TFTC

"the period known as the Great Compression, where you could literally have a one income family,"

Mark Mitchell Rasmussen Reports on why the Great Compression is not coming back with trickle down.

Who appointed MSCI the judge of what counts as an operating business?

On Oct 15, MSCI ruled that non-operating companies are ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes. The rule applies from the November 2026 review, with changes effective at the close of Nov 30.

Nvidia's board is preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang, the WSJ reports, citing people familiar, and could meet as soon as today.

Three days ago that same board said it had confidence in him. So what changed?

• Nov 8: the board opened an independent investigation, with outside counsel, into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort • Huang told employees he was "unfaithful" to his wife and acknowledged an affair with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive suspected of being a Chinese spy • The board said it had "no reason to believe" national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised • The NYT, citing five people, reports a separate relationship with an Nvidia executive who reports to him • The House Select Committee on China asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on Nov 18 • A spokesperson said Jensen "is committed to continuing to lead NVIDIA as CEO without interruption" before the WSJ report came out

Nvidia has no board chair, and Huang is one of the 11 directors. The man at the center of the investigation is also a member of the board that oversees him.

When a company this central to the AI buildout runs like that, who exactly is the board answering to?

Stablecoin supply shrank by $14.2 billion in 30 days, the largest contraction since the 2022 bear market, according to Glassnode.

To be fair, the June 2022 drop was nearly $30 billion, about twice as big. But less dollar liquidity on these rails means less fresh buying power.

"it was literally the only plausible scenario that we could ever come up with where Republicans supported austerity and where the American people were clamoring for it."

Mark Mitchell Rasmussen Reports on how DOGE was the one real shot at fiscal reform.

The Netherlands is moving to tax the wealthy harder. Two coalition parties, D66 and CDA, struck a deal with opposition parties to raise Box 3 taxes on wealthier people and cut income tax for workers by the same amount. The VVD is wavering.

Who decides where "wealthy" starts?

"what we have is a stealth depression among most Americans in the United States"

Mark Mitchell Rasmussen Reports on a stealth depression and the path to unrest.

Israel Discount Bank will let customers buy, hold and sell bitcoin and ether in its mobile app starting November 26, Globes reports.

Israel's largest bank, Leumi, announced its own crypto partnership with Galaxy back in August, so who gets to say "first" depends on who ships.

• No separate wallet needed, it all sits in the bank app • The crypto is held alongside stocks and bonds • Sale proceeds go straight into the bank account • Gains and losses can be offset against the rest of the portfolio for tax purposes • Limited to private customers 18 and over with securities trading enabled • The Jerusalem Post adds a six-month waiver of account management fees • Leumi's Galaxy partnership covers bitcoin, ether and Solana, with launch expected in early 2027

Give it its due, this is a mainstream bank treating bitcoin like any other asset in the portfolio, and that's a real step for Israeli savers. If banks are racing to offer it, doesn't that tell you what customers are asking for?

Always remember, you don't own the bitcoin unless you control the keys.

"you have the group of pollsters who I was affiliated with, who I believe were taking political action committee money from the Trump administration to suppress criticism of Trump"

Mark Mitchell Rasmussen Reports on pollsters allegedly paid to stay quiet on Trump.

USDA's own analysis says about 6.3 million people would lose SNAP under a rule it proposed Nov 10, and federal spending would fall about $44.65 billion over five years.

So who is actually being cut, and who picks up the bill?

• About 3.2 million households would no longer qualify once the rule is fully in effect in fiscal 2029 • Automatic eligibility would be limited to households getting TANF assistance, ending the use of "non-cash or in-kind benefits or services" • About 1.78 million children would lose automatic eligibility for free school meals, but about 97% would still qualify based on household income • Of those children, about 1.66 million would still get free meals, 93,000 would move to reduced price and 28,000 would pay full price • Over the same period, states' net SNAP spending would fall about $5.24 billion, while their administrative costs would rise about $928.5 million

Today a state can qualify a household automatically through a TANF-funded benefit, often just a pamphlet or a hotline referral, which skips the federal income and asset limits. USDA wants to close that door and call it savings.

Nothing changes until the rule is finalized, but if you're a family near the income line, we should all be watching this closely.

White House counsel Will Scharf wrote to Rep. Robert Garcia that planned Democratic probes of the administration "may cross the line into blatant criminality."

The Washington Times reports the letter suggests the White House could investigate lawmakers who issue subpoenas.

MARA borrowed against its bitcoin in August and has now sold 13,597 BTC, about 40% of its stack, and repaid both loans in full.

That is roughly $1.1B of bitcoin from one of the biggest public holders, sold in the weeks after quarter end. Why did a miner sitting on $2.8B of coins unload so much so fast?

The 10-Q has the numbers.

• MARA held 34,012 BTC on Sept 30, worth about $2.8B • It sold 13,597 BTC for about $1.1B, an average of roughly $81,039 per coin • $750M of the proceeds repaid the Coinbase and Two Prime loans, both entered into in August 2026 • All pledged bitcoin was released on repayment, including 17,477 BTC that secured the loans

The miner comes out with the loans cleared, but it sold a huge chunk of its bitcoin along the way. Borrowing against your coins puts a lender between you and your stack, and that goes for a public company as much as anyone.

Always remember, you don't own the bitcoin unless you control the keys.

Strategy raised $283.8M selling its common stock last week, and only $81.9M of it went to bitcoin.

$188.3M went to buying back its own STRC preferred shares, more than twice what went into the coins.

