TFTC

The rule that would let employers put bitcoin and other alternative assets in 401(k)s with far less legal risk is now at the White House for final review.

The Labor Department sent its final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on Nov. 5, the last step before it's published. OIRA lists it as economically significant, $100 million or more a year in impact.

The rule doesn't legalize bitcoin in 401(k)s. Nothing banned it. It gives employers a safe harbor. Weigh six factors (performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, benchmarks, complexity) before adding an investment and the choice is presumed prudent, cutting the lawsuit risk that keeps plans away.

How we got here: • May 2025, Labor drops its 2022 warning to use "extreme care" with crypto in 401(k)s • Aug 2025, Trump signs an executive order to open 401(k)s to alternative assets • March 2026, Labor proposes the rule • June 2026, comments close with more than 33,000 letters

Once it's final, the question for savers stops being whether bitcoin is allowed and becomes whether their employer will offer it.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) says he could reintroduce his articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as soon as Monday, according to a report citing his interview with Politico.

Massie first filed them in September over the Iran war. He has said he will only reintroduce them if Hegseth is still in the job, and he is a lame duck after losing his primary.

Iran is now willing to discuss its nuclear program in talks with the US, Bloomberg reports, a topic it had previously kept off the table.

A diplomat reportedly says Iran is studying proposals on its atomic activities from mediator Qatar.

No deal has been announced.

Greece's parliament has approved a 10% tax on individuals' crypto gains.

Income from lending, liquidity provision and staking would be taxed at 15%. The rules are reportedly set to start Jan 1, 2027.

Rep. Thomas Massie says he will force a House vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war when Congress returns, probably the week of Nov. 9.

Speaker Mike Johnson blocked a vote in September by recessing the House early. That option is reportedly gone.

"I changed the way that our business model was going to work based upon some of the incentives that I was learning from Bitcoin."

Andy Schoonover on what the white paper taught him about incentives.

A new report says the Chainalysis attackers got usernames, password hashes and live tokens.

Chainalysis has said authentication credentials and session tokens were not accessed.

The two accounts conflict, and the company has not said how many records were accessed.

Bitcoin tagged as collateral for Trump Media's $1B convertible notes just moved to Crypto dot com.

Arkham data shows about 4,259 bitcoin sent in two transfers. Holders of the notes can demand a cash repurchase on Nov 30, 2026. The company has not explained the move.

"Banks are to Bitcoin as health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are to healthcare."

Andy Schoonover on who really writes the rules in healthcare.

Greg Abbott received around the same amount of votes as previous years.

But the Democrat candidate somehow received over 1.5 million more votes than normal.

Where did the new Democratic voters come from?

JPMorgan's Epstein problem is about to get subpoena power.

CNBC reports Senate Finance Democrats plan to investigate the bank's Epstein ties once they take control in January, with Ron Wyden likely in the chair. Their focus: Mary Erdoes, who still runs JPM's wealth arm.

What's already on the record:

• Erdoes admitted in a deposition JPM knew by 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying for underage girls • JPM kept him as a client until 2013 • While he was alive, it flagged ~$4.3M of his activity. After he died, it filed retroactive reports on ~$1.3B • Per Wyden's staff, a JPM private bank chief coached Epstein on cash withdrawals to dodge reporting rules • JPM has paid $365M in settlements. Zero charges.

The same system that files a report on your $10K cash withdrawal looked away from one of its biggest clients for 15 years.

$JPM down 1.7% today.

Samsung Wallet is adding USDC accounts for eligible US Galaxy users, across a base of 82 million compatible devices.

Bastion powers the accounts and Coinbase safeguards the USDC. Samsung charges no fee for transfers to compatible wallets.

US regulators have reportedly contacted banks to check their systems for security vulnerabilities after the Binance hack, according to Reuters, citing sources.

The Federal Reserve and the OCC reportedly asked about unusual activity or service disruptions. Both declined to comment.

Paraguay's largest digital bank just collapsed, and about 60% of the country's adults banked there.

The central bank seized Ueno Bank on Tuesday after its solvency ratio fell below half the legal minimum. Roughly 3 million customers were locked out overnight: app, cards and transfers all frozen.

