TD Cowen warns CFTC crypto rules may not survive past the 2028 election

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new framework for leveraged crypto trading may not be finalized before the 2028 presidential election, and TD Cowen analysts say that timing puts the whole effort at risk.

Jaret Seiberg, a managing director at TD Cowen’s Washington Research Group, laid out the warning in a note dated October 12, 2026. “Time is running out,” he wrote. In his view, the agency at best delivers a formal proposal in late Q1 2027 or early Q2 2027, and finalizing the rule could stretch into early 2028. A rule finished that close to an election can be rewritten or scrapped by the next administration and a new slate of commissioners, the analysts argued, because agency rules lack the durability of a law passed by Congress.

The warning lands on a rulemaking that began on October 5, 2026, when the CFTC issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, a non-binding request for public input ahead of any formal rule. The notice asks for comment on a federal framework for retail crypto transactions involving leverage, margin or financing, an area the agency has never regulated through a dedicated federal lane.

Why the deadline matters

The CFTC moved after the Clarity Act, the market structure bill that would have handed the agency authority over spot crypto trading, stalled in the Senate in September 2026. Chairman Michael Selig has described the agency’s approach as a temporary solution meant to provide oversight while legislative efforts stay stuck, a framing TD Cowen reads as a concession that rulemaking alone cannot settle the industry’s regulatory status.

The analysts see no clean way out of the timing squeeze. Rushing the rule to beat the election raises the risk a judge blocks it on procedural grounds, Seiberg wrote, and even a careful process invites legal challenges that could run past 2028. In TD Cowen’s assessment, only legislation gives the framework a stable footing.

The comment period, set to run 60 days once the notice appears in the Federal Register, has not yet started. No publication date has been announced.

Rival prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket will reportedly be excluded from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) probe into deceptive practices in the $167 million online sports gambling industry.

The two crypto-linked firms aren’t a focus of the FTC probe, which will instead set its sights on sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel.

It will likely look into misleading advertisements, as well as the rate of suicides, hospitalizations, and bankruptcies caused by the industry. 

Sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Sun that the industry evaluation “is in its early stages,” and that it’s conducted by political and career staffers.

New York alleges prediction markets cause problem gambling

Polymarket, which utilises blockchain technology, and Kalshi, which offers crypto perpetuals, are already under the scope of an insider trading probe overseen by Republican House Oversight Committee member James Comer. 

The state of New York has also sued Kalshi and Polymarket this year, accusing them both of running an illegal gambling operation that’s encouraging problem gambling among people under the age of 21.  

Last month’s Polymarket suit highlighted a study from the National Institutes of Health and American Psychological Association that linked pathological gambling to mental health disorders, suicidal behaviors and substance abuse.

Prediction markets say they aren’t offering gambling

Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket want to be considered gambling, and hope to be regulated federally under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission instead of individual states.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour recently argued that prediction markets aren’t gambling because it is an open financial market that matches buyers and sellers. 

Read more: American Indian tribes want Kalshi and Polymarket off their land

Last year, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan called DraftKings and FanDuel a sportsbooks “duopoly” that acts against winning bettors.

He said that Polymarket offers derivatives and shouldn’t be regulated like sportsbooks that offer gambling.

President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. holds advisory roles in both firms. He holds $300,000 worth of Kalshi shares, and his investment firm 1789 Capital has invested $500 million in Polymarket.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Entering a closed market

• KuCoin 5.0 integrates AI, trading tools, and wealth management services.
• KuCoin introduces a unified account for eligible spot, margin, and futures traders.
• The upgrade adds accessibility features and expands AI Assistant 5.x.

KuCoin has unveiled KuCoin 5.0, a comprehensive platform upgrade that integrates artificial intelligence (AI), trading tools, wealth management services, and accessibility features as the cryptocurrency exchange seeks to improve the user experience.

Announced on October 9, 2026, the upgrade covers six areas: compliance, technology, assets, experience, AI, and wealth management.

The company said the changes are intended to create a more unified and efficient platform, building on its global brand initiative, “Trust, Built-in,” and its “Trust First. Trade Next.” proposition.

The upgrade includes a redesigned interface, an expanded AI assistant, and new ways for users to manage funds across trading and wealth management services.

KuCoin 5.0 introduces redesigned interface and unified trading account

KuCoin 5.0 includes an updated Profile Center 2.0, featuring a card-based layout designed to make account information and frequently used functions easier to access.

The exchange has also upgraded its sub-account system to simplify account creation, strengthen security controls, and improve management.

Enhanced K-line charts offer additional tools and real-time data, with settings synchronised across devices.

The platform has introduced a colour vision accessibility mode to make charts and other visual information easier to distinguish for users with different colour vision needs.

