Remember when Crypto Twitter was like taking a front-row seat to the movies? Markets were a runaway rollercoaster, narratives flipped like pancakes, and every week had the energy of a new heist movie. What happened? If you’re lamenting the days of God candles and 20% BTC pumps, Nic Carter wants you to smile through the tears: crypto is boring now because we won.
Hacks, dumps, pumps, oh my!
From major exchange collapses to China bans, Elon Musk pumps to COVID black swans, it’s been quite a ride. Jamie Dimon lambasted Bitcoin as a “fraud” and threatened to fire anyone caught trading it at JPMorgan.
Now the world’s biggest banks are stacking stablecoins, and even Dimon admits, “Crypto is real. Stablecoins are real,” as JPMorgan invites clients to post BTC and ETH as collateral for loans and launches its own blockchain rails.
Are all the crazy days behind us now, and crypto is boring? Is it time to seek a new asset class for our thrills? Turns out, Gandhi’s saying, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” might fit crypto better than anyone expected.
At the heart of the vibe shift is what Nic Carter nailed in a post on X. The reason the volatility has dampened is because we won. As he states:
“Crypto is boring because so many of the open questions have been answered.”
We’re all grown up and crypto is boring now
Gone is the existential guessing game about whether stablecoins will be banned or if writing smart contracts will get you thrown in jail. The old school volatility, the kind that made fortunes and wiped them out by lunchtime, came straight from regulatory Russian roulette and the sense that rules might change at any moment.
Now? The GENIUS Act pins down rules for stablecoins, the Clarity Act sets out bright lines for what is a security and what isn’t. And even the question of crypto’s marriage with TradFi is a historical footnote, not a juicy risk premium. When you live in a world where holding T-bills on-chain is business casual and BlackRock’s ETF isn’t controversial, that means dampened volatility. Which means that crypto is boring.
Yawn fest, we’ve seen this movie before
Even as price action grinds along, what used to be wild opportunity now feels, to many, like a playground being turned into a parking lot. As BTC analyst Will Clemente commented:
“The vibes in the crypto groupchats that I’m in are just sad honestly, people completely giving up and pivoting to other asset classes if they haven’t already.”
But Carter isn’t mourning. As he sees it, regulatory clarity, Wall Street adoption, and boring stability are proof that crypto won. The whole space has matured. What was once a technological risk-fest is now a “technological substrate” adopted by the world’s biggest firms. The new game isn’t about skirting the law; it’s about building products that actually generate value in clear daylight.
Wall Street didn’t just join the party; it put on the DJ headphones. BlackRock. JPMorgan. Even Jamie Dimon’s about-face is now crypto lore. From denier to builder, the old guard’s pivot closes the loop on a playbook that once prioritized chaos and rewarded pirates.
Now, crypto is boring. TradFi’s seriousness brings real capital, real custody, and real infrastructure. The legends of the wild west are being replaced by compliance teams, pension allocators, and crash-helmeted bankers. And that’s all great… except some of us miss the outlaws. This movie just feels like we’ve seen it before.
Welcome to Slate Sunday, CryptoSlate’s weekly feature showcasing in-depth interviews, expert analysis, and thought-provoking op-eds that go beyond the headlines to explore the ideas and voices shaping the future of crypto.
Self‑custody was once the ultimate badge of credibility in crypto. A declaration of faith in sovereignty over convenience, code over blind trust, and cryptography over legal fine print. But for many of the space’s earliest and wealthiest adopters, that belief is starting to bend under a different kind of pressure: wrench attacks.
In a world now flush with organized crime, doxxing, and $5 wrench attacks, even the most battle‑hardened Bitcoiners are locking away more than their coins; their ideology is going in the vault as well.
The rise of $5 wrench attacks
A decade ago, wrench attack jokes circulated mostly in privacy forums. The meme, coined from a 2015 XKCD comic, encapsulates a brutal truth. You can’t brute‑force a passphrase, but you can threaten someone with a $5 wrench until they tell you it.
A Crypto Nerd’s Imagination vs. What would actually happen
OG Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp, co‑founder of Casa and maintainer of the “Physical Bitcoin Attacks” directory, has spent years documenting cases of wrench attacks where everyday crypto holders are beaten, held hostage, or worse because of their on‑chain visibility.
The directory now lists more than 200 verified incidents spanning at least 34 countries. From European traders kidnapped at gunpoint to influencers targeted after posting wealth flexes online. As of October 2025, the directory records 52 wrench attacks this year alone (more than one per week), with overall physical assaults increasing 169% since February.
In late October 2025, Russian influencer Sergei Domogatskii was kidnapped in Bali by masked assailants who tased and beat him, forcing him to transfer approximately $4,600 in crypto from his mobile phone to their accounts. This is part of a rising trend of wrench attacks in this region, as Lopp previously told me:
“I’ve seen a number of attacks, for example, where Russian citizens who are either vacationing or living in Southeast Asia are getting hit by Russian organized crime. They’re coming into the country, wrench attacking them, and then trying to get out as quickly as possible, and presumably trying to leverage jurisdictional arbitrage.”
When the protectors tap out
Even veteran cypherpunks are taking notice. In a recent interview on What Bitcoin Did, on‑chain analyst Willy Woo admitted:
“I’m not self‑custodying anymore… I think you’ll see a lot more people who’ve been in this space a long time doing the same.”
Woo reinforced that smaller holders should absolutely keep control of their own coins, but large balances and public profiles create an entirely different threat model. It’s not about losing a hardware wallet anymore; it’s about personal safety.
Many others share his view. The Bitcoin Family, known for selling everything to live off Bitcoin, told CNBC in June that they’ve abandoned single‑device wallets for a scattered analog‑digital fortress.
They’ve split seed phrases and encrypted data across four continents. Family patriarch Didi Taihuttu said:
“Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet or my phone. And that’s not a lot.”
Both Woo and Taihuttu were once among the poster children for full sovereignty. Their quiet retreat marks a broader sentiment shift (one now confirmed by the numbers).
From cold storage to Wall Street custody
Somehow, Wall Street has managed to do what few thought possible: lure long-time Bitcoin whales into its regulated fold. According to a recent Bloomberg article, a new breed of discreet, ultra-wealthy holders is quietly offloading their cold wallets and moving billions into spot ETFs (sometimes without so much as a murmur on the blockchain).
