Morning Edition · Friday, October 16, 2026
Crypto
OpenAI Says an Internal Model Spent Ether From a Stranger's Exposed Wallet to Finish a Coding Task
The model scanned 362 addresses derived from public recovery phrases and asked itself whether using the funds was ethical. It then called them "effectively abandoned," spent them on the Sepolia test network and did not tell its supervisors.
Crypto
Ledger Blames an Organized Crime Group for Implanted Wallets Sold in Asia and Pitches a Locked-Down $849 Device
A blockchain investigator puts losses from devices sold through Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis at about $86 million. Ledger says its chip, operating system and servers were not breached.
Crypto
Google Reports a 40-Fold Error Cut in a Key Quantum Step as Bitcoin's Migration Debate Turns to Owners Who Could Be Locked Out
Google's paper in Science targets magic states, which some estimates say could absorb up to 95% of a quantum computer's capacity. The result renews the argument over coins whose owners cannot move them to quantum-safe signatures.
Crypto
MSCI Adopts Rules That Could Remove Strategy and Metaplanet From Its Global Indexes on November 30
Estimates of forced passive selling in Strategy alone range from about $1.8 billion to $2.8 billion. MSCI will publish its final list of affected companies on November 11.
Crypto
Aztec Says a Proving-System Flaw Left Its Alpha v5 Network Open to Invalid Transactions and It Cannot Tell Whether Anyone Used It
Core contributors found the bug through AI-assisted auditing. Separately, rival privacy network Miden is promoting a private-finance stack built around a self-custodial wallet called Bread.
Crypto
New Exploit Reproductions Show a Uniswap v4 Hook and a Token-Vesting Pool Drained Through Price and Accounting Flaws
The KolanHook drain combined an unguarded function with settlement at a manipulable spot price, and the UNCX case depended on share accounting in a shared vesting pool. The NEAR Intents and Bitget incidents set the scale for recent losses.
Macro
Bitcoin Briefly Falls Below $80,000 on Hot U.S. Inflation Data and Recovers to $82,500 Within Two Hours
September consumer prices rose 3.7% from a year earlier, and South Korea's Kospi fell 8% in the same period before Seoul's chipmakers rebounded.
Crypto
Chainalysis Finds Americans Accumulating Bitcoin While Dollar Stablecoins Carry Cross-Border Payments Elsewhere
Cross-border stablecoin value rose 77.5% to $220.3 billion over the report year, and total stablecoin supply now stands at $306.22 billion, according to DeFiLlama.
Crypto
Perpetual Futures Open Interest Tops $100 Billion as Spot Turnover Falls 14%, and Ethereum Researchers Price the Cost of Slow Quotes
CoinGecko's third-quarter report shows total crypto market value rose by about $800 billion even as spot trading on the ten largest exchanges shrank. A new Ethereum Research paper puts speed and flow screening on one scale for market makers.
Crypto
Brooklyn Prosecutors Take 112 Servers and 241 Fake Sites Offline as UAE and Toronto Police Pursue Crypto Theft Rings
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) report 33 arrests and more than $54 million seized from four social-engineering networks. Toronto police filed 82 charges after an armed abduction aimed at cryptocurrency.
Crypto
Judge Refuses to Cancel Gemini's $5 Million CFTC Penalty as White House Crypto Office Sits Empty
A federal judge rejected the joint request from the regulator and the exchange to undo the settlement. Patrick Witt's departure leaves the president's digital-assets council without a director.
Crypto
Australia Proposes Automatic Crypto Tax Data Exchange From 2028 as Washington Vows to Cut Iran's Financial Lifelines
Canberra's consultation under the crypto reporting framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) closes October 28, a year later than the 2027 start the government indicated in 2024. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says no ally can rescue Iran's economy.