.”H.R. 8957 would require the Treasury secretary to create a secure storage facility called the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve within 180 days of enactment. A separate Digital Asset Stockpile would handle non-Bitcoin crypto assets held by the federal government.

⚡️ All “qualifying Bitcoin” acquired by the government would be placed in the Bitcoin reserve. The legislation defines qualifying Bitcoin as BTC finally forfeited through criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, or received in satisfaction of certain civil monetary penalties, subject to requirements under existing federal law. Non-Bitcoin assets would go into the separate stockpile, where the Treasury secretary would have discretion to sell, exchange or convert them. Proceeds could only be used to increase the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve’s holdings or reduce the national debt.

➡️ Crypto firms pour $206 million into 2026 US election cycle

‼️ Crypto companies have contributed $206 million toward the 2026 U.S. election cycle as industry backed political groups continue directing money into congressional races ahead of the November midterms. Public Citizen said in an Aug. 27 analysis of Federal Election Commission records that cryptocurrency companies represented the largest of three technology related sectors driving corporate political spending this election cycle. Crypto contributions reached $206 million, compared with $76 million from online betting companies and $62 million from Big Tech, AI and data center related businesses.

📊 Corporate contributions across all sectors have reached $646 million so far, according to the consumer advocacy group. The figure is already 40% above the $461 million recorded across the entire 2024 presidential election cycle and more than triple the $184.1 million reported during the 2022 midterms. Crypto companies, online betting firms and businesses connected with AI and data centers contributed a combined $344 million, accounting for 53% of the corporate contributions disclosed to the FEC in Public Citizen’s analysis.

🔖 Fairshake has remained the main political vehicle for crypto companies during the 2026 election cycle, with Public Citizen calculating $83 million in corporate contributions to the super PAC through the second quarter. The group listed total crypto corporate contributions at $206 million over the same period. Fairshake works alongside Protect Progress, which has primarily participated in Democratic contests, and Defend American Jobs, which has focused on Republican races.

🌐 BitMine adds 17,362 ETH as treasury crosses 6 million

🔗 BitMine Immersion Technologies has bought another 17,362 ETH over the past week, pushing its total Ethereum holdings above 6 million tokens as the company moves closer to its stated goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s supply. The company said its Ethereum balance represents approximately 4.9% of an estimated 122.1 million ETH supply. BitMine described itself as 98% of the way toward its “Alchemy of 5%” target, which seeks to build a treasury equal to 5% of Ethereum’s supply.

⚠️ The latest purchase extends BitMine’s weekly accumulation strategy, which began on June 30, 2025. Chairman Tom Lee said the company has purchased ETH during every week since launching the strategy. “Over the past week, we acquired 17,362 ETH,” Lee said in the company release. He described the crossing of 6 million ETH as a milestone reached in under 15 months.

❗️ One week earlier, BitMine held 5,983,940 ETH after buying 27,562 ETH, according to an exhibit filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing put the treasury at approximately 4.9% of the same 122.1 million-token supply. At a 5% share of the 122.1 million ETH supply used by BitMine, the target would equal approximately 6.105 million ETH. Based on the Sept. 27 balance, the company remains roughly 103,698 ETH short of that level, assuming the supply figure does not change.

📌 SEC proposes crypto custody framework for investment advisers and funds

📊 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed an Oct. 1 crypto custody framework under two federal investment laws, allowing conditional self-custody and state trust company custody for investment advisers and regulated funds. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in the statement shared in his Oct. 3 X post that the proposal addresses uncertainty over how advisers and funds can legally hold crypto assets for clients. The SEC published the same statement on Oct. 1, alongside its proposed rules.

⚠️ Under the SEC’s proposal, advisers could hold client and fund crypto assets themselves in limited circumstances. Commissioner Hester Peirce explained that an adviser must first determine that no permitted custodian is available for the asset, then repeat that assessment quarterly. For state trust company custody, Peirce said advisers and funds must assess the company’s state authorization and written safeguards before appointing it, then repeat those checks annually. According to her statement, the safeguards must address theft, loss, misuse and misappropriation of crypto assets and related cash.