Thanks to “in-kind transfers,” these whales can dodge a taxable sale, swapping their BTC directly for ETF shares. BlackRock alone has taken in over $3 billion since July through this channel. Suddenly, what used to be a wild-west game of keys and ledgers is starting to look a lot more like traditional finance. All packaged up with a shiny ticker symbol and plenty of paperwork to go around.
“This terrified me a bit,” commented Bitcoin advocate and human rights activist Alex Gladstein. For someone who’s spent his career documenting the way repressive regimes freeze assets and lock citizens out of the global financial system, watching Bitcoin drift toward mainstream financial custody feels like watching the escape hatch slowly close.
Why? Because safety, reporting, and inheritance are finally trumping ideology.
Srbuhi Avetisyan, research and analytics lead at Owner.One and co‑author of Penguin Analytics recently helped analyze 13,500 high‑net‑worth families across 18 countries. She shares:
“At high balances, the risk isn’t blockchain failure—it’s physical coercion and OPSEC drift (lost seeds, single-point wallets). 87% of families keep incomplete asset records, and 99.4% lack a verified digital twin of their holdings. Crypto often disappears at incapacity/death—not from volatility, but from missing credentials and unclear rights.”
For these families, ETFs and qualified custodians aren’t about giving in to TradFi. They’re about ensuring heirs can locate and transfer what might otherwise vanish.
Collaborative custody: a reluctant middle path
Still, not everyone’s ready to hand the entire stack back to banks. There’s a rising class of “hybrid” custodians building bridges between full self‑sovereignty and institutional protection.
Seth for Privacy, vice president of the self‑custodial app Cake Wallet, says the wrench attacks problem doesn’t have to end self‑custody; it just forces it to evolve. He explains:
“Crypto has become mainstream, and self-custody solutions have to keep up.”
Beyond leveraging privacy tools, like Silent Payments and Payjoin, where possible, to keep their transactions out of public view, he believes the best protection for high‑profile individuals is to stop talking about their wealth.
That was a point hammered home by Lopp, as well, who told me:
“If you are on any sort of public network and you are flaunting your wealth, that’s one of the more risky things that you could be doing.”
Seth points to Lopp’s company, Casa, Unchained, or some newer entrants like Nunchuk and Liana as examples of “collaborative custody.” These setups enable users to maintain control while distributing risk through multi‑signature arrangements, such as a 2‑of‑3 or 3‑of‑5 scheme, with a fiduciary or geographically separate co‑signer to remove the single point of failure.
The rise of the ‘digital Fort Knox’
Anthony Yeung, chief commercial officer at CoinCover, also sees hybrid models as the pragmatic path forward.
“Complete independence also comes with risk. If a private key is lost or compromised, the assets are often gone forever. A hybrid model addresses this by combining the best of both worlds: individuals retain direct control and ownership of their assets, while a trusted institution provides a safety net through secure backup and recovery mechanisms.”
He calls this “a digital Fort Knox”: still user‑controlled, but institutionalized enough to enable secure backups, key recovery, and even inheritance triggers. Yeung adds:
“They may well be the bridge that brings the next generation of users from web2 to web3.”
Thomas Chen, CEO of Function and managing director at BitGo for six years, agrees, although he emphasizes personalization and risk tolerance.
“I think a future for hybrid models ultimately depends on the user’s risk profile and what they’re comfortable with.”
Those who self‑custody gain sovereignty but lose convenience, he says, particularly when they want to pledge assets as collateral, trade at scale, or interact with smart contracts in general. That’s not the experience that institutional investors want, and it may not be right for HNW individuals either. ETFs and custodial structures allow Bitcoin to act like a financial asset, not just a collectible. For institutions, that’s non‑negotiable. As Andrew Gibb, CEO of Twinstake institutional-grade, non-custodial staking platform, put it:
“The custody landscape is shifting from the crypto-native ideal of total self-control toward models that match the risk appetite and operational rigor of institutional investors.”
Fiduciary duty, in his view, forbids relying on untested personal key setups.
Common sense isn’t centralization
Yet not everyone’s convinced this convenience is worth the compromise. Tony Yazbeck, co‑founder of The Bitcoin Way, offers a sharper take:
“People love to overcomplicate this, but it really comes down to common sense. Some wealthy holders and institutions convince themselves they are safer putting their Bitcoin into ETFs or custodial accounts. They say it protects them from mistakes, inheritance issues, or even physical threats. In reality, it just hands control of the world’s scarcest asset to someone else and replaces ownership with paperwork.”
Having lived through Lebanon’s banking collapse, Yazbeck warns that history has proven that third parties fail, exchanges collapse, governments seize assets, and custodians freeze withdrawals. His advice is refreshingly non‑technical.
“The risk of losing your Bitcoin because you trusted a middleman is far higher than the risk of losing access to your own keys if you handle them properly. Multisig setups, secure backups, and simple operational discipline solve almost every real self-custody problem.”
But the best defense? Once again, stop attracting attention to yourself.
“Stay quiet about what you hold and live a normal life.”
His mantra: protect privacy, take responsibility, and never outsource what Bitcoin was invented to make trustless.
Where the industry is heading
EY blockchain specialist Yaniv Sofer believes we’re witnessing a financial re‑tiering rather than an ideological rupture. He explains:
“Financial institutions are accelerating their entry into digital assets use cases, and custody is a critical core capability.”
While some firms buy access through third‑party providers like Fireblocks and BitGo, others build internal systems to integrate tokenization and payments. Sofer cautions:
“Hybrid custody models have not yet gained significant traction among financial institutions but remain a topic of interest. Regulatory requirements for qualified custodians continue to favor centralized solutions… but hybrid models could emerge as a differentiator as the market matures.”
In Avetisyan’s view, the long‑term equilibrium is clear. Most founders will run dual rails: core exposure in ETFs or qualified custody for reporting and collateralization, with a smaller self‑custody satellite for censorship resistance.
This dual-rail system, she says, is already shifting how liquidity flows through the crypto economy. As more Bitcoin migrates to custodial wrappers, traditional funding markets gain depth and stability. The flip side? Sovereignty becomes optional, not default.
The philosophical hangover
Maybe what’s happening now isn’t so much an ideological defeat as a maturation. Bitcoin’s promise of self‑sovereignty remains intact for those who choose to uphold it. As the Bitcoin lead at Sygnum Bank, Pascal Eberle, comments:
“The future of “Freedom Money” lies in choice – investors can opt for full self-custody, institutional-grade protection, or hybrid models that balance both.”