The fallout so far: • About $380M of the state pension and health fund (IPS) is tied up in Ueno bonds and deposits • 13 mutual funds froze withdrawals and trading in Ueno's bonds was halted • Ueno handled about two thirds of electronic payments at large supermarkets, and merchants warn retail could be partly paralyzed • Customers can only get back up to about $1,700 for now • The central bank chief resigned and prosecutors ordered 8 people linked to the bank arrested

Angry depositors have taken to the streets of Asunción, and the opposition is pushing to impeach President Santiago Peña over his past ties to the bank's parent group.

One bank failure, and most of a country can't touch its money. That's counterparty risk.

The US military is finishing preparations for a possible resumption of major combat operations in Iran, Axios reports, citing US officials.

The preparations reportedly include sending more assets to the Middle East.

No final decision has been made, and Trump's closest aides reportedly don't know what he will do.

Voters sided against data centers in 40 of 41 local midterm ballot measures, according to a preliminary CNBC analysis of Ballotpedia data. Counts vary by tracker and results aren't final.

The exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where about 75% voted against an amendment that would have required independent review of large industrial projects, including data centers.

The Moscow Exchange plans to start trading bitcoin, Ether and USDT on December 1.

The exchange and its clearing house have been under U.S. Treasury sanctions since June 2024.

The first phase is a pilot.

"You lose enough business because you won't do Bitcoin and you'll start doing Bitcoin."

Andy Schoonover on the auditors keeping hospitals off Bitcoin.

Riot Platforms sold 20,264 bitcoin this year, about $1.5 billion, mostly to fund AI data centers.

Counting the coins it mined, its stack went from 18,005 BTC in January to 2,418 by September.

In today's earnings, Riot also announced a $28 billion AI campus lease in Texas.

"i want you to put the word out there that we back up"

TFTC 807 w/ Andy Schoonover: "You start ripping the healthy people out of the system, you only have the unhealthy people left. That's why health insurance is in a death spiral."

We discuss: ⚡ The $60K insurance bill ⚡ Paid to deny you ⚡ The Bitcoin parallel

"Massive exchange downside event in midterms week, essentially pretty much put in the Bitcoin bottom."

on Binance, FTX and the midterms.

"There's no magic button to make it go away."

on US debt crossing 100% of GDP.

"It's much easier to find peace when the chaos is expected."

and Baron Koch CFA on living on a Bitcoin standard in an age of chaos.

"Especially the Microsoft headline is problematic for social stability if you extrapolate it out quickly enough and broadly enough."

on Microsoft's 60,000 buyouts and AI's ROI.

Anthropic is pitching Claude as a chip designer to IPO investors.

A 15-person hardware team is using Claude to speed up custom AI chip work, according to The Information.

The comparison is against the team's own estimates of traditional workflows at established designers like Nvidia and AMD. That is Anthropic's assessment, not an independent benchmark.

The audience matters. The debut could value the company near $1.5 trillion, and "our model makes us faster at hard engineering" is a very nice line to have in the room.

Fifteen people is a slide in a pitch deck. Shipping silicon is the proof.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-touts-claudes-chip-design-skills-ipo-investors

"If all of a sudden there's lines around every JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, whatever, that money's not all there."

Baron Koch CFA on AI hacks and the next bank run.

Selling bitcoin to cover expenses is a losing trade.

Aven gives you a better option. Borrow against your stack instead.

Up to $1M, rates starting at 8.99%, no rehypothecation. 2% unlimited cash back.

https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-visa-card-aven/

SpaceX, Tesla and Amazon have joined the list of companies rejecting OKXICE's tokenized stocks plan. The total now stands at 56 objectors.

Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, SpaceX, SoFi Technologies and Lam Research are the latest, according to a Nov. 2 public notice. Of the 62 companies OKXICE originally targeted, 49 have objected. That is about 79%.

Only 13 of the original 62 have no disclosed objection. Seven companies outside the lineup have objected too.