KuCoin estimates that approximately 360 million people worldwide experience some degree of difficulty distinguishing colours.

The upgrade also retains Lite and Pro experiences to accommodate users with different levels of familiarity and trading requirements.

For eligible users at VIP1 level and above, KuCoin has introduced the Unified Trading Account (UTA). The feature brings spot, margin, and futures trading into a shared framework for funds, margin, and risk management.

According to the company, this arrangement reduces the need to transfer funds between separate accounts and allows for more efficient capital use across eligible products.

AI assistant expands across platform services

KuCoin 5.0 includes an upgrade to AI Assistant 5.x, creating a unified entry point for conversations, questions, and task completion across the platform.

The assistant covers market insights, Earn services, trading, customer support and campaigns.

It uses page context and user actions to better understand users’ requirements, recommend relevant services and help them complete tasks.

The company said the AI integration is intended to extend across the user journey rather than operate as a standalone feature.

Wealth management tools connect earning and trading

The upgrade also links earning and trading activities through wealth management products and benefits for VIP users, Earn access through sub-accounts and support for selected wealth assets within the UTA framework.

Main accounts and sub-accounts can participate in Earn while managing funds separately.

Meanwhile, KCUSD can be used as margin within the Unified Trading Account, reducing the need to move funds repeatedly between earning and trading activities.

KuCoin said these changes are supported by continued development of its compliance, technology and asset foundations.

“Trust should be something users can experience in every interaction—not only in how their assets are protected, but in how clearly, reliably and efficiently the platform works,” said BC Wong, CEO of KuCoin.

Wong added that KuCoin 5.0 translates the company’s long-term commitment to trust into its product, providing users with greater confidence and control while laying the groundwork for the next stage of digital finance.

The company said the upgrade establishes a foundation for further platform development by connecting trading, asset management, and intelligent services within a more integrated experience.

Omar has accused Trump of having a “weird” obsession with her

Ledger has halted sales by its Southeast Asia reseller CryptoBilis after wallets belonging to customers who bought devices through that channel were drained of an estimated $72 million to nearly $90 million.

The hardware wallet maker said it is investigating the losses and has asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments of Ledger devices pending the outcome. Ledger advised users who purchased from the reseller in the past 90 days not to set up unused devices, and to move assets to a new Ledger device with a new seed phrase if their device is already in use. It said it would keep customers informed as the investigation progresses.

On-chain estimates of the losses differ. The analyst Specter traced ten collection addresses and counted inflows from hundreds of victim wallets across Ethereum, TRON and Bitcoin, putting total losses above $86 million as the count was still rising. The analyst tanuki42 put the figure above $72 million, and MistTrack estimated almost $90 million. Ledger has confirmed no dollar amount.

CryptoBilis claims to be the authorized reseller of Ledger products in Malaysia and sells devices in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It has not responded to a request for comment.

The suspected mechanism is supply-chain tampering rather than a flaw in Ledger’s software. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said the available information points to a supply chain attack at a single vendor, with a small number of people likely having bought fake or tampered devices. Security researcher Taylor Monahan, for her part, insisted there is no zero-day in Ledger products and warned that hasty fund-moving exposes users to phishing risk greater than the incident itself.

Some stolen funds have already moved. On-chain tracking shows the suspected attacker has laundered about 430 ETH, worth roughly $1.07 million, through the mixer Tornado Cash, and Arkham-tracked wallets linked to the thefts still hold about $70.6 million. Tether has frozen USDT on addresses tied to the thefts, after which the attacker began swapping USDT into USDD, a Tron-based stablecoin Tether cannot freeze.

Ledger declined further comment. Its investigation is ongoing.

XRP Ledger developers have defended the emergency security patch used to fix a bug capable of creating XRP beyond the network’s fixed supply, saying they could not wait for the network’s usual two-week validator vote without exposing the flaw to attackers.

The fix, released on Sept. 25, came three days after a bug bounty report, and took effect immediately on any server that installed it. It was the first deliberate bypass of the normal amendment process since the system was introduced more than ten years ago, they said. 

“With a normal amendment vote, the fix would have been public for weeks before it took effect, risking network security,” XRPL developers said in an X post on Sunday. 

The expedited fix led to questions about XRPL’s level of decentralization. On its website, XRPL claims it is a fully decentralized, public blockchain — a characterization that has been central to arguments that its native token, XRP, is not a security. 

XRPL security fix “raised a lot of questions”

Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons said Thursday that marketing XRP to retail investors as decentralized amounted to “straight-up fraud.” He argued that the Sept. 25 emergency release shipped as binaries only, temporarily withheld the source code and pressured operators to upgrade. 

However, XRPL Foundation said the decision to skip the normal amendment process was made jointly by the Foundation, RippleX, core developers and validators after assessing the severity of the bug.