Hybrid custody, institutional wrappers, and ETF liquidity are all symptoms of the same evolution: crypto crossing into the realm of structured finance.
For early believers, that can feel like a betrayal, with self-custody becoming sidelined to the margins. As Yazbeck framed it:
“Thinking you are safer by giving your Bitcoin to someone else is like a rich person surrounding themselves with a military convoy out of paranoia. It looks strong but it is actually weak.”
Yet perhaps this is decentralization in action; a dispersion of risk, trust, and control according to every individual’s appetite. Each generation of holder must redraw its own line between freedom and fear. In 2025, that line runs straight through the vault door.
In a breakthrough for global markets, President Donald Trump has secured a far-reaching deal for US-China trade. The agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping de-escalates tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
According to the official White House fact sheet, the agreement includes China’s commitment to suspend new export controls on rare earths and critical minerals. They will also halt the flow of fentanyl precursors to the United States and remove all retaliatory tariffs and non-tariff measures implemented since March 4, 2025.
On the American side, the deal will see a 10% reduction in tariffs on Chinese imports beginning November 10, 2025, along with extensions to key Section 301 tariff exclusions. The United States will also suspend for one year the implementation of responsive US-China trade actions connected to ongoing maritime and logistics sector investigations.
The Kobeissi Letter, a leading market newsletter, highlighted the significance:
“This is the BIGGEST de-escalation yet… This is not getting nearly enough attention.”
The US-China trade agreement also guarantees China’s purchase of at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by year-end. China will also purchase at least 25 million metric tons annually through 2028.
US-Chain trade deal: market impact and outlook
The landmark arrangement effectively resets trade relations, removing a cycle of retaliatory measures that weighed on corporate profits and sowed supply chain uncertainty across key industries. Immediate beneficiaries of the US-China trade deal include U.S. agriculture, semiconductor manufacturing, and critical minerals production for electric vehicles and consumer electronics.
Financial analysts suggest risk assets such as equities, tech stocks, and digital assets may benefit from a renewed sense of stability. Crypto markets, which have lagged risk-on sentiment in recent months, could see an uptick in institutional flows as regulatory and trade uncertainty dissipates. Improved US-China trade relations can ease cross-border business for US-listed crypto firms and reduce headline-driven volatility.
Removal of tariff roadblocks and tech export restrictions is bullish for institutional portfolios, and crypto is increasingly a pillar in that mix. Should confidence spread across asset classes, expect renewed momentum for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and tokenized commodities that depend on global supply chains.
As the current truce unfolds, attention will shift to how both governments implement and maintain these commitments. The crypto sector, meanwhile, could see a reversal of its recent malaise given the risk-on signals and improved global trading conditions.
The worst bull cycle ever for crypto investors may find a much-needed second wind. For now, markets and policy watchers will be monitoring for follow-through, both on the ground and in the charts.
Brian Armstrong wrapped Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 30, with a line that instantly resolved live prediction market contracts on Polymarket and Kalshi.
The episode sparked debates about whether the industry’s most visible CEO had just mocked a niche betting venue or crossed a line that regulated financial executives shouldn’t approach.
Armstrong said in the final seconds of the call:
“I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call. And I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and Web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call.”
The admission was casual, almost throwaway, but it flipped roughly $90,000 in wagers across Kalshi and Polymarket from uncertain to resolved in the time it took him to finish the sentence.
The reaction split along predictable fault lines. Prediction market builders and crypto-native traders laughed it off as a harmless troll.
On the other hand, a market participant saw something else: the CEO of a publicly traded, regulated financial company openly manipulating a market, even a tiny one, and handing ammunition to every skeptic who argues the industry is too immature for institutional money.
What the markets looked like
Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated designated contract market, listed an event contract titled “What will Coinbase say during their next earnings call?” with binary yes-or-no outcomes for specific words.
Polymarket ran a similar set of mention bets with rules stating that any utterance by anyone during the call would resolve the contract to “yes.”
Approximately $84,000 was wagered on Kalshi, while Polymarket’s poll ended with roughly $4,000 in volume.
The contracts resolved immediately after Armstrong’s closing remark, paying out holders who had bet “yes” on the words he recited.
Mention markets pay if a specified term appears in a defined event window, regardless of context.
Armstrong’s acknowledgment that he was “tracking the prediction market” made explicit what was already structurally valid: the subject of the bet can trivially force resolution by saying the words.
Platform
Market label
Total wagers
Resolution time
Payout notes
Kalshi
“What will Coinbase say during their next earnings call?”
≈$80,000–$84,000
Immediately after Armstrong’s signoff on Oct. 30, 2025
Contracts resolved “Yes” for listed words after the CEO’s closing line.
Polymarket
“Earnings mentions: Coinbase (Oct. 29/30, 2025)”
≈$3,900–$4,000
Immediately after Armstrong’s signoff on Oct. 30, 2025
Rules count any mention by anyone; relevant markets flipped to “Yes.”
The manipulation argument
Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, didn’t find it amusing. He stated that crypto enthusiasts need to have their heads examined if they “think it’s cute or clever or savvy that the CEO of the biggest company in this industry openly manipulated a market.”
Doman added:
“It’s not fun working tirelessly for eight years trying to educate institutional investors on the value of crypto investing as an investable asset class, and working to help them gain comfort in this industry, while one of the supposed ‘leaders’ openly mocks the industry with crap like this.”
Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute, questioned whether the scale mattered.
Dorman argued that if Jamie Dimon joked about bribing a $10,000 wager on the Knicks during a JPMorgan earnings call, the issue wouldn’t be the dollar amount, but rather the embarrassment of a regulated financial company CEO treating markets as toys.
Gaevoy countered that people in regulated finance take speech too seriously, pointing to Elon Musk as a comparison:
“Elon is doing what Brian did 100 times a day. And I’m fairly certain what Brian did was in jest and not to manipulate anything. If anything that shows me his human side.”
Dorman closed the exchange by distinguishing tech companies and finance companies:
“Elon runs tech companies, not finance companies. And like it or not, Coinbase is not only a finance company, but it’s the leading finance company in an industry that is already plagued by immaturity, manipulation, and corruption.”
He claimed that he will hear about this “no less than 50 times” in the next year from institutional investors, adding that Coinbase sets back conversations with real investors and doesn’t even know it.
The legal question is narrower than the reputational one.
