💎 23-Year-Old Sality Botnet Dismantled — Stole BTC and ETH for Years

U.S., Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian authorities, alongside CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation, took down the Sality botnet on August 31, 2026 — cutting its Russia-based operators off from over 15,000 infected machines worldwide.

💎Sality's crypto-theft trick was deceptively simple: monitor clipboards for copied Bitcoin or Ethereum addresses and silently swap them for the attacker's own. It had been running since 2003. Authorities turned the botnet's own peer-to-peer architecture against itself to execute the sinkhole operation.

💎 Twenty-three years is a long time to go uninterrupted. Better late than never, one supposes.

💎 U.S. House Committee Eyes Two Crypto Tax Bills Sept. 16

The House Ways and Means Committee is set to review two crypto tax bills on September 16, covering mining income deferral, wash sale rules, constructive sales, and stablecoin treatment. The outcome could meaningfully reshape how digital assets are taxed in the U.S. — no small thing for an industry that's spent years operating in a patchwork regulatory grey zone.

💎 The details beyond the agenda are thin for now, but the topics alone signal serious legislative intent.

💎 KelpDAO Sues LayerZero Over $292M rsETH Bridge Hack

💎KelpDAO has filed suit in British Columbia against LayerZero and its CEO Bryan Pellegrino, alleging the messaging protocol failed to disclose known security weaknesses — weaknesses that KelpDAO says led to April's $292 million rsETH bridge exploit, reportedly 2026's largest hack to date.

💎 KelpDAO claims LayerZero even endorsed its bridge setup before the attack. Pellegrino's response? The lawsuit is meritless. Two very different stories, one very large hole in the balance sheet.

📣 OTC is Live on Aster

If you already have a price and a counterparty, you can fill off the book.

Agree terms. Create a Deal Code. Send it. Once both sides sign, positions open at that price — no order-book print.

Starts with 💰BTCUSDT. More markets next.

- Price must stay within ±8% of mark.
- Pick maker or taker first (that sets the fee).
- Codes expire if the other side does not sign.
- Max 20 pending OTC tickets.
- Regular size? Ask Aster for a tailored desk setup.

Move size without moving the market.

💱 Trade: asterdex.com
📔 Rules: docs.asterdex.com/trading/otc-trading

💎 Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Back OKX at $25B

💎 OKX has closed a new funding round at a flat $25 billion valuation, pulling in Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and London quant hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies. The raise amount wasn't disclosed — par for the course when your backers are this prestigious.

💎 The round extends March's $200M investment from ICE, the NYSE's parent, at the exact same valuation. Seven months on, no markup — though OKX is now readying tokenized stock trading alongside ICE, which may explain why the strategic names matter more than the dollar figure here.

🧧 $RFN — Powering the Next Chapter of Ryfinite

More than a token. 
The core of a growing DeFi ecosystem built for early access, real rewards, and community alignment.

Access. Rewards. Governance. DeFi. 🎁

Here’s how it works: 
Collect Gems through Quests, referrals, daily streaks, and ecosystem activity. 
Burn those Gems. 
Secure your share of $RFN before the pool fills up.

The Early Stage Launchpool is live with a 90M $RFN community allocation — reserved for active Ryfinite members who built their position early.

✈️Join the $RFN Pool Now: https://ryfinite.com

🏦JPMorgan Brings JPM Coin to Ethereum Mainnet

💎 JPMorgan is expanding its USD deposit token, JPM Coin, to Ethereum — allowing approved institutional clients to transfer tokenized dollar deposits and settle financial transactions on-chain. The move follows the token's Base launch in November 2025, and was announced October 19, 2026.

💎 Access stays restricted to vetted counterparties, so this isn't open DeFi — it's permissioned bank money finding its footing on a public blockchain. Still, 24/7 institutional settlement on Ethereum mainnet is a meaningful step for a bank that once had a complicated relationship with the chain.

💎 Bitcoin ETFs end two-week outflow streak with $301M haul

💎 U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs clawed back to positive territory this week, pulling in roughly $301 million in net inflows and snapping a two-week losing streak. The win came with an asterisk, though — two consecutive days of outflows late in the week kept October's overall balance in the red.

💎 The mid-week whipsaw was striking: $524.8 million flooded in on October 21, only for $635.6 million to exit the very next day, followed by another $137.9 million in withdrawals on October 23. Weekly net positive, monthly still ugly — the ETF crowd is clearly not reading from the same script.

💎 Twelve DeFi Sites Hijacked via Name.com, $138K Stolen

💎 A coordinated domain hijacking hit at least a dozen DeFi project websites, with attackers redirecting visitors and draining roughly $138,000. The common thread: every compromised domain was registered through Name.com, pointing strongly to a registrar-level breach rather than individual project failures.

💎 No patches, no audits, no bug bounties — sometimes the attack vector is just your DNS provider. If your favorite DeFi frontend suddenly looks a little different, maybe don't connect your wallet.

💎 Crypto in 401(k)s: White House Review Is the Last Stop

💎 The U.S. Department of Labor's rule on alternative assets in retirement plans landed at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on Thursday — the final regulatory checkpoint before public release. The rule would create a process-based safe harbor for plan fiduciaries who include crypto, private equity, and real estate in 401(k) menus, making it significantly easier for employers to offer that exposure without running afoul of fiduciary duty standards.

💎 OIRA review typically signals a rule is close to finalization. Millions of American retirement accounts could soon have a clearer path to Bitcoin exposure — whether savers want that or not.