the daily grind

Crypto Spent $56M, a Third of Its Midterm War Chest, to Keep Sherrod Brown Out of the Senate. He Won by Nearly 5 Points

Fairshake, the super PAC funded mainly by Coinbase, Ripple and a16z, says it spent about $154M on ads this cycle. Roughly $56M went into one race: beating former Senate Banking chair Sherrod Brown in Ohio. He won anyway, Democrats took both chambers, and the PAC's $10M bet against Juliana Stratton in Illinois failed too. It still won 29 of 34 called races, per Reuters.

Nov 6, 2026 · 5 min read

The SEC Just Told Fund Managers They Can Hold Your Crypto Keys Themselves. The Catch: Every Quarter They Have to Write Down That Nobody Else Will

Oct 2, 2026 · 6 min read

On October 1 the SEC proposed a crypto custody framework for investment advisers and regulated funds. Advisers could self-custody client crypto if they document, before they start and every quarter after, that no permitted custodian will hold the asset. Transfers need two people to sign off, every client gets a separate address, and state-chartered trust companies become qualified custodians. Three years ago the Gensler-era SEC proposed a custody rule that would have pushed advisers toward banks and broker-dealers. It was withdrawn in June 2025. The new one landed a day before the commission shrinks to two members.

Last Week Manhattan Prosecutors Moved to Seize $61M of Iranian Oil Money That Ran Through Binance. This Week They're Investigating Binance

Sep 22, 2026 · 6 min read

Bloomberg reports the Manhattan US Attorney's office, with DOJ's Criminal Division, is investigating whether Binance knowingly let trading that violated Iran sanctions continue on its platform. It lands seven days after the same office filed to forfeit $61 million in Iranian oil proceeds laundered through Binance accounts, and seven months after the Wall Street Journal reported Binance's own compliance team flagged $1.7 billion flowing from Chinese clients to Iran-linked wallets. Binance already pleaded guilty and paid $4.3 billion for this exact category of failure in 2023. Its founder was pardoned in October. Here is what a second case would mean.

Crypto Spent $56M, a Third of Its Midterm War Chest, to Keep Sherrod Brown Out of the Senate. He Won by Nearly 5 Points

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A 10 ETH Bug Did What the FBI Asked For. THORChain Accidentally Locked North Korea Out of Its Favorite Laundering Route

The FBI Asked Crypto to Block 600+ Addresses Tied to the Binance Hack. Chainalysis Says North Korea Is Already Using Thousands

Binance Blamed One Laptop. A Day Later It Found 'Additional Points of Breach', and the Hacker Had Been Rehearsing for 36 Hours

Binance Says 'No Wallet Private Key Leak.' It Didn't Need One: A DevOps Engineer's Laptop Moved $6.3 Billion

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Datavault AI Sold $150M of Stock for Bitcoin. It's Been Trying to Withdraw That Bitcoin Since June. Now It Says the Bitcoin Was Never an Asset

Robinhood Made $173M From Bets Last Quarter and $120M From Crypto. The Same Day, Washington Sued a 10th State to Keep the Bets Legal

Bloom Says 'No Private Keys Were Compromised.' Every One of the Drains Was Signed With the Wallet's Own Key, and It Took 94 Seconds

The Weekly Grind (Oct 20–Oct 26): Hackers Swipe Millions, OCC's Stablecoin Drama

Keystone Bragged 'Other Hardware Wallets Keep Your Data Forever. We Delete Your Shipping Info in 180 Days Max.' Then Hackers Got Buyers' Addresses, and Customers Say Their Orders Were 2 Years Old

Electrum Showed Users a Payment They Never Made, Then Let Them 'Speed It Up.' Bumping the Fee Sent the Bitcoin to an Attacker

AUSD's Issuer Says Its Stablecoin 'Does Not Exist on Initia.' A Hacker Minted 2 Million There Anyway and Left With 1.4M Real Ones. The Chain Is Still Off

CoinDCX Said Those Wallets Died in Its 2025 Hack. Then $16M Walked Out of Them, and the 'Rumour' Became 'Operational Losses'

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The OCC Just Wrote the Rule on Your 4% Stablecoin Yield. It Won't Say If Coinbase's 3.75% on USDC Is Legal

Drift's Hacker Ran $61M Through Tornado Cash in Two Hours. Seven Months In, Only $9.2M of the $295M Has Been Frozen

Investors Paid $6.50 a Unit to Build a Solana Treasury. The Company Just Sold Every SOL and Is Offering $3 to Buy Them Out

The Weekly Grind (Oct 13–Oct 19): 2.94 Trillion QU Drained, Blur Shuts Down

Nobody Hacked Qubic's Chain. Its Seeds Were Just Guessable. 1,404 Wallets Emptied in 104 Minutes, and the Whole Network Is Still Off

Bitget Just Gave Traders in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan 72 Hours to Get Their Money Out. It Won't Say Why

An OpenAI Model Ran Out of Gas Money, Checked 362 Public Wallets, Spent a Stranger's ETH and Left It Out of Its Report