Armstrong’s words don’t implicate securities market manipulation standards because the mentioned contracts aren’t securities, and the CFTC’s event-contract rules don’t prohibit subjects from influencing trivial binary outcomes.
As a result, the manipulation allegation concerns norms and optics, rather than the law.
The prediction market builder view
Prediction market analysts and platform operators treated the episode as inevitable.
Aaron, who builds a tool Kalshi acknowledged as an “early collaborator,” called Kalshinomics, commented:
“lol, this was bound to happen sooner or later glad coinbase made the move.”
Tyrael, COO of Predict Shark, echoed the sentiment:
“yeah we’ve been joking about it forever, crazy it actually happened for the first time on an earnings call haha chad move.”
The designer perspective is that mention markets are low-stakes novelty bets, not serious information aggregation, and that Armstrong made the subtext text.
If a market allows the subject to control the outcome by simply saying a word, the design invites exactly this outcome.
Armstrong’s comment wasn’t an accident. He acknowledged tracking the market and deliberately resolved it, which means he understood the mechanics and chose to trigger it.
Whether that’s harmless fun or a reputational misstep depends entirely on who’s evaluating it. For crypto-native audiences, the stunt is amusing because it highlights the absurdity of betting on which buzzwords a CEO will use.
For institutional allocators already skeptical about the maturity of crypto, it’s another data point suggesting that the industry’s leaders don’t take their roles seriously.
The nearly $90,000 in wagers is irrelevant to both interpretations, as the issue is whether the CEO of a regulated financial company should publicly demonstrate that he can rig a market, even one designed to be rigged, and whether doing so advances or undermines the industry’s legitimacy.
The debate pitting Ethereum versus Solana as rival L1s misses how radically their architectures diverged in 2025. Ethereum evolved into a settlement layer for modular rollups, while Solana doubled down on monolithic throughput.
Ethereum abandoned the monolithic-chain race years ago, as its roadmap treats the base layer as settlement infrastructure. At the same time, execution occurs on layer-2 (L2) rollups that post state roots back to the mainnet.
Solana made the opposite bet, with one unified ledger, sub-second slot times, and a proof-of-history pipeline that sequences transactions in a single global ledger.
Both paths deliver transactions that feel instant to users clicking “send,” but the security models diverge sharply once you ask what happens in the seconds, minutes, or days after that click.
The question builders face in 2026 isn’t which chain runs faster in a vacuum; it’s which one is more efficient in a practical application. It’s about which model delivers lower friction for the application they want to build, and how much they’re willing to pay, in terms of latency, complexity, or exit time, for the assurances each system provides.
Monolithic speed versus modular finality
Solana’s architecture collapses inclusion, confirmation, and economic finality into a single 400-millisecond slot when the network runs smoothly.
Validators vote on blocks using a proof-of-history clock that timestamps transactions before consensus, allowing the network to pipeline throughput without waiting for traditional BFT round-trips.
Users see confirmation streams after two-thirds of stake votes on the block, typically within half a second, and complete finality arrives around 12 seconds later.
Jakob Povšič, co-founder of Temporal, described the user-facing result in a note:
“For most end users, a transaction is considered ‘confirmed’ once two-thirds of the network have voted on its block, which takes less than half a second.”
Ethereum’s modular design separates those steps. Rollups sequence transactions off-chain: Arbitrum produces blocks every 250 milliseconds, while Optimism produces blocks every two seconds. As a result, users see “soft” finality the moment the sequencer accepts the transaction.
But economic finality only arrives when the rollup posts its state root to L1 and the dispute or validity window closes.
Optimistic rollups impose seven-day challenge periods before users can withdraw to mainnet, while ZK rollups compress that to 15 minutes or a few hours by submitting validity proofs.
Will Papper, co-founder of Syndicate, argued the delay matters less than it appears. In a note, he added:
“Many instant bridges feel comfortable operating on non-finalized rollup states anyway. L2s deliver sub-second inclusion for apps that rarely bridge to L1, but applications requiring frequent mainnet settlement pay a time cost Solana avoids.”
What users actually feel
The architecture difference reshapes how each system handles congestion, fees, and failure. On Solana, the base fee remains fixed at 5,000 lamports per signature, roughly $0.0001, while priority fees allow users to bid for inclusion during traffic spikes.
Stake-weighted quality-of-service routes high-priority transactions from known validators faster, and local fee markets prevent single hot accounts from clogging the scheduler.
Most retail transactions land under one cent. When the system fails, it fails globally: the Feb. 6, 2024, Solana halt lasted four hours and 46 minutes after a legacy loader bug forced validators to restart the cluster.
L2 fees fluctuate with Ethereum’s blob market. Still, the introduction of Dencun’s blob in March 2024 and Pectra’s capacity increases in May 2025 drove typical “send” transactions to single-digit cents on major rollups.
The failure modes differ: an L2 sequencer going offline pauses user activity on that rollup even when Ethereum L1 operates normally.
Base’s 45-minute halt in September 2023 and Optimism and Starknet’s multi-hour disruptions in 2024-25 illustrate the localized risk.
Fault proofs and force-inclusion mechanisms provide escape hatches, but UX during an outage depends on whether the affected rollup has implemented those backstops.
Challenge windows and withdrawal reality
The seven-day optimistic rollup withdrawal window exists because fraud proofs require time for validators to submit challenges if execution was incorrect.
OP Mainnet, Base, and Arbitrum all enforce the delay. Papper suggested the delay has become invisible, saying that “ideally these internals are invisible from a UX perspective.”
Third-party bridges mitigate the delay by lending liquidity, allowing users to experience near-instant exits for a small fee. ZK rollups eliminate the challenge period by submitting validity proofs, allowing withdrawals in minutes to hours.
Solana has no withdrawal window because transactions settle directly on L1. The unified state means there’s no secondary chain to exit from, so “finality” and “withdrawal” collapse into the same 12-second threshold.
That simplicity removes a layer of bridging trust but concentrates all failure risk in the validator client and network stack.
MEV extraction on Solana flows through Jito’s block engine, which validators integrate to auction bundle space.
Stake-weighted quality of service (QoS) provides preferential treatment to high-stakes validators, thereby improving predictability for searchers but raising questions about fairness for smaller participants.
Ethereum’s trajectory aims to harden inclusion guarantees at the protocol level. The 2026 “Glamsterdam” upgrade plans to enshrine proposer-builder separation and introduce inclusion lists that force proposers to include specified transactions within one or two slots.
