Amundi Boosts Strategy (MSTR) Stake 44% To $291 Million As Shares Slide

Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, raised its stake in Strategy (MSTR) by about 44% in the third quarter, a Form 13F filed Nov. 6 shows, lifting the position to 1,903,725 shares worth $291.4 million at Sept. 30 prices.

That is up 579,672 shares from the 1,324,053 Amundi reported at June 30, when the same holding was valued at about $115.1 million. The Paris-based firm managed €2.579 trillion in assets at the end of September, up 11% year over year, and described itself as Europe’s leading asset manager.

The filing lands as MSTR has given back much of its third-quarter run. Strategy shares closed at $153.09 on Sept. 30 and near $126 on Monday, an 18% drop that would…

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Elizabeth Warren Plans Prediction Market Crackdown As She Prepares To Chair Senate Banking

Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to crack down on prediction markets once she takes the Senate Banking Committee gavel in January, with a banking aide telling Punchbowl News that Warren would seek to stop the sector’s “Wild West-style lack of oversight.”

The Massachusetts Democrat is poised to chair the panel after Democrats swept both chambers of Congress last week, putting her in charge of a portfolio that covers banking, housing, the Federal Reserve and cryptocurrency. Punchbowl published the aide’s rundown of her agenda on Monday.

Warren intends to use the committee’s investigative powers for oversight of prediction markets and election betting platforms, aimed at…

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North Korea Minting Meme Coins To Launder Binance Loot

North Korean launderers are creating their own worthless meme coins and pushing stolen Binance funds through them so the coins never move directly from one wallet to another, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said Monday.

Between Nov. 5 and 7, the operators minted at least six new tokens on the NEAR blockchain — named FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI and SINU — paired each with NEAR in its own liquidity pool, then bought the tokens with stolen NEAR and sold them back out through a second set of wallets. About 117,000 NEAR, or roughly $430,000, passed through the six tokens, Elliptic wrote.

The trail sits inside the broader laundering of the Oct. 29 Binance theft, which the…

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TD Cowen Gives Stablecoin Yield Ban 10% Odds After Midterms

Banks will try again to stop crypto platforms from paying yield on stablecoin balances, but TD Cowen’s Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg puts only a 10% chance on Congress enacting such a ban over the next two years, he wrote in a Monday policy note shared with Bitcoin Magazine and clients.

The issue is whether exchanges and other platforms can offer yield or rewards to investors who keep dollar-pegged stablecoins on their platforms. Seiberg views action as unlikely, though he sees a “narrow path” for a ban.

His rationale is procedural as much as political: it may be easier to find 60 Senate votes on stablecoin yield alone than on the broader crypto market structure bill,…

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Bitcoin Whales Are Swapping Self-Custody For IBIT At Record Pace

Large bitcoin holders are swapping coins they guard themselves for shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) at a record pace, the firm’s head of digital assets said Monday, as kidnappings and hacks push security to the top of their list.

“The current moment is the highest we’ve seen at any point,” Robbie Mitchnick told Barron’s, adding that demand for the swaps “has sort of been one way — up.” Of all the reasons clients give, he said, “the single largest one is security and peace of mind.”

The trades are in-kind conversions. A holder delivers bitcoin to the fund through an intermediary and receives newly created IBIT shares, without first selling…

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Binance To Close Accounts In Four EU Countries Dec. 31

Binance will close customer accounts in France, Spain, Italy and Poland on Dec. 31 and begin charging a monthly fee on leftover balances from Nov. 29, as the world’s largest crypto exchange still lacks a license under the European Union’s MiCA rules.

A Binance spokesperson confirmed to CoinDesk the closure date over the weekend, saying the exchange is “progressively restricting certain services for affected users” now that the transition period under the Markets in Crypto-Assets framework has ended.

“Affected accounts will be closed with effect from 31 December 2026,” the spokesperson said, calling it “a carefully managed process.” Binance said customer assets…

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FinCEN And Fed Scrap Plan To Cut Travel Rule Threshold To $250

FinCEN and the Federal Reserve have formally withdrawn a 2020 proposal that would have cut the Bank Secrecy Act threshold for cross-border funds transfers from $3,000 to $250 and spelled out that the rules cover crypto, leaving the existing $3,000 line in place.

The notice, published Monday in the Federal Register, says the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Fed’s Board of Governors “will not take further action” on a proposal they first issued on Oct. 27, 2020.

That plan would have lowered the recordkeeping and Travel Rule thresholds to $250 for transfers that begin or end outside the United States. Those rules require banks and nonbank financial institutions to…

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That Was The Bear Market” And Bitcoin Is “On Our Way Out Of It

Is the Bitcoin bear market already over? Kraken co-CEO Dave Ripley says the move back above $80K makes him think “that was the bear market,” and that it may be the softest bear market in Bitcoin’s history. He explains how retail and institutional customers are approaching Bitcoin right now on the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast with Spencer Nichols.

🔶 Host: Spencer Nichols — Bitcoin Magazine🔶 Dave Ripley — Kracken Co-CEO

Chapters:00:00 Softest Bear Market in Bitcoin History01:27 Why This Cycle Doesn’t Feel Like a Bear03:02 When Banks Said Blockchain Not Bitcoin05:14 Stablecoins Prove Permissionless Works06:56 Why Kraken Acquired a European Bank09:46 Diversifying…

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Strive (ASST) Adds 29 Bitcoin For $2.2 Million As Weekly Buys Slow After Crossing 43,000

Strive bought another 29 bitcoin last week for about $2.2 million at an average of $75,721 per coin between Oct. 31 and Nov. 6, a Monday 8-K filing shows, lifting total holdings to 43,153 BTC from 43,124 as of Oct. 30 and capping a month that had already pushed the Dallas treasury past 40,000 coins.

Chairman and CEO Matthew Cole posted the same figures on X: “Strive acquired 29 $BTC for $2.2M at an average cost of $75,721 per bitcoin, bringing total holdings to ₿43,153.” Strive’s corporate account republished the note minutes later. The average price is inclusive of fees and expenses, the filing says.

The buy is a sharp downshift from the pace Strive set through October….

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Coinbase Wins Full OCC National Trust Charter

Coinbase has won a full national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, upgrading the conditional approval it received in April and putting its institutional custody business under direct federal supervision, the exchange said Monday.

The OCC approved the application for Coinbase National Trust Company last Friday, the company said in a blog post. OCC licensing records, as reported, show the chartering process was completed Nov. 6.

Coinbase applied in October 2025 and received preliminary approval on April 2. In the intervening months it had to finish its organizational and operational preparations before the OCC would let the trust bank open.

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