LIVE: Midwest Bitcoin Summit | Day Two nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1pKdRDYeq…

BLOCK JOINS x402 FOUNDATION, BRINGS BITCOIN LIGHTNING TO AI AGENT PAYMENTS Block has joined the x402 Foundation and contributed Bitcoin Lightning support to the open payment standard for AI agents. x402 embeds payments directly into HTTP, allowing AI agents to autonomously pay for goods, services and other agentic tools. Block says Lightning is suited for the billions of instant, low-cost, small payments expected to emerge from the agentic economy.

BITGET FACES POSSIBLE $176 MILLION HACK On-chain data shows $176 million in ETH and USDT0 moved from multiple Bitget wallets to a single address amid suspected unauthorized activity. No Bitcoin was involved in the suspected hack. Bitget has yet to comment.

Saving used to mean saving. You could store the product of your labor in money without being forced into stocks, bonds, real estate or increasingly complex financial products just to preserve its purchasing power. Today, standing still means getting run over. Bitcoin offers something remarkably simple. Bitcoin owners can simply save again.

Strategy is now the 21st most-traded U.S. stock, ahead of Robinhood on multiple September sessions. Peak August days saw 46 to 49 million MSTR shares change hands, briefly as high as 10th by turnover, with a 30-day average around 22 to 25 million. The magnet is the balance sheet: more than 800,000 BTC, with reports above 840,000 by late summer, funded in part by more than $5.6 billion of preferred stock through May. Short interest was about 14% of market cap as of February, which keeps the stock busy on both sides.

We have entered a whole new era of AI-empowered orange pilling 👀

Speaking in 10 mins! Live stream here on @BitcoinNewsCom:

NEW: CME FedWatch now treats four quarter-point hikes by June 2027 as the most likely path, taking the funds rate toward 4.75% to 5%. The Fed already added 25 bps this month, to a 3.75% to 4% range. The 10-year yield is above 5.1%, last seen in 2007, and the 20-year is near 5.5%. Bitcoin has slipped below $83,000 from a local high around $87,500, with the dollar index above 101.

BLINK MAKES USERS WHOLE AFTER SEPTEMBER 19 EXPLOIT @blinkbtc says every account that lost funds in its September 19 security incident has been fully restored to its pre-incident balance. A software flaw allowed an attacker to drain several dozen accounts and access account information belonging to roughly 3,400 additional users. Blink says no funds were stolen from those 3,400 accounts and no names, IDs or addresses were accessed. The company says affected users have been contacted and a full post-mortem is coming.

Soon.

Wallets holding 100 to 1,000 BTC have added 113,950 BTC since July 15, according to Santiment. About 18,205 of those wallets now hold 5,243,253 BTC, roughly 26.1% of circulating supply. The same cohort added 222,756 BTC over the past year. They distributed about 77,800 BTC around July 19, then came back after the late-July Coldcard shock. That band is mid-tier size, not proof the coins sit with institutions, but it is a thick transfer into a supply cluster that already holds more than a quarter of bitcoin.

NEW: StarkWare says the GPU cost to prepare an experimental quantum-resistant bitcoin transaction is now under $67, down about 79% from the roughly $320 spent on the first mainnet send in August. A weeklong challenge produced 62 accepted optimizations. That first Quantum-Safe Bitcoin transaction was mined August 26 through MARA's Slipstream after about 3,100 GPU-hours. It still does not change consensus. StarkWare continues to prefer a soft fork for broad protection.

CIRCLE’S $USDC IS COMING TO BITCOIN THROUGH ALPEN Alpen is partnering with Circle to bring native, Circle-issued USDC and CCTP to its Bitcoin financial system when mainnet launches. The integration will allow BTC holders to borrow, lend and trade using regulated dollar stablecoin liquidity without selling their Bitcoin or moving it to another network. CCTP will connect Alpen with other supported networks, enabling USDC to move cross-chain without wrapped representations for swaps, payments and treasury rebalancing.

Public bitcoin miners have announced AI and HPC power deals estimated at $70 billion to $100 billion. An AI tenant can pay about $1.5 million per megawatt a year, versus roughly $500,000 for mining. Core Scientific's CoreWeave contract is $10.2 billion over 12 years for 590 MW. IREN's Microsoft deal is about $9.7 billion over five years. Of about 4 GW contracted, only about 550 MW is earning revenue, around 14%. Analysts also flag about 35 EH/s leaving these firms as power is redirected.

RESEARCHERS PROPOSE “SHIELDED BITCOIN” FOR PRIVATE TRANSFERS DIRECTLY ON BITCOIN L1 The proposed metaprotocol by @allocinitxyz would hide transaction amounts and counterparties without a soft fork, new blockchain, trusted operators or bridges. Value is represented through encrypted “notes,” with transfers published to Bitcoin alongside zero-knowledge proofs verifying their validity. Bitcoin itself only stores and orders the encrypted data, while separate software verifies the proofs and independently derives the Shielded Bitcoin state. A companion paper will detail how bitcoin can enter and exit the shielded system using L1 security vaults via PIPEs.

STRIVE LAUNCHES BITCOIN TREASURY PREFERRED INCOME ETF The T-Strive Digital Credit Preferred Income ETF will invest at least 80% of assets in preferred securities issued by Bitcoin treasury companies and derivatives providing exposure to them. The fund will initially focus on two securities: $STRC - Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock $SATA - Strive’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock The actively managed ETF is expected to initially allocate roughly equally between the two, but can adjust exposure based on yield, valuation, liquidity and financing conditions. The fund can also tactically add leverage when preferreds fall below par, use total return swaps, and write puts at prices where it would be willing to acquire the underlying securities. The ETF is designed to generate current income from the preferred layer of Bitcoin treasury company capital structures rather than their common equity. It will not hold Bitcoin directly.

Our coverage of @MWBTCSummit continues 🙌 SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce now on stage 👀

AI RESEARCH SHOWS ONLINE PSEUDONYMS MAY NO LONGER PROVIDE ANONYMITY Research published at USENIX Security 2026 shows LLMs can deanonymize pseudonymous internet users at scale by analyzing their posts and matching them across platforms. Researchers say successful identifications cost as little as $1–$4 each, while using higher-reasoning AI models doubled their matching success rate. The team warns that as AI improves, deanonymization will become cheaper and more effective, potentially forcing platforms to rethink what online anonymity actually means.

After spending 2 fascinating days at Freedom Tech DC by @bitcoinpolicy — where the major theme was the convergence of AI and the Bitcoin protocol— I’m more excited than ever to listen to @JeffBooth talk about this tomorrow/Friday. If you haven’t already registered, do it now and join us!