Crypto World
Crypto Group Supports Custodia in Supreme Court Fight for Fed Access
A U.S. crypto industry group is urging the Supreme Court to take up a dispute between Custodia Bank and the Federal Reserve over access to the central bank’s payment system, arguing that federal law limits how broadly the Fed can refuse eligible banks.
In an amicus brief filed Wednesday, the Blockchain Association said the Fed should not have wide discretion to deny payment services to state-chartered banks that meet eligibility requirements. The group also framed Custodia’s case as part of a broader pattern of resistance to crypto banking—referencing regulatory pressure it links to the “Operation Choke Point 2.0” narrative.
Key takeaways
- The Blockchain Association filed an amicus brief supporting Custodia Bank’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court over Fed master account access.
- The group argues the Federal Reserve should not be able to effectively override eligibility for payment services through broad discretion.
- Custodia’s application for a master account was rejected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and a Tenth Circuit ruling left the Supreme Court as the last option.
- The dispute is unfolding as some crypto firms have obtained federal banking structures and, in limited cases, direct access to Fedwire.
Why Custodia is looking to the Supreme Court
Custodia Bank, a Wyoming-chartered institution focused on digital assets, applied for a Federal Reserve master account in 2020. Such an account is designed to give qualifying banks direct access to payment system services, reducing reliance on intermediary institutions for transfers.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City denied Custodia’s request in 2023. After that denial, the case moved to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ultimately ruled that the regional Fed bank had discretion to reject the application.
Earlier this year, the Tenth Circuit voted 7-3 against rehearing the dispute in March. With the appeals court effectively closing the door, Custodia’s petition to the Supreme Court became its remaining path for review.
The Blockchain Association’s legal argument
The Blockchain Association’s amicus brief argues that the lower court gave the Fed too much leeway in how it interprets its authority. The group contends that federal law requires the Federal Reserve to make its payment services available to eligible nonmember banks.
In the association’s view, the Tenth Circuit’s reasoning risks granting the Fed a de facto veto over state-chartered banks by allowing the central bank to withhold the operational access these institutions would need to function independently.
The filing also connects Custodia’s situation to claims about regulatory discouragement of crypto-related banking activity. Specifically, it links the case to concerns raised under the “Operation Choke Point 2.0” theme, which has been used in parts of the industry to describe alleged pressure that makes it harder for banks to serve digital asset clients.
Notably, the brief’s central emphasis is legal and structural: whether the Fed’s discretion in granting access should be narrowly constrained when a bank meets eligibility requirements.
Access to Fed payment rails is becoming more common—though unevenly
Custodia’s dispute comes at a time when some crypto businesses are making headway into the U.S. banking system through federal licensing, and in certain circumstances, direct links to Federal Reserve infrastructure.
For example, in March, Kraken Financial—an entity tied to the Kraken ecosystem—became the first crypto banking unit to receive a limited-purpose master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. That approval provided direct access to Fedwire. The development stood in contrast to Custodia’s earlier rejection by the same regional Fed bank, highlighting that the legal questions at the heart of Custodia’s case remain highly consequential for other banks pursuing similar access.
Meanwhile, Coinbase has moved through federal chartering pathways tied to custody and trust activities. In April, the company received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust company, a structure that would bring custody services under federal oversight without allowing retail deposits or operation as a commercial bank. Circle later obtained final OCC approval for a national trust bank in July, and Kraken parent Payward applied for its own national trust company charter the following month.
The OCC has also conditionally approved national trust bank applications for several other crypto-adjacent firms, including Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos in December.
Industry pushback from traditional banking groups
As crypto firms seek federal charters and deeper banking integration, traditional banking associations have argued that these entities can gain benefits associated with bank status without accepting the full set of regulatory obligations applied to conventional retail banks.
In April, the Independent Community Bankers of America opposed Coinbase’s conditional OCC approval for a national trust company, arguing that crypto companies are pursuing the advantages of bank charters while avoiding certain burdens of the traditional banking framework.