The notices do not give reasons for any of the objections.

https://www.okx.com/cdn/assets/okfe/web3-activities/okxicetsv/notices/OKXICE_Tokenized_Securities_Venue_Public_Notice_26.11.02.pdf

Election models now have a Guam problem.

Google will turn off Search for schools that reject its AI.

Starting early 2027, Google will switch off AI tools for K-12 students unless administrators opt in. But schools that restrict AI entirely will also lose access to Google Search. Students will see a message from their school saying it is not available.

Google's Chris Phillips said "Search and A.I. are deeply integrated." Schools cannot disable AI Overviews or AI Mode on their own.

Google's apps are ubiquitous in U.S. classrooms, and Chromebooks are the most widely issued student devices. Reject the AI, lose the search engine.

CZ says banks are even less safe from hackers than Bitcoin and crypto, arguing the entire financial system is at risk.

CZ says Binance saw about $3.6 billion in outflows, roughly 2% of holdings, against the 10% to 30% he had braced for.

"I think it's worth underscoring just how big of a document that is."

Baron Koch CFA on JP Morgan putting Bitcoin at the top of its long-term forecasts.

The data centers DLR bought from DCRU were old and thinly leased.

Toronto has 3 years left, LA under 1, Virginia was vacant until a new 10-year lease starts Dec 1. Price: $21-26M per MW.

The sponsor was the buyer.

Password manager mSecure tells current and former customers to immediately secure everything stored in it.

That means passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys. Its maker, mSeven Software, says it "recently learned of suspicious activity" tied to the app and has brought in outside cybersecurity experts.

The notice does not say what happened, how many users are affected or whether any vaults were accessed.

The warning lands after Germany's cyber agency BSI found in December 2025 that mSecure's maker could, in theory, access the data users store in it.

Citi Wealth is pitching spot BTC and ETH ETFs as the regulated, brokerage-account way for suitable clients to add digital assets alongside stocks and bonds.

h/t matthew sigel recovering CFA

Binance says hackers used a fake job interview to breach an engineer's computer, then used an internal AI tool to take over two wallet developers' systems.

The result: $6.3 billion stolen on October 29.

"Bitcoin is worse, is better, it's simple, it's stupid."

and

on Bitcoin's small attack surface.

"The market is getting antsy about the mystery box."

on Red October and the AI trade.

"It's not for you and me, it's for like just a few users to go out and generate like a hundred X value on, you know, pharma pipelines or weapons manufacturing or whatever."

on who the AI frontier is really for.

"Which begs the question, how smart do these models need to be?"

and

on what all that AI training compute is for.

Blockstream moves another 300 BTC into Liquid, cutting the backing shortfall to 250 BTC.

North Korea calls the $6.3 billion Binance heist claims "nothing more than absurd fabrication."

KCNA issued the denial on Nov. 3, about two days after the FBI named Pyongyang as responsible.

Samson Mow says another 300 BTC has moved to the Liquid Federation wallet, cutting the shortfall to 250 BTC.

https://mempool.space/tx/2701150a160219c13c5a580bc7c93aeaee69bf5810b24cfffdc065d879fa4ed5

"One being you're looking at the IPO and the emergence of one of the most dominant franchises and institutions, institutions in the history of mankind."

on the Anthropic S-1.

"Bankers are more than happy to come in and sell these strategies to people and charge large spreads."

and Baron Koch CFA on Bitcoin yield strategies.

"His point is, we're here now, and it's time to throw a Hail Mary."

Baron Koch CFA on the Stephen Miran paper.

BofA ranks Texas as the highest-impact governor's race for data centers, utilities and power this cycle.

The bank calls it "the single most consequential election" for the sector. Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oregon also made its list, out of 36 races.

BofA still calls Texas "the clearest secular demand growth story in the sector." But it says investors should carry "materially wider volatility margins" than the market currently reflects.

The demand is there. The political outcome is the open question.

"One path is one of the most dominant franchises in the history of mankind. The other is horribly unsustainable and twelve months away from blowing up." -

We discuss: ⚡ The Anthropic S-1 ⚡ Big Tech's cash crunch ⚡ The Binance hack

New Jersey rescinds its Coinbase staking order after more than 3 years.