• 1,036 bitcoin bought between November 2 and November 8, at an average of $79,012 • About 2.05M MSTR shares sold for $283.8M in net proceeds • 1,887,464 STRC shares repurchased for $188.3M, the only repurchase that week • Holdings now 850,364 bitcoin, bought for $64.16B at an average of $75,456 • $560.3M still left on the digital credit repurchase program and $1.0B on the MSTR repurchase program

STRC is the variable-rate preferred Strategy uses to fund its bitcoin buys. The company authorized a $1B repurchase program in June and doubled it to $2B in September, after STRC fell below its $100 par.

So the machine that used to turn stock sales into bitcoin is now spending most of the proceeds supporting its own funding, and last week's buy came in above its average cost. If the preferred needs this much support, how long can the flywheel keep running on common stock sales? Worth watching closely.

TFTC 809 w/ Mark Mitchell Rasmussen Reports: "The president's out there banging on about election fraud, when his own pollster told him it was going to be a blue wave."

We discuss: ⚡ The USS Trump-tanic ⚡ Who ran the White House ⚡ America's stealth depression

Russia is opening bitcoin to regular citizens, with a leash. Retail buyers get 300,000 rubles a year, about $3,700, per intermediary, and only three coins.

Why only three coins, and who gets the rest?

• Ordinance No. 7441-U, published by the Bank of Russia on Nov 6, takes effect Nov 17 • Exchanges can start crypto trading from Nov 22, once the Bank of Russia approves their trading rules • Non-qualified investors can buy only bitcoin, Ether and USDT, picked on market cap, daily volume and five years of price history on foreign exchanges • Qualified investors face no cap and can buy any crypto asset • Everyone has to pass a knowledge test and acknowledge the risks first

Credit where it's due, a central bank that treated this stuff as hostile not long ago now lets people buy bitcoin through licensed intermediaries. With that being said, it's the Bank of Russia deciding which coins you can touch and how much of your own money you can put in, while the bigger players get a free pass.

Always remember, you don't own the bitcoin unless you control the keys.

Bitcoin is now on by default at Square checkouts across the U.S.

Sellers don't have to apply. Square switched it on for every eligible business, whether the owner has ever thought about bitcoin or not.

The customer scans a QR code with any Lightning wallet and the payment settles in seconds. The seller gets dollars by default or can choose to keep the bitcoin, and there are no chargebacks. Sellers can also auto-convert up to 50% of their daily card sales into bitcoin.

The limits: $600 max per payment, $20,000 a day, and sellers in New York are left out.

The fee is 0% through Dec. 31, then a flat 1%. A card tap on Square's free plan costs the merchant 2.6% plus 15 cents.

James Talarico drew about 5.44 million votes in Texas’s Senate race.

That would be the most votes any Democrat has ever received statewide in Texas, topping Joe Biden’s 5.26 million in 2020.

A Homeland Security agent in St. Paul sent YouTube a subpoena on April 3 for the accounts of six news outlets and journalists, including Don Lemon, Georgia Fort and Megyn Kelly.

A Google spokesperson says Google did not comply.

Claroc says 35,578 of 37,571 live apps built with SpaceXSI's Grok Build opened for anyone on the internet, no sign-in.

That includes 24 built by SpaceXSI and X staff. How did anyone find them?

• Every published app gets its own web address, with a random string as the "secret" • Passive DNS services log those hostnames, so the links can be found there • The 24 staff apps held a confidential sales onboarding plan, a territory map covering 594 accounts and advertising proposals • Claroc says the publish screen in its paid account preselected "Anyone with the link" • Claroc says ChatGPT's builder kept new apps on "Only me" until it changed the setting • SpaceXSI pulled its 24 apps after Ars Technica asked

A Cursor representative told Ars that apps are private by default and nothing goes public unless the creator chooses to share it. Claroc says its tests show otherwise. Shared chats from Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini keep the secret in the URL path, so DNS never sees it.

If the company's own sales plans ended up in the same open pile as everyone else's, what chance does a regular user have?

Trump still wants the US government to buy bitcoin, says Patrick Witt, the former White House crypto adviser.

The catch is that the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was set up by executive order, funded mainly by forfeited coins, and that order doesn't allow open-market buying.

Deutsche Bank's digital asset custody service has launched, Reuters reports, starting with bitcoin, ether and the stablecoins USDC, EURC and EURAU.

It's for institutions and corporate clients only, no retail. Germany comes first, Asia is planned for 2027.

JPMorgan analysts estimated in 2025 that if MSCI removes Strategy from its indexes, passive funds would have to sell about $2.8 billion of MSTR stock.

It's the shares that get dumped, not the bitcoin. Strategy would not be forced to sell a single one.

Anthropic told IPO investors its Mythos model got Claude running on AMD GPUs in 3 days with "basically no human intervention."

Bringing up a new chip used to take "dozens of engineers months of work."

Claude ported or wrote "almost 100% of the kernels."

A federal appeals court just called the DOJ's secret LinkedIn order for journalists' data "substantially overbroad."

Fewer than 5% of their articles appear tied to the leak, so why ask for everything?

• The order covered 18 months of the journalists' communications metadata • They published nearly 1,000 articles in that window • The metadata would identify every user, and so every confidential source, they corresponded with on LinkedIn about those stories • LinkedIn was barred from telling affected users for at least a year, which the court said poses an "obvious" risk to the journalists' First Amendment interests • The panel was unanimous, with Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III writing, and faulted the district judge for giving "blanket approval to the government's broad request"

It is not a clean win. The court rejected LinkedIn's request to quash the order and sent it back so the district court can narrow it, so some version of the order survives.

A platform that holds your messages can be ordered to hand over who you talked to, and be gagged from telling you. Worth remembering the next time a company says it takes your privacy seriously.

Bitcoin Core disclosed three bugs today, all fixed in releases that shipped over a year ago. The worst, rated High, could leave a mining node unable to build blocks after a reorg until it was restarted.

Still running anything older than 29.2 or 30.0? Be aware.

