House Democrats plan to open investigations into President Donald Trump’s family crypto businesses once they take control in January, with World Liberty Financial, its Emirati investor and the pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao at the top of the list.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, who will chair the House Oversight Committee, answered the Associated Press call with a two-word statement at 3:18 a.m.: “Lawyer up.” His office said he intends to take on what it calls the “Trump Crime Family” alongside corporate corruption, immigration enforcement abuses and the Epstein files. 

Garcia told Punchbowl News the committee will examine the family’s crypto deals,…

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The Democratic sweep of Congress closes the door on crypto market structure legislation like the Clarity Act for the next two years and may rule out any version the industry would support, TD Cowen told clients in a note published after the Associated Press called both chambers.

“We view this outcome as negative for our sectors,” Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote. The caveat he has repeated all cycle still holds: the election “will not impact the ability of regulators to push their de-regulatory agendas,” and he expects the SEC and CFTC “to remain active including on crypto, prediction markets and perps.” 

The items he flags to watch are the lame-duck session,…

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Two of the largest public bitcoin miners reported third-quarter results on Wednesday, and both used the occasion to confirm they have been selling the asset they were built to accumulate. 

Riot Platforms has sold 20,264 BTC this year for about $1.5 billion, and Hut 8 has sold 3,102 BTC since July to fund $250 million in share repurchases.

The sales serve different ends. Riot is paying for data center construction; Hut 8 is buying back its own stock. Riot ended September with 2,418 BTC, worth about $202 million at the quarter-end price of $83,554. It held 18,005 at the start of the year. 

Hut 8 reported about 16,787 BTC across the parent and its majority-owned American…

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Circle Internet Group cut about 5% of its workforce in the third quarter, a reduction the USDC issuer disclosed in the footnotes of an earnings report that showed revenue rising 17% to $865 million and net income up 5% to $226 million.

The company booked a $9.1 million restructuring charge for the cuts, which it described as “designed to better align our organizational structure with our operating model and strategic priorities.” The charge covered notice-period pay, severance and benefits. 

Circle did not say how many employees were affected or which teams were hit, and the layoffs did not appear in the release’s list of business highlights.

CRCL shares slipped about…

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Bitcoin price traded near $78,300 on Wednesday morning, up about 1% on the day, after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections and dealt the crypto industry its worst night in Washington since 2022.

The Associated Press called the Senate for Democrats late Tuesday and the House early Wednesday. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become speaker. The result exceeded most forecasts: by Wednesday morning the AP tracker showed Democrats with 54 Senate seats to Republicans’ 44, with races still open. 

Prediction markets had put a Democratic House above 90% for weeks, but the Senate margin and the loss of several…

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Tether holds about 150,000 bitcoin, worth some $11.5 billion at current prices, CEO Paolo Ardoino said, a figure that exceeds the holdings implied by the company’s latest reserve attestation by roughly 50,000 coins.

“We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” Ardoino said during his keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland, the city where Tether has run a bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program since 2022.

At that size the stack would rank Tether among the largest corporate holders of bitcoin, behind Strategy’s 848,517 BTC (as of Q3) and ahead of most public miners and treasury companies. 

Ardoino did not say…

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A Democratic sweep of Congress would end the CLARITY Act’s chances for the next two years and sour the political climate for crypto, TD Cowen’s Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote to Bitcoin Magazine and clients in an election-day note.

Seiberg wrote that TD Cowen agrees with polls and prediction markets that Democrats are likely to take both chambers, with the caveat that polls taken a month out, which were more mixed, tend to beat those taken on the eve of a vote. 

His conclusion for crypto is blunt: “Democrats will likely investigate Trump including his crypto entanglements. We see this as souring the political environment for crypto, which is why we do not expect…

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The $6.34 billion theft from Binance began with a fake job interview and ran for five months before a single coin moved, the exchange said Tuesday in its first public account of the Oct. 29 attack.

Another initial incident report from Binance, released alongside a media briefing by co-CEO Richard Teng and chief security officer Jimmy Su, describes a campaign that combined a poisoned software download, a staged recruitment process, malware that evaded endpoint detection and an internal AI tool the attackers turned against the company’s own wallet engineers. 

Binance said it has frozen or intercepted about $2.85 billion of the stolen assets and replenished 98% of affected…

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U.S. federal debt has grown 40x in 45 years, from $1 trillion in 1981 to over $40 trillion. Andrew Hohns, founder and CEO of Battery Finance, explains why he doesn’t expect tax hikes or spending cuts to fix it, and how a strategic Bitcoin reserve could help defease the national debt. He also makes the case for the Treasury to pilot BitBonds.

Chapters:00:00 Andrew Hohns on Bitcoin and the Midterms00:47 Bond Market Volatility and America’s Fiscal Outlook01:22 40x Federal Debt Growth in 45 Years02:55 A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to Defease the Debt03:20 Why BitBonds Haven’t Come to Market Yet05:12 Higher Borrowing Costs and the Digital Credit Boom06:15 Battery Finance’s…

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Perpetual futures on individual stocks can begin trading on U.S.-regulated exchanges for the first time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Tuesday, extending a product that was confined to offshore crypto venues a year ago into the equity market.

In a statement, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said the contracts, which he called “Equity Perps,” were deemed approved under Commission Regulation 40.3 as security futures products. 

They may list on exchanges that hold a CFTC designated contract market registration and a notice registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a national securities exchange for security futures.

“This expansion marks a…

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