Crypto World
Polymarket appoints Amazon veteran as first CFO
Polymarket has appointed former Amazon finance chief Warren Jenson as its first chief financial officer on Sept. 10, placing him in charge of finance and capital strategy during the company’s U.S. expansion.
Summary
- Polymarket has appointed former Amazon executive Warren Jenson as its first chief financial officer ever.
- Jenson will oversee Polymarket’s finance organization, capital strategy, infrastructure and long-range planning functions worldwide operations.
- Polymarket is expanding its CFTC-regulated U.S. exchange while continuing to operate its international platform globally.
- Jenson previously held senior finance roles at Amazon, Nielsen, Electronic Arts, Delta Air Lines, NBC.
- The appointment follows Polymarket’s regulated U.S. return through its $112 million acquisition of QCEX infrastructure.
Polymarket’s Sept. 10 announcement said Jenson will report directly to founder and CEO Shayne Coplan. His responsibilities include leading the finance organization, setting capital strategy, strengthening long-range planning and building financial infrastructure.
The company linked the appointment to two business lines. Polymarket is developing its Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated U.S. exchange while continuing to operate its international prediction market platform.
No financial terms for Jenson’s appointment were disclosed. Polymarket did not announce a start date separate from the appointment date or provide details about other planned changes to its executive team.
Polymarket CFO brings experience from large public companies
Jenson previously served as chief financial officer of Amazon, Electronic Arts, Delta Air Lines and NBC. His career gives Polymarket a finance leader who has worked across technology, media, aviation and public-company operations.
At Nielsen, Jenson held the roles of president and CFO. His responsibilities covered finance, strategy, technology, corporate development and the company’s analytics business. He previously served as president of data connectivity company LiveRamp, where he managed finance and international operations.
Jenson currently serves on the boards of Ripple, Dropbox and DigitalOcean. Polymarket identified those positions in its announcement but did not say whether his board responsibilities would change following the appointment.
Speaking about the role, Jenson said he would establish the capital strategy and operating systems needed to help the company “move quickly at scale.” Polymarket described that growth plan as covering both its regulated U.S. exchange and international operations.
“The opportunity ahead of us is enormous,” Jenson said, presenting his assessment of Polymarket’s potential.
The description remains a company projection. Polymarket did not provide audited revenue, profit, cash-flow or user-growth figures with the CFO announcement.
U.S. expansion follows the QCEX acquisition
Polymarket’s U.S. strategy relies on regulated infrastructure acquired through its $112 million purchase of QCEX and QC Clearing in July 2025. QCX was registered with the CFTC as a designated contract market, while the affiliated clearing organization provided the structure needed to clear transactions.
In September 2025, CFTC staff granted QCX and QC Clearing no-action relief covering specified reporting and recordkeeping requirements. The relief supported Polymarket’s route back into the U.S. market through regulated entities.
American users had been blocked from Polymarket’s international platform after a January 2022 CFTC enforcement case. The regulator found that the company had offered off-exchange event-based binary options without obtaining the required registration.
Polymarket agreed to pay a $1.4 million civil penalty, wind down contracts that did not comply with the Commodity Exchange Act and restrict access for U.S. customers. The settlement did not provide Polymarket with authorization to operate a domestic exchange at the time.
Acquiring QCEX created a separate regulatory path. The international platform uses USDC and records transactions through smart contracts on Polygon, while regulated U.S. operations sit within the CFTC-supervised derivatives framework.
The company’s announcement did not identify new contracts, launch dates or geographic availability tied to Jenson’s appointment. His immediate work will center on financial planning and infrastructure as the U.S. business develops.
Capital strategy becomes central to Polymarket’s growth
Jenson joins after Polymarket attracted funding from large financial and political investors. Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, agreed in October 2025 to invest up to $2 billion in the company.
The agreement initially valued Polymarket at $8 billion before the investment. ICE received rights to distribute Polymarket’s event-driven data to institutional customers and agreed to work with the company on tokenization projects.
As crypto.news reported, the NYSE parent committed $2 billion to Polymarket as part of a relationship extending beyond an equity investment. ICE planned to package probability data produced by Polymarket’s event contracts for professional financial clients.
By March 2026, ICE had built a reported $1.64 billion position. ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher said in August that the exchange operator could consider joining another financing if its participation helped Polymarket complete the round.
Separate reporting in September said Donald Trump Jr.-linked 1789 Capital had agreed to lead a $1 billion funding round. Under the reported proposal, 1789 Capital would invest roughly $300 million at a $21 billion valuation.
The financing remained a reported transaction when crypto.news covered how the proposed round valued Polymarket at $21 billion. Polymarket did not confirm the round’s closing in its CFO announcement.
Managing existing investor relationships, future fundraising and spending controls falls within the finance functions assigned to Jenson. Polymarket did not disclose whether it is preparing an initial public offering or another public-market transaction.
