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Heather Maurer, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), resigned effective Sept. 26 after controversy over a $2 million donation from Kalshi, Crypto Briefing reported. Maurer, who took the NCPG post in January, signed an agreement with Kalshi without prior board approval, according to the report. As part of the deal, Kalshi was named the first platinum member of NCPG’s newly created financial services and trading membership category. Board members later questioned how the donation would be used but did not receive sufficient answers, the report said.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed higher today. - S&P 500: +0.59% - Nasdaq: +0.64% - Dow Jones: +0.83%

Former FTX COO Constance Wang said Netflix’s first trailer for “The Altruists,” a drama inspired by the rise and fall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was enough to make Wang feel sick, The Block reported. Wang criticized the series for focusing only on the romance between Bankman-Fried and his then-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda CEO, and said it distorted Wang’s experience at FTX. Wang added the actual workplace atmosphere at FTX was nothing like the party culture often cited in discussions of the company’s collapse.

Robinhood is considering adopting Arbitrum’s fee-based transaction priority technology for the Robinhood Chain infrastructure, CoinDesk reported, citing sources. Arbitrum had previously offered a paid transaction-ordering system called Time Boost. More recently, it replaced the legacy Time Boost system with a Priority Gas Auctions (PGA) model, under which individual transactions are processed ahead of others if traders pay higher fees. Robinhood Chain currently uses a first-come, first-served transaction processing model and has not adopted Arbitrum’s Time Boost feature.

Companies have added 193,000 BTC so far this year, while individual holdings have fallen by 93,000 BTC, according to data from Bitcoin financial services firm River as of Oct. 5.

Tether blacklisted four THORChain vault addresses and froze about 1.45 million USDT, then lifted the restrictions three hours later, according to Crypto Briefing. The fund freeze on THORChain has been reversed and swap functionality has resumed. No hacking or fund theft on THORChain was reported during the freeze and unfreeze process.

HSBC has tested AI agent payments using tokenized deposits with Ant Digital Technologies, according to Crypto Briefing. For the test, HSBC integrated its Tokenized Deposit Service (TDS) with Ant Digital’s Anvita Flow network, while the transactions were executed on the Jovay testnet, a layer-two blockchain environment. The payments were processed in real time and were generally under $2. Ant Digital Technologies is the blockchain-focused subsidiary of Ant Group, China’s largest fintech company.

Barclays raised its price target on Strategy (MSTR) to $175 from $160 while maintaining an Overweight rating, according to CoinGape. The UK investment bank also classified Strategy as a U.S. payments and fintech company. CoinGape said the move suggested Strategy’s market position may be worth assessing based not only on its Bitcoin holdings but also on other factors.

An Iran-linked financial network is suspected of using Binance to evade U.S. sanctions and transfer funds tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with the transactions said to total about $850 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Four wallets believed to be tied to the Ledger fund theft transferred a combined 430.2 ETH, worth about $1.07 million, to Tornado Cash, according to Onchain Lens. After Tether froze part of the related funds, the hackers began swapping USDT for USDD through SUN.io and the USDD PSM, while some of the funds were also said to have moved into a Binance hot wallet. The suspected hacker wallets currently hold about $70.6 million in assets, including ETH, BTC, USDD and USDT.

Morgan Stanley raised its price target for Coinbase to $258 from $250 while maintaining a neutral rating, CoinGape reported.

A Ledger user lost all 80 BTC after depositing the funds into a hardware wallet a week earlier, amid a string of complaints on X and Reddit alleging unauthorized crypto outflows from Ledger users, according to Lookonchain. The address had bought 80 BTC near a market low about four months ago and was sitting on roughly $1.38 million in unrealized gains, Lookonchain said. Separately, Ledger said it is investigating devices sold through official distributor CryptoBilis in connection with asset theft cases involving users in Southeast Asia.

Tether blacklisted four THORChain vault addresses and froze about 1.45 million USDT, Crypto Briefing reported. The move halted THORChain’s Tron-based cross-chain swaps and liquidity provision operations. THORChain co-founder Chad Barraford said THORChain had received no advance notice from Tether before the freeze.

The U.S. SEC has added a cryptocurrency agenda item to a national compliance seminar for investment advisers scheduled for Nov. 19, CoinDesk reported. The attendee list for the event also includes the chief legal counsel of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, according to the report.

Tether has frozen some addresses linked to the theft of Ledger user funds, cryptocurrency transaction tracking platform MistTrack reported. The incident is known to have caused losses of about $90 million.