Analysts expected a ¥129 billion profit from SoftBank. It lost ¥1.12 trillion, roughly $7 billion, its first net loss in almost two years.

So where did the money go, and who else is exposed?

• A writedown of about $3.7 billion (roughly ¥600 billion) tied to power equipment for its US AI data centers, including the 8-gigawatt Ohio project, with nonrefundable advance payments to equipment makers part of it • The value of its Intel holding fell and financing costs rose • Shares dropped as much as 11% in Tokyo, to a low of ¥3,465 • GE Vernova and Bloom Energy shares fell Tuesday on the news • The same quarter a year earlier was a profit of about $16 billion

Bloomberg reports the CFO, Yoshimitsu Goto, says there are no plans to downsize the Ohio project, but SoftBank is doing a "thorough reassessment" that includes its procurement strategy.

Nonrefundable deposits are a bet that the buildout goes exactly to plan, and SoftBank just paid to find out it doesn't always. The dip in GE Vernova and Bloom Energy shows the market is watching demand for this equipment.

With financing costs rising too, we should all be watching how this AI spending is being funded.

"But the timing of the release of this is just obviously like very, very notable, like right after midterms."

on why the Jensen Huang spy story timing is no coincidence.

A Republican congressman just told Pete Hegseth to get out before Democrats take over, warning they "are not going to be as polite as I am."

Rep. Thomas Massie said it on CNN's The Source, the day his own party shelved his Hegseth impeachment.

• Massie filed eight articles of impeachment on Nov 9, three of them over the Iran war and the War Powers Resolution of 1973 • The House voted 211-204 to send them to committee, which effectively kills them • Massie was the only Republican to vote with Democrats • He told CNN there is a "high probability" Hegseth won't make it to the end of the year • Asked whether Hegseth should cut bait, he said "That's exactly what I'm saying." • Hegseth called the effort a "farce" and a "stunt"; Trump said he would stand by Hegseth and called Massie "a stone cold loser"

Democrats take the House in January, so Massie's warning is that the Iran war questions get a much rougher hearing then than the one his own party just gave them.

If Congress can bury a war powers charge in committee this easily, who is the war actually answerable to?

The House voted 211-204 to shelve Massie's impeachment of Pete Hegseth, and nearly a dozen Democrats skipped the vote.

It was a motion to refer to committee, so Massie's charges, including an Iran war without congressional authorization, never got a direct vote.

"you're buying the insurance after the fact when you need it most desperately"

and

on the brutal hedge fund blowout and record put buying.

Mississippi's Senate seat is hanging on 2,607 votes, a 0.27 point margin, and the state has no automatic recount.

Democrat Scott Colom leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith with about 97% counted, and the fight now moves to the affidavit ballots.

• Colom was ahead by 2,607 out of 953,547 votes counted as of 4:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, CNBC reports, with the figures coming from the Associated Press • Two deadlines hit Nov. 10, one for resolving affidavit ballots and one for mail-in absentees, which had to be postmarked by Election Day and arrive within five business days • An earlier tally had independent Ty Pinkins at 20,038 votes, about 2.1%, many times the gap between the two leaders • County officials have until Friday, Nov. 13 to certify • Hyde-Smith's legal team sent all 82 counties a letter demanding that affidavit ballots be separated and preserved, and Colom's campaign called it an "unlawful attack on voter privacy"

A margin this thin comes down to how the leftover ballots are handled and who gets to look at them. With no automatic recount, a court order is the only way anyone gets a second count.

If the count is going to be trusted, every step of it should be something people can check for themselves. Don't trust, verify applies to elections too.

"then you kind of start looking down the barrel of something that looks a lot more like this again, right?"

on how a stalled AI build out leads back to debasement.

"That's clearly created a lot of crowding out for capital"

on why AI is crowding capital out of Bitcoin.

OpenAI made about $10 billion last quarter, The Information reports.

Anthropic's amended IPO filing shows about $17 billion for the same quarter.

One side put its number in a filing. The other has anonymous sources.

Comcast's layoff filings add up to 994 jobs, and the company says that is not all of them.

Some cuts fall below the size that triggers a filing, so they never show up. Comcast has not given a total.

• 634 jobs in Pennsylvania, 159 in Washington, 119 in New Jersey, 82 in California • Comcast told Bloomberg some cuts fell below the filing threshold • A fourth quarter charge of more than $1 billion for the restructuring • 144,000 domestic residential broadband customers lost in the third quarter • More than 1,100 new roles planned, over 500 of them in Philadelphia

Broadband customers are leaving, and executives are expanding AI agents to handle customer service. Comcast is cutting jobs in one part of the business and hiring for new roles in another.

The filings are a floor. The real total is still unknown.

Across, a crosschain bridge, just told users not to connect their wallets to its app.

"Do NOT visit the app, connect your wallet, or sign any transaction or approval there until further notice."

It says it is investigating an issue with its domain.

Ledger's signing SDK reports to Ledger's servers every time a transaction is signed, on by default, Ambire's developers say.

The report includes the recipient or contract address.

Privacy should be the default.

Move abroad or leave by the end of the year.

That is the choice IBM is giving affected staff in Consulting, according to a company document cited by Bloomberg.

IBM confirmed it is ending visa and green card sponsorship for most roles in the unit, which has 150,000+ staff.

Bitcoin holders have swapped about $3.6 billion of directly held BTC into BlackRock's IBIT since in-kind creations were approved, says BlackRock digital assets head Robbie Mitchnick.

He says the main driver is security concerns.

They traded their keys for a ticker.

Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa says that within an hour of taking the oath of office she will "declare a high-cost emergency" and freeze residential electricity rates.

The governor appoints every PUC commissioner. Texas law says prices are set by competition.