Warren Jenson will report directly to Shayne Coplan
Coplan said Jenson’s experience would support the products and infrastructure Polymarket plans to build. In a separate post, the CEO described Jenson as a “true legend” and welcomed him to the company.
The formal announcement gave Jenson authority over finance, capital allocation and long-range planning. It did not identify a previous executive who handled those duties before Polymarket created the CFO position.
Hiring a first finance chief places one executive over functions that can include budgeting, treasury management, financial reporting, investor relations and capital planning. Polymarket specified only the responsibilities listed in its release, leaving the final structure of Jenson’s organization undisclosed.
Regulatory matters remain separate from the stated CFO mandate. Polymarket’s U.S. exchange must continue operating through CFTC-regulated infrastructure, while individual states have pursued their own challenges involving sports-related event contracts.
Jenson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University. Polymarket did not announce further senior appointments or give a timetable for the next phase of its U.S. product rollout.
The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act is going to go through a very important Senate test on September 15th after more than a year of legislative work on the bill. The House passed H.R. 3633 by a vote of 294- 134 in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced its version 15-9 in May 2026.
Lawmakers later merged the work from the Banking and Agricultural committees, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture before the August recess, setting September 15 as the next major hurdle.
The vote is not final passage. Senators are basically deciding whether or not to proceed with the debate, and cloture requires 60 votes, so Republicans need Democrats or support from independent seats. Senate Republicans have now released further revisions after recess negotiations. They said that the bill includes more than 115 Democratic “wins,” with new fraud measures and changes for certain decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, as well as clear crypto authority for credit unions.
The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, urged a “yes” vote, noting the company’s previous must-have concerns have been resolved as well.
That said, failure to reach 60 votes could seriously weaken momentum behind the most advanced attempt of Congress at what many see as a comprehensive crypto market-structure framework. But why is that? Well, in this article, we will walk you through the three most important things that the CLARITY Act does for crypto.
The SEC-CFTC Divide is the Core of the Legislation
CLARITY is fundamentally about making sure who regulates what. The framework is designed to preserve the Security and Exchange Commission’s authority over securties and certain transactions involving fundraising. At the same time, though, it als expands the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s role over spot digital-commodity markets and intermediaries.
The text also introduces what is referred to as “ancillary assets.” In essence, these are network tokens whose value may depend on entrepreneurial or managerial efforts, while treating the tokens themselves as commodities and requiring specific disclosures.
Those obligations can potentially end when the relevant managerial efforts cease. In practice, the proposal seeks to separate the securities-law treatment of fundraising transactions (ICO, STOs, IEOs, NFT launches, etc) from the later regulatory status of the token itself. This in itself addresses one of the industry’s longest-running legal uncertainties.
DeFi Protection Comes With a Test of Decentralization
The second issue that the bill seeks to address is the field of decentralized finance and self-custody. The latest revisions target non-decentralized DeFi protocols. This means that these are DeFi protocols that appear decentralized while identifiable parties retain meaningful control, with CFTC registration requirements for relevant spot digital-commodity activity.
The broader framework looks at discretion, control, as well as the ability to censor operations when making the call whether a protocol is decentralized or not. At the same time, however, it protects certain software developers and network participants whose role is limited to software development or validating transactions. Moreover, it also states that federal agencies generally cannot stop individuals from using self-hosted wallets.
The goal here is to regulate the entities that actually control financia services without necessarily treating open-source code or truly decentralized infrastructure like centralized exchanges by default.
Crypto Exchanges Would Face a Formal Federal Regulation
Last but definitely not least, the companies through which most Americans actually buy and sell crypto are also under consideration for regulation. The CLARITY Act would bring digital-commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers into a defined federal registration and supervision regime. This comes as opposed to leaving them to operate under the current combination of state requirements, enforcement actions, as well as confusing and oftentimes overlapping federal authority.
The framework includes requirements for both customer protection and market integrity. The latest Senate proposal also applies the Bank Secrecy Act obligations to relevant cryptocurrency intermediaries.
In essence, this means that anti-money-laundering programs, customer identification, reporting of suspicious activity, as well as sanction compliance would become integral and explicit part of the federal framework.
The legislation also calls for additional disclosures and protections intended to address insider abuse, fraude, and treatment of customer assets.
This is the reason for which the CLARITY Act represetns more than just a decision over whether individual tokens are securities or commodities – it could establish the critical federal operating rules for the entire crypto market.
The post The 3 Most Important Things to Know About the CLARITY Act appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto's overnight advance did not survive the U.S. open on Wednesday. Bitcoin carried a gain out of the Asian and European sessions, gave all of it back in the first hours of New York trading, and by midday sat within $60 of where it closed on Tuesday. The tape is waiting on two federal price… Read the full story at The Defiant
Sinclair was joined on stage by Jennifer Garrison, a neuroscientist with expertise in the women’s health biotech field, and Jack Jia, the founder and CEO of Musely, a telehealth platform aimed at expanding access to personalized prescription care that sponsored the event on Sept. 10.
