Crypto’s biggest week ever? Swarm fears prompt AI slowdown: Hodler’s Digest

Crypto’s moment of CLARITY arrives

The CLARITY act heads for a crucial Senate vote on September 15, with Politico reporting that Democrat senators were called to a meeting on Sunday by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss their position.

While Polymarket puts the odds of CLARITY becoming law this year at just 24%, the odds of there being 60 votes in favor of the cloture vote on Tuesday are higher, as it would simply move the bill into the amendment and debate phase. That’s where the rubber would hit the road on issues that have drained support so far including ethics provisions for elected officials, stablecoin yield, and protections for decentralized developers.

The bill has now doubled in size to more than 630 pages since the first draft was released in May 2025. It follows a year’s worth of work by both Democrat and Republican senators. A new draft was released last week with 14 pages of new text directing the SEC and CFTC to determine whether those in control of “non-decentralized finance trading protocols” must comply with securities, commodities and anti-money laundering requirements. That version didn’t include any of the big changes to the ethics provisions the Democrats have demanded as a red line for supporting the bill.

President Donald Trump reportedly met with advisors late last week to discuss whether he’d agree to further curbs on his multi billion dollar crypto empire. On the weekend White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt posted that it was a “bad day to be a Clarity Act doomer.” 

A new 635 page version of the bill landed today, including “new, White House-blessed government ethics language covering federal officials’ engagements with digital assets” according to Politico. Senator Cynthia Lummis said the White House has agreed to a “meaningful” role for state Attorney Generals in enforcement of the provisions, which the Democrats have been pushing for as they don’t trust the Department of Justice to prosecute the President.

Altcoin Daily claimed the combination of the CLARITY vote, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions and other positive developments could make this “crypto’s biggest week ever.”

Carl Higbie from NewsMax predicted a sea change for crypto businesses and hodlers if the bill passes, claiming that “banks would shift trillions into this market overnight. Thousands of people, maybe even you, if you hold a little bit of it, would become millionaires overnight.” 

This is not a particularly likely scenario at this point in time, but it’s nice to dream. 

Big AI bosses agree to a slowdown over agent swarm fears

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei put out a blog on the weekend calling for a slowdown in the speed of AI development that he believes is threatening to “outrun our ability to understand and control these systems.”

Amodei cited the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident in July, in which a swarm of agents broke out of containment and hacked another firm. He predicted that in just six to 12 months’ time, such a swarm might be capable of taking over the entire internet. Amodei is not alone in his anxieties with Elon Musk, head of SpaceXAI, posting on X that “Dario is right” and OpenAI boss Sam Altman agreeing. OpenAI has put plans for an IPO this year on ice.

Some are predicting that Monday could see a bloodbath in AI stocks, which now account for most of the US stock market’s performance. “AI stocks will drop 10%+ on Monday morning. Brace for impact folks,” said Jason Calacanis, entrepreneur and podcaster. However the after hours prices of SpaceX and Nvidia remained steady on the weekend.

Source: Jason Calacanis

The big AI companies may be considering the legal ramifications of developing technology that can autonomously hack or harm others. On Thursday Anthropic reported that Russian- and Chinese-speaking operators have been using Claude to automate cyberattacks. The question of who is legally liable when an AI agent goes rogue is not yet settled, but both developers and deployers could face expensive lawsuits.

In related news Anthropic is in talks with Nvidia about a potential $10 billion investment in what may still end up as the biggest IPO in history. Anthropic is seeking to raise as much as $100 billion in the offering, which could value the AI company at about $2 trillion.

Blockstream refuses to pay hacker bounty for 600 BTC ‘theft’

Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream has refused to pay a ransom to recover funds still held by the Liquid Network hackers.

“Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure,” Blockstream said Friday. “It is not white-hat activity. It is theft.”

The company said it had engaged with the hackers in good faith to recover user funds but would not accept their demands.

Claiming to be “white hat hackers” the actors drained Liquid of 4000 Bitcoin last week, before returning 3,400 Bitcoin. They have since demanded that Blockstream pay a 10% bounty from its own funds.

The security bugs have now been patched and the Liquid Network has restarted. Calle from the Bitcoin Red Team, which used AI to audit hundreds of Bitcoin protocols following the Coldcard thefts, said Blockstream had not acted on the Red Team’s warnings about the vulnerabilities. Samson Mow denied the claim.