The House held billionaire Leon Black in contempt of Congress for defying his Epstein subpoenas. No charging decision from the Justice Department has been reported.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: "It is time for the Department of Justice to act."

• The Oversight Committee voted 41-0 on Sept. 15 to recommend contempt • The full House held him in contempt on Sept. 16 by unanimous consent • The two subpoenas sought a deposition and documents, including nondisclosure agreements • Black sued the committee and Chairman Comer to block the subpoenas, and his lawyers call the contempt resolution retaliation • Criminal contempt carries up to 1 year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 • A DOJ spokesperson said it takes contempt of Congress allegations seriously

The committee voted 41-0, the House acted by unanimous consent, and the only thing between a billionaire and a charge is a prosecutor's decision. Luna also says she is asking DOJ to investigate Lesley Groff, Epstein's former assistant, whose testimony survivors dispute.

Congress can name the contempt. Only DOJ can make it cost anything.

Bitcoin fell from $74,753 to $72,770 in 45 minutes this morning, down 2.7%.

That's its lowest price since Aug 20, and 10.3% below where it traded last Wednesday at $81,131.

Google DeepMind says it has mathematically proven key security properties of the machine code behind Signal. Not the design on paper. The compiled code.

DeepMind's Pushmeet Kohli calls it the first time the production code of a widely deployed protocol has been formally verified, "by any method, with or without AI," and at this depth.

• The proofs cover Signal's post-quantum PQXDH handshake and the Triple Ratchet • Properties proven: forward secrecy, authentication, post-compromise security and handshake secrecy • AI agents wrote the Lean proofs • Human experts reviewed every specification before any proof ran

Formal verification is extremely complex and time consuming, which is why most software never gets it. DeepMind's pitch is that AI can change that.

If that holds, the bar for privacy tools moves. Proof instead of promises.

Riot isn't the only miner selling.

MARA sold 13,597 bitcoin after September 30 for about $1.1 billion. That's roughly 40% of the 34,012 it held at quarter-end.

$750 million of it went to repay bitcoin-backed loans.

Hegseth says Iran, cartels, Maduro and Yemen were all "notified to Congress."

Massie's charge is that the Iran war had no declaration of war and no statutory authorization.

Notified is not authorized. That gap is the whole fight.

The Texas midterm numbers deserve scrutiny.

2022 Governor race: 4.4M Republican votes, 3.6M Democrat votes.

2026 Governor race: 4.5M Republican votes, 5.2M Democrat votes.

Republicans actually increased their turnout by ~100K. But Democrats somehow added 1.6 million new voters in a midterm cycle.

For context, Kamala Harris got 4.8M votes in Texas during the 2024 Presidential election, the highest turnout election type. Democrats just beat that by 400K votes in a midterm governor's race.

Midterms historically have lower turnout than presidential years. Texas followed that pattern in 2022. Not in 2026.

The question isn't whether the numbers are real. It's whether anyone in a position of authority will ask how.

97 Texas counties reported voter registrations exceeding their adult citizen population in the 2026 midterms.

Montgomery County: 107.6% (34,319 over) Collin County: 104.0% (30,557 over) Fort Bend County: 104.1% (23,122 over) Williamson County: 103.0% (13,816 over) Denton County: 102.0% (13,466 over)

Those totals include 1.76 million "suspense voters," registrations flagged because the voter never responded to an address confirmation notice or their mail came back undeliverable. They can still cast a ballot by confirming their address at the polls.

Whether this is explained by Census estimates lagging explosive suburban growth or something worse, the fact that Texas can't answer that question definitively is the problem. You can't run credible elections on voter rolls you can't reconcile against the actual population.

Clean the rolls or don't act surprised when nobody trusts the results.

Hegseth calls Massie's push to impeach him "a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment."

Massie's charge: the Iran war ran more than 90 days without congressional authorization. The resolution is privileged, so it forces a House vote.

"He is executing on President Trump's mission."

That's Attorney General Todd Blanche defending Pete Hegseth as Massie's impeachment articles move in the House. One charge: a war without congressional approval. The defense: loyalty to the president and DOJ cover.

Oil just lost about $15 a barrel in eight days.

WTI went from about $100 on Nov 2 to about $85. Brent fell below $90 for the first time since August. Traders are betting Washington backs off the Iran war.

How it happened: • Nov 2: Iran's president said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei gave the government authority for peace talks, and oil dropped sharply • Nov 3: Democrats won both chambers of Congress • Nov 4: JD Vance said "The reason we lost is the war." • Nov 5: the S&P 500 fell 4.36% and Nvidia fell 9.26%

Trump also said he'd hold off on new strikes after appeals from Qatar and others, but he's keeping the naval blockade in place for now.

The Strait of Hormuz carries about a fifth of the world's energy, and flows through it have largely recovered.

Eurasia Group's Gregory Brew says Brent is unlikely to fall below $90 without durable de-escalation and a US-Iran deal. A tanker was reportedly hit by an unknown projectile in the strait over the weekend.

One policy decision in Washington can move the global price of energy by double digits in days.

Miami-Dade County now takes bitcoin for property taxes. Officials floated it in 2021 and 2022. It took until now.

But the county won't touch a single coin, and that's the part worth reading.

The details from the Tax Collector's announcement and local coverage: • Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez announced it Monday, Nov 9 • A third-party system converts the bitcoin to U.S. dollars • The office says it will not hold any cryptocurrency • It says it receives the full amount of taxes owed regardless of bitcoin's value at the time of the transaction • Only property taxes are covered. Fines, fees and licenses are not • Cash, checks, credit cards and debit cards remain available and unchanged

This is a payment rail, not a treasury move. By the office's account, the county takes no price risk and holds no bitcoin. It is also the county Tax Collector, not the City of Miami, doing this.