This tension underscores a broader theme: even as regulators have created pathways for crypto-related institutions to operate under federal supervision, access to the most central components of the payment system—such as Fed master accounts—still appears to be a contested boundary.
For investors and operators, the Supreme Court decision will matter less as a symbolic victory and more as a potential clarification of how far the Fed can go when determining payment-system access for eligible banks. Until the Court acts, it remains uncertain whether Custodia’s case will reshape the Fed’s discretion or further cement the limits of judicial review over payment rail eligibility decisions.
Mad Money host Jim Cramer said the AI data center trade is reclaiming market leadership. He named six stocks leading the rally, and every one of them closed higher on Wednesday.
The group had trailed financials, healthcare, and retail for weeks. Cramer said a run of developments in recent days has restored his confidence in AI infrastructure names.
Why the AI Data Center Trade Stalled
Cramer said the once-hot AI infrastructure names began cooling in late June. The slide then ran through most of July.
“This group has languished while the financials, the healthcares and the retailers rocked,” he said.
Each of the six rallied sharply before the gains reversed, for some in early May and for others in June. All then trended lower through late July. CoreWeave (CRWV) dropped 56% across that span.
Super Micro Computer (SMCI) fell 53%, and Nebius (NBIS) lost 48%. Lumentum (LITE) shed 43%, and Intel (INTC) fell 42%. The Nasdaq 100 declined by just 11%.
The turn arrived with the forced unwind of Situational Awareness. Wednesday’s session is further proof of the regained strength.
Nebius led with a 34.14% gain. CoreWeave added 19.28% and Supermicro 19.02%. Lumentum rose 13.63%, Intel 3.32%, and Nvidia (NVDA) 3.03%.
“I cannot stress enough how important today’s session was,” Cramer added.
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What Restored Cramer’s Confidence
Cramer noted that prices still sit below their peaks but now “seem primed to go higher.” He pointed to a cluster of recent events that suggested the pressure had passed.
- Intel drew enough investor demand to lift its stock offering to $20 billion from $15 billion.
- He said Supermicro and Lumentum reported better-than-expected results, followed by Nebius. Worth noting that Supermicro missed revenue estimates.
- CoreWeave’s results, he said, offered evidence that older Nvidia GPUs hold value longer than skeptics expected
- Finally, Wednesday’s inflation print eased the rate pressure weighing on growth stocks.
How the 6 AI Data Center Stocks Have Performed in 2026
Notably, all six are beating the S&P 500 this year. The index has gained 12.98% year-to-date, according to Google Finance data.
Nebius leads the group at 209.64%, followed by Intel at 173.58% and Lumentum at 152.98%. CoreWeave is up 50.4%, Supermicro is up 28.5%, and Nvidia is up 20.16%.
“This morning, the rockets went off and the fabled six fighting bulls, Supermicro, Nvidia, Intel, Nebius, Lumentum, and CoreWeave, tore out of their pens and proceeded to trample the non-believers who didn’t realize that you’re taking your life in your hands when you bet against these companies,” Cramer said.
The question now is how long the run lasts and whether the six can reclaim their highs.
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The post Mad Money’s Jim Cramer Says These 6 AI Stocks are Primed to Surge appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Bitcoin mining stocks have been on a run in 2026, with Riot Platforms, Hut 8, Bitfarms, and Core Scientific posting some of the group’s biggest year-to-date gains, according to a CryptoQuant chart analyst Maartunn shared on X covering trading from January through July.
The move has less to do with mining Bitcoin itself and more to do with miners repositioning as power and data center suppliers for AI companies, reflecting a change in how the market is pricing these stocks.
The Chart Behind the Rally
Maartunn’s chart put Riot’s year-to-date gain at 83% through late July, with Hut 8 up 72%, Bitfarms up 50%, and Core Scientific up 31% over the same stretch.
“It’s a race for power, grid access, and AI-ready infrastructure,” Maartunn wrote, arguing the sector has moved past pure hashrate competition.