Garrison’s longevity work focuses largely on women’s health, in particular on ovaries—something she said affects not just women, but everyone, because “understanding the differences between male bodies and female bodies gives us levers with which to develop medicines.”
“When we miss female physiology, we’ve essentially left out half of the picture,” she said.
For example, she said, female bodies tend to be better at fighting viruses than male bodies. Researchers don’t fully understand why, but if they were able to understand those differences, it could help better equip the medical community to treat everyone depending on their needs, Garrison argued.
When Kumar asked her how far along the medical field is in understanding these differences, Garrison replied, “We’re pretty far behind, as it turns out.” But, she continued, “Everyone understands that there’s a challenge here that we’ve got a data gap, that we’ve got this systemic bias about our research, that we’re essentially, I think, generations behind.”
“It’s not years. It’s not decades. It’s generations behind in terms of the data,” she said. “So we’re catching up, but it’s going to take a while.”
During the conversation, Jia shared that he was inspired to expand Musely beyond being a skincare tip platform after his wife’s struggle to find effective treatments for her melasma.
“This kind of wellness or cosmetics conditions are everyone’s problem,” Jia said. But “the entire healthcare system is not designed to solve that problem; it’s designed to solve that real sick person who is dying.”
Since then, Jia has broadened Musely’s scope to include resources and treatments for proactive health and longevity.
Kumar went on to ask the panelists what they think about the recent “explosion in testing” in the longevity space—how people are getting all kinds of tests and scans to, they claim, optimize living longer and better. Garrison said that, where there is evidence for the test, it’s a great option. But that is not always the case.
“I think we can all acknowledge that there’s a little bit of a credibility issue in the longevity space, and a lot of the products that are marketed are either poorly supported by evidence or outright pseudoscience,” Garrison said. “For women, the amount of information and marketing that comes at us these days is crazy. And part of the problem is that it’s very hard as a consumer, as someone who’s not a scientist or a doctor, to really make the call between, ‘Is this real or not?’”
Sinclair expressed concerns that what people used to consider to be “fringe” behaviors, such as injecting oneself with peptides or taking drugs that have not yet been proven to be effective in humans, is becoming more common.
“I wonder where we’re going to go,” he said. “But I do applaud the fact that people do have the right, with their doctors … to try something if there’s nothing else that works, and there’s no seemingly bad downside.”
“I thought that five years ago, in my opinion, the regulations were so strict that even people who were suffering or dying couldn’t get medicines,” he continued. “That was too extreme in my view, but we’ve gone with the other extreme.”
Mad Money host Jim Cramer says the 30-year Treasury, not company fundamentals, is now the single force driving stock prices. He points to a yield near 5.3% squeezing housing, borrowing costs, and equity valuations.
Cramer recalled a lesson from his early Goldman Sachs days. An instructor corrected his fundamentals-based take on Delta Air Lines by pointing to the long bond instead.
Why the Long Bond Now Overrides Fundamentals
Cramer argued a government-backed 5.3% yield gives investors a safer alternative to stocks. That pressure is already forcing capital-intensive sectors, like airlines, to compete for funding.
“The long bond, the 30-year Treasury, is in charge of everything.”
— Jim Cramer, CNBC
Cramer’s warning echoes a pattern already seen this year. In August, bond stress hit Asia, pushing investors toward Bitcoin and gold.
A similar dynamic emerged in late August. BeInCrypto reported on a dangerous September pattern linking bonds, stocks, and Bitcoin.
Housing and Treasury Supply Add to the Squeeze
Higher long-term rates are hitting housing directly. Cramer noted mortgage rates breached 7%, discouraging new listings and pricing out buyers.
Housing touches nearly every part of the economy, from materials and wages to retail spending. Cramer said that ripple effect makes the sector especially sensitive to rate moves.
Cramer also criticized the scale of Treasury issuance. He noted roughly $4.5 trillion in long bonds are outstanding.
That dwarfs the government’s buyback program, which he called too small to move yields. He also flagged proposed stimulus checks as a further drag on the deficit.
That concern echoes recent BeInCrypto coverage of how rates threaten GOP turnout ahead of the midterms.
For investors over 50, Cramer said Treasuries now beat lower-yielding stocks. Younger investors, he added, can still afford to hold riskier growth names.
With oil prices still elevated, Cramer said energy costs and Treasury yields will keep dictating which sectors suffer first. Airlines, he suggested, remain the most exposed.
The post Jim Cramer Says Forget Stocks, the 30-Year Treasury Is King Right Now appeared first on BeInCrypto.
New Apple CEO John Ternus holds the new foldable iPhone Duo during Apple’s event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S. Sept. 9, 2026.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Apple‘s first folding phone is getting a tepid response Chinese consumers that are focused more on how much it costs versus existing foldables from domestic rivals.
“I won’t buy it this year. I’ll buy the second-generation foldable next year,” one user on social media platform WeChat said, according to CNBC’s translation, after Apple announced the iPhone Duo at an event on Wednesday. It’s priced at 15,999 yuan ($2,230) in China.