Still, a government office that deals in dollars now has to build a pipe for people who earn and save in bitcoin.

Taxpayers can now settle a government bill with money no government prints. That's the point.

The BLS can't tell you how much prices rose over the past 12 months. It is dropping the annual number from today's CPI report.

A shutdown left a hole, and one monthly print may now decide a 25 or 50 basis point Fed hike.

What we know going in: • CPI drops at 8:30 AM ET with no 12-month figure for headline or core • The 2025 shutdown left no October 2025 prices, so there is nothing to compare against • September CPI rose 0.6% on the month and 3.7% over the year • September core rose 0.3% on the month and 2.6% over the year • Dow Jones consensus for October is headline +0.3% and core +0.2% • Waller leans toward a 25 bp hike in December, and says 50 bp could be warranted if core is around 0.3% or more • CME FedWatch had a quarter-point December hike better than 80% likely

So a government shutdown erased a month of price data, and one monthly core number could steer rates for everyone.

That's a lot of weight on a single print.

The FBI got a warrant for a sitting congressman's personal Gmail, seized his phone a month later, and has not charged him.

A judge unsealed the paperwork over Rep. Andy Ogles' objection.

• In July 2024 the FBI served Google with a search warrant for Ogles' personal Gmail account • About a month later, after his August primary, agents executed a separate warrant for his cell phone • A magistrate approved the searches on probable cause tied to possible false campaign-finance statements. That is not a finding that he committed a crime • Scripps Media, parent of NewsChannel 5, moved on Aug. 13, 2026 to unseal. The US took no position but said it may seek redactions. Ogles opposed • The judge rejected his privacy arguments, and the released affidavits are heavily redacted • In May 2026, DOJ lawyers told Ogles' team they would return his phone and destroy the emails

Ogles has not been charged.

A search warrant is one judge's signature, and the data sits on a company's servers. The public got a look at the file because a news outlet asked a court to open it.

Messages stored on someone else's servers are one signature away from the government.

Trump Media held 15,649 bitcoin at Sept 30, and a Nov 30 deadline could force it to sell some.

Convertible noteholders can demand cash repayment that day, up to about $1B. Will the bitcoin stay put?

What the numbers show • 15,649 BTC held at Sept 30, up 1,510 from the end of Q2 • Q3 profit of about $410M, driven by crypto gains • The filing warns the company may have to sell bitcoin or other digital assets if refinancing efforts fail • On Nov 5, wallets linked to Trump Media moved about 4,259 BTC from "Convertible Notes Collateral" addresses to Crypto․com • A spokesperson told CoinDesk the company transferred but did not sell

A profit driven by crypto gains is only as solid as the balance sheet behind it. Debt that can be called for cash turns a long-term bitcoin treasury into a possible forced seller.

Bitcoin held outright has no deadline. Bitcoin held against debt does. That's counterparty risk.

France says Iran's Revolutionary Guards cooked the fridges at about 700 supermarkets.

Temperatures reportedly hit 50C. Food spoiled and fires broke out.

Paris prosecutors want arrest warrants for the head of the Guards cyber unit and his two deputies.

A Nobel laureate's group is about to show its work on OpenAI's AI-written proof of quantum Yang-Mills existence.

The full Lean code and the group's own validation go public Wednesday.

Open code means anyone can check the work.

The Senate was set to hold a procedural vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (S. 5653), a permitting reform package. Advancing it requires 60 votes. I could not confirm the result of that vote or the vote count, so I am not reporting either one. The Senate's floor activity page is the place to check the roll call.

As reported, the bill would require new data centers of 20 MW or more to pay the full added grid-upgrade costs they cause.

Tribal nations, including the National Congress of American Indians, have publicly opposed the bill and urged the Senate to reject it at this stage.

Final passage has not happened yet. Reports say a final vote would likely come the week after next, since the Senate is out Wednesday through Friday for Veterans Day.

A video posted by Bulwark Clips attributes this to Trump: "No, I will not approve wind turbines." It also attributes "I know, but I won't approve it" to him in response to a reporter. I found no independent transcript or wire copy confirming the wording, so treat the quotes as attributed, not verified. The bill in question is the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, introduced Sept. 30, 2026, with a Senate vote targeted for after the Nov. 3 midterms. In March 2026, Trump said he would try to have no windmills built in the U.S. during his term.

The Senate scheduled a procedural cloture vote for Monday, Nov. 9, on the motion to proceed to S. 5653, the permitting bill known as BAAJA. A vote on the motion to proceed does not pass the bill. I could not find a roll call record or wire report confirming the result or the tally, so treat any count as unconfirmed.

Sen. Schumer spoke on the Senate floor about Pete Hegseth.

In a clip of his remarks, Schumer is quoted as saying: "The Senate needs to put Pete Hegseth on trial so we can remove him for his catastrophic failure in Iran." The exact wording has not been independently confirmed.

The context: Rep. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth over the Iran war and boat strikes. Hegseth called the effort a 'sham'.

A video posted by Hunter EaglemanTM says Trump answered a CNN question about Rep. Thomas Massie on camera. I have not confirmed the quotes or the date of the clip. Massie introduced 8 articles of impeachment against Hegseth in September over the Iran war, and said he would reintroduce them after the midterms if Hegseth is still SecDef. Earlier, asked about replacing Hegseth, Trump said: "No, I think he's doing a very good job."

The Senate was scheduled to hold a cloture vote at about 5:30 PM ET on Monday, Nov. 9, on the motion to proceed to the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (S. 5653). The motion needs 60 votes. A manager's amendment was released Nov. 7.

Progressive Democrat Brad Lander of New York says he'd like to impeach Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel and RFK Jr.: "I'd like to impeach Pete Hegseth. I'd like to impeach Kash Patel. I'd like to impeach RFK Jr. They've all sold out the American people."