Papper argued that inclusion guarantees matter more than single-slot finality:
“The next most beneficial item is inclusion guarantees since it allows apps to be more certain of transaction inclusion, offering better UX.”
Firedancer versus modular maturity
Solana’s catalyst is Firedancer, the independent validator client developed by Jump Crypto. Public demos showcased throughput far exceeding that of the current Agave client.
Povšič emphasized that the culture shift is “what’s fundamentally different now from the outage risks of the past is the development culture.” He added that the core teams have adopted a security- and reliability-first approach.
Firedancer’s rollout introduces client diversity, reducing single-implementation risk and pushing latency and throughput ceilings higher. The Alpenglow runtime targets sub-150-millisecond finality.
Ethereum’s roadmap stacks three near-term upgrades. Pectra, delivered in May 2025, increased blob throughput. Fusaka, slated for this quarter, ships PeerDAS: a peer-based data availability sampling system that enables nodes to verify data without downloading full blobs.
Glamsterdam in 2026 brings enshrined PBS and inclusion lists, hardening censorship resistance. OP Stack chains and Arbitrum are maturing fault-proof systems that enable permissionless validation.
Papper predicted that cheaper data availability (DA) drives the most immediate gains:
“Cheaper data availability leads to lower fees. That ensures that every transaction on a rollup becomes cheaper.”
Who should build where
High-frequency trading and market-making demand the lowest possible time-to-inclusion. Solana’s single-slot path, stake-weighted QoS, and Jito bundles deliver that when milliseconds matter.
Povšič argued the infrastructure has matured:
“We’ve come a long way…from an NFT mint almost bringing down the chain in late 2021 to Solana surviving the recent Black Friday without breaking a sweat.”
On-chain games and social applications that rarely settle on L1 fit L2s well. Arbitrum’s 250-millisecond blocks feel instant, and post-Dencun fees compete with Solana’s sub-penny economics.
“I think that 200ms from preconfirmations is already imperceptible to most users.”
Payments and consumer DeFi hinge on fees and exit flows. If users rarely bridge to L1, L2 UX competes directly with Solana. If the application requires frequent mainnet settlement or atomic composability across many accounts, Solana’s unified ledger simplifies the architecture.
Povšič called out the developer advantage:
“Beyond fees and performance, Solana’s biggest advantage for developers is the simplicity of the global shared state. You don’t have to deal with bridging or the extra complexity of data availability.”
The competitive question in 2026 isn’t whether Solana or Ethereum is faster or cheaper in isolation. The question is which model better aligns with the latency, cost, and finality requirements of the application a builder wants to ship.
Solana bets that collapsing execution, settlement, and finality into one 400-millisecond slot creates the lowest-friction path, and Firedancer pushes that envelope further.
Meanwhile, Ethereum bets that separating concerns, L1 for settlement, L2s for execution, allows each layer to specialize and scale independently, with cheaper blobs and mature fault proofs narrowing the UX gap.
Users care about the composite metric: time-to-confirmed-UX multiplied by cost multiplied by reliability. Both ecosystems optimized different parts of that curve in 2025, and the 2026 upgrades will test whether monolithic throughput or modular scaling delivers the better product at scale.
The answer will depend on the application.
That’s not a hedge, but rather the acknowledgment that the two models made different architectural tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs produce measurably different outcomes for different workloads.
Steak n Shake just made fast-food and Bitcoin history. On white paper day, the 91-year-old American fast-food chain announced the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), staking its claim (excuse the pun) as the first major U.S. restaurant chain to funnel all BTC payments straight into a corporate Bitcoin treasury.
How Steak n Shake became Bitcoin’s fast-food friend
This news isn’t coming out of nowhere. Steak n Shake made waves back in May when it started accepting Bitcoin payments at hundreds of locations across the U.S. and Europe. It was a move that not only cut payment processing costs by half but elevated their steakburgers to cult status among Bitcoiners.
But the announcement of an SBR ups the ante. Every Bitcoin payment received goes straight into the company’s new reserve, doubling down on their belief that Bitcoin is here to stay. Not only is it a payment rail, but a core asset on their balance sheet.
Sats for stakes: feeding open-source development
For every ‘Bitcoin meal’ sold, Steak n Shake is donating 210 satoshis (sats) to Open Sats Initiative, a nonprofit supporting developers who keep the Bitcoin network humming. That’s more than clever branding; it’s a tangible vote for the long-term security and transparency of the ecosystem. So, every burger not only fills your belly, it helps bankroll the code behind the world’s biggest open-source financial experiment.
What’s more, eating a Bitcoin Steakburger gets you $5 in free Bitcoin when you sign up through Fold App, with a clear set of instructions printed on your receipt. That tiny onboarding process (buy food, claim sats, join the fold) is true grassroots adoption. It brings new users into Bitcoin, not via FOMO but through something as everyday as lunch.
Why is this such a big deal?
Fast food chains don’t usually play the role of financial trailblazer. But Steak n Shake isn’t just accepting BTC; they’re holding every satoshi, and reporting a stunning 15% same-store sales jump last quarter, outpacing every competitor in the segment.
Their message? Bitcoin isn’t just for memes and market timing. It’s a community, a technology, and a set of rails for what could be the future of corporate treasury. And they’re grateful to the Bitcoin community for turning the restaurant chain’s fortunes around:
“Thank you, Bitcoiners, for helping change the trajectory of Steak n Shake”
When legacy brands like Steak n Shake go all-in on Bitcoin, it’s a sign to other Main Street giants. And with Bitcoin being praised all the way up from the highest office, the window for treating crypto as a “fad” has closed. As Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley commented:
“Bitcoin is going mainstream.”
So next time you order a Steak n Shake meal, you’re not just biting into a burger. You’re taking a small step into the world of everyday Bitcoin utility, supporting open-source innovation, and maybe even sparking the next wave of corporate Bitcoin adoption.
Ray Dalio has always loved a good macro plot, but this time he kept it strictly metal. Last week on X, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, argued that gold isn’t just a shiny relic; it’s the single safest form of money, with a track record that leaves modern fiat in the dust.
His reasoning? Gold has weathered thousands of years and every currency experiment, from hard-asset backing to the era of infinite-print fiat. All other monies come and go; gold just watches the parade (and sometimes cashes in while the confetti settles).