U.S. consumers “earn US$3,000 to US$4,000 a month and buy it for US$1,999. We earn 3,000 to 4,000 yuan and spend 10,000 yuan on it,” one commenter wrote on a WeChat video review translated by CNBC.
Apple shares climbed more than 3% after the launch event.
But the company faces a key test in its third-biggest market of Greater China, which generates around 17% of total revenue and is one of the world’s most competitive foldable-phone markets.
Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo and Vivo already sell devices across book-style, flip-phone and, in Huawei’s case, trifold designs. That means that in China, the iPhone Duo is entering a more established category than in many other overseas markets.
Ahead of Apple’s event, Xiaomi and Huawei on Monday launched new flagship foldables, the Xiaomi 18 Fold and the trifold Mate XT2, priced at 10,999 yuan and 19,999 yuan.
Apple’s Duo is “cheaper than Huawei. Can you take it?” one WeChat commenter wrote.
Huawei led China’s smartphone market in both the first and second quarters, according to Counterpoint. Apple was second, followed by Vivo and Oppo, the data showed.
Worldwide, Samsung has narrowly reclaimed the lead over Apple by smartphone shipments in the second quarter, while Xiaomi ranked third, according to Counterpoint. Earlier this year, Samsung launched a new version of its folding phone and is expected to surpass Apple in foldable market share, a sizable lead at 32% compared to Apple and Huawei at 25% and 24% respectively, according to the research.
In addition to price, users on Chinese social media also expressed concerns about the Duo’s lack of a physical SIM-card slot, which may require mainland users to visit a carrier store for ID verification to activate an eSIM.
Xiaomi’s 18 Fold will be available for purchase from Thursday. Huawei’s Mate XT2 follows days later. Apple’s iPhone Duo pre-orders are slated to begin Oct. 16 with sales commencing on Oct. 23.
—CNBC’s Jenny Lee contributed to this report.
Circle has announced that it will discontinue USDC and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol V1 support on Noble, with new minting ending Oct. 13, 2026, and the final contract pause scheduled for Jan. 12, 2027.
Summary
- Circle will disable new USDC minting on Noble through Circle Mint on October 13, 2026.
- Noble’s USDC contract and every CCTP route will be fully paused on January 12, 2027.
- CCTP V1 burn limits from Noble will begin declining toward zero on October 31, 2026.
- Circle will snapshot remaining Noble balances before opening manual redemptions beginning January 13, 2027 onward.
- Noble will not receive CCTP V2, requiring holders and integrators to move elsewhere before closure.
Circle’s Sept. 10 notice instructed Circle Mint customers, institutions, retail holders and application developers to move their USDC or remove Noble routes before the final deadline.
USDC will remain transferable on Noble during the exit period. Circle Mint customers can redeem Noble-based USDC until Jan. 12, while holders outside Circle Mint can use supporting exchanges, decentralized exchanges or CCTP V1 routes to leave the network.
Noble will not receive CCTP V2, Circle’s current cross-chain protocol. Once the legacy contracts are paused, users will no longer be able to move USDC to or from Noble through CCTP.
Circle has divided the Noble exit into three stages
Circle Mint will continue offering its existing Noble services through Oct. 12. Customers can use withdrawals, express routes and redemptions without changes during this initial period.
New USDC minting through Circle Mint will stop on Oct. 13. Redemptions will remain available until Jan. 12, 2027, giving customers three months to remove or redeem their balances after issuance ends.
During the same window, the USDC token will remain transferable between Noble addresses. Circle is not immediately freezing balances or stopping ordinary on-chain transfers when minting ends.
CCTP V1 capacity will become more limited before the final pause. Circle plans to start reducing burn limits on Oct. 31, eventually taking the available limit to zero.
After Dec. 1, Noble users may only be able to send CCTP transfers to networks that still accept CCTP V1 burns. Circle advised holders to consult its documentation before selecting a destination chain.
All Noble CCTP routes and the USDC contract are scheduled to pause on Jan. 12. Noble will then disappear from Circle Mint and CCTP access beginning Jan. 13.
USDC on Noble holders have three exit routes
Institutional and self-custody holders can deposit Noble USDC into a centralized exchange that supports the network. Each holder must verify that the selected exchange still accepts Noble deposits before initiating a transfer.
A decentralized exchange operating on Noble provides another option. Holders can swap USDC for an available asset and move the replacement asset through a supported route, subject to the liquidity and pricing offered by the relevant platform.
The third route uses CCTP V1 to burn USDC on Noble and mint an equivalent amount on another supported blockchain. Circle’s protocol transfers native USDC through a burn-and-mint process without requiring a traditional bridge liquidity pool.
CCTP V1 currently supports Noble alongside Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Polygon PoS, Solana, Sui and Unichain. Continued destination availability may change as Circle retires the legacy protocol.