That framing lines up with what’s happened since. On August 11, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic agreed to pay Riot $9.1 billion over 20 years for 191 megawatts of computing capacity at its Rockdale, Texas site, enough to power roughly 143,000 homes.
Riot’s shares jumped 24% in after-hours trading on the news, even after closing the regular session down more than 5% and posting a $237 million quarterly loss.
IREN, another miner chasing the same trend, climbed close to 10% this week after landing a $3.4 billion cloud contract with Nvidia, part of its own shift from mining into AI cloud services. Maartunn’s numbers only run through late July, though, while the market data available this week runs through August 12, and the two datasets don’t line up perfectly.
By that more recent close, Riot’s year-to-date gain had settled near 60%, still strong but down from the 83% cited in the July chart, with shares trading around $20. Hut 8 pushed further to a roughly 98% gain, near $91 a share. Core Scientific extended its climb too, up 43% year-to-date and trading near $21.
Others showed more modest upticks, including CleanSpark, which, at the time of writing, was around $12, up 20% this year, and IREN, whose shares were trading near $44, a 16% jump since the start of the year. MARA, the largest publicly traded miner, was about $10, with a much smaller 7% YTD gain.
But not everyone in the sector is celebrating, as data from Yahoo Finance shows Bitdeer, Argo Blockchain, and Canaan are down about 20%, 24%, and 71% in the same period when their counterparts printed green.
Where the Money for This Is Coming From
MARA’s results show why miners are looking elsewhere. In its August 6 shareholder letter, the company reported Q2 revenue of $174.9 million, down 27% year over year, and a $611.3 million net loss. It also sold 2,213 BTC during the quarter while continuing to invest in new infrastructure.
But that does not mean mining is disappearing, with analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera noting on July 6 that the network absorbed a large miner exit after public firms, including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer, sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 and put that money into AI contracts worth an estimated $70 billion industry-wide.
The pivot briefly knocked Bitcoin’s network hash rate down about 4%, the first drop in six years, before difficulty adjustments restored profitability and the network kept producing blocks on schedule.
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Kalshi’s contract on US government shutdown odds in 2026 priced YES at roughly 17% in early August; by October 1, 2026, it had dropped steeply from about 64% a month earlier.
That repricing arrived as Senate negotiators closed in on a stopgap funding deal. Since then, the Senate has gone further, passing its stopgap funding bill 90-6 on August 8 and extending its proposed funding runway through December 11.
For traders running fiscal risk into crypto positioning, the question isn’t whether the earlier 25% reading was precisely right at any given hour. It’s whether the direction of travel, sharply lower odds of an imminent lapse, actually removes the macro overhang that Bitcoin desks have been pricing into risk-off scenarios, or simply pushes the same fight to a worse date on the calendar.
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US Government Shutdown Odds 2026: What Moved The Market
The catalyst was legislative, not speculative. Senate appropriators initially worked toward a continuing resolution that would fund the government beyond the September 30 deadline, while negotiating limits on a pending Office of Management and Budget rule that would let political appointees block already-approved spending.
Those negotiations have now produced legislation. The Senate approved a continuing resolution 90-6 that would fund federal agencies through December 11 at largely current levels while temporarily blocking the administration from finalizing the proposed OMB grants rule.
The House has already passed its own stopgap measure, but that version runs only through December 4. Because the chambers have approved different bills, the Senate legislation still needs House approval before it can reach President Trump.
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Why The Price Keeps Disagreeing With Itself
The earlier Kalshi pricing reflected genuine uncertainty about how much weight to put on backroom progress versus confirmed legislative action. No passed Senate continuing resolution existed when the contract initially fell toward 17%.
That distinction matters more than the headline percentage. The Senate has now supplied a much stronger signal than negotiations alone: 90 senators voted for a stopgap extending funding beyond the midterms.
