u.s. treasury secretary scott bessent said on october 8 that the u.s. would "probably" seize about $1b in iran-linked crypto this week. the wallets and assets are not disclosed. for usdt, a september forfeiture complaint shows the process: tether freezes the coins, then burns them and issues the same amount to government custody. usdt supply does not change, and the process needs no market sale.

Here is the bull case for NEAR AI. The average Google search is 3.4 words. On ~3 words at a time, Google built the biggest advertising business in the world. Search ads alone brought in $63 billion last quarter. Now think about what you tell an AI chatbot. Your salary. Your diagnosis. Your company numbers. The thing you would never ask a real person. Google had to guess what you wanted from three words. Your AI does not have to guess. It already knows, and it remembers forever. Nobody worries about this yet. The AI companies are not selling your data, because right now they need big user numbers before they go public. That will change. It always changes. When it does, one thing will be obvious. NEAR AI has been building the private version of this for years. Your prompt runs inside a sealed part of the chip, so the company that owns the machine cannot read it. You get proof of which model answered you and where it ran. They are the infrastructure layer for this, and Brave and Venice both buy private inference from them. And you can stake near:native right now and take your rewards as private AI instead of tokens. Your stake becomes your AI budget. Which of the last ten things you told an AI would you have typed into Google?

INSTEAD OF WATCHING AN HOUR OF NETFLIX TONIGHT. This 20 minute lecture by Andreas Antonopoulos will teach you more about the financial surveillance complex and KYC risks, than most people learn in years. Bookmark it and share it, no matter what.

Here we go again! The WSJ is working on a story blaming Coinbase and me personally for the CLARITY Act not passing. The Journal has repeatedly been hostile to CLARITY in its reporting, regurgitating bank lobby talking points, while I’ve spent years pushing for crypto legislation, but that’s not stopping them from trying to reverse the blame. The boring TLDR: in January I opposed a draft of the bill going into a committee vote, because it needed a lot of work on DeFi, tokenization, CFTC authority, and stablecoin rewards. At the time, the bill had major issues that would have harmed crypto. Support was fractured, and it wasn’t passable. We worked with a number of parties who improved the bill and made it passable. All four of the items I called out were fixed in the draft that then went through the committee about four months later. I'm proud to have done it, and would do it again, because it helped create a better bill. One step of many along the way. The final draft of CLARITY that went to the Senate was great, and I strongly supported it. I'll continue showing up for our customers and pushing for clear rules that treat crypto fairly, even if those who feel threatened by crypto try to plant false stories. It's a shame that the WSJ takes direction from bank lobbyists instead of reporting the truth, but luckily, people are smart enough to see through it these days, and it backfires on them every time.

This afternoon, Senate Democrats proved they were never truly serious about protecting consumers and preserving American leadership. I sat at the table with Senate Democrats working in good faith to get this done while they played games. For over a year, they presented demands and the second we met them, they made new demands and moved the goal posts. Today they voted against real limitations on politicians’ personal crypto investments. They voted against protecting American consumers from the scammers and fraudsters this bill would have shut down. They voted against American leadership, and handed China and every one of our foreign competitors exactly what they wanted. Democrats chose politics over the American people—again. That’s not leadership on their part, that’s surrender to their radical, socialist base. The once-proud Democratic party is anti-consumer and pro-illicit finance, anti-ethics, anti-free enterprise, anti-worker, anti-livable wage jobs, and pro-socialism. The Democrats are now anti-American. Sad!

Literally the best lesson to come out of a board game ever…

The Senate has had CLARITY for a year. Since then, lawmakers have negotiated hundreds of pages of changes, reached agreement on SEC and CFTC nominations, and secured unprecedented ethics commitments. The crypto and banking industry have compromised as well. That’s how legislation is supposed to work. No one gets everything. Everyone gets most of what they need. At this point, the only thing left isn’t negotiation—it's whether some group will try to stall or block legislation that already has broad bipartisan support. Millions of Americans own crypto and are watching. It’s time to call the vote.

Steak n Shake is a sustainable Bitcoin company. Bitcoin payments go into our Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. And the savings in processing fees over credit cards helps us reinvest in improving the quality of our offerings. The allegiance of Bitcoiners is unparalleled. We thank them on our journey to become a MAHA-aligned company. We are increasing sales at a rate faster than any other fast food chain.

History will remember this as the moment a president chose a higher standard of ethics than the law required of him. This agreement bans ALL federal officials — including the President — from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset for profit, with real enforcement and real penalties. Thank you, @POTUS! Let's get the Clarity Act passed NOW.

CLARITY

CLARITY enactment trades at 42% on $1.9m of volume with no senate floor date, too rich for a crypto catalyst whose coalition and text are both unfinished. banking advanced its version 15-9, but only two democrats voted yes and both withheld floor support pending changes. cloture needs 60 senators. agriculture advanced a separate spot-market bill, so the senate still needs one combined text, an ethics deal that adds votes, then identical house passage. the july 20 schedule contains only a judicial nomination and recess starts august 10. network tokens, defi infrastructure and u.s. exchanges carry the catalyst because BTC and ETH already have agency commodity treatment. thune's pre-recess vote pledge supplies neither text nor 60 votes. the 42% contract is pricing a coalition that does not exist

for SOL, the Clarity Act would turn an existing commodity label into law. the SEC and CFTC already call SOL a digital commodity. the bill would add federal spot-exchange rules and durable status, but still needs merged text, 60 votes to open Senate debate and House approval.

the 894 BTC hyperliquid short at 12x with liquidation at 68,200 is running 100% margin utilization. that means zero capacity to add and defend. the underwater longs at 64,200 just topped up 4.46m because they can. a position that cant defend itself is the first domino, not the survivor

When someone says “no company can beat the Google ecosystem” show them this.