🔗 According to the SEC’s rulemaking docket, the proposal also includes changes to reporting and recordkeeping requirements. The agency issued it under file number S7-2026-35, with release numbers IA-7023 and IC-36353. The docket sets the public response period at 60 days after Federal Register publication. Under the SEC’s stated schedule, the comment clock therefore runs from publication of the proposing release rather than the date of Atkins’ X post.

🌐 Zcash plans quantum-safe upgrade: Will ZEC price recover?

🔗 Zcash developers have set January 2027 as their target for adding quantum-resistant payment support to the network, as concerns over future attacks on cryptocurrency wallets grow and ZEC trades near $1,240 following a sharp weekly decline. Zakura engineer Roman Akhtariev announced the timeline in a technical update, explaining that developers intend to introduce new instructions allowing Zcash to verify hash-based signatures. The proposal focuses on transparent transactions, which account for approximately 70% of the cryptocurrency’s issued supply. However, the January target does not establish a confirmed date for activating the changes across the network.

📊 The planned upgrade would introduce new signature verification instructions designed to protect transparent Zcash transactions against potential future advances in quantum computing. Currently, transparent Zcash payments use elliptic-curve cryptography to verify that someone spending coins controls the corresponding private key. The system relies on mathematical problems that conventional computers cannot practically solve using known methods.

🔖 Researchers have warned that sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually weaken this protection, potentially allowing attackers to recover private keys from exposed public keys. Zakura’s proposed instructions would allow payments to use hash-based signatures, which rely on different mathematical assumptions. The developers are considering constructions such as Winternitz One-Time Signatures, commonly called WOTS.

❗️ Tether launches offline AI speech model for smart glasses and robots

➡️ Tether has released a 254 million parameter speech recognition model that can transcribe conversations directly on smartphones, smart glasses and humanoid robots without sending audio to cloud servers. The company said the model can transcribe 10 minutes of audio in 1.65 seconds on an iPhone 17 Pro Max using Apple’s Core ML framework.

📊 TranscribePsy is part of Tether’s QVAC AI project, which focuses on running artificial intelligence applications locally. Its release gives developers access to speech recognition software that can operate without an internet connection. For smart glasses, the model can process audio received over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi with minimal delay. Humanoid robots can run the software on their onboard processors, leaving computing capacity available for functions such as navigation, visual recognition and physical movement.

🔗 Tether said local processing could be useful in medical consultations, legal interviews, therapy sessions and journalism, where recordings may contain confidential information. In performance evaluations released by the company, TranscribePsy recorded an 8.02% word error rate on the Open ASR Leaderboard and 6.58% on Multilingual LibriSpeech.

☄️ Zcash developers select November 5 target for NU7 upgrade with 25-second blocks

💭 Zcash developers have agreed on block 3,543,405 as the planned activation point for Network Upgrade 7 (NU7), bringing the privacy-focused blockchain closer to introducing 25-second blocks around November 5. Meanwhile, the proposed block height establishes a specific point at which Zcash would begin applying the new consensus rules, replacing the provisional November 5 timetable with a block-based activation target.

📊 Bowe’s proposal received approvals from developers ValarDragon and str4d on October 20. The pull request remained open during the October 21 review, with the official NU7 deployment specification still listing the mainnet activation height as undecided. The proposal contains another scheduling detail: block 8,939,664 is designated for the future reissuance of funds accumulated under NU7’s Network Sustainability Mechanism.

➡️ Before activation, the selected height must be incorporated into the deployment specification and compatible node software. The network has already completed its initial testnet activation. On October 4, NU7 became active at testnet block 4,465,026, allowing developers to evaluate the proposed changes before mainnet deployment.