Hi! In today’s edition:
🔍 A Senate staff report traces Iran-linked wallets to one stablecoin, and a senator wants Treasury and DOJ to dig in
⚖️ SEC staff went back to their new token buyback guidance within days, and the fix turns on a few words
🛡️ NEAR's cross-chain trading protocol stopped Bitget's hackers midstream, and its co-founder is defending the call
🏦 Coinbase now has its own clearinghouse, but the CFTC drew a firm line around what it can clear
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Senator Wants Tether Investigated Over Iran's USDT Use
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wants Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate Tether's anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance, citing a Senate staff report on Iran's use of USDT. He asked both to say by Oct. 9 whether they have past or ongoing investigations into the company.
The report studied 846 Iran-linked wallets blocked by U.S. and Israeli authorities and found 84% transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in USDT. It also called Tether's freezes "uneven and inconsistent." When Israel designated 39 wallets tied to a Hezbollah money launderer in June 2023, Tether froze five immediately and the other 34 in March 2024. About $34.6 million in USDT moved during that gap.
Tether said freezes it supported this year locked up about $550 million in Iran-linked USDT across more than 640 addresses, and that USDT "is not a haven for sanctioned actors."
SEC Staff Tighten Their New Token Buyback Guidance
SEC staff narrowed their new guidance on crypto token buybacks on Sept. 28, three days after publishing it. The Division of Corporation Finance added a condition: a buyback announcement avoids counting as a promise of essential managerial efforts only if the network is functional "and has no central party." A promise like that is one way a token sale becomes a security under the Howey test.
The Sept. 25 version required only a functional network, and the revised answer doesn't define a central party. Miles Jennings, general counsel and head of policy at a16z crypto, had raised concerns about the original wording. On Monday he said the narrowing "will bolster its durability."
The FAQs build on the SEC's March 17 interpretive release. They reflect staff views and "have no legal force or effect."
NEAR Intents Stops Bitget's Hackers Midstream
Attackers behind the Bitget hack tried to push more than $50 million in stolen funds through NEAR Intents, the network's cross-chain trading protocol, general manager Alex Shevchenko said Monday. About $166,000 got through, and $503,000 was frozen partway through execution.
The block came from SHIELD, a risk-intelligence layer that declines to quote trades it ties to a hack, or halts them once they're underway. "Permissionless doesn't mean neutral," Shevchenko wrote. NEAR Intents also said it would give up its share of Bitget's bounty so the exchange can recover more.
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin also defended the move, writing that permissionless "does not mean every application or liquidity provider must process every transaction." THORChain has taken the opposite stance and turned down Bitget's request to block the attacker's addresses. Bitget says attackers took about $387.5 million on Sept. 24.
Coinbase Gets Its Own Clearinghouse, With Limits
The CFTC approved Coinbase Clearing LLC as a derivatives clearing organization on Monday, but only for fully collateralized futures, options on futures and swaps. Fully collateralized means the clearinghouse holds enough money at all times to cover the most a trader could lose, which rules out margin.
Coinbase already ran a futures exchange and a futures broker, so the approval completes its U.S. derivatives lineup. The company called the new entity "the first USDC-native clearinghouse" and says it will take USDC as collateral and settle 24/7. "Today's CFTC approval completes Coinbase's end-to-end derivatives infrastructure," said general counsel Molly Abraham.
The approval doesn't cover Coinbase's leveraged business. Margined derivatives and the single-stock perpetual futures Coinbase plans to launch will still use outside partners. Nodal Clear clears for Coinbase Derivatives today. The CFTC can also condition, modify, suspend or terminate the order on its own.
🚨ON TODAY’S LIVESTREAMS ⏰
Bitget lost roughly $388 million last week without losing a single private key: attackers used a zero-day in a third-party security product to steal internal credentials, then sent fake withdrawal commands through the exchange's own systems.
CEO Gracy Chen joins Laura to explain what failed, why she wants THORChain to refuse the stolen funds, and what users should make of it. Live today at 9am ET.
DEX in the City is signing off. In their farewell episode, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos (Chainlink Labs), Jessi Brooks (Ribbit Capital) and Vy Le (Veda) set the news docket aside to reflect on what they've learned as general counsels in crypto, and what it's meant to do that job as women in the industry. Watch live today at 12pm ET.
🤫 Blockchain.com is seeking roughly $500 million in an IPO this year at a $4 billion to $6 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. That would be well below the $14 billion valuation it reached in 2022.
🟠 Strategy bought 1,665 bitcoin for $142.7 million, bringing its holdings to 847,666 BTC, just above where it stood before selling 6,916 BTC this summer. It paid for the buy with MSTR share sales and put the remaining $103.5 million toward buying back STRC preferred stock.
🔗 Chainlink launched CCIP 2.0, which lets institutions run or hire their own verifier that has to approve cross-chain token transfers alongside Chainlink's 16-operator committee. The upgrade follows April's $292 million Kelp DAO bridge exploit, which came from a single-verifier setup.
🇰🇷 South Korea's Financial Services Commission is weighing legalizing crypto market making and moving exchange order matching, listings and surveillance under public oversight. The push follows a JPYC price spike on Upbit on Sept. 17 that cost about 21,219 investors roughly 259.9 billion won.
📊 Bitmine now holds 6,001,302 ETH, about 4.9% of supply, after buying 17,362 ETH last week, its smallest weekly purchase since mid-August. Chairman Tom Lee said the slower pace was expected.
🟠 Strive bought 1,107 bitcoin for $94.5 million, bringing its holdings to 27,462 BTC. Most of the money came from sales of its SATA preferred stock.
🏦 Bybit now accepts shares of Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market fund as off-exchange collateral, with ByCustody holding the assets. Clients can pledge the shares for USDT or USDC trading credit while the fund keeps earning yield.
📉 Ram Ahluwalia called the Treasury selloff "technical panic selling" on Bits + Bips and said he expects yields to top out soon. The 10-year yield closed at 5.24% on Monday, its highest since June 2007.
📱 Ran Neuner told Unchained that social trading apps like FOMO will replace exchanges like Binance. He said 24/7 tokenized stocks are what make that shift possible.
🏦 Citi will let corporate clients accept stablecoins at checkout through Spring by Citi, with Coinbase converting the tokens to fiat before they reach merchants. The rollout will start in the U.S.
💵 tZERO added Goldman Sachs' FTIXX, a $105 billion Treasury fund, to Lynq, its settlement network built on a private Avalanche chain. Trading desks such as Wintermute and Galaxy can now earn Treasury yield on idle cash between trades.
🎤 Sony's Soneium partnered with DayOneDream to tokenize concert, streaming and music rights revenue from the K-pop company, which manages artists including BTOB and Lee Chae Yeon. The companies did not give a launch date or offering sizes.
💰 Axis Robotics drew $2.39 million in USDC commitments from 2,472 participants in its community sale on Echo's Sonar, which it called Sonar's most-participated sale of 2026. Allocations are pro-rata, and USDC that isn't accepted will be refunded within 48 hours.
Dom Dosu: Why Crypto Options Have Never Taken Off