But the October shutdown is not formally off the table yet. The House and Senate have passed different versions, and Congress must still agree on a single measure before the September 30 funding deadline.
Fiscal risk of this kind doesn’t move Bitcoin in a straight line. There’s no direct evidence that the shutdown contract alone drove BTC price action in early August – the more accurate framing is that shutdown odds function as one input crypto desks monitor alongside Treasury bill spreads, dollar liquidity, and risk appetite more broadly, a pattern already visible in how traders position around other macro catalysts like CPI prints.
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The entity behind the world’s largest stablecoin has announced that KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified audit opinion on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended December 31, 2025. This is the first full financial statement audit in the history of the company behind USDT.
An unqualified opinion carries no reservations, exceptions, or caveats, and is the strongest conclusion an independent auditor can reach. This means KPMG examined the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement under US generally accepted accounting principles, with each area subject to independent substantive testing. The audited statements report reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.81 billion.
KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar Tether holds, verifying its existence and identifying information. Tether said the procedure went beyond the reports supplied by custodians and counterparties.
The Attestations And The Audit
Tether has provided regular independent attestations of its backing assets for years, but an attestation just checks reserves at a point in time, while the KPMG engagement covered the full financial statements.
Back in 2022, BDO Italia replaced MHA Cayman on the reserves reports, a move Tether called “the next step in the company’s path toward a complete audit.” BDO still prepares the quarterly reports, among them the Q1 2026 attestation showing a record $8.23 billion excess reserve buffer.
Tether had also completed a SOC 2 Type 1 examination covering IT and security controls in 2024, but that examination stopped at the controls and never reached the financial statements.
Moreover, those quarterly figures sit outside KPMG’s opinion. Tether’s most recent attestation covered the second quarter of 2026 and reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit, roughly $184.6 billion of USDT issued, and more than 146 tons of gold.
Tether’s Long History With Regulators
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Tether $41 million in October 2021, finding the company held sufficient fiat reserves to back USDT in circulation for only 27.6% of the days in a 26-month sample from 2016 through 2018.
The order also found Tether had told customers and the market that every token was backed by an equivalent amount of corresponding fiat currency, while its reserves included unsecured receivables and non-fiat assets.
“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed. They said the Company refused to subject itself to the most rigorous scrutiny. We have once again proven them wrong. Completing our financial statement audit sets a new standard for the industry and reflects the leadership we’ve brought to this market from the start,” said Paolo Ardoino, Chief Executive Officer of Tether.
Tether announced signing with a Big Four auditor earlier this year and described the completed engagement as the largest inaugural financial audit in history.
The post Tether Clears First Full Audit as KPMG Issues Unqualified Opinion on 2025 Statements appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
Tether (USDT) says it completed long-promised audit from KPMG, down to counting its gold bars
Tether said in March that it had hired a “Big Four” accounting firm to conduct its first full audit. KPMG is one of the Big Four, the group of accounting giants that also includes Deloitte, EY and PwC and audits many of the world’s largest companies.
KPMG examined Tether’s transactions, systems, valuations, counterparties and ownership records, according to the company. Auditors also physically counted and inspected its gold bars.
Tether has repeatedly promised a full audit while relying on reserve attestations, leaving critics asking why a company of its size hadn’t undergone the same level of scrutiny common among large financial firms.
Concerns about the stability and backing of its USDT token, a key piece of infrastructure for crypto trading and markets, have surfaced from time to time as a potential systemic risk for digital assets. The recurring debate became so familiar in crypto circles that it earned its own shorthand as “Tether FUD.”
The stakes have only grown as USDT swelled to over $180 billion in market capitalization, while Tether has become a major buyer of U.S. government debt for reserve assets.
“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.
In Bitcoin news today, BTC trades at around $63,500, down -0.6% on the day, sitting in a tight range while the market absorbs a fresh round of corporate treasury noise. Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich just killed a rumor that could have spooked holders, and the numbers behind his denial are worth unpacking before assuming this is a non-event.