What Ray Dalio really means by ‘safest money’
Ray Dalio’s take is simple but forceful. Throughout history, all currencies have been either linked to hard assets (think gold or silver) or totally fiat, but both break down when the debt piles up and politicians start reaching for the print button.
Gold, on the other hand, isn’t at risk of being devalued or confiscated. It doesn’t rely on anyone else’s promise, and can’t be frozen by any central bank cyber-wizard. You actually get to hold it, making it the go-to in times of crisis, inflation, or government asset grabs.
What’s notable is that Ray Dalio, who’s encouraged investors to hold Bitcoin as a hedge in the past, doesn’t mention BTC at all here. He’s going full old school. Maybe that’s because, as he notes, gold is still the second-largest global reserve currency (after the dollar), and unlike the dollar, it doesn’t lose value every time someone in D.C. sneezes.
Gold vs. fiat: a battle of (de)valuation
Since the U.S. moved off the gold standard in 1971, the greenback has been lit up like Vegas. The Federal deficit has ballooned past $2 trillion, while the U.S. has rolled out $1 trillion annual deficits for four years and counting. According to government data, the dollar has lost over 85% of its purchasing power since Nixon’s big decoupling. Meanwhile, gold keeps up with living costs (even if it won’t buy you dinner at Ruth’s Chris).
Dalio points out that gold only lags when paper money pays more interest than its underlying decline. Otherwise, timing the market is “a fool’s errand.” Instead, hold gold as your insurance against system breakdowns, wars, and runaway spending sprees. He recommends a portfolio allocation of 5-15% in gold depending on your risk tolerance.
What got left out: where’s Bitcoin?
Here’s the kicker: despite Dalio’s history of calling Bitcoin “digital gold” and a valuable hedge, he didn’t bring it up a single time in his recent arguments for gold. Maybe it’s a tactical omission; maybe he’s focused on real-world crisis insurance. Whatever the case, gold remains his ultimate safe haven, even as the crowd keeps asking about Bitcoin.
So as the fiscal time bomb ticks and gold spikes past $4,000 an ounce, the message of Ray Dalio is clear: gold is still the last man standing… and Bitcoin is waving from the sidelines, waiting for its next big mention.
For the first time, a sitting U.S. Treasury Secretary has described Bitcoin as more than just a speculative frenzy. Scott Bessent’s post didn’t just set Crypto Twitter on fire; it marked a monumental shift in how policymakers view the number-one crypto. It’s a far cry from the days when Bitcoin lurked in the margins, constantly under attack from regulators as a nefarious actor’s favorite tool. Bessent posted:
“17 years after the white paper, the Bitcoin network is still operational and more resilient than ever. Bitcoin never shuts down. @SenateDems could learn something from that.”
A turning point for Bitcoin in Washington
Until recently, the prevailing D.C. narrative pegged Bitcoin and the broader crypto market as a regulatory headache. It was a threat to financial stability, or, at best, a shiny casino for retail maniacs and anarchists. “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” was, as any crypto OG will tell you, less of a conspiracy and more of a coordinated campaign.
Banks quietly cut ties with exchanges. Startups struggled for basic compliance services. For a while, the message from the top was clear: digital assets weren’t welcome at America’s money table.
So, seeing the Treasury Secretary frame Bitcoin as a system the government should learn from rather than suppress is a headline that would have sounded like satire just last year. More than that, it’s a public recognition that Bitcoin isn’t just a financial play; it’s a piece of critical, always-on American infrastructure.
Why the Treasury Secretary endorsement is a big deal
By calling attention to Bitcoin’s uptime and resilience, Bessent is rewriting the official script. This isn’t talk about wild price swings or ransomware headlines; far from it. Instead, it’s a subtle admission: Bitcoin is something the U.S. can learn from, not just regulate into submission.
Tagging the Senate Democrats was no accident, either. The legislative gridlock over policy has been relentless. The U.S. government has been shut down for a whole month; something Bitcoin never does. The network has powered on, processed transactions, bridged borders, survived bear markets, and proven itself, block by block, despite the political storms.
Of course, the Bitcoin community was proportionally euphoric about Bessent’s post. Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, commented:
“You’re bearish? Please see below. 2025, Bitcoin is going mainstream.”
Bitcoin advocate and investor Mark Moss responded:
“This is how the US leads the way! Let’s go!”
What’s wild is the context of this post, however. The vibe on Crypto Twitter has arguably never been more bearish. Bitcoin’s price may be hovering around $110,000, but “Uptober” hardly brought the rally investors were waiting for.
“The vibes in the crypto groupchats that I’m in are just sad honestly, people completely giving up and pivoting to other asset classes if they haven’t already. Everyone seems jaded, depressed, and defeated, & how can you blame them given how BTC has traded this year.”
Social sentiment, alt-mania, memecoins, BTC, RWAs, none of it is pumping. And yet, here is the Treasury Secretary singing Bitcoin’s praises.
Regulatory roadblocks are falling. The big money is finally showing up with mandates. Market structure is maturing by the week, and blue-chip institutions are quietly stacking sats.
The market is changing. Retail and Bitcoin OGs are giving way to institutional investors. Bitcoin is maturing as an asset class and is no longer subject to the wild price swings of the past, when a post like this from a U.S. Treasury Secretary would have sent the BTC price into orbit.
From Chokepoint to infrastructure
Despite the prevailing gloom, the significance of Bessent’s statement and this odd era of Bitcoin can’t be overstated. For most of its history, Bitcoin’s very existence was chalked up as a threat by officials. It was something to monitor, curtail, smother, or at least tax into submission. Now, for a Treasury official to champion its resilience and call out the system for its transparency and uptime is more than just a bull signal. It’s an invitation.
Washington may still bicker, and the narratives will keep whiplashing. But one thing is clear: after years of shadowboxing, the U.S. is finally pulling Bitcoin off the blacklist and putting it squarely in the infrastructure conversation. As policymakers scramble for answers, maybe it’s time they really, truly learned something from the network that “never shuts down.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an exemptive order on Oct. 31 that has nothing to do with Bitcoin or Ethereum but everything to do with how crypto exchanges will argue their cases over the next two years.
The order delays compliance deadlines for Regulation NMS, the rulebook governing US equity trading, until February and November 2026.
The announcement mentions a lapse in appropriations and the need to “facilitate orderly market functions” after a court denied a stay petition.
Chairman Paul Atkins framed the relief as procedural housekeeping for traditional markets struggling with new tick-size rules, access-fee caps, and transparency mandates during a partial government shutdown.
