Hi! In today’s edition:
🏦 The SEC is taking another run at crypto custody, and this time advisers could hold the keys
🍽️ Trump's memecoin is offering dinner with the president again, with notable limits on what guests actually get
🔓 Drift's exploit victims can finally start cashing in, though what they get back depends on a rebuilt exchange
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SEC Would Let Advisers Hold Client Crypto
The SEC proposed rules Thursday that would let registered investment advisers and regulated funds hold client crypto themselves when no approved custodian is available. The plan would also let state trust companies act as crypto custodians.
Chairman Paul Atkins said the proposal aims to close a gap that has left advisers and funds "guessing how to effect lawful custody" of crypto. To hold assets itself, an adviser would have to recheck every quarter that no permitted custodian is available, require at least two people to approve any transaction, keep separate addresses for each client and get outside accountant reports on its controls.
The SEC withdrew an earlier custody proposal from 2023 in June 2025, a plan Commissioner Mark Uyeda said had built a "no-win" scenario for crypto. The 760-page release opens for 60 days of public comment once it's published in the Federal Register.
Trump Memecoin Holders Get Another Shot at Dinner
The official $TRUMP memecoin site opened registration Wednesday for a Nov. 22 gala dinner with President Donald Trump at Trump National Washington D.C., his members-only golf club. Seats go to the 185 holders with the highest time-weighted scores, which reward holding more tokens for longer. The final snapshot is Nov. 12.
The top 29 also get a VIP reception with Trump, and the four highest-ranked VIPs get an 18K gold Trump watch. The site says no attendee will get a private meet and greet with the president.
The dinner was announced days after Reuters reported that Democrats plan to investigate Trump family business dealings, with Trump-linked crypto firms among the areas of interest, if they win the House or Senate in November. The token traded around $2.10 Friday, roughly 97% below its January 2025 peak.
Drift Opens Claims on Its Exploit Recovery Token
The Drift Foundation opened claims Thursday for DFX, a Solana token for users of the perpetuals exchange who lost funds in its April 1 exploit. Each USDT of verified loss earns one DFX, and Drift has put user losses at over $290 million.
Redeeming now returns about 0.0104 USDT per token, roughly a cent per dollar lost. That rate is the Recovery Pool's balance, about 3.1 million USDT at launch, divided by the DFX outstanding, and it rises as money comes in. The rebuilt exchange, now called Velocity, sends a daily cut of net revenue to the pool, a share that climbs from 60% to 90% as revenue grows. Drift also listed up to 127.5 million USDT in commitments from Tether.
Holders can redeem, trade DFX on venues like Raydium or hold. Claims close Jan. 1, 2028, and unclaimed tokens will be burned.
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🔥 EIP-8363's authors withdrew the proposal from Ethereum's Hegotá upgrade after core developers and industry participants argued that planning which changes go into a fork was the wrong place to settle issuance policy. The proposal would have burned a growing share of staking rewards as more ETH got staked, and its authors say it will now get its own process.
🔒 NEAR Intents pledged full compensation after an attacker used a bug in its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure to drain about $3.8 million in USDT from the HOT Bridge treasury on BNB Chain. ZachXBT said the funds went to KuCoin and were bridged to bitcoin.
💼 Evernorth cleared its SPAC vote after Armada II shareholders approved the merger, which will leave it holding about 473 million XRP at closing. Shares are expected to start trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN on October 8.
⚖️ Illinois agreed to delay its 0.2% digital asset tax from January 1 to July 1, 2027, pending court approval, while the Digital Chamber and the Illinois Blockchain Association continue their legal challenge.
📱 Robinhood Wallet can now route Stock Token trades through Arcus, a request-for-quote exchange on Robinhood Chain built by the team behind dYdX, giving eligible users access to more than 190 tokenized stocks. Arcus has handled more than $5 billion in volume since it launched in July.
🤖 The Ethereum Foundation launched zkAPI, a system that lets users prepay for AI models and other APIs from an Ethereum vault and approve their usage with zero-knowledge proofs, so providers can't link requests to the payer's identity. The EF noted that it doesn't hide IP addresses or the content of prompts.
🤖 Blockworks released an MCP server that lets ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other AI assistants query its data on more than 40,000 crypto assets, which now combines Blockworks and Messari datasets. Access requires a Blockworks API subscription.
🏦 Lloyds and Visa settled $750,000 in USDC in a live cross-border pilot, with the funds reaching Visa in under an hour, even outside banking hours. Lloyds ran its own Canton Network node and bought the USDC through Archax, a UK-regulated exchange.
Baillie Gifford & Aave: Tokenisation Was the Easy Part