The Japanese Bitcoin treasury company moved 5,014 BTC (roughly $322M) between custodial addresses over a 24-hour window starting Wednesday, triggering immediate speculation of a sell-off.
Gerovich shut that down directly: “This was a routine custody operation. No bitcoin was sold, and our holdings remain 43,000 BTC.” The entire transfer cost Metaplanet about $8 in network fees, underscoring how cheap it is to move nine-figure sums on-chain when you’re not touching exchange order books.
This clears one overhang, but it doesn’t rewrite Bitcoin’s broader structure. The macro backdrop still matters more than any single treasury’s wallet activity, and traders are right to keep watching whether other public holders face similar scrutiny.
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Bitcoin News: Can BTC USD Hit New Highs This Week?
BTC’s $63,769.56 print with a 0.27% daily gain reflects a market in consolidation rather than a trend. Volume hasn’t shown the kind of spike that typically accompanies a breakout, which suggests traders are waiting on a catalyst rather than forcing direction.
The $63,373 intraday low functions as near-term support; a close below it would open room toward the next demand zone, while reclaiming $64,000 with volume could shift momentum toward retesting recent highs.
Bull case: a clean break above $64,000 on rising volume drags in momentum buyers and squeezes short positioning. Base case: continued range-bound trading between $63,300 and $64,000 as the market digests treasury-company headlines and awaits the next macro print.
Bear case: a breakdown below $63,373 invalidates the near-term structure and reopens downside toward prior support shelves. For deeper technical framing, recent target analysis is worth a look before positioning either direction.
Prediction Market Bettors Give Higher Chance of $40K BTC Over $100K in 2026
In other Bitcoin news, cryptocurrency bettors are tempering expectations that Bitcoin will reclaim $100,000 in 2026. Kalshi currently assigns only a 1.6% chance of Bitcoin hitting $100,000 and beyond this year, down from a high of 91% in January.
Similarly, chances of BTC reaching $90,000 fell from 71% in early May to 2.5% as of this writing. Interestingly, the odds of Bitcoin moving lower were relatively higher.
Punters have priced in a 20% possibility of Bitcoin declining below $45,000, alongside a 15% chance of a drop below $40,000. Forecasts about Bitcoin’s price action have surged in volume even as the asset struggles through a drawn-out bear market.
Popular market analyst Alessio Rastani predicted Bitcoin would crash to $20,000 by the end of 2027 before making a sharp recovery.
On the other side, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Bitcoin’s refusal to react to bad news, including BTC sales by Strategy and CLARITY Act delays, is one of the clearest signs the cryptocurrency winter is ending.
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This article is not financial advice. Crypto markets are highly volatile. Always conduct independent research before making investment decisions.
The post Bitcoin News: Metaplanet CEO Shuts Down BTC Sale Fears appeared first on Cryptonews.
KPMG U.S. has issued an unqualified opinion on Tether’s 2025 financial statements, the first full audit in the stablecoin issuer’s history.
The audited accounts show reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025. Tether’s own most recent quarterly report puts that buffer at $4.11 billion.
What KPMG Actually Signed Off On
The audit covers Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. An unqualified opinion is the strongest result an auditor can give, meaning no reservations or caveats.
KPMG tested transactions, ownership records, valuations, systems, and counterparties. Its work spanned the full balance sheet, the income statement, changes in equity, and cash flows.
Auditors also counted and inspected every gold bar the company holds, rather than relying on custodian reports.
Tether had spent years defending quarterly attestations from the accounting firm BDO rather than a full audit. It announced the engagement in March, and KPMG was named as its auditor soon after.
“KPMG conducted a full and thorough audit in accordance with AICPA standards – examining the assets, transactions, systems, documentation, and other evidence supporting our financial statements. The result is an unqualified opinion; in other words, it means Tether has a clean audit,” Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in the company’s statement.
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The Cushion Has Shrunk Since the Audit Date
An audit opinion is dated, and that date is now almost 20 months old. BDO’s second-quarter report, published July 31, recorded $4.11 billion in excess reserves as of June 30, 2026.