“No single party could make that call alone. Every validator and node operator chooses what software to run, and 3.4.1 only became required through a normal amendment vote with more than 80% validator support for two weeks. Protocol changes still go through amendments,” the foundation said. 

Related: Ledger confirms unauthorized hardware implant, says losses may exceed $86M

XRP Kuwait, an independent validator operator, also rejected claims that the coordinated upgrades signaled centralized control. 

“We disagree with the claim that operators coordinating an update is, in itself, proof of centralized control,” it said. “Coordination is not the same as control. Independent operators can assess a situation, communicate with one another, and reach the same conclusion without giving up their independence.”

Bug could have minted unlimited XRP 

The bug was an integer overflow in the XRP Ledger’s payment engine that had been present since 2015, according to the project’s vulnerability disclosure report. 

XRP balances are stored as 64-bit integers with a fixed maximum. When a sum exceeded that maximum, the calculation wrapped to a smaller number instead of failing. 

An attacker could exploit this by creating hundreds of specially priced offers, each asking for a very large amount of XRP, then sending one payment that consumed them all.

The engine would credit each offer owner their full amount but charge the buyer only the tiny wrapped total. The difference would be newly created, spendable XRP.

The attack required deliberately constructed offers and could not be triggered by normal trading activity, according to the report. Developers said they found no evidence that the issue was exploited on any public network. 

Magazine: Ledger attack spreads to EU, AI finds ’18 trillion XRP’ bug: Hodler’s Digest

MicroStrategy’s corporate Bitcoin strategy is back in focus after Strategy’s chair, Michael Saylor, posted a tease to investors about a possible near-term signal tied to the company’s latest BTC purchases. Writing on X, Saylor added the line “There’s always room for more orange,” a reference that has become shorthand for the firm’s continued willingness to add Bitcoin.

Still, for readers expecting a fresh, formal update through U.S. SEC filings, timing may be tight. An official disclosure related to the most recent activity is not expected to arrive before Tuesday because federal offices are closed on Monday for the Columbus Day holiday.

Key takeaways

• Strategy says it has pushed its most recent weekly Bitcoin buying far past its typical budget window through early October repurchases.
• According to an Oct. 5 SEC 8-K, Strategy ended the Sept. 28–Oct. 4 period holding exactly 848,000 BTC.
• Over the same dates, the company also repurchased about 1.77 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $176.3 million.
• Analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera highlights that capital raised in the third quarter does not automatically translate into immediate BTC purchases, due to other uses such as cash reserves and preferred-share buybacks.

What Strategy disclosed in its latest SEC filing

At the center of this update is a filing that lays out Strategy’s activity across a defined one-week span. In an Oct. 5 8-K form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported that it bought 334 Bitcoin between Sept. 28 and Oct. 4, paying $28.7 million for the purchases. The buy adds to Strategy’s cumulative holdings, taking the company to exactly 848,000 BTC.

That same 8-K window also included a substantial preferred equity repurchase. Strategy said it repurchased roughly 1.77 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $176.3 million during the same period.

For investors, the practical takeaway is that Strategy’s BTC program is not operating in isolation. The company is simultaneously managing its capital structure, including actions that reduce preferred-share exposure. That matters because it can affect how much cash remains available for later Bitcoin buys and how capital providers view near-term risk versus balance-sheet strengthening.

Saylor’s “orange” message and what investors may read into it

Saylor’s X post frames the next step as something investors should watch for on Sunday—suggesting there may be another sign of BTC accumulation. The phrasing, however, appears more like a broad encouragement than a specific update tied to a particular filing.

With Monday’s federal holiday likely to delay administrative timing, the market’s ability to confirm details through SEC channels may not improve until Tuesday. In other words, traders who rely on filings for verification may have to bridge the gap between public commentary and formal documentation.

In previous cycles, this kind of messaging can still move sentiment around whether additional buying is coming. But as Strategy’s disclosures show, the company’s real confirmation typically arrives through SEC paperwork, not social posts.

Why “cash now, buy later” remains a live question

Beyond the immediate Bitcoin figure, analysts are weighing how Strategy financed its recent actions and what that implies for future pace. Independent analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera pointed to third-quarter funding and how it translated into BTC holdings over time.

According to Perera, Strategy raised $5.41 billion from new common shares in the third quarter and ended that quarter with 1,666 more BTC than it held at the end of June. He also notes that Strategy’s SEC disclosures allocate 9.5% of the raised capital directly to bitcoin purchases. Other disclosed uses, Perera wrote, include a dollar reserve, cash, dividends, and preferred-share buybacks.

