New SEC staff guidance: once a crypto network is functional, maintaining or improving it doesn't constitute "essential managerial efforts" under Howey. Token buybacks and staking receipt tokens on live networks can fall outside securities law. h/t @EleanorTerrett

Anthropic's seven co-founders own ~14% of the company but want 50.1% of the shareholder vote through special shares. A "Long-Term Benefit Trust" with zero equity can elect a majority of the board. Google, Meta, and Snap founders had dual-class control too, but they owned 28-36% at IPO. This is a different animal. h/t @matthew_sigel

The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.47%, the highest since 2004. It closed under 1% in 2020.

Japan's 30-year bond yield briefly hit 4.23%, the highest since the bond launched in 1999. The 40-year is at 4.27%, 12 bps from its all-time high. The 20-year hit 3.97%, a three-decade high.

The CFTC just released updated guidance on how digital assets can be used as collateral in derivatives markets.

TFTC 795 w/ @jvisserlabs: "We're about to unleash the 900 trillion in liquid form. That's what tokenization is. And the Ponzi scheme then ends." We discuss: ⚡ The $900T Ponzi hiding in the fiat system ⚡ Why the next crisis may never come ⚡ What actually sends Bitcoin to $1M

The 30-year Treasury yield just hit 5.43%, its highest level since June 2004. It was under 1% in 2020.

China's spot copper premium hit 1,375 yuan per ton, the highest since November 2021. Refined copper imports fell 11% in August, and LME copper is trading near $14,577 a ton.

Spot bitcoin ETFs took in $1 billion yesterday, their biggest day of 2026. That flipped year-to-date flows positive for the first time since April. Option 2 (year-over-year, from the chart) Spot bitcoin ETF net flows: 2024: +$35.2 billion 2025: +$21.3 billion 2026: +$349 million Yesterday's $1 billion day is what pulled this year back above zero.

A Morgan Stanley employee accidentally emailed out a list of 100+ deals the bank is working on in Asia. Potential IPOs, the private equity and pension funds backing them, and projects on hold.

Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 will deliberately fall back to a less capable model when asked about frontier LLM development tasks like ML kernel development.

The US is projected to spend 4.3% of GDP on debt interest payments by 2027, among the highest in the developed world. Japan, despite the largest debt-to-GDP ratio, pays just 0.9%. America's debt problem isn't just how much it owes. It's what it costs to carry.

Web traffic to the top 100 US news sites has fallen 28% in two years. Down from ~66 million monthly visits to 47.6 million. The legacy media business model was already on life support. Advertising revenue was cratering. Subscriptions were plateauing. Now the audience is physically leaving. People aren't consuming less information. They're getting it from podcasts, newsletters, group chats, and social feeds run by individuals they actually trust. The institutional brand means less every year. The news industry spent two decades trading credibility for clicks. Now they're losing both. Data: Similarweb via Axios

The ECB and all 27 EU central banks want to scrap MiCA's rule requiring major stablecoin issuers to hold 60% of reserves in bank deposits. Their reasoning? Stablecoin flows are too volatile and could expose banks to sudden deposit withdrawals. The central banks aren't worried about protecting stablecoin holders. They're worried about protecting banks FROM stablecoin holders. The proposed fix: issuers hold reserves in "highly liquid assets" maturing in 1 to 5 days instead of parking them at banks. Translation: stablecoins got big enough that their deposit requirements became a systemic risk to the very banking system they were forced to integrate with. The regulated structure created the fragility. This is what happens when you try to shoehorn new money into old pipes.

If AI companies really think they're going to destroy humanity, why don't they just stop? Big AI wants regulation for the same reason Amazon wanted sales taxes. @Gary_Brode explains why AI safety talk is really about killing competition.

The policies sold as fixing wealth inequality are the ones causing it. If you own a home, Bitcoin, or gold, inflation is making you richer. Everyone else is paying for it. @Gary_Brode explains the economic illiteracy behind today's policy debate.