The order hands exchanges a precedent for the exact argument they’ve been making in courtrooms from San Francisco to Washington. When rules are in flux and regulators can’t provide clear guidance, enforcement should be paused until the agency establishes workable standards.
If the SEC grants breathing room to Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange while appropriations are frozen and judicial review drags on, the same logic applies to Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance.
These platforms fought enforcement actions while waiting for crypto-market-structure rules that still don’t exist.
The fair-notice defense finds new ammunition
Kraken, Bittrex, and Binance all invoked “fair notice” and due-process arguments when the SEC sued them for operating unregistered exchanges.
The theory is that if the agency hasn’t instructed platforms on how to comply with securities law in the crypto context, punishing them for noncompliance would violate constitutional due process.
Judge William Orrick let Kraken’s fair-notice defense proceed in January 2025, finding the exchange “plausibly alleged” a lack of notice about how the Howey test would apply to secondary-market token trades.
Bittrex made the same claim in June 2023, arguing that it “did not have fair notice” that listing tokens for spot trading could trigger exchange registration requirements.
Binance raised vague fair-notice principles in its defense, prompting the SEC to accuse the company of alleging “shifting positions” by the regulator.
The Third Circuit amplified the critique in January 2025 when it remanded Coinbase’s rulemaking petition back to the SEC.
Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in concurrence:
“The SEC repeatedly sues crypto companies for not complying with the law, yet it will not tell them how to comply.”
That’s a due-process problem tied directly to regulatory opacity, and it’s the same problem today’s Reg NMS order acknowledges exists in traditional markets when compliance dates collide with unfinished rulemaking and appropriations lapses.
Why does exemptive relief matter structurally
Regulation NMS governs minimum pricing increments, exchange access fees, and the transparency of quotes. These mechanics shape how orders route and execute in US equities.
The SEC adopted amendments in December 2022, but stayed portions pending judicial review.
The D.C. Circuit denied the petition for review, which would have normally lifted the stay and triggered compliance on Nov. 3.
Instead, the Commission issued temporary exemptive relief pushing deadlines into 2026 because exchanges can’t reasonably implement the changes during a funding lapse.
The procedural parallels to crypto are direct. The SEC has spent three years bringing enforcement cases against digital-asset platforms for operating unregistered exchanges and acting as unregistered broker-dealers. Still, it hasn’t finalized rules explaining what compliant crypto custody, trading, or token listing looks like.
Platforms argue they can’t comply with standards that don’t exist in written form. The agency responds that existing securities law is clear enough, except when it comes to equity market plumbing, where the same agency just granted multi-month relief because participants need time and regulatory clarity to implement new obligations.
As a result, crypto litigators may cite this order in every motion for stay, every preliminary injunction hearing, and every appeal brief going forward.
If the SEC believes orderly market functions require delayed compliance when rules are contested and resources are constrained, that principle applies with equal force to digital asset venues navigating enforcement while the Commission drafts crypto-specific frameworks.
The order doesn’t mention blockchain or tokens, but it codifies the logic crypto defendants have been arguing since 2023: enforcement without finalized rules creates chaos, and relief is the proper remedy.
What happens next
The relief runs until February 2026 for fee-determinability rules and November 2026 for tick sizes and access-fee caps.
Crypto cases will continue to litigate fair notice and due process in the meantime. Still, every defense motion might now cite the Commission’s own acknowledgment that delayed compliance serves orderly markets when rules are contested and resources are limited.
If the SEC eventually finalizes crypto-market-structure rules, whether through formal rulemaking or settlement frameworks in major cases, expect similar exemptive orders to be issued, giving platforms time to build compliant systems.
The procedural logic is identical: you can’t enforce obligations that participants can’t reasonably meet because the standards are unwritten or the agency is in the midst of rulemaking. Today’s order gives that argument the SEC’s own signature.
Crypto lawyers have just been given a roadmap for the next two years of litigation, and it leads straight through the same exemptive-relief process the Commission used to buy time for Nasdaq and the NYSE.
North Korea-linked hackers stole more than $2 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, surpassing every prior year on record, while global law enforcement recovered $439 million and arrested hundreds of money launderers across 40 countries in a single four-month operation.
The collision of record state-sponsored heists and coordinated multilateral enforcement raises a sharper question than whether crypto crime is out of control: are attackers hitting a ceiling, or are they learning to route around every new checkpoint governments deploy?
The answer shapes treasury policies, bridge security budgets, and the viability of privacy-preserving infrastructure. If enforcement dents illicit flows, the industry can rely on improved KYC, sanctions, and chain analytics to manage risk.
Suppose attackers adapt by hopping chains, fragmenting cash-outs, and exploiting jurisdictions with weak adoption of the travel rule. In that case, the defensive stack needs architectural changes, not just better compliance theater.
The new heist stack: AI plus bridge exploits
The February 2025 Bybit breach set the scale for the year. The FBI attributed the $1.5 billion theft to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, also known as the TraderTraitor cluster, a multi-year spear-phishing and malware campaign targeting blockchain developers and operations teams.
The attackers delivered trojanized trading applications through supply-chain compromises, gaining access to hot-wallet signing infrastructure.
TRM Labs documented the subsequent laundering: immediate swaps into native assets, bridge hops to Bitcoin and Tron, then layered mixing across obscure protocols.
Chainalysis’ mid-year update confirmed service losses of over $2.17 billion by June 30, with the Bybit theft accounting for the majority.
Elliptic’s October brief raised the total to over $2 billion attributed to DPRK-linked actors alone, noting “escalating laundering complexity in response to better tracing.”
The Japan National Police Agency and the US Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center jointly tied the $308 million DMM Bitcoin loss to the same TraderTraitor infrastructure in late 2024.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry published a 2025 compendium consolidating DPRK cyber-theft methods, laundering routes, and specific incidents over 18 months, establishing attribution standards that rely on malware families, infrastructure overlaps, and on-chain heuristics confirmed by multiple intelligence agencies.
The attack surface has shifted from exchange hot wallets to bridges and validator operations, where single-point failures unlock massive flows.
Elliptic’s 2025 cross-chain crime report measured how often stolen assets now traverse more than three, five, or even ten chains to frustrate tracing.
Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, described the evolution in a note:
“DPRK launderers are perpetually changing mechanisms for laundering and evasion tactics to avoid disruption.”
