Trump tapped Intel chief Jay Clayton to lead new superintelligence force
President Donald Trump has named US Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to lead the nation’s new superintelligence force, according to a post on Truth Social on Sunday.
The announcement followed media reports on Friday of the appointment. Cointelegraph reported on September 20 that Trump plans to create an “AI force” modeled after the Space Force and hire an artificial intelligence czar.
“The Superintelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the federal government’s efforts to ensure that America leads the world in superintelligence,” Trump wrote. post.
Clayton led the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term and on his last day in office launched a case against Ripple for selling securities and, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, led the criminal prosecution of Roman Storm for his involvement in Tornado Cash. Storm commented:
“It doesn’t seem like we’re headed for a future that supports open-source AI.”
Trump’s good friend Elon Musk is renaming SpaceXAI SpaceXSI Rename “artificial intelligence” to “superintelligence” to honor presidential directive.
Source: Roman Storm
NEAR Intents Hack has a happy ending
NEAR has been riding a wave of positive sentiment lately and has more than doubled in price in the past month It won praise in some quarters – and criticism in others – this week after the SHIELD AI system blocked Bitget’s hacked funds from its INTENTS cross-chain swap platform. Its Bitwise ETF debuted this week with nearly $60 million in inflows.
SHAILD also helped stop a $3.8 million exploit of NEAR Intents due to “bugs in the interaction of the Omni Deposit and Withdrawal infrastructure with Near Intents smart contracts.”
Sentiment flipped for about seven-and-a-half minutes, until NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko posted like a boss “we’ve spotted you, sir” and issued a 48-hour ultimatum to return the funds or possibly face the full force of the law.
“You know best how responsible disclosure works — that’s the last window to use it. After 48 hours, that window closes.”
The funds were duly returned, and Shevchenko urged other exploiters who thought of LARPing as white hat hackers to “use bug bounties instead of disrupting services”.
Bitget’s move to block stolen funds was controversial though and in full agreement with THORchain which has refused to block swaps on its platform, pointing to the ideals around decentralization. There is also a live debate over whether the SHIELD Blocking Fund is legally liable for what happens on the platform in the future.
NEAR is down 11% this week.
Arthur Hayes says printing money is inevitable
The AI revolution, the U.S. debt crisis, and rising financial pressures in France are driving money printing, said Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom Fund.
AI companies need trillions of dollars to fund data centers even as the cost of their services falls, Hayes said in a fireside chat at Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition’s CONNECT on Tuesday during Korea Blockchain Week.
“They haven’t really given themselves many options other than to print money and make it less bad,” he said.
Hayes also discussed China’s possible move to fiscal stimulus as financial stress increases in France, including credit-default swaps tied to BNP Paribas and French government bond spreads.
I think money printing will basically happen at some point, but it’s a slow moving train wreck under the surface.
Bitmex co-founder Arthur Hayes speaking at Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition of Connect.
Ethereum L2 After Exceeding Blast Revenue to Reduce
The Ethereum Layer-2 network blasts off when its operating costs exceed the revenue generated by the chain.
In a Friday post on X, Blast said it sees no “credible path” to making the network economically sustainable and asked users to withdraw their assets to the Ethereum mainnet.
“We launched Blast with the goal of creating a self-sustaining chain for users and developers,” the team said.
“Unfortunately, the economics of chain management no longer make sense.”
Blast was founded by Tieshun “Pacman” Roquerre, founder of NFT marketplace Blur, in November 2023 with a points program tied to Ether (ETH) and stablecoins and an expected token airdrop.
The strategy helped attract more than $2 billion in deposits before its original net on In February 2024. According to DeFiLlama, its DeFi total locked value has fallen by more than 98% since its June 2024 peak. Information.
Ethereum Schedules Glamstardom Upgrade to Sepolia for October 6
Ethereum developers have scheduled the network’s next major upgrade, Glamstardom, to be activated on the Cepolia testnet on October 6.