Circle said it would publish a shortlist of known exit venues but had not released the list with its initial announcement. The company stressed that it will not operate an exit interface for holders.
Users will therefore need to interact with an exchange, decentralized trading platform or compatible CCTP application. Circle warned users to rely on its official blog and Help Center because the migration process could attract scams.
CCTP V1 integrators must remove Noble routes
Applications that have integrated CCTP V1 must remove Noble as a supported route before Jan. 12. Any application still pointing to Noble’s legacy contracts after the pause will no longer be able to process transfers.
Circle’s developer documentation describes CCTP as a permissionless utility that moves native USDC between networks through burning and minting. Circle does not take custody of assets transferred through the protocol.
The Noble withdrawal schedule forms part of Circle’s network-wide retirement of CCTP V1. In an Aug. 27 update, the company said general V1 deprecation would begin Oct. 31 and finish Dec. 1.
CCTP V2 uses separate smart contracts and application programming interfaces. It is not backward compatible with V1, meaning integrators must change their contracts, APIs and supported route configurations.
The current version offers standard and fast transfer modes, programmable hooks and support for 27 blockchains, according to Circle. Noble is excluded from that list and will not be upgraded from V1.
Circle did not provide a technical or commercial reason for excluding Noble from CCTP V2. Its announcement described the withdrawal as part of the transition away from the legacy protocol.
Manual redemptions begin after the final snapshot
At the Jan. 12 pause, Circle will take a snapshot of every remaining USDC balance on Noble. The snapshot will establish which wallet addresses may qualify for manual redemption after normal access ends.
Manual redemptions are scheduled to begin Jan. 13 through Circle’s Help Center. Holders will not be able to use Noble through Circle Mint or CCTP from that date.
Eligibility will depend on three conditions. The claimant must meet Circle’s compliance and security requirements, control the wallet holding the tokens and have an address recorded in the pause-day snapshot.
Circle has not published the full manual redemption procedure or its expected processing time. The company said detailed instructions would appear in its Help Center when the process opens.
No automatic conversion will occur for tokens left on Noble. Holders seeking payment after the pause must contact Circle and complete its manual review process.
Circle said its work within the Cosmos ecosystem would continue through Injective and other networks connected through the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol. The company did not announce a replacement native issuance partner for Noble.
Crypto World
Senator Lummis Says the New Clarity Act Text Carries Over 100 Democrat-Requested Changes
Senator Cynthia Lummis said the updated Clarity Act text carries more than 100 changes that Democrats requested. She urged them to help pass the bill.
Senate Republicans released an updated CLARITY Act text that runs 630 pages, 14 more than the July 22 draft. A procedural vote, now four days later, decides whether the bill reaches the Senate floor.
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What Changed in the Clarity Act’s September 10 Draft Text
The bill still runs four divisions and 103 sections. What changed is buried inside roughly a dozen of them, all in the Banking and Agriculture titles.
BeInCrypto compared the two Senate substitute texts line by line. The September draft differs from the July draft in 14 of its 103 sections. Those sections contain 104 discrete edits, though only 28 exceed 8 words.
The heavy lifting is in Section 20209, the DeFi safe harbor, which balloons from 285 words to about 2,200. Validators, node operators, and anyone publishing wallet software get a full carve-out from the Commodity Exchange Act.
Front-ends, governance systems, liquidity pools, and the upkeep of that wallet software are shielded only from spot-market rules.
For “decentralized-in-name-only” protocols, the CFTC must write rules on how controllers comply, a mandate rather than an automatic registration trigger, and the code itself is never required to register. Treasury then writes matching anti-money-laundering rules for whoever the CFTC pulls in.
The quieter story sits in the preemption clause. State securities, commodities, and digital asset law no longer applies to those activities, and the section applies to conduct before enactment. State fraud, manipulation, and AML powers survive, so the fight moves to where licensing ends, and fraud begins.
Division C, the ethics title Democrats want changed, is untouched
What Republicans Left Alone, and Who Is Still Voting No
The smaller edits sit outside the DeFi title. Credit unions get a clearer footing, keyed to definitions from the GENIUS Act, though the text stops short of expanding their authority into brokerage or dealing.
CFTC spot oversight now covers every payment stablecoin rather than only those from licensed issuers. The bill reaches transactions on or through an entity registered with the Commission. States also keep their fraud-enforcement powers against registrants under Section 20207.
The ethics title is not the only thing Republicans left alone. Section 10404, which bars yield on payment stablecoins, is identical to the July version. So is Section 10604, the developer protections known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act.
Those two carry substantial opposition. The American Bankers Association and 60 other banking groups asked Senate leaders to tighten the rewards rules. They warned of deposit flight from community banks.
Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran have raised concerns about that. Democrats, meanwhile, have tied their support to stronger ethics terms covering President Donald Trump’s crypto holdings.
Senators vote Tuesday afternoon on whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed. 60 votes are needed.