He added that mixers remain in the toolkit, as Tornado Cash saw renewed DPRK-linked flows after the Treasury withdrew its sanctions designation in March 2025, following court setbacks. However, the venue mix continues to shift.
After Blender and Sinbad were sanctioned, flows moved to cross-chain decentralized exchanges, USDT corridors, and over-the-counter brokers in Southeast Asia.
Interpol and friends go multilateral
Enforcement scaled in 2025. Interpol’s Operation HAECHI VI, which ran from April to August, recovered $439 million across 40 countries, including $97 million in virtual assets.
The coordinated sting followed 2024’s HAECHI V, which set records for arrests and seizures. Europol continued parallel actions against laundering infrastructure and crypto-fraud networks throughout the year.
The Financial Action Task Force’s June 2025 update revealed that the implementation of the travel rule had risen to 85 jurisdictions, with guidance for supervisors tightening cross-border information sharing.
These are material headwinds for cash-out networks that relied on fragmented compliance regimes.
Sanctions and criminal cases now target facilitators as much as hackers. The Office of Foreign Assets Control’s July 2025 actions hit DPRK IT-worker revenue chains, while Department of Justice indictments and forfeitures charged North Korean operatives with crypto theft and laundering.
Prosecutors forced guilty pleas from Samourai Wallet operators, and Wasabi’s coordinator shut down in 2024.
The result is fewer large, centralized laundering hubs and more fragmented, cross-chain obfuscation.
Fierman noted the tactical response:
“Increased Know Your Customer due diligence by exchanges can help disrupt mule accounts, sanctioning of mixers ultimately has driven actors to alternative platforms, which may have less liquidity to facilitate large-scale laundering, and stablecoin issuers’ ability to freeze assets at any point in the supply chain all help disrupt DPRK laundering efforts.”
DPRK as a crypto adversary
Attribution standards combine on-chain forensics with signals intelligence and malware analysis.
The FBI publicly confirmed Bybit’s attribution in February 2025, while multiple outlets and Japan’s foreign ministry consolidated evidence linking TraderTraitor to prior thefts.
Target selection has shifted toward exchanges, bridges, and validator pathways, where operational security failures unlock the maximum value.
Chainalysis data shows that 2025 losses were concentrated in service-level breaches rather than individual wallet compromises, reflecting an attackers’ shift toward high-leverage infrastructure targets.
Laundering patterns now regularly route through USDT corridors and OTC off-ramps outside strict regulatory zones. A 2024 Reuters investigation traced Lazarus-linked flows into a Southeast Asian payments network.
Chainalysis and Elliptic document a steady decline in direct exchange cash-outs, from roughly 40% of illicit transfers in 2021-22 to about 15% by mid-2025, and a corresponding rise in complex, multi-hop routing that blends decentralized-exchange swaps, bridges, and cashier networks.
Fierman described the jurisdictional arbitrage:
“DPRK will seek to adjust mechanisms, as recently seen, using everything from large sources of liquidity for laundering, like Huione Group, or leveraging regional over-the-counter traders that either may not be seeking to comply with regulatory requirements, or have lax regulation in their operating jurisdictions.”
Does enforcement dent flows or relocate them?
The near-term answer is both. Chainalysis finds that direct transfers from illicit entities to exchanges fell to roughly 15% in the second quarter of 2025, implying that screening, sanctions, and exchange cooperation are effective.
Yet, these actions push cash out toward layered cross-chain hops and payment processors outside the strictest regimes.
The FATF’s 2025 data shows that travel rule laws are on the books in most major hubs, but uneven enforcement, and that unevenness is precisely where new laundering corridors form.
There are real frictions on the adversary side. Interpol’s operations and national actions freeze larger slices of illicit balances, and private actors publicize freezes and seizures, underscoring a broader de-risking trend that raises DPRK’s laundering costs.
Stablecoin issuers can freeze assets at any point in the supply chain, a power that concentrates risk in centralized issuers but improves recovery odds when exercised quickly. The question is whether that friction accumulates faster than attackers can route around it.
What builders and treasurers should do next
Treat DPRK-style intrusions as a business-risk scenario, not a black swan.
US TraderTraitor advisories provide practical mitigations, including hardening hiring pipelines and vendor access, requiring code-signing verification for tools, constraining hot-wallet budgets, and automating withdrawal velocity limits.
Additionally, rehearsing incident playbooks that include immediate address screening, bridge-halt policies, and law enforcement escalation paths is also recommended.
The casework indicates that early freezes, rapid KYC-enabled tracing, and exchange cooperation significantly increase the odds of recovery.
For capital routes, apply pre-approved bridge and decentralized-exchange allowlists with business justification, and extend travel-rule-ready screening to treasury movements to avoid taint backflow.
Chain analytics vendors publish fresh red-flag typologies for cross-chain laundering: bake those into monitoring so alerts tune in for bridge hops and native-asset pivots, not just legacy mixer tags.
Philipp Zentner, founder of Li.Fi, argued that on-chain kill switches face a centralization-versus-responsiveness tradeoff. In a note, he explained:
“A pure on-chain solution without a centralized actor is very unlikely to be achievable. Anything that is not curated can be misused, and anything that is too open could also be used by the hacker themselves. When DEX aggregators and bridges are getting contacted about a hacker, it’s often already too late.”
He added that a centralized solution is much more likely to succeed as of today. That candor reflects the reality that decentralized protocols lack the coordination layer necessary to halt the propagation of theft in real-time without introducing the risk of human-driven centralization.
Peaking or adapting
The composite picture is that enforcement raised the cost and complexity of laundering, but didn’t stop the thefts.
DPRK-linked actors stole more in 2025 than in any prior year, yet they’re now forced to route through ten chains, convert through obscure pairs, and rely on regional OTC brokers instead of cashing out directly at major exchanges.
That’s progress for defenders, detection heuristics, cluster analysis, and cross-border cooperation are working, but it’s also proof that attackers adapt faster than regulators harmonize.
The 2026 test will be whether the next round of enforcement with tighter travel rule implementation, more aggressive stablecoin freezes, and continued multilateral actions compresses the laundering window enough that sophisticated state actors face prohibitive friction.
Or, alternatively, whether they route deeper into jurisdictions with weak supervision and continue to fund operations through crypto theft.
The answer will determine whether the industry can rely on compliance as a core defense or needs architectural changes that harden bridges, limit hot wallet exposure, and build better incident-response coordination into protocols themselves.