The state's Bureau of Securities pulled its June 2023 cease-and-desist order on October 30, and the matter is over. New Jersey users can stake again.

Coinbase estimates those users missed roughly $15 million in rewards while the order stood.

No new law was passed. No court ruled on whether staking is a security. The Bureau rescinded the order without prejudice, which leaves the door technically open.

Three years of lockout, and the legal question is still unanswered.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/sygt3q11s4a9/UP8DDH65wMBLgeI2RbWRR/90945f6360884dfa75aadcbac57d4f9f/Coinbase_Withdrawal_Order_10_30_26.pdf

Power outage hits Washington, D.C. the day before the midterms.

Pepco says an event at its I Street Substation in Foggy Bottom left about 1,100 customers without power. Outage maps listed 1,176. The area is blocks from the White House. Traffic lights and some federal facilities, including the State Department, were affected.

DC Fire and EMS responded to smoke from multiple manholes on H Street NW. One manhole reportedly exploded in front of the World Bank. Pepco said the cause was under investigation and gave no restoration time at first.

By the afternoon, the main outage was largely resolved.

https://www.popville.com/2026/11/power-outages-hit-1176-pepco-customers-dc-foggy-bottom-and-downtown/

"If you were to tell me that Binance would be hacked for 6.3 billion dollars and Bitcoin would be down less than five percent less than 18 hours later, I would have told you you're crazy."

and Baron Koch CFA on the Binance hack.

Apple sent threat notifications to German MPs and ministers saying mercenary spyware was aimed at their iPhones. The alerts started landing on 29 October.

Digital minister Karsten Wildberger confirmed it and said it is something that "unfortunately happens from time to time." That is the line that stuck with me. A spyware campaign against lawmakers is treated as a known hazard of the job.

The cyber agency BSI is not saying patch and move on. It tells recipients to assume the phone may be compromised, set up a new device with a new number, and skip the full backup restore.

When the official fix is replace the phone and the number, the threat model is not a bug. It is a budget with a government's name on it.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/02/german-mps-and-ministers-warned-iphones-have-been-targeted-by-spyware

"Once that question changes, the career risk flips on its head."

Baron Koch CFA on the switch that flips institutions into Bitcoin.

Four days after Binance's $6.3B hack, Mercado Bitcoin reports its own incident across multiple chains.

No public evidence links the two. The exchange says its own assets moved, not customer funds, and withdrawals stay paused.

https://news.bitcoin.com/security/brazil-mercado-bitcoin-halts-withdrawals-estimated-46m-stolen/

Blockchain Association and Crypto Council for Innovation filed comments on Illinois' draft rules for the Digital Asset Tax Act.

They still call the tax unlawful and have sued in state court.

The letter is a good-faith effort to engage the Department of Revenue.

https://theblockchainassociation.org/api/media/file/CCIBA_Joint_LetterReNoticeofDraftProposalImplementingtheDigitalAssetTaxAct.pdf

"Someone froze it and said, give us Bitcoin and we'll unfreeze it while a guy's sitting there on the operating table."

Baron Koch CFA on how Bitcoin first came across his desk.

Fidelity releases a video teaching clients the fundamentals of Bitcoin and crypto.

$2.85 billion of the $6.43 billion stolen from Binance has been frozen or seized, per Elliptic. That’s 44%.

Almost all of it was USDT and USDC.

Shoppers who arrive from AI assistants convert 60% better than other online shoppers, according to Adobe data shared by a16z.

They also bring in 53% more revenue per visit and bounce 34% less often.

Anthropic's amended S-1 says internal estimates show its models may soon cross its RSI threshold under its Responsible Scaling Policy: "dramatically accelerated progress attributable to AI."

It's in the filing.

TFTC 806 w/ (BaronKoch21): "Once the question changes from why would you put this in the portfolio to why haven't you, the career risk flips. That can happen in a matter of quarters."

We discuss: ⚡ The legend who quit ⚡ The Bitcoin switch ⚡ Washington's Hail Mary

The typical household 75 and older is worth $504,900.

The typical household under 35 is worth $33,000.

That's a 15x gap, per the Fed's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances.