That sits roughly 40% below the figure KPMG verified. The cushion halved in Q2, even as Tether booked about $1.5 billion in net operating profit, suggesting unrealized losses or outflows elsewhere in the reserve.
Bullion is one candidate. Spot gold dropped more than 20% from its January record, and Tether holds gold and Bitcoin alongside Treasury bills. Its tokenized gold token tracks the same metal KPMG counted bar by bar.
What the Clean Opinion Does Not Settle
The audited entity and the attested group are not identical. Tether’s Q4 2025 attestation showed a $6.34 billion surplus for the same balance sheet date, roughly $480 million below the audited figure.
Tether has also not released the statements themselves. Notes, accounting policies, reserve composition, and related-party disclosures would let outside analysts test the numbers instead of accepting a headline.
Nothing in the opinion addresses redemption capacity, liquidity under stress, or counterparty exposure. Those questions carry more weight as the GENIUS Act stablecoin rules, the U.S. framework setting Federal Reserve standards for issuers, take final shape.
Tether’s USDT market capitalization sits near $183 billion, third among all crypto assets.
Tether has cleared the bar, critics said it never would. The harder test arrives with the next attestation, and with whether the company publishes the statements KPMG signed.
The post Tether USDT Gets Largest Audit in History, But One Key Number Has Fallen 40% appeared first on BeInCrypto.
A security incident at a Trezor shipping provider exposed personal details belonging to 13,689 customers.
The breach affected customers across seven countries, while Trezor confirmed that its wallet systems and devices remain secure.
However, the company warned that exposed details could increase phishing attempts targeting affected users.
Shipping Provider Incident Led to Data Exposure
The incident began after ShipMonk, a shipping provider used by Trezor, suffered unauthorized access to its systems.
As a result, attackers accessed customer information linked to hardware wallet orders processed through the provider.
The exposed information includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, and shipping addresses for some affected customers.
Trezor identified 11,742 customers whose information received full exposure during the incident. Those records included customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and shipping addresses linked to their orders.
Meanwhile, another 1,947 customers faced partial exposure involving their names, cities, and email addresses.
The affected customers received orders in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, or Portugal. Trezor said those orders fell within the 90 days before August 8, 2026, when the incident came to light.
Furthermore, the company contacted affected customers through its official email channel and advised them to remain alert.
Trezor Warns Customers About Phishing Threats
Although the breach exposed personal information, Trezor said attackers did not compromise its internal systems.
The company also confirmed that its hardware wallets remain secure and that customer funds remain protected by wallet security.
Therefore, the incident primarily creates a social engineering risk rather than a direct device security threat.
However, leaked contact and shipping information could help criminals create more convincing phishing messages.
Attackers could combine customer names, addresses, and emails to make fraudulent messages appear linked to Trezor orders. Consequently, affected users could face attempts to obtain wallet credentials, recovery phrases, or other sensitive information.
Trezor customers should therefore avoid links from unexpected messages and verify communications through official channels.
Users should also never provide recovery phrases, because legitimate wallet providers do not require those details.
In addition, customers should treat unexpected calls, emails, and messages as potential attempts to steal wallet access.
Trezor Develops Anonymous Delivery Option
The breach has also pushed Trezor to develop a new Anonymous Delivery option for future customers.
The company plans to introduce the service in the European Union by September and in the United States later.
This approach aims to reduce the personal information connected with hardware wallet purchases and deliveries.
The planned option could allow customers to use nicknames or label identification instead of real names.
It could also support automated parcel lockers, which would reduce the need to provide home delivery addresses.
Furthermore, Trezor plans to offer unbranded packaging with generic sender information for additional privacy.
The move highlights the security challenges that crypto companies face beyond their own technology and wallets.
Shipping partners can hold valuable customer information, which makes third-party data protection important for hardware wallet users.