Cepolia node operators must update both their execution-layer and consensus-layer clients before activation, Ethereum Foundation said.
One of the changes in glamsterdom is the proposer-producer separation. This will move the handoff between specialized block builders and validators to Ethereum’s protocol, reducing reliance on outside middleware.
Glamsterdam will introduce block-level access lists, which record the accounts and storage locations used during each block, and enable parallel processing by clients to speed up throughput.
winners and losers
By week’s end, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading up 1.4% at $85,821, Ethereum (ETH) was trading up 0.6% at $2,701, and XRP (XRP) was down 0.8% at $1.50. According to CoinMarketCap the total market cap is $2.92 trillion.
Among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week were Midnight (Knight), with a 60.6% gain, StarkNet (SRK) at 14.5% and Pump.fun (PUMP) at 26.3%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Lighter (LIT) which is down 22.2%, Zcash (SEC) down 16.4% and Athena (ENA) down 14%.
Forecast for the week
Peter Brand says Bitcoin could hit $600K by 2029
Veteran trader Peter Brandt has flipped bullish, after warning in July that prices could fall into the high $40K zone.
“There is a good chance that we have seen the low and are now entering a new bull market cycle in Bitcoin,” Brand said. to say Cointelegraph in the latest episode of Trade Secrets.
Brandt also has his sights set on bitcoin’s next peak, a peak between $300,000 and $600,000 in late 2029, down from the $250,000 to $300,000 range he noted in July.
“The bull market cycle has a very good chance of reaching half a million this time,” he said.
Best FUD of the week
Crypto tops $768M hacked in September, worst month of 2026
Crypto suffered its worst month of the year for hacks and exploits in September, with two blockchain security firms estimating losses of more than $766 million.
Peckshield to calculate 55 major incidents resulting in theft of $766.5 million, while CertiK recorded 97 incidents and an estimated loss of $768.4 million.
The month includes the $388 million Bitgate hack and the $320 million Liquid Network hack. More than $270 million was later returned, according to reports.
“September was a stark reminder of how quickly the threat landscape can change,” CertiK said.
Other crypto hacks this month include SafeWallet, Deceint, and DualBit, which lost $7.8 million, $6 million, and $5.9 million, respectively.
The biggest event in September. Source: Certike
Aave founder says V3 unaffected after third-party adapter exploits drain $305K
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said Aave v3 was unaffected by an exploit that siphoned about $305,000 from two secure multisig wallets through a third-party adapter built on top of the lending protocol.
“This is not an Aave v3 contract, it’s a third-party external adapter built on top of Aave, zero impact on Aave v3,” Kulechev said on x.
Tether says it helped accumulate $550M in Iran-linked USDT this year
Stablecoin issuer Tether said it helped authorities deposit about $550 million in Iran-linked USDT by 2026.
Company said It has been working closely with international law enforcement agencies for years. This year alone, it froze more than $130 million in USDT across four wallets, and in April, it froze more than $344 million linked to Iran’s central bank.
Tether’s statement came as the Democratic investigator for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations release One report alleges that USDT has become a key channel for Iran to evade sanctions.
The investigators found that 84% of the 846 crypto wallets approved for ties to Iran dealt exclusively or almost exclusively in USDT. The findings prompted U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal to call on the Treasury and Justice Departments to investigate possible sanctions violations.
Top magazine feature of the week
The outrage over Bitget’s $387.7M hacked funding comes down to the ideals surrounding “permissionless and decentralized” technology that never interfere — even if you can.
THORchain will not — or cannot — block addresses linked to the $387.5 million BitJet hack. Can the gods be prosecuted for money laundering? It’s complicated, says crypto lawyer Yuri Brisov.
Highly liquid and permanent 24/7, stablecoins can leave banks and countries at lightning speed. But stablecoins are a risk – or an opportunity – depending on your perspective.
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