Hi! In today’s edition:
🏛️ Trump is expected to show up for a crypto roundtable
📉 MSCI found a way to reach Strategy without ever mentioning bitcoin
🏦 A Trump family stablecoin just got a federal regulatory boost
🇫🇷 A government leak handed criminals exactly what France's crypto holders feared
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by 1inch!
Your DeFi Liquidity Just Woke Up
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Crypto's CEOs Get the President in the Room
President Donald Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting on Wednesday with crypto and prediction market executives, according to multiple media reports. CFTC Chair Michael Selig and SEC Chair Paul Atkins are also expected. The session is set for 2:30 p.m. ET at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the West Wing, The Block reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The meeting is reportedly a warm-up for Thursday, when the CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee meets for the first time. Selig named its 35 members in February, among them Polymarket's Shayne Coplan, Kalshi's Tarek Mansour, and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Both meetings land while the Clarity Act sits stalled ahead of a Sept. 15 cloture vote, and while Selig's claim of exclusive federal authority over event contracts is being tested in court. Baltimore sued Kalshi and Polymarket last week, and a Washington state judge ordered Kalshi to halt most of its offerings there.
MSCI's Second Try Doesn't Mention Bitcoin
MSCI opened a consultation this month that could strip Strategy and Metaplanet from its Global Investable Market Indexes. A simulation on May 2026 data deleted both, plus UK uranium holder Yellow Cake, from the MSCI ACWI IMI. SharpLink and two others would go onto a new public watchlist.
The screen never says crypto. A company first has to show operating assets above 50% of total assets. Fail that and it faces five financial ratios, with four flags making it ineligible. Strategy, at a $23.9 billion free-float market cap in the simulation, is the largest name caught.
Strategy pushed back Friday, arguing on X that index providers should be measuring markets rather than policing which assets a company may hold. Feedback closes Sept. 30, results are due by Oct. 16, and any change would hit the November index review. JPMorgan last November put potential passive outflows for Strategy at roughly $2.8 billion in the event of an MSCI delisting.
The Trump Family Stablecoin Gets a Bank
The OCC granted preliminary conditional approval Friday to World Liberty Trust Company, the national trust bank arm of Trump-backed World Liberty Financial. From an office in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, it proposes to issue and redeem USD1, maintain reserves, and custody digital assets as a fiduciary.
USD1 carries a market capitalization of about $4 billion, fourth among stablecoins behind Tether and USDC. BitGo Bank & Trust is currently its exclusive issuer and custodian, a role World Liberty plans to assume. Conditions include $20 million in tier 1 capital and 180 days of operating expenses held in liquid assets.
Final approval still requires preopening exams, and the OCC can rescind. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats responded by announcing the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, which would bar senior officials from owning or controlling a bank. Zachary Witkoff, the bank's president, is Trump envoy Steve Witkoff's son.
France's Tax Leak Is a Target List
Hackers extracted French taxpayer records in an intrusion at the Directorate General of Public Finances between June and July, the agency confirmed Thursday. The agency puts the number of people affected at 678,000.
The exposed fields reportedly include names, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Nearly 27,000 of those affected reportedly declared income of at least €100,000, 386 topped €1 million, and eight exceeded €10 million. The database is reportedly for sale on dark web markets.
Nothing in the data flags crypto ownership, but income paired with an address is enough to build a target list. The breach comes after Chainalysis counted 30 publicly known violent crypto attacks in France in the first half of 2026, with more than $30 million stolen, on pace to beat 2025's record $58 million.
🚨 DON’T OUR DOUBLE-HEADER LIVESTREAM TODAY 🚨
Trump signed a memo this week letting vetted private companies hack foreign criminal networks — a policy Chris Perkins co-proposed 18 months ago with former CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo.
On episode 100, the panel digs into whether the version that got signed still reaches North Korea. Plus a Trump-family bank charter, the SEC pulling its own crypto vote, and Strategy selling bitcoin below cost.
Monday, 4:30pm ET.
What should Ethereum’s issuance be? Today on Unchained at 3:30pm ET, Kevin Owocki and Oisin Kyne discuss EIP-8363, a proposal to change issuance that has garnered opposition from prominent DeFi and business leaders.
We’ll go over what effect this could have on security, centralization, and institutional adoption, plus why it's drawn so much criticism out of the gate.
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🏦 JPMorgan cut off Polymarket in October 2025, telling the prediction market to find a new banking partner over regulatory concerns, the Financial Times reported Friday. Polymarket has since moved its accounts to an unnamed lender and says it still works closely with the bank, which wants an underwriting role in a possible IPO.
⚖️ Cboe BZX asked the SEC to approve the first US 3x bitcoin and ether ETFs, part of a six-fund suite from sponsor Volatility Shares that also covers gold, silver, crude oil, and natural gas. The funds would hold futures rather than spot and operate as CFTC-regulated commodity pools, requiring a rule filing because Cboe's generic listing standards bar leveraged products.
🇪🇺 Binance will block transactions involving 16 crypto platforms including HTX, with the largest tranche of 11 entities cut off Aug. 23, most of them named on the EU's updated Russia sanctions list. TRON founder Justin Sun said on X that the measure concerns only Binance's UK and EU users and that settlement talks with regulators are already underway.
📊 Payward posted $508 million in second-quarter adjusted revenue, up 17% year over year, and stayed adjusted EBITDA positive at $23 million even as total platform volume fell 13% to $310 billion. Funded accounts at the Kraken parent rose 42% to 6.6 million.
🎓 Harvard's endowment held its IBIT stake flat at 3,044,612 shares worth $101.4 million through the second quarter, after a 43% cut in Q1. The university now discloses more in gold funds, at $171.2 million, than in bitcoin ones.
🔒 SafePal disclosed a flaw in an order-tracking plug-in that exposed names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and purchase details for roughly 39,798 customers who ordered between March 2, 2025 and April 11, 2026. The wallet maker said seed phrases and private keys were not involved, and that it has taken down more than 30 fraudulent sites tied to the resulting scam activity.
🇨🇭 UBS reported a 24-fold jump in call option exposure to BlackRock's IBIT, reaching 1.95 million underlying shares as of June 30 from 80,000 three months earlier, while its direct holding rose 12% to 407,890 shares and put exposure fell 53%. The filing carries no strike prices and does not say whether client demand, dealer hedging, market-making, or proprietary positioning drove the change.
📈 SharpLink will stake $200 million of ether through Lido, receiving wstETH to be held in custody at Anchorage Digital. CEO Joseph Chalom said the allocation deepens the treasury's diversification, adding Lido to the company's existing staking and restaking strategy.
🏝️ World Liberty Financial delayed a token sale tied to a Trump-branded resort in the Maldives, with the Iran war disrupting regional travel, Bloomberg reported Friday. The token was set to go on sale next year giving investors a share of revenue from loans financing the development, and now has no listing date.
🇮🇱 Bank Leumi partnered with Galaxy to become the first bank in Israel offering digital asset trading, giving Leumi and PEPPER customers access to bitcoin, ether, and solana inside the Leumi Trade app. The service is expected in early 2027 and runs on GalaxyOne Institutional, with infrastructure from Galaxy's custody platform, formerly GK8.
Michael Saylor: What Is Money?
Officer's Notes: Extreme OpSec: Separation Over Software