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The post Senator Lummis Says the New Clarity Act Text Carries Over 100 Democrat-Requested Changes appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Blockstream has refused to pay a ransom for roughly 598.5 BTC that remains under the control of the actors behind the Liquid Network exploit after 3,400 BTC was returned earlier this week.
Summary
- Blockstream has refused to pay a ransom for Bitcoin still held by the actors behind the Liquid Network exploit.
- The actors previously returned 3,400 BTC after nearly 4,000 BTC was withdrawn from Liquid’s federation wallet.
- Blockstream rejected the actors’ white hat position and said taking funds without authorization and withholding their return amounts to theft.
- The company said it will work with law enforcement, exchanges, forensic specialists and service providers to trace and recover the remaining Bitcoin.
Blockstream said in an X post on Sept. 11 that taking assets without authorization and withholding their return amounts to theft, rejecting the actors’ description of their actions as responsible disclosure or white-hat activity.
“We will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds,” the company said. “Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is theft.”
The statement follows several days of communication between Blockstream and the unidentified actors after nearly 4,000 BTC was withdrawn from Liquid’s federation wallet on Sept. 6.
Blockstream rejects ransom for remaining Bitcoin
Blockstream said it had engaged with the actors in good faith to recover funds belonging to users and protect the Bitcoin community, but said the talks did not amount to acceptance of either the withdrawal or the terms later demanded.
The company argued that developers of open-source Bitcoin software should not be forced to pay a ransom that exceeds their economic participation in a project after someone exploits the code.
“Bitcoin is hard money and can’t be minted without costs, Bitcoin doesn’t haircut users to pay a ransom,” Blockstream said.
The dispute centers on approximately 598.5 BTC that remains outstanding following the return of 3,400 BTC to Liquid’s federation wallet on Sept. 7. The repayment recovered roughly 85% of the Bitcoin withdrawn during the incident.
The remaining Bitcoin was worth close to $47 million when the larger repayment was completed. No publicly disclosed agreement had authorized the actors to retain the coins as a bounty.
The actors had initially described themselves as “whitehats” and communicated with Blockstream through messages embedded in Bitcoin transactions. Before returning the 3,400 BTC, they told the company to fix the vulnerability and ensure that every affected node had been patched.
Blockstream later confirmed through a signed message that its bridge nodes had been patched and that the funds were safe to return.
As crypto.news previously reported, the actors had offered to return most of the withdrawn Bitcoin after the vulnerability was fixed, without committing to return the entire amount.
Subsequent on-chain messages changed the terms of the dispute. The actors demanded that Blockstream pay a 10% bounty using its own money or leave Liquid holders facing a loss, according to messages published as negotiations continued.
Blockstream has now rejected any payment tied to the return of the remaining coins.
Liquid exploit left nearly 600 BTC outstanding
The Sept. 6 incident involved a vulnerability affecting Liquid, the Bitcoin sidechain developed by Blockstream. Nearly 4,000 BTC left the federation wallet, representing most of the Bitcoin held in the reserve at the time.
A later examination of the Liquid Network exploit found that the incident stemmed from a cache-key collision in confidential transaction verification logic. Blockstream said federation keys were not compromised.
The actors used the flaw to obtain Bitcoin from the federation reserve before beginning an on-chain exchange with Blockstream. Liquid halted block production during the incident, while exchanges were asked to suspend L-BTC deposits and withdrawals.
After Blockstream patched the affected bridge nodes, the actors transferred 3,400 BTC back to the federation address. Approximately 598.5 BTC remained at an address controlled by the actors.
Blockstream’s latest statement draws a line between its earlier effort to negotiate the return and any agreement to reward the people responsible.
The company said paying the demand would establish a precedent in which open-source developers could be forced to fund large payments after unauthorized withdrawals from systems using their software.
Blockstream told the Bitcoin community that it was continuing to work for users whose funds were taken and thanked engineers, cryptographers and security researchers who had helped identify and patch vulnerabilities across Bitcoin-related software.
The company linked part of the security pressure facing open-source projects to advances in artificial intelligence, saying teams across the Bitcoin ecosystem have been dedicating time to finding and fixing weaknesses in one another’s products and systems.
Security problems involving Bitcoin software have surfaced elsewhere in recent months. In August, BTCPay Server supporters backed a recovery bounty equal to 10% of funds retrieved after an exploit exposed LND admin macaroon credentials. That bounty was capped at 3 BTC if all stolen assets were recovered.
The arrangement followed an active exploit that prompted BTCPay Server to tell operators to install version 2.4.2 or shut down affected servers until they could update.
Blockstream plans to pursue remaining funds
With negotiations failing to produce a complete return, Blockstream said the people controlling the remaining Bitcoin still have an opportunity to send it back and return to what the company called standard white-hat principles.
If the funds remain outstanding, the company said it plans to work with law enforcement agencies, exchanges, service providers, forensic specialists and other parties to trace the Bitcoin and identify those responsible.