Diesel hit a record $6.51/gal nationally today. That matters because diesel moves goods and runs the heavy equipment you need to build things. Hard to get excited about reindustrializing the country while the fuel bill for doing it keeps climbing. But a few data points are getting lost in the supply shortage fear. Venezuelan crude imports hit their highest rate since mid-2017 at 782,000 barrels/day. Gulf Coast refineries are well-suited for that heavy crude. More oil is also getting through Hormuz than headlines suggest, with flows near 12 million barrels/day. The real question is duration. How long can diesel stay this expensive before it undermines the industrial growth we need?

Someone tell bitcoin it's not mainstream yet.

China is rapidly scaling its AI infrastructure as global data center capex projections nearly double since January 2026, now expected to top $3 trillion by 2030.

xAI just dropped Grok 4.7.

TFTC 794 w/ @Gary_Brode: "People still believe the Federal Reserve has control. It doesn't. The bond market doesn't care what Warsh is doing, nothing stops this train." We discuss: ⚡ Why the Fed lost control ⚡ The AI bubble & OpenAI ⚡ Bitcoin in El Salvador

Christine Lagarde personally blocked Binance from operating in the EU, per the WSJ. Binance was on the cusp of getting licensed under MiCA, the EU's crypto regulatory framework, when Lagarde stepped in and killed it. She wanted "the controversial crypto exchange" kept out entirely. The stated reason? Binance pleaded guilty to AML violations in the US and paid a $4.3B fine. But the real tell is buried deeper in the report: Lagarde was worried Binance would embed dollar-denominated stablecoin dominance across Europe instead of encouraging euro alternatives. The head of the ECB isn't protecting consumers. She's protecting the euro's market share. This is the same woman who called bitcoin "a highly speculative asset used for money laundering" in 2021. The same one who swears central banks will never hold bitcoin. The same one who launched "Pontes" today, a platform to settle tokenized assets in central bank money, while pushing a consumer-facing digital euro by 2027. The pattern is clear: ban the competition, build the surveillance tool, call it innovation. Lagarde doesn't fear crypto crime. She fears losing monetary control. A world where Europeans freely trade dollar stablecoins on Binance is a world where the ECB becomes irrelevant. So she's kicking out the exchange and fast-tracking a programmable euro she controls. Binance withdrew its MiCA application in Greece in June and says it's pursuing authorization in another EU member state. But the message to every crypto company is loud: you're welcome in Europe only if you serve Europe's central bank agenda. The US banned CBDCs by executive order. Europe is sprinting to build one while locking out the alternatives. Two very different visions for the future of money playing out in real time.

Housing affordability has hit an all-time low as the income needed to buy a median-priced home far outpaces median household earnings.

Saudi Arabia leaving mBridge is getting a lot of attention today. Meanwhile, CIPS transaction volume just hit ~50 trillion CNY and the trend line doesn't care about headlines. Every "this will stop de-dollarization" moment, Iran kicked from SWIFT, Russian sanctions, chip export bans, trade wars, has been followed by acceleration, not reversal. The plumbing is being built whether we pay attention or not.

Chinese state media is spreading fear about US data centers while celebrating AI wins at home. 80% of Chinese citizens are optimistic about AI. Only 17% of Americans are. @SamLyman33 explains why China wants Americans to hate AI.

The anti-data center crowd claims to stand up for the working class. The unions disagree. @SamLyman33 explains why 40+ labor groups are fighting against data center regulations.

Alaska pays its residents to live there. Rural counties could be next. @SamLyman33 explains why AI infrastructure is the new oil fund.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce is pushing for 24-hour stock trading. Extended hours currently account for less than 1% of total NMS stock volume. Meanwhile, bitcoin has traded 24/7/365 since day one. The legacy system is slowly discovering what bitcoin figured out 17 years ago.

TFTC 793 w/ @SamLyman33: "The same Chinese state media sowing fear about data centers here is celebrating AI milestones back in China. It's the coup of the year." We discuss: ⚡ China's anti-AI psyop ⚡ The $278M money trail ⚡ Data center dividends

VanEck's Matthew Sigel: "We track the number of countries that are mining or holding bitcoin at the sovereign level and that goes up every year."