OpenAI is planning a policy and PR push right after Tuesday's midterms, Axios reports.

The plan: rebrand data centers as "AI compute campuses" and ask Congress for mandatory "speed limits" on the most powerful AI systems.

Binance has resumed withdrawals on all 15 networks and assets in its first phase.

Net outflow since 06:00 UTC: roughly $3.64 billion, or 2.1% of its $171 billion in AUM.

Binance: "Rest assured that market conditions are stable."

Sweeper bots burned $4,800 of bitcoin in fees within minutes after a user withdrew to an insecure address.

The winning bot kept just $12.67. The miner got the rest.

The S&P 500 is just 3% below the record high it set on October 6.

Its worst drop this year was 9.1%, during the Iran war in March.

Zelensky says Ukraine, the US and Russia are preparing a trilateral meeting in the first half of November.

He discussed it with Erdoğan, including holding talks in Türkiye and involving Europe.

No date or venue confirmed yet.

Where it all started.

18 years ago a post on an obscure mailing list changed the course of human history.

Happy White Paper Day.

OpenAI's latest funding round values it at $1.25 trillion, short of the $1.4 trillion it was targeting.

It had been seeking $30 billion.

Annualized revenue is $50 billion, with a goal of $70 billion by year-end.

An extortion group called n0n published the passwords and keys to a firewall that guards the link Finzly's bank clients use to send payment instructions to the Federal Reserve.

Finzly connects 11 listed banks and credit unions to ACH, Fedwire and FedNow through a single shared connection. The leaked files describe a direct link labeled "FED" and rules for FedNow and FedACH traffic.

Finzly says it rotated its keys and credentials and that the files can't get anyone into its systems. The Fed says its payment services were not impacted.

The passwords were the easy part to fix. The map of how everything connects is still out there.

h/t

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/extortion-group-leaks-keys-to-bank-vendors-fed-firewall

"Microsoft's revenue went from 198 billion to 332 billion in the last four years, while staff only increased by 2,000 people."

Chamath Palihapitiya on AI productivity gains at Microsoft.

"That $80 billion loss is a phantom number."

David Sacks on why Anthropic's $80 billion loss was not real.

"There's no single company in the world that is doing more to race towards full RSI than anthropic."

David Sacks on Anthropic and the coming split with the doomers.

"The AI complex has gotten so big that it now competes with U.S. Treasuries."

Chamath Palihapitiya on the systemic risk of AI competing with Treasuries.

"The entire United States economy is levered to the AI complex."

Chamath Palihapitiya on AI companies competing with the US Treasury for capital.

French lawmakers approved a tax of €0.055 (5.5 cents) per gigabyte of data that companies like Netflix and YouTube send to French users.

The vote was 11 to 10. Only 35 of 577 lawmakers were present.

Supporters say it could raise up to €10 billion a year. The tax falls on the companies, not users directly, but the cost could be passed on to subscribers.

The French government opposed it, warning it would hit smaller French companies hardest. VLC says it would cost it over €1 million a year.

Trump says he is looking into the $6.3 billion Binance hack, as Binance says it has the situation pretty much under control.

CFTC proposes a federal registration option for crypto exchanges.

Selig: "Markets are best protected when regulated in the U.S."

Avenger air defense systems armed with Stinger missiles are now deployed near Mar-a-Lago, per the Palm Beach Post.

They sit on a barge next to the estate and near the airport where Air Force One parks, at the Secret Service's request.

"She was stuffing her bag with chickens, just literally stealing chicken for dinner because it's that bad."

Broken Country Film director Mira Metter on Canada's food bank crisis.

Chainalysis, the firm that tracks crypto hackers, has been hacked itself.

In a customer email seen by International Cyber Digest, the company says an external attacker used "offensive agentic techniques" to gain unauthorized access to its systems. Exposed data: user IDs, full names, email addresses and organization role labels.

Chainalysis says there is no indication that investigation content, passwords, MFA secrets or session tokens were accessed. It also says the incident is unrelated to the $6.3B Binance heist.

The notice has circulated as a shared customer email. There is no broad public statement from the company yet.

.The Rage says only about $2.7 billion of the $6.36 billion stolen from Binance has been frozen.

Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial froze about $2.67 billion in stablecoins. Arbitrum's Security Council froze 8,426 ETH and 74.6 million ARB.

The attacker raced the freezes, selling USDT to market makers and borrowing ETH against USDT on Aave. It still holds more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, about $2.4 billion beyond any issuer's reach.

TRM Labs attributes the theft to North Korea's TraderTraitor.

North Korea-linked hacks now average $185.65M per incident in 2026 YTD, up from $50.65M in 2021.

That is about 3.7x larger per hack.

The cleanest sats are the ones you mine yourself.

(simpleminingio) hosts your miner. Fresh bitcoin, direct to your wallet.

No exchange. No KYC. No one in between.

https://www.tftc.io/simplemining/

Anthropic may get a junk credit rating despite its mega-IPO.

Blackstone has warned investors that Anthropic is likely to receive a below-investment-grade credit rating, in the double-B range, after its planned IPO. That reverses earlier expectations for investment grade.

The downgrade risk complicates Anthropic's plans to borrow cheaply for AI infrastructure buildout. An investment-grade rating would unlock lower borrowing costs for projects like Project North Star, the company's $63B chip financing deal where Blackstone is an anchor investor.

Anthropic reportedly holds over $112B in cash and equivalents, with investors expecting the IPO could raise ~$100B. But a junk rating means bond market access comes at a premium, if it comes at all.

https://www.ft.com/content/59383c7f-8d82-493f-bf01-d2e862a1018f?syn-25a6b1a6=1

"I literally got crack smoke blown in my face."

on anarcho-tyranny in New York City.

Tether reports ~$1.5B in net operating profit for Q3 2026. USDT in circulation: ~183.5B.

Excess reserves nearly doubled to $7.95B from $4.1B at the end of Q2.

Google's Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is working in orbit.

Engineers sent a command up, booted the TPU, ran a prompt, and got a full response back on earth.

The first output: a haiku.

"You can just opt out. You don't have to ask for permission to adopt a better money."

on Bitcoin as the exit from broken money.

The Digital Chamber is asking Congress to pass a targeted bill before the 119th Congress ends: customer asset protections, CFTC oversight of U.S. exchanges, and baseline cybersecurity standards.

Its letter cites the $6.3 billion Binance theft.

https://digitalchamber.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Congressional-Letter-on-Consumer-Protection-10.30.26.pdf

Ten tech names are now in a bear market, and Intel and Western Digital sit at -54% each.

Columbia engineers built a living knee replacement and it just passed a simulated walk.

The 3D-printed implant was placed in a cadaver knee and attached to robotic machinery. It withstood hundreds of pounds of force, similar to an adult striding briskly, with no cracks or malfunctions, according to the Washington Post.

The design uses a biodegradable scaffold seeded with cartilage and bone cells. The scaffold supports the joint while the cells grow new tissue. It is meant to dissolve over time, leaving living cartilage and bone behind.

Preliminary human testing could start in about 18 months if the research goes well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/10/15/scientists-may-have-key-treating-arthritis-regrowing-knee/

Binance CEO Richard Teng confirms attackers used Ethereum's EIP-7702 delegation mechanism to gain execution authority over a Binance hot wallet.

The exploit bypassed the exchange's normal transaction controls.

Indirect bidders took 45.7% of Monday's $69B 2-year auction, the lowest share in 18 two-year auctions going back to May 2025.

Your AI can pull this straight from the TFTC MCP. No burning tokens scraping Treasury PDFs.

https://tftc.io/ai

"This film was funded primarily through Bitcoin."

Mike Werry on why Broken Country was funded with bitcoin.

"To raise a family in 500 square feet, it's an impossibility."

Broken Country Film director Mira Metter on Canada's housing crisis.

Higgsfield promised to open source its product and never did.

ComfyUI's community built open source alternatives anyway.

Now Higgsfield sent a cease and desist demanding the challenge be taken down within 48 hours.

ComfyUI CEO: "When we started Comfy, we made the community a promise. Our product stays open, free, and yours. We've kept it every day since, and one letter isn't going to change that."