BitGo CEO Mike Belshe says the Senate's 50-49 vote that stalled the CLARITY Act lets single firms keep running an exchange, a brokerage and custody together. He thinks a failure at such a venue could be worse than Lehman, and reviving the bill means finding votes it lacked in September.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence45
Anchorage Digital is cutting about 17% of staff, an estimated 68 jobs, eight months after Tether's $100 million investment valued it at $4.2 billion. That price covered a roughly 2.4% stake, and Anchorage's own 2023 record points to a cost cut it has reversed before.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 22%
- Operator
- Operator 40%
- Investor
- Investor 38%
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives35
- Confidence55
Absa, Africa's first bank to offer Bitcoin custody, says Bitcoin is most of what its institutional platform holds. The book draws on South Africa's stock of crypto assets, a small fraction of the value that moves through the country in a year.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence60
MoonPay is pursuing stablecoin, remittance and payments work with KB Financial, Woori Bank and KakaoBank after opening a Korean entity in September. Its one-vendor pitch faces three other global entrants and four Korean firms, most of them selling banks a single layer of the stack.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence45
SBI Holdings closed its 46.7 billion yen purchase of Bitbank on October 1, becoming Japan's largest crypto exchange group by assets held for customers. The price, about 8 yen per 100 yen of client crypto, is a bet on scale as Japan brings crypto under securities law.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption65
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence55
UC San Diego and Inria researchers forged a 1024-bit RSA signature through an HSM in 1,380 core-years, against at least 500,000 to factor the key. The attack only works with raw, unpadded signing access, so how exposed a custodian is depends on how its HSM is configured.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence52
UC San Diego and INRIA researchers forged RSA signatures on a 1,024-bit key inside a hardware security module after about 4 billion signing requests. The key stayed inside the device throughout, so for custodians the exposure is in signing settings, starting with the FIPS mode the researchers switched off.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence40
The Responsible Fintech Institute has put NIST-standardized signing in front of supervisors from Abu Dhabi, Bhutan and Malta. The code that would let anyone check the work comes later.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives55
- Confidence62
The fund charges 2.5% a year on about $100,000 of day-one assets held with BitGo, four weeks after Grayscale's US Zcash ETF began trading on NYSE Arca. The European money has not shown up yet.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption28
- Hype gap+44
- Incentives72
- Confidence57
Kakao Pay and KakaoBank signed a non-binding memorandum with Fireblocks for stablecoin infrastructure, the second such agreement Kakao has signed since July, while KB Financial and Toss have already run won-stablecoin pilots.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 27%
- Operator
- Operator 35%
- Investor
- Investor 38%
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives72
- Confidence68
Bastion, Agora and Catena Labs won conditional national trust charters requiring $6 million or $10 million of working capital each, a low bar because trust banks do not lend. That makes eight such approvals before the GENIUS Act takes effect in January 2027.
Reality
- Evidence74
- Adoption34
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives62
- Confidence66
The KRW1 white paper says issuance and redemption sit inside the anti-money-laundering registration BDACS already holds. Korea has not legislated who may issue a won stablecoin, and regulators plan to look into the wording.
Reality
- Evidence64
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+45
- Incentives70
- Confidence58
The OCC has conditionally approved Bastion Platforms National Trust Company to issue, custody and convert stablecoins on behalf of clients, a fee business housed inside a charter that bars deposits and FDIC cover.
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives65
- Confidence58
The Wall Street Journal puts StringZ Holding at 49% of WLTC Holdings and a Trump family entity at 38%, which leaves 13% for everyone else, with the OCC's signed non-control letters standing as the documented limit on that influence.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 8%
- Operator
- Operator 37%
- Investor
- Investor 55%
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives68
- Confidence62
The Milan lender is reviewing providers that could hold client digital assets and handle purchases and sales. It has already taken roughly 16 percent of BlockInvest and a minority of VC Trade, and the talks are early.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives55
- Confidence45
High Ridge Trust, a Nevada-based trust company open since March, will hold securities issued on Polymath's Polymesh chain. The partnership was struck 25 days into TruGolf's all-share takeover of Polymath.
Reality
- Evidence26
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+46
- Incentives74
- Confidence41
The connection lets institutions fund and unwind EDX positions from custody software they already run. The one figure either firm quantified belongs to Fireblocks: more than $16 trillion of activity secured.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption18
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives82
- Confidence46
The proposed Builders Bank and Trust would take no deposits and make no loans, which leaves custody fees as its only revenue line, and the applicant queue it joins suggests approval is measured in years rather than quarters.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives72
- Confidence55
Five former SEC and CFTC officials told the agencies that miscalibrated rules keep pushing perpetual futures offshore, and they filed the argument while Congress is on recess and the definitions are still being drafted.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption33
- Hype gap+27
- Incentives80
- Confidence55
A live conversion of eligible Treasuries and equities into digital twins put real repo trades through more than 30 firms, with one OCC-regulated custodian holding the tokens and an October 2026 launch still to reach.
Reality
- Evidence27
- Adoption36
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives63
- Confidence30