Bitcoin typically moves to exchanges before being sold, but there were almost no cases of BTC held for more than six months moving to exchanges during the recent decline from $87,000, Bitfinex said. Most of the Bitcoin flowing into exchanges had last moved within the past week, according to Bitfinex. The exchange added that capitulation selling by investors would likely require longer-held coins to start moving as well, but no such pattern has emerged so far.

Telegram’s Gram Wallet, which had previously been available only to a limited group of users, has rebranded as Money and started offering its services to all Telegram users. Trading and investment functions are handled through Walt, which supports more than 300 assets including tokenized stocks, precious metals, perpetual contracts, and Earn financial products.

New York state has reached a settlement with former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky over investor fraud allegations, The Block reported. The deal includes up to $35 million in conditional restitution and a permanent ban on participating in the securities, commodities, and cryptocurrency industries. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Mashinsky in 2023, alleging he misled investors about the platform’s stability and investment strategy while Celsius was taking on risky investments and concealing losses. The state said the conduct harmed hundreds of thousands of investors. Mashinsky is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence in federal prison and had previously faced sanctions and industry bans from the U.S. FTC and CFTC. Separately, Celsius creditors have recovered more than $3.4 billion so far through the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Crypto-related stocks were broadly higher in premarket U.S. trading. Strategy (MSTR) rose 3.89%, Coinbase (COIN) gained 5.45%, Circle (CRCL) advanced 7.69%, SharpLink (SBET) added 0.23%, Bitmine Immersion (BMNR) climbed 1.81%, and Robinhood (HOOD) increased 2.41%.

Amid a wave of user complaints on X and Reddit over unauthorized crypto outflows tied to Ledger devices, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said users should wait a few weeks after buying a hardware wallet or downloading a new software wallet before transferring large sums. In a post on X, Zhao added users should keep checking for news about hacks during that period and afterward, noting hardware can be tampered with and even official software websites can be compromised. Zhao also stressed that while self-custody gives users greater control over their assets, it also leaves users with greater security responsibility. Meanwhile, Ledger said it is investigating devices sold through official distributor CryptoBilis in connection with asset theft cases involving users in Southeast Asia.

Donald Trump, the U.S. president, allegedly bought additional shares of Strategy (MSTR), according to a post on X by crypto influencer The Bitcoin Historian. The post was reposted by Bitcoin Treasuries. The post did not provide the size of the alleged purchase or any filing to support the claim, and it was not possible to verify whether Trump had in fact increased the holding.

Ledger is investigating devices sold through official distributor CryptoBilis in connection with thefts targeting users in Southeast Asia, BlockBeats reported. Ledger asked the distributor to halt product sales and shipments, and advised users who bought devices from CryptoBilis within the past 90 days to delay initial setup. Users who have already completed setup were told to generate a new recovery phrase and move their assets to a separate wallet. On-chain analyst Specter estimated that hundreds of wallets across the BTC, ETH, and TRX networks were affected, with losses exceeding $86 million. The exact cause of the incident and whether it involved a security flaw in the devices themselves have not yet been confirmed.

John Koudounis, CEO of Calamos Investments, reiterated his long-term outlook that BTC could reach $1 million by 2030. Koudounis said broader BTC-backed lending, lower price volatility and the launch of new ETF products could encourage large global asset managers to enter the market.

France recorded a total of 90 crimes targeting cryptocurrency holders over the past seven months, including kidnapping, extortion, threats and theft. In the first half of this year alone, 77 cases were reported, far above the 45 recorded in all of last year. The crimes are known as "Wrench Attack," in which perpetrators directly threaten crypto holders to steal their assets. The method is understood to involve using leaked personal data to identify victims and track their home addresses. One case involved a data breach at crypto tax reporting platform Waltio that exposed information belonging to about 50,000 users. French authorities arrested around 200 people during related investigations and, by this spring, had indicted 88 people in connection with 12 cases, including 10 minors.

Solana recorded 1.88 million unique active addresses as of today, the highest level in 13 months, according to SolanaFloor and Blockworks data. Santiment data showed Solana’s network growth metric rose 124% from early September, while the number of wallets holding balances climbed 38.5% from the previous month to 16.1 million. Monthly active programs on the Solana network topped 8,400 in September, marking a record high. Daily active stablecoin addresses reached 888,000, up 269% from a year earlier, while stablecoin supply on the network exceeded $15 billion. By contrast, spot SOL ETFs in the U.S. saw more than $22 million in net outflows through early October.