Bitcoin transactions leave a public on-chain record, giving investigators a continuing view of movements from addresses associated with the incident even if the coins are later split between multiple wallets.
A similar tracing process has been used following other major Bitcoin thefts. Galaxy Research, for example, found in August that 1,561 BTC remained unmoved after researchers attributed 1,789.28 BTC in losses to the Coldcard exploit. Identified attacker addresses were shared with exchanges, compliance companies and law enforcement.
Blockstream said the transparency of Bitcoin would allow the community and investigators to continue following evidence left by transactions involving the Liquid funds.
“Transactions do not disappear, and neither does the evidence they leave behind,” the company said.
The company maintained that it would neither pay for the return of stolen property nor stop pursuing the outstanding Bitcoin.
“Return the bitcoin,” Blockstream said.
Trezor has warned that a third-party security breach enabled phishing emails to be sent out from the hardware wallet provider’s official domain.
The breach comes soon after a security incident at ShipMonk compromised the personal information of Trezor users.
Trezor Warns Of Third-Party Breach
Trezor issued a warning in an official X post, informing users that the email “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” was a phishing attempt and urged them to avoid clicking any links.
“Please be aware that the email named ‘Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability’ is not coming from us, and it’s a phishing attempt. Do not click on any link.”
The compromised domain has since been taken down, and Trezor has launched a full investigation into the breach and how hackers used the company’s official domain to send phishing emails. Marcello Paz, a crypto commentator, said he received the phishing email in question and shared screenshots asking customers to update their hardware wallets due to a “critical vulnerability.” Unlike typical phishing emails, the email’s credentials showed official domain names and signatures.
“Hello @trezor, I received a “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” email today (9 Sep 2026). Gmail shows From: Trezor Security
Similar Attempt On BitBox
BitBox, a Swiss Bitcoin hardware wallet maker, reported a similar phishing attempt. The company shared a similar email on its official X account, warning users it was a phishing attempt and urged them to be cautious.
“There is currently a phishing email going around that’s pretending to come from us. Please do not follow the instructions in the email! We are currently investigating.”
Previous Security Incidents
Last month, Trezor’s shipping provider ShipMonk was hit by a major security breach that exposed personal information linked to its customers. Trezor initially disclosed that personal information, including names, cities, and email addresses of 13,700 users, was compromised. However, it said another 67,000 US-based users were affected by the breach.
Hardware wallets have been hit by several security vulnerabilities and breaches recently. Ledger’s security team disclosed a major vulnerability in Trezor Safe 7’s TROPIC01 chip, demonstrating how a lab-based laser attack bypassed its firmware verification system. Ledger suffered a major security breach in 2020 that exposed the personal information of over 270,000 customers, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and even home addresses. The details were published on a dark web forum, with impacted customers receiving scam calls and physical letters even years later.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
WROCŁAW, Poland — 11th September 2026 — Getting to the top of Google no longer means getting found by investors. That disconnect is the starting point of HackGPT, the new AI search playbook published by ICODA, a crypto marketing agency founded in 2017 and trusted by more than 650 clients across DeFi, GameFi, iGaming, Exchanges, and Token Sales. The 51-page guide documents how Web3 projects build citation authority inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — and why teams still treating ChatGPT SEO as an extension of Google strategy are losing ground fast.
The Data Point Every Crypto Team Got Wrong
Only 43.2% of pages ranking #1 on Google are ever cited by ChatGPT — the majority of top-ranked pages are AI-invisible.
That finding, drawn from Semrush’s study of 230,000 prompts, is the central tension HackGPT was built to resolve. For years, Web3 marketing agency strategy treated Google rankings as the default proxy for investor discovery: earn backlinks, publish content clusters, reach Page 1. That logic has fractured.
Semrush’s parallel 1,094-category analysis sharpens the picture: the brand that dominated a topic had more organic traffic than its closest competitor only 48.4% of the time — worse than a coin flip. Organic authority and AI citation authority are measurably different things. Winning one does not guarantee winning the other, and for crypto projects operating in 90-day launch cycles, that gap is a direct revenue risk.
ChatGPT’s citation behavior makes the divergence sharper still. While Perplexity cites Google’s top-10 results 91% of the time, ChatGPT overlaps with those same results just 14% of the time — actively sourcing fresher, more conversational content that standard SEO strategies never touch. For any Web3 marketing agency optimizing exclusively for Google, their clients are invisible on the AI platform now processing over one billion web searches per week.
The data aggregator myth: ICODA and Semrush’s most disruptive finding
CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and DeFiLlama earned zero AI citations across 100+ controlled queries — a result that overturns the most repeated GEO advice in crypto.
ICODA and Semrush jointly ran more than 100 controlled query sessions across ChatGPT and Perplexity, covering four categories: recommendation-style prompts, breaking news queries, safety and legitimacy checks, and community-framed questions. Every citation was captured. The three most trusted data aggregators in crypto — CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, DeFiLlama — did not appear once across any category or engine.