Cyril Jefferson said: "Right now, the best course correction would be the impeachment of Pete Hegseth."

Manu Raju (Manu Raju) posted both quotes in a video on Nov. 9.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) read eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on the House floor in mid-September. On Nov. 6, Hakeem Jeffries called for Hegseth's removal but stopped short of backing impeachment.

Massie's resolution contains 8 articles of impeachment against Hegseth, centered on the Iran war and war powers.

On Nov. 9, the White House Rapid Response 47 account posted a clip captioned with Trump's remarks on Hegseth: "I'll stand by him. He won two wars. He was in charge; we all won." The same caption quotes him on Massie: "Massie is a loser, just like you're a loser at CNN."

Trump told ABC News on Nov. 5 that he has "every intention" of keeping Hegseth. He called Massie "very destructive and is a very bad guy."

Massie lost his May primary to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein. Whether the House will vote on the resolution has not been confirmed.

Rep. Thomas Massie read his eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on the House floor, then spoke outside the Capitol. The articles center on the Iran war without congressional authorization and allege extrajudicial killings.

"We're not indicting Hegseth for being bad at his job. In fact, he was very effective at killing schoolchildren in Iran. He was very effective at extrajudicial killings."

Rep. Thomas Massie introduced updated impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the House floor on Monday, Nov. 9. The resolution is 34 pages and has eight articles. Massie said: "There are six of these eight articles where both the president and Hegseth are culpable." CNN reported a House vote is expected by Wednesday. The House GOP majority is 218-214. No official statement yet says how the vote will be structured.

"If there's going to be a really aggressive push to stall the data center build-out, then you start looking down the barrel of something a lot more like the debasement trade." -

We discuss: ⚡ The blue wave ⚡ Texas flips ⚡ Bitcoin's way to win

Trump says Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and others would prefer the status quo on Iran.

He defines that as "a continuation of the Greatest Naval Blockade in History, and the new Operation Iron Gate."

Anthropic has filed for a Nasdaq IPO and can start pitching investors as early as Tuesday, Bloomberg reports.

The fear gauge briefly topped 25 last week. Matt Kennedy of Renaissance Capital says that's a zone where companies typically postpone IPOs. Anthropic is pressing ahead.

California just ordered CoinFlip to pay more than $4.8 million to scam victims, plus more than $350,000 in fees the state says were illegally excessive.

The regulator's core charge is that since 2021 the company failed to properly identify who was using its machines.

• Since 2021, DFPI says CoinFlip "failed to appropriately identify who uses its products and services" • It also failed to detect, prevent, report and mitigate suspicious activity • About 500 of its kiosks operate in California, typically in grocery stores, convenience stores and gas stations • It accepted more than $1,000 from customers in a single day, over the state limit • It skipped required pre-transaction written disclosures • DFPI cites California's Digital Financial Assets Law, its Consumer Financial Protection Law and federal anti-money-laundering law

CoinFlip is not the first. DFPI has already acted against Coinme, Coinhub, Coin Time and Athena Bitcoin. If regulators keep making operators pay for their own compliance gaps, expect kiosks to turn into identity checkpoints.

Scam victims are ordered paid back. Everyone else may get a surveillance checkpoint at the gas station.

Anthropic has shipped Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2, about 10 weeks after 5.1.

It says they're "designed to tackle the most daunting technical challenges," with gains in coding, reasoning and vision.

Three versions in five months.

Commerce approved a Beijing firm, New Matrix, to turn Nvidia H200 chips into AI servers. Chinese records link its owners to Wise Road, a fund Commerce put on the Entity List in 2024.

Its listed address is an empty building, the Times found.

Bernie Sanders wants Democrats to lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55 "as an immediate first step," and says they can do it with 51 Senate votes.

Democrats won control of the House and Senate on Nov. 3 and take over in January.

What Sanders is asking for: • Medicare eligibility age cut from 65 to 55 • Dental, vision and hearing added to Medicare • Universal coverage for children through age 19 • Passage through reconciliation, which needs 51 Senate votes

Sanders is expected to chair the Senate HELP Committee.

He told CNN he thinks the support is there: "We're getting more and more in the Senate."

The catch is the White House. Sanders said he is "not absolutely certain that Trump would not sign it." Without a signature, a veto override needs two-thirds of both chambers. Rep. Ro Khanna says Democrats should pass it anyway and force Trump to veto it.

This is being sold as Medicare for All, but the actual first ask is a much bigger Medicare, and the veto math makes it a messaging fight before it is a law.

Everyone in Washington will argue over who gets covered. Far fewer will say who pays.

Marco Rubio called Iran's demands "simply unacceptable."

On Monday, Qatar's prime minister, fresh from Tehran, meets Trump and, separately, Vance anyway. Reports say no imminent deal is in sight.

Bitcoin hit $69,000 in November 2021. The BLS inflation calculator says that equals $83,644 today.

Bitcoin trades around $74,500, so in real terms it's still about 11% below its 2021 high. Five years later.

The numbers: • $69,000 in November 2021 equals $83,644 today on the BLS calculator, about 21% more dollars • Fortune put bitcoin at $74,549 at 7:30 a.m. ET on Monday • FXStreet described a fifth straight weekly loss • FXStreet reported about $412 million in net outflows from US spot bitcoin ETFs on Friday

And that's the government's own inflation measure. The price is only half the story. The ruler keeps shrinking too, and every dollar-denominated chart quietly hides it.

A small gain in dollar terms can still be a real loss when the dollar loses buying power. That's the cost of measuring everything in fiat.

Trump reportedly told CBS he had been "too tough" on immigration.

Asked about a legal-status deal, he reportedly called it "something that's actually doable."