They Drained Victims' Life Savings, Then Called Back Offering to Recover It. Brooklyn Just Pulled 241 of Their Sites

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The SEC Couldn't Touch Richard Heart. A Finnish Tax Case Just Got Him Picked Up by Turkish Intelligence

Koreans Paid Offshore Exchanges an Estimated $3.5 Billion in Fees Last Year. Seoul Just Blocked 27 of Them

Blur Once Did $1.43 Billion in NFT Trades in a Single Month. On November 12, Its Website Goes Dark

The Weekly Grind (Oct 6–Oct 12): $86M Vanished and a $10B Tether Probe

Coldcard's Own X Account Told Users to Move Their Bitcoin. Coldcard Can't Find a Single Login

For 11 Years, a Few Hundred XRP Could Have Printed XRP Past the 100 Billion Cap. Ripple's Engineers Patched It Without Telling Anyone Why

Ledger Just Told Buyers Not to Set Up the Wallet They Paid For. Analysts Say $86M Is Already Gone

Cantor Fitzgerald's Tether Stake Went From $600M to $10B. Now a Senator Wants to See the Receipts

Crypto Compliance Officer Salary in 2026: What Crypto Protocols Are Actually Paying

OKX Pleaded Guilty to Running an Illegal Money Business in the US. Now Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Are Buying In

Treasury Wanted a Token Swap or a Fresh Wallet Address Counted as 'Mixing.' It Just Dropped the Rule

The Weekly Grind (Sep 29–Oct 5): $6M Drained, Blast Fizzles, SEC Crypto Shift

Someone Just Drained $6 Million From a Vault on Base. Nobody Will Say Whose Vault It Was

Blast Pulled In $2 Billion Before It Even Had a Chain. Now It's Switching the Chain Off Because It Can't Cover the Bills

Someone Stole Less Than $1,000 From MetaMask's Validators. MetaMask Is Pulling $1.4 Billion of ETH Out of Staking Because of It

The SEC Just Told Fund Managers They Can Hold Your Crypto Keys Themselves. The Catch: Every Quarter They Have to Write Down That Nobody Else Will

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Two Appeals Courts Just Said Kalshi Sports Bets Are Gambling. The CFTC, Run by One Man, Is Rewriting the Dictionary So They Aren't.

Two Weeks After Its Engineers Were Charged Over HYPE Perps, Robinhood Says It Will Sell HYPE Perps to Every American

Senate Investigators Checked 846 Sanctioned Iran Wallets. 84% of Them Ran on Tether

The Weekly Grind (Sep 22–Sep 28): SEC Down to Two, $351M Bitget Hack

53 Memecoins on Robinhood Chain Turned Out to Be One Crew. They Took $18.4M, and Each Rug Paid for the Next

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The SEC Is About to Be Two People. 'Crypto Mom' Hester Peirce Just Quit, and Nobody Has Been Nominated to Replace Her

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BitMEX Invented the 100x Perpetual Swap, Beat a Criminal Case With a Presidential Pardon, Then Lost to the Product It Created. Leave Money There Now and It Costs You $50 a Month

Circle Pays Binance Every Month to Push USDC. Now Binance Owns $100M of Circle, and the Filing Landed the Same Day the Sanctions Probe Leaked

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Polymarket's Payment Processor Was Rejecting 80% of US Deposits as Fraud. The CEO's Reported Answer: Keep Growing, Pay the Fine Later

Robinhood Wallet Users Bought Dogwifhat With Credit Cards and Earned Cash Back, Because Visa Was Told They Were Buying E-Books

The Senate Needed 60 Votes to Give Crypto a Rulebook and Got 49. The CFTC Needed Zero, and Just Filed One With the White House.

The SEC Just Legalized Trading Apple Stock on Uniswap. The $3 Billion of Tokenized Stocks That Already Exist Don't Qualify.

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Two Robinhood Engineers Front-Ran Their Own Company's Token Listings on Hyperliquid. They Made $50K Each. They're Facing 30 Years.

The Democrats Who Helped Write the CLARITY Act Just Voted to Kill It. 49-50. Crypto's Senate Bill Is Dead for 2026.

Balancer's CEO Just Asked Token Holders to Vote the Protocol Dead. Its $9M Treasury Is Worth More Than Its Own Token.

The Weekly Grind (Sep 7–Sep 14): FTX Creditors Get 120% Back, AI Slashes Bitcoin Crack Costs

Trump Made $1.4 Billion on Crypto Last Year. Republicans Just Sent Democrats a 'Final Offer' That Makes Him Give Up Control of It.

Someone Emailed Revolut From a Real Government Domain. Revolut Sent Back Passports and Bitcoin Histories.

FTX Creditors Got Up to 120% of Their Money Back. SBF Just Told the Supreme Court That's Why He's Innocent.

They Pointed AI Agents at Bitcoin's Encryption. Eight Weeks Later, Cracking It Got 86% Cheaper.

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Consensys Just Renamed Itself MetaMask — And Gave the Name 'Consensys' to a Brand New Company

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