What did get cited consistently: roundup content, financial media placements, the project’s own site, and community platforms. That result forms the structural core of HackGPT. Generative engine optimization for Web3 isn’t about listing your token everywhere investors look. It’s about building the content infrastructure language models actually retrieve.
HackGPT: Inside the 51-page framework
HackGPT converts AI search theory into an execution roadmap built specifically for crypto — not adapted from a generalist SEO playbook.
Who it’s for: SEO leads, CMOs, and growth teams at DeFi protocols, crypto exchanges, token launches, and iGaming platforms who need measurable AI citation gains — not another content calendar.
The framework maps the full citation lifecycle across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with each tactic tied to platform-specific retrieval behavior. Here’s what the 51 pages cover:
- Citation mechanics: How language models retrieve and weight sources — and why most crypto content fails the retrieval test before it ever reaches an investor
- Platform-specific playbooks: ChatGPT and Perplexity require different content architectures; the guide maps both, plus AI Overviews and Gemini
- Documented results: ICODA made ChatGPT its number-one lead source in four months; a Perplexity optimization effort produced a 286% traffic surge with 779 AI-generated sessions
- New performance KPIs: AI Share of Voice, LLM citation tracking by platform, and conversion segmentation by engine — with a monitoring cadence built for the 70% answer variability rate
The yield math behind the shift is clear: AI-referred traffic converts 23 times better than standard organic. For any crypto marketing agency still measuring success by Google rankings, that figure changes the entire budget allocation conversation.
Why crypto-native agencies lead the generative engine optimization race
Crypto-native Web3 agencies adapt faster to AI citation dynamics because they already understand the trust signals language models apply to blockchain claims.
Generative engine optimization in crypto isn’t only a content challenge. Language models apply stricter evaluation criteria to financial claims — weighting source authority, independent corroboration, and regulatory framing far more heavily than they do for general information queries. A traditional agency building GEO strategy for a DeFi protocol without understanding tokenomics language, MiCA compliance framing, or the credibility signals that distinguish trusted crypto sources from promotional ones is building on the wrong foundation.
ICODA’s 14+ years of crypto-native practice translate directly into GEO execution: which publication ecosystems AI engines weight as authoritative for blockchain topics, how investors phrase their research queries, and which community platforms generate the conversational signals that improve AI search visibility for financial products.
Building the citation architecture: Four layers that actually work
AI search visibility for crypto projects is built across four interconnected layers — and most projects invest in only one.
- Financial media placements: Articles in crypto-native publications that AI engines index as authoritative sources carry higher citation weight than aggregator listings across both ChatGPT and Perplexity. HackGPT maps which outlets by query category.
- Roundup and comparison content: Recommendation-style formats — “best of,” comparisons, ranked lists — are the single most commonly cited content type in crypto AI search responses. The format built for synthesis is the format AI retrieves.
- Community platform presence: Forum threads, crypto subreddits, and Discord discussions generate the conversational citation signals that make ChatGPT treat a project as community-verified rather than brand-promoted.
- Owned content structured for AI parseability: Short paragraphs, direct answers in the opening sentence, and clear heading hierarchies all improve how ChatGPT SEO actually functions at the technical level — the layer most crypto content currently ignores.
The citation channel map
Different AI engines weight different source types — a single-channel strategy captures less than 20% of available citation opportunity.
Citation Channel
Primary Engines
What Drives Citation Weight
Financial media (crypto-native)
ChatGPT, Perplexity
Authority indexing, recency
Roundup & comparison content
All engines
Synthesis-ready structure
Community platforms
ChatGPT
Conversational query match
Owned site (structured answers)
Perplexity, AI Overviews
E-E-A-T signals, directness
Original research and data
ChatGPT, Perplexity
Unique citation anchors
YouTube transcripts
Google AI Overviews
Multiformat entity signals
HackGPT prioritizes these channels by project vertical. DeFi protocols, exchanges, and token sales face different citation competitive landscapes — the framework maps execution by project type, not just content format.
The window is open — and closing
The agencies building AI search visibility now will own the citation landscape before competitors recognize that the terrain has changed.
Gartner projects traditional organic search volume will decline 25% by 2026. AI Overview coverage has expanded from 6.5% to 48% of Google queries inside twelve months, and current trajectory points to 70–80% coverage by year-end. In 53.7% of ChatGPT topic categories tracked by Semrush, no brand dominates yet — that blank space is available, but only temporarily.
Research-backed generative engine optimization can lift AI visibility by up to 40%. ICODA’s own results demonstrate that ChatGPT SEO built on citation architecture — not keyword density — can establish an AI engine as a project’s primary lead source within a single quarter. LLM-referred investors convert at 15.9% on ChatGPT versus 1.76% for Google organic. The audience asking AI assistants which protocol to trust is smaller than Google’s total addressable market, and it is decisively higher-intent.
The competitive question for crypto has shifted from who ranks on Google to who gets cited when an investor asks an AI assistant which project to trust. HackGPT is the answer to the second question.
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