Governments are running influence operations on social media right now. Not hypothetically. Documented. Citizen Lab just exposed BlackCore, an Israeli influence-for-hire company that trained Angolan government personnel to run ops using fake identities, fake news outlets, and coordinated posting. To someone scrolling, it looks like ordinary people noticing the same thing. This isn't just an Angola problem. Meta removed a network linked to the US military in 2022. OpenAI identified a covert Chinese campaign posing as Americans pushing anti-data-center narratives. The Bitcoin Policy Institute traced CCP-aligned funding into nonprofit networks opposing American AI infrastructure. The playbook is simple: take something real that people care about, amplify it through fake accounts, steer the reaction, and wait for people to demand a solution they'd never have accepted otherwise. Ask yourself: What do you know? What are you assuming? Who benefits from you being angry at this particular thing, at this particular moment? And what are they asking you to support while you're angry?

The "AI Evaluator Forum" just published an open letter that David Sacks is calling "Trust & Safety 2.0." 100+ researchers are calling on every frontier AI company to embed independent third-party evaluators inside their labs with access equivalent to senior employees, protection from retaliation, and direct lines to company boards. The letter dropped the same day as Newsom's executive order calling for the same thing. aievaluatorforum.org/initiat…

Anthropic has quietly set up a physical wet lab in the Bay Area for hands-on biological experiments. The company won't disclose the lab's size, headcount, or biosafety level. Their head of life sciences confirmed the lab. A spokesperson then clarified it's "not for drug discovery specifically" without elaborating on what it is for. Anthropic is also pushing to have its AI direct robotic units to carry out experiments with limited human intervention. They call it "very early innings." The timing is something. In the past two weeks, Anthropic's own researchers warned AI could lead to human extinction. The company reported cases where its systems could have been used toward bioweapons development. And now they're scaling a physical biology lab while preparing for a potential $2 trillion IPO. reuters.com/world/anthropic-…

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon told Bret Baier on Fox News he didn't work with "any third parties" ahead of his public resignation. A Wall Street Journal claims Coxon turned to the general counsel of AI safety nonprofit Encode AI for help with the announcement. He also briefed a Journal reporter beforehand, with the WSJ exclusive dropping about 30 minutes before his X post. Friends and AI safety advocates then amplified it. The Journal was part of the rollout it's now reporting on. wsj.com/tech/ai/jacob-coxon-…

California Gov. Newsom just signed an executive order exploring the creation of an AI "kill switch" for frontier models. The order accelerates two new laws establishing independent oversight of AI companies. It convenes an expert panel to deliver recommendations within 60 days and would require independent verification organizations embedded onsite at AI labs. Newsom is positioning himself as the AI safety candidate ahead of a likely presidential run.

Hedge fund Treasury holdings: $2.35 trillion, up 154% in 5 years. They now own a record ~7% of the marketable Treasury market. Why? The basis trade, arbing tiny price differences between cash bonds and futures using heavy leverage. Banks can't absorb enough new supply, so levered hedge funds are filling the gap. The US Treasury market is increasingly dependent on a crowded, leveraged trade to function. h/t @KobeissiLetter

The CEO of METR, the organization Anthropic wants overseeing all frontier AI models, on camera calling immigration controls immoral and saying future generations will be embarrassed borders ever existed.

Jensen Huang on shipping AI: "You should go as fast as you can, but no faster than that." "We have to just go back to core engineering. Make sure that we have the rigor of testing these products properly before we release it to the public."

A Nigerian man running a California home health company billed Medicaid over $36 million. Under $2M from 2018-2021. Then $34M from 2022-2024. Nobody noticed. Mansions in California. A palace in Nigeria. His company hadn't filed required state reports since 2019.

Treasury says OFAC designated BitBank, an Iranian exchange it claims was used to launder funds and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The exchange is described as "a priority digital assets venture" controlled by previously sanctioned financier Babak Zanjani. Treasury also designated BitBank's developer and three Zanjani associates. The action falls under "Operation Economic Outcast," the broader campaign Treasury says is aimed at severing Iran's sanctions evasion channels. Secretary Bessent: "Today's designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC's reach. If you support the Iranian regime, the Department of the Treasury will sanction you." home.treasury.gov/news/press…