In a related development Ledger chief technology officer Charles Guillemet said artificial intelligence has made bugs easier to find and exploit. He warned that some researchers are publishing their findings before fixes are available, a practice he called “attention farming with someone else’s risk.” Guillemet urged researchers to report bugs privately and agree on a timeline for fixes before publishing details

Robinhood’s crypto volume increases 61% in August

Robinhood’s crypto trading volume rose 61% month-on-month to $17.5 billion in August, though it remained 38% below the year-earlier level.

The online brokerage said in its August 2026 monthly operating report that Bitstamp (which it acquired in June 2025) accounted for $10.1 billion of the total, while the Robinhood app accounted for $7.4 billion.

Meanwhile, the firms new Ethereum L2, Robinhood Chain, is expected to generate as much as $160 million in annual fees by 2028, according to a new report from Bernstein. 

The analysts cited growing demand for tokenized stock trading on the network, which has grown to account for about 27% of the chain’s total trading volume, while memecoin trading has decreased to 36% of network activity, down from 100% at launch on July 1.

Revolut says customer data exposed through fake government email

Financial tech and banking company Revolut has admitted it was tricked by scammers into releasing sensitive customer data, including copies of passports, verification selfies and full transaction histories.

The company received a fraudulent request that appeared to be from a legitimate government agency email domain and released the information. Customers whose information was compromised were notified on Friday. 

According to the International Cyber Digest the scammers have now begun drip feeding sensitive customer data on to the web, including that of high-profile clients such as tennis player Shevchenko and Römer, CEO of Gamdom/Skinscom.

“They want Revolut to pay up. They say they’ll release more messages, data and insights into how the Revolut team operates.”

The hackers have accused the company of negligence around privacy and the exposure of sensitive information.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 4% to trade at $76,800, Ethereum (ETH) is down 1.4% to trade at $2,478 and XRP (XRP) is down 5.6% to $1.34. The total market cap is at $2.61 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Venice Token (VVV) with a 26.2% gain, Falcon Finance (FF) on 20.4%, and Filecoin (FIL) on 17.2%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are Pons (PONS) which was down 33.7%, Arbitrum (ARB) down 29.6% and Dash (DASH) down 25.2%.

Prediction of the Week

85% chance of US interest rate hike this week

The August release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), came in at 3.4% year-on-year and met expectations.

In response, traders doubled down on bets that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates by 0.25% at its Sept. 16 meeting. The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed odds of such an outcome rising to 85% on Friday, increasing from 60% a week ago.

Top FUD of the Week

North Korea using foreign talent to help infiltrate US companies

North Korea (DPRK) is now using remote workers from third countries, including Iran and Lebanon, to aid its efforts to infiltrate US companies and obtain money to fund its weapons programs, NBC reported on Friday.

As the US and other governments have moved to counter North Korea’s efforts, the DPRK has turned increasingly to third-country IT workers to pass job interviews, the report said. After work contracts are obtained, the positions are usually taken over by North Korean operatives. Foreign IT workers have been scouted on LinkedIn, with some offered $500 monthly in cryptocurrency to work part-time as “interview associates.”

Hunter Biden denies profiting from memecoin after his LAPTOP crashes

Hunter Biden has denied profiting from his LAPTOP memecoin after its launch-day price crash.

Several X users accused the LAPTOP project of a “rug pull” after the memecoin lost more than 95% of its value in the first hour of trading on Wednesday.

“The team’s allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have,” Biden said in an X post Wednesday. “I, personally, have not made a single dollar.”

Biden blamed the price action on insufficient liquidity and “snipers,” which are trading bots that quickly swoop up tokens when trading opens.

Bitcoin ETF outflows accelerate as investors pull $449M in three days

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have registered their largest daily outflow in nearly two months, reversing part of the $3.8 billion in net inflows recorded during the funds’ strongest three-week stretch of 2026.

The spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs logged $282.6 million in net outflows on Thursday, marking the largest net outflow since the $424.7 million outflow recorded on July 13, according to SoSoValue data. Bitcoin ended up recording a negative week with $462.73 of outflows, while Ethereum ETF weekly inflows were positive at $197.11 million.

Top Magazine Stories of the Week

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