Perera’s central argument is that the relationship between raising capital and buying Bitcoin may not be one-to-one on a day-to-day or even quarter-to-quarter basis. In an interview carried by Cointelegraph on Sunday, he explained that “raising capital does not necessarily mean buying bitcoin,” emphasizing that investors should consider what the financing left behind—particularly cash and existing claims such as debt and preferred shares, which sit ahead of common stock.

At the same time, he clarified that the company’s retained cash can still fund later purchases. From a balance-sheet perspective, strengthening liquidity can also be supportive for shareholders, especially if it reduces pressure to sell assets or rely on external borrowing to sustain Bitcoin accumulation.

Bitcoin buy intensity versus capital structure management

The recent window highlighted in Strategy’s SEC filing suggests an active BTC posture, but it also illustrates how tightly the Bitcoin narrative is interwoven with other corporate moves. The company “ended September by spending more than six times its weekly Bitcoin buying budget,” according to the coverage context leading into the SEC disclosure. In that period, the firm bought 334 BTC for $28.7 million—bringing total holdings to 848,000 BTC.

Meanwhile, Strategy repurchased a large quantity of preferred stock for $176.3 million during the same week. That dual activity complicates simplistic interpretations. Instead of viewing Bitcoin buys as the only variable, investors also have to watch how Management allocates cash across different priorities: accumulating Bitcoin, building reserves, and addressing preferred equity.

This dynamic creates a useful lens for readers tracking Strategy. If BTC buying appears to slow while preferred repurchases or cash retention rises, it may reflect not a change in conviction, but a timing shift in how capital is deployed. Conversely, if BTC buys accelerate without corresponding reductions in liquidity, that may indicate the company is comfortable drawing down reserves or drawing from ongoing capital needs.

Perera’s remarks underscore this tension: even when disclosures show a portion of raised capital earmarked for Bitcoin, the rest may support other uses that don’t immediately show up as BTC purchases. That is why investors may want to focus not only on headlines about “more room for orange,” but on how each SEC filing breaks down timing and allocation.

Looking ahead, readers should watch for the next SEC update that confirms what Strategy actually executed in the days following Saylor’s message. The uncertainty is not whether the company remains committed to Bitcoin—recent filings and ongoing commentary point the other way—but rather the pace and sequencing of purchases relative to preferred buybacks and the remaining cash balance. With Tuesday’s filing timing likely to be the first clear checkpoint after the Columbus Day closure, the market may get fresh data soon enough to separate speculation from documented activity.

On-chain data indicates exactly one year ago today, the cryptocurrency market experienced an epic crash, recording approximately $19.2 billion in market-wide single-day liquidations, wiping out over 1.65 million investors, and setting the most brutal single-day liquidation record in history, comparable to the 2020 “312” black swan event. It is worth remembering not because of hype, but because understanding what happened helps UK traders prepare for future volatility.

The Scale of the Crash

Bitcoin had peaked at around $125,000 prior to the crash, falling to a daily low of $102,000 with a single-day drop exceeding 13%; Ethereum declined by 22% in a single day, while SOL dropped by as much as 37%.

Where Has the Market Been Since?

Exactly one year later today, BTC is trading at approximately $82,679, representing a cumulative drawdown of roughly 34% from its peak at that time.

The broader picture:

What This Means for UK Traders Today

The October 11 crash reflected a complex mix of factors: overbought conditions after a strong rally, macro headwinds, and the mechanics of leveraged trading that amplified losses as liquidations cascaded through exchanges. But the core lesson is simple: cryptocurrency markets remain volatile, and sharp drops are a structural reality of the market.

Key takeaways for UK retail traders:

1. Volatility is real. A 13% single-day drop in Bitcoin and 22-37% moves in major altcoins show why only invest what you can afford to lose entirely.
2. Liquidations hurt. Over 1.65 million investors were wiped out in a single day, most of them using margin and derivatives. If you use leverage, understand your liquidation price in advance and size positions accordingly.
3. Exchange choice matters. Thin liquidity on smaller platforms means your actual exit price could be far worse than the live price you see in news. Trade on well-capitalized, regulated exchanges.
4. Recovery is slow. One year on, the market is still 34% below the October 2025 peak. If you believe in long-term crypto value, plan accordingly.

Caution remains warranted. UK traders should focus on building a portfolio strategy around volatility rather than trying to time the market.

What to Watch Now

Rather than trying to predict the next crash, UK traders should focus on:

• Your own portfolio size and leverage.
• Whether your exchange is FCA-regulated (important for UK consumer protection).
• Your exit strategy, not your entry.
• Whether your holding period matches your investment horizon.

The October 11 crash is a reminder that cryptocurrency markets remain young and volatile. Understanding that risk—and building a portfolio strategy around it—matters more than trying to time the market.