The campaign promise was mass deportations. What he's floating now is a negotiation. No deal has been announced.

Trump is questioning the midterm results after the GOP's sweeping losses, and the machines are his target.

Before the vote, he said he would accept the results only if they were "honest," and that if they weren't, "something else has to happen."

What the record shows • He has called voting machines "Highly Inaccurate" and said he would sign an executive order to end mail-in ballots and those machines, with no evidence • The AP reported no evidence of widespread voter fraud on Election Day • ProPublica found only isolated voting problems, and Snopes found no evidence that machines switched votes • In Westchester County, ballot readers struggled with thick paper and some polls stayed open longer, and no verified evidence shows machines altered votes

No evidence has surfaced that the machines changed the outcome.

When the standard for an honest election is who won, the standard is the problem.

A billionaire-funded PAC spent over $304 million to beat California's billionaire tax.

Prop 40 trailed about 55% to 45%. And even if it had won, a rival measure could have killed it.

The numbers: • Prop 40 was a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of taxpayers and trusts with assets over $1 billion, hitting roughly 200 billionaires • Close to $500 million was raised across Props 40, 41 and 42, and opponents heavily outspent supporters • Prop 42, which would ban taxing personal wealth in the state constitution, led with about 53% to 54% of the vote • A Public Policy Institute of California poll on Oct. 27 had support among likely voters at 46%, down from 52% a month earlier • If either Prop 41 or Prop 42 gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax does not take effect

A billionaire-funded PAC led the campaign against the tax, and billionaire-backed counter-measures sat on the same ballot.

Proponents say they will try again. Voters were asked to tax billionaires, and the billionaires bought the other side of the ballot.

Strategy bought 1,037 more bitcoin last week, up from 811 the week before.

Its total is now 850,364 bitcoin.

The weekly Monday filing keeps landing, and this buy is bigger than the last.

Freeze vulnerable coins, or do nothing. Cory Fields just offered a third option.

The Bitcoin Core developer's "quantum landmines" would make a thief moving a protected coin post collateral first. A real owner can reveal hidden proof and claim it.

Trump says someone else will pay for the Iran war.

On 60 Minutes he said "Those countries that we've protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we've had for the war."

No figure. No timeline. Just "100%."

Coinbase now has final approval for a US national trust charter, American Banker reports.

It's a trust bank, not a commercial bank. No deposits, no loans. Custody first, with stablecoin issuance and payments planned next. The OCC moved it from conditional to final.

Trump says the DOJ told the head of a major AI company to "get ready to go to jail, please give your wife a kiss goodnight..."

He said the person "totally changed everything" afterward. He didn't name the executive or the company.

Iran just gave the White House two days to accept its proposal or see its forces "rain down hell."

Foreign Minister Araghchi says Iran will reopen Hormuz within two days if the US meets its terms, including an end to fighting on all fronts and lifting its port blockade.

HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest and Nationwide have blocked or restricted AI agents from customer accounts, the Telegraph reported.

McKinsey says up to £700bn could move out of low-paying savings. It is unclear who pays if a bot mismanages your money.

Harwood, North Dakota voted 325 to 105 against a measure adding independent review for big industrial projects.

About 430 votes decided review rules for a $3B, 280 MW Applied Digital campus. Oracle is reportedly leasing it under a $2.15B, 15-year deal.

Asked by Ross Douthat on CBS 60 Minutes whether he'd escalate the Iran war now that the midterms are over, Trump said "Well, I'm not looking to."

The interview was taped after the GOP losses. He also acknowledged the war has pushed gas prices up.

Both parties now want answers on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Lawmakers are calling for scrutiny and asking what the Trump administration knew. Huang had said the US government had not told him of its suspicions about Alice Huang, the Megaspeed executive U.S. intelligence reportedly believes is a Chinese spy.

Who knew what, and when, is the real story.

Federal law doesn't stop Medicaid patient data from being handled in India. Only state rules and contracts do, and Bloomberg Law found Medicaid vendor Gainwell's systems can't always enforce them.

• 15 current and former employees told Bloomberg Law the systems can't always stop workers in India from viewing protected data • Nearly all of Gainwell's state contracts ban storing, viewing or accessing identifying information outside the US • New York and Colorado denied repeated requests to do Medicaid work in India • Ohio approved Gainwell's India shift after staff were already hired there, despite contract terms and a governor's executive order • Officials on some of its largest contracts said they didn't know until Bloomberg Law asked

Gainwell disputes parts of the employee accounts and says "no work is done outside the United States for any state client without explicit approval from that client."

When federal law is silent, state rules and contracts are the whole privacy policy. And they only work if the state knows what its vendor is doing.

Privacy that depends on a vendor's promise isn't privacy.

The Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture has been open since 2008. A 2020 claimed proof turned out to have a flaw.

Now Physical Superintelligence says an unreleased Anthropic model proved it. PSI didn't name the model.

An AI result nobody outside can test or use is hard to check.

Bitcoin fell from $75,690 to $73,477 in 15 minutes late Sunday afternoon, its lowest price since August.

On Wednesday it traded above $81,000. That's a 9% drop in four days.

Weekend markets are thin, and a fast drop like this tends to flush out leveraged longs.

Google DeepMind says its AI agents found two new attacks on 1024-bit RSA.

One forges signatures an estimated 1,600 times faster than the previous best method, when an attacker controls only a small part of the signed data. The other makes each extra key about 30 times cheaper to crack in bulk.

Both figures are DeepMind's estimates. 2048-bit RSA is not affected.

Jensen Huang has admitted to an affair with a woman US intelligence officials suspect of spying for China.

"I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did."

That's from a draft email to Nvidia staff, obtained by Axios. Nvidia's board has opened an independent probe and says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised. He remains CEO.