As Trezor responds to the incident, stronger delivery privacy could help reduce similar exposure in future orders.
The incident also follows a separate Coldcard security incident that raised concerns across the crypto self-custody sector.
Galaxy Research estimated that users lost as much as $116 million in Bitcoin during that incident.
Together, the events highlight how personal data and wallet security can create different risks for crypto users.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has said the network’s layer 1 will leave Poseidon after an eight-year, eight-figure research effort and pursue established hash functions such as SHA-2 or BLAKE2s.
Summary
- Ethereum’s L1 roadmap will use traditional hashes instead of the SNARK-focused Poseidon function.
- Binary-field SNARKs can reportedly prove about 1 million traditional hash calls per second.
- A production-grade leanVM is scheduled for 2027, followed by layer deployments in 2028.
- Hash-based signatures form a central part of Ethereum’s planned protection against quantum computers.
Ethereum L1 turns away from Poseidon
Justin Drake said in an Aug. 13 X post that the Ethereum Foundation is abandoning Poseidon for its L1 roadmap and moving toward traditional options such as SHA or BLAKE.
“Goodbye, Poseidon!” Drake wrote, describing the decision as the result of an “8-year, 8-figure rabbit hole” in post-quantum cryptography.
Poseidon emerged in 2019 as a hash function designed for zero-knowledge proof systems. Its structure made it less costly to process inside Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge, commonly known as SNARKs, than traditional hash functions built around binary operations.
Since 2018, the Ethereum Foundation has invested in specialized hashes as part of its work on zero-knowledge technology. Poseidon later became a common choice across zk-rollups and zkVMs, including systems that secure billions of dollars in crypto assets.
Drake’s announcement concerns Ethereum’s future L1 architecture, rather than an immediate removal of Poseidon from existing applications. Rollups, virtual machines, and other projects that already use the function are not required to replace it because of the roadmap decision.
Advances in proof-system design have now changed the trade-off that initially favored Poseidon. According to Drake, established functions such as SHA-2 and BLAKE2s can match its performance when paired with SNARKs designed around binary computation.
“In hindsight the key was not SNARK-friendly hashes, but hash-friendly SNARKs.”
Binary-field SNARKs make traditional hashes practical
Binary fields allow proof systems to process the Boolean logic used by standard hash functions more naturally. Earlier SNARK designs often relied on large prime fields, where bit-based operations such as XOR could be costly to represent.
Working over the smallest prime number, two, allows binary-field systems to align their calculations with the zeros and ones used in conventional computing. Drake said the resulting designs can prove about 1 million traditional hash calls per second on a laptop, with an overhead of roughly 100 times compared with native CPU execution.
Research projects including Binius and Flock contributed to the performance gains, according to the post. Binius applies binary-field arithmetic to zero-knowledge proofs, while Flock focuses on proving large batches of Boolean calculations, including computations involving SHA-256, Keccak, and BLAKE3.
Drake also pointed to SNARK.fast, an open automated research project that uses artificial intelligence to improve proving code. Its strongest result reached 1.8 million BLAKE3 compressions per second, representing a 255% improvement over its starting benchmark.
Using established hashes could reduce Ethereum’s reliance on specialized cryptographic functions that require years of separate analysis. SHA and BLAKE have already received extensive study outside zero-knowledge systems, although their implementation inside Ethereum would still require research, audits and testing.
The decision also changes the relationship between Ethereum’s hash functions and its proof infrastructure. Instead of designing a new hash around the limits of a SNARK, researchers can build the SNARK around hash functions that already have long security records.
Ethereum post-quantum work favors hash-based signatures
Drake linked the decision to Ethereum’s post-quantum security program, which is preparing the protocol for computers capable of breaking elliptic-curve cryptography. Ethereum currently relies on such systems for user accounts and parts of its consensus and data infrastructure.