About 20% of Keplr accounts that use Google or Apple login were affected, co-founder Josh Lee estimates.

He says only a fraction of those were actually exploited.

Keplr has suspended both logins. Users who set up with a recovery phrase or a hardware wallet were not affected, Keplr says.

LNbits told every user to shut down.

"All LNbits users should stop their LNbits servers IMMEDIATELY."

It cites "a wave of attacks" and patches still to come.

Self-hosting means you pull the plug.

A city council in Indiana just voted to ban a technology that doesn't exist.

Bloomington's Common Council voted unanimously, 7-0, for Ordinance 2026-29, adding a chapter to city code titled "Prohibition of Superintelligence."

Politicians love banning what nobody has built.

Four senators from both parties want data centers of 20 MW or more to pay for the grid they strain, instead of passing it to your electric bill.

An earlier Republican bill was blocked in the Senate on Sept 17. This new one is tied to permitting reform.

What's in it: • The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, text posted Sept 30 • Led by Capito (R-WV), Whitehouse (D-RI), Lee (R-UT) and Heinrich (D-NM) • New data centers of 20 MW or more would cover the added costs they put on the power system: generation, storage, transmission and distribution • The earlier Republican Ratepayer Protection Act was blocked by a Senate Democrat. Heinrich said it "suggests, but does not require" that data centers pay the full cost • Much of Heinrich's own GRID Savings Act, which used a 150 MW threshold, is now in the package

Capito calls it "a major step toward making it faster and more efficient and easier to build infrastructure projects." Environmental groups are critical of the permitting provisions.

Our view: build the data centers, but the town next door shouldn't be the subsidy. Power for AI should be paid for by the people using it.

Trump's former White House AI and crypto czar says the Iran war lost the midterms.

David Sacks: "Republicans lost the midterms because of the war and its economic consequences."

His fix is to end the war now. Then, he says, inflation "will drop quickly."

849,327 bitcoin. An average cost of about $75,446.

That's Strategy's tracker as Saylor posted it Sunday, captioned "Connecting the dots."

That's the holdings baseline before any new announcement. Monday's 8-K is the one to watch.

"Affected accounts will be closed with effect from 31 December 2026."

That's a Binance spokesperson, on users in some EU countries. The exchange has no MiCA license. If your coins sit on Binance, your access now depends on the exchange's regulatory status. That's counterparty risk.

House GOP leaders are bracing for enough Republicans to join Democrats and pass impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war this week, Axios reports.

Trump said Thursday he has "every intention" of keeping Hegseth.

Removal would take 67 senators.

FinCEN and the Fed just withdrew a plan to make banks collect customer data on cross-border transfers as small as $250.

The proposal sat unfinished for six years and drew nearly 3,000 comments. Why it isn't over is below.

• The proposal was issued in October 2020 and would have cut the threshold from $3,000 to $250 for transfers that begin or end outside the US • It covered convertible virtual currency too • Nearly 3,000 comments raised financial privacy, compliance cost and personal data collection concerns • Commenters said $250 would burden smaller institutions and could push remittance customers to less regulated channels • The $3,000 threshold stays, and suspicious activity reporting duties are unchanged • The notice is due in the Federal Register on Nov 9

Privacy pushback won this round. The agencies gave no replacement plan or timetable, and any future proposal goes back out for public comment.

Withdrawn is not permanent. Transfers of $3,000 or more through a regulated middleman still come with a file on you. That's the price of letting someone else hold your money.

Leveraged ETFs pulled in a record $3.3 billion on Thursday, while inverse ETFs lost a record $2.2 billion, per Goldman Sachs data.

That was the day the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4%, its worst session since March 2020.

A crypto holder in France scared off kidnappers by firing a Glock from his window. A court just sentenced him to 30 months in prison.

The case turns on where the attackers were when he pulled the trigger.

The facts, per French press reports: • The attempted kidnapping happened at La Roche-sur-Yon, in Vendée, on 31 October 2026 • The victim, a 23-year-old identified as Ayman R., fired from a window. He reportedly said he did it out of panic • The attackers fled without taking him and left behind a vehicle reported as stolen • Prosecutors first opened an attempted murder investigation and police arrested him • The sentence is 30 months in prison, plus a 15-year ban on carrying a weapon

Prosecutors called the shot revenge, not self-defense, because the attackers were already leaving. French law requires a response proportionate to an immediate threat, and prosecutors argued that once the attackers were running, there was none.

France has been hit by a wave of crypto kidnappings, and in April 2026 prosecutors charged 88 people in connected cases. A man scared off his attackers, then got prison for the shot.

The US is moving to cut a major offshore exchange off from American banks without sanctioning it.

FinCEN says MEXC handled more than $16B in illicit transactions. The tool it used is the story.

What the November 6 order does • Issued under Section 9714(a) of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, which draws on the Section 311 framework • Bars banks, broker-dealers and money transmitters from transmitting funds to or from MEXC Global and covers its foreign subsidiaries, branches and offices • It is not an OFAC SDN designation. No property is blocked and no accounts are frozen • It takes effect 30 days after Federal Register publication, and none had appeared as of Friday evening

Treasury is using a Russia-focused money laundering authority to pull a Seychelles-linked exchange that isn't licensed in the US off US financial rails. FinCEN used similar transmittal bans on Mexican institutions under the FEND Off Fentanyl Act. Other offshore exchanges may see the same treatment.

The dollar system runs on permission. Bitcoin doesn't.

Binance CFO Kaiser Ng is leaving, nine days after the record $6.3 billion hack of the exchange.

Co-CEO Yi He says the handover was planned six months ago, well before the hack. Justin Yek, ex-Airwallex, replaces him.

That timeline is Binance's own account. Binance says it will reimburse affected customers from company funds.