As crypto.news reported in August, co-founder Vitalik Buterin has moved quantum security higher in Ethereum’s updated roadmap. The plan also covers native privacy, formal verification, post-quantum scaling, and possible replacements for parts of the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Drake said recent advances in AI-assisted cryptanalysis have created setbacks for more complex post-quantum systems. He specifically cited HAWK, a lattice-based signature design, and SQIsign, which relies on isogeny-based cryptography.
According to his assessment, the problems strengthen the case for hash-based signatures on blockchains. Such designs use relatively simple and extensively studied assumptions, although individual signatures can be too large for direct use at Ethereum’s present scale.
SNARK aggregation offers one way to address the size problem. A proof system can verify many hash-based signatures and compress the result into one smaller proof for the network, rather than requiring every signature to be placed and checked separately.
The same method could support multisignature arrangements and k-of-n threshold signatures, in which a transaction needs approval from a set number of participants. Drake said the flexibility comes from using the SNARK to prove the authorization rules without placing all the underlying signature data onchain.
Wallet-level preparations are already being tested. In June, an Ethereum researcher demonstrated account protection using a SPHINCS-based signature verifier, with one optimized version requiring about 127,000 gas and carrying a 3,704-byte signature. The researcher estimated the verification cost at roughly $0.07 per account at the time.
U.S. standards add pressure for early preparation
For U.S. investors and businesses using Ethereum, the roadmap addresses a security risk that federal standards agencies have already begun treating as a migration issue. The National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first three post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024 and encouraged system administrators to begin integrating them.
NIST’s standards do not direct Ethereum’s protocol choices, and the agency’s selected algorithms do not make the network quantum-safe by themselves. Its migration work shows, however, that American institutions are preparing before cryptographically relevant quantum computers become available.
A Coinbase independent advisory board reached a similar position in a 50-page paper published in April. Its members included Drake, Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, Coinbase cryptography head Yehuda Lindell, and distributed-systems researcher Dahlia Malkhi.
The board concluded that current blockchains remain secure from quantum attacks but warned that replacing vulnerable signatures across networks, wallets, and exchanges could take years. According to the advisory paper, some quantum-resistant alternatives could increase blockchain data requirements by as much as 38 times.
Ethereum’s use of proof aggregation is intended to limit such costs while replacing vulnerable cryptography. Drake said hash-based SNARKs could compress an arbitrary number of post-quantum signatures into a compact proof suitable for inclusion in a block.
LeanVM targets production deployment in 2027
The Ethereum Foundation’s post-quantum team is working on binary-field infrastructure as part of leanVM, a minimal zero-knowledge virtual machine intended to verify and aggregate cryptographic proofs.
Drake said the current schedule calls for a production-grade leanVM in 2027. Deployments involving Ethereum’s consensus, data, and execution layers are planned for 2028, though each protocol change will still require implementation, testing, and agreement among Ethereum’s independent development teams.
The schedule sits within Ethereum’s Strawmap, a technical coordination document extending through 2029 rather than a finalized activation calendar. Earlier Strawmap coverage described seven proposed forks covering faster slots, shorter finality, post-quantum cryptography, privacy, and higher network capacity.
Ethereum’s post-quantum team is now working with Binius, Flock, and related binary-field systems while developing leanVM benchmarks. Drake said the planned 2028 work would apply the resulting proof technology separately across the consensus layer, data layer, and execution layer.
On Aug. 12, the luckiest 15 million people in the world were those living in a narrow band measuring approximately 5,100 miles long and 180 miles wide, stretching from northern Russia, down through Greenland, then Iceland, then Spain, then a tiny nip of Portugal, before passing into the Mediterranean Sea. That strip represented the path of totality for the recent total solar eclipse—the first visible from Europe in 27 years.
The eclipse did not take long to play out, lasting just 4.4 hours before it at last extinguished its fires in the Mediterranean waters. But it made an enduring impression—and will continue to, thanks to the uncounted astronomers and lay folk who photographed the event with ordinary cameras, great observatories, and even a NASA chase plane. Here is just a sampling of the work these eclipse-watchers produced.
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