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U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal demanded that the subjects of the investigation provide the requested documents and information by January 4, 2027. Blumenthal sent letters to the recipients, including Binance, Tether, World Liberty Financial, and Fight Fight Fight LLC. Blumenthal warned that if they refused to cooperate, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations would seek other ways to ensure compliance with its requests.

An analysis of blockchain and trading data casts doubt on whether a successful election bettor had access to unpublished Times/Siena polls in advance. On Friday, The New York Times reported that researchers at Vanderbilt University had noticed unusually large bets placed before polls on Senate races in Nebraska and Michigan were published. The bettor held the positions until Election Day, and transaction data indicate that some additional purchases may have been made after one of the polls was published. In the view of two experts, the available data are more consistent with a picture of a wealthy trader making large bets on election outcomes, although misconduct cannot be entirely ruled out. Polymarket said it had launched an investigation, while The New York Times and the Siena Research Institute said they intended to examine the research.

The review examines Vitalik Buterin’s proposals for the future of Ethereum and losses in the cryptocurrency market after the U.S. elections. Buterin believes that ETH’s value should be based on Ethereum’s resilience and decentralization, not on burning transaction fees. Average transaction fees fell from 35 cents in January to 3.5 cents in October this year. Democrats gained control of both chambers of Congress, despite crypto super PACs spending $176 million in the fight for 100 seats. According to Stand With Crypto’s rankings, lawmakers include significant support for the industry, though cryptocurrency opponents are expected to take influential committee posts. After the election results, Bitcoin fell below $76,000.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that USDT is essentially a smart contract of about 300 lines of code. Tether has more than 730 million users. Every quarter, Tether adds 30 million wallets. USDT allows ordinary people in countries with annual inflation of up to 100% to hold US dollars.

Binance resumed withdrawals of HYPE and APT on November 8, ahead of schedule. A security review is still required before other withdrawal channels can resume operations. According to CryptoQuant, Binance’s Ethereum-based stablecoin reserves fell by approximately $9 billion—from about $41 billion to around $32 billion—during the hack. Binance’s BTC and ETH reserves also declined over this period, CryptoQuant reports.

In late trading on Sunday, bitcoin and ether fell to their lowest levels in more than two months as investors feared tighter cryptocurrency regulation under Democratic control of the U.S. Congress. Bitcoin lost more than 2%, falling to $73,708. Ether dropped about 5% to $2,223. A $6 billion theft at Binance and victories by prominent cryptocurrency critics in last week’s U.S. midterm elections have roiled cryptocurrency markets in recent sessions.

Crypto investor Evan Luthra described being kidnapped in Oxford, England, last year: five masked men forced him to transfer more than $2 million in cryptocurrency within 30 minutes. The attackers also stole a Richard Mille watch, which police valued at around £450,000. Luthra said that being without internet access for several hours after the attack prevented him from contacting exchanges while the stolen funds were being transferred. Luthra said that just under $1 million has now been recovered, including around $370,000 returned by Binance under a UK court order. The trial was postponed until November 2027; Luthra explained that the delay was due to the need to set aside more time for it.

The XRP-RLUSD pool on the XRP Ledger offers an estimated annualized yield from trading fees of about 4.7%, but participating replaces full exposure to XRP price movements with a changing mix of assets. With prices unchanged, a hypothetical $10,000 position would have earned about $9 over a week at the stated rate, before costs. In a model excluding fees and costs, with the RLUSD price fixed at $1, a doubling of the XRP price increases the value of the pool position to $14,142, compared with $20,000 for holding only XRP. The pool cushions some losses when XRP falls, but automatic rebalancing also causes it to lag behind an unchanged 50/50 allocation between XRP and RLUSD. The stated fees are estimates, not confirmed earnings for the full seven-day period.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) November 5 directive gives American derivatives exchanges 30 days to remove geographic restrictions that violate equal-access rules, or explain why compliance is impossible. The directive calls into question the September reasoning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that geographic restrictions may be compatible with Kalshi’s federal obligations. However, the new interpretation does not in itself overturn the court’s separate findings on contract classification and state gambling laws. According to Phantom data, Kalshi’s prediction markets are accessible throughout the United States except in Michigan, Nevada, and Washington. Kalshi must respond to New Jersey’s petition before the Supreme Court by December 7; the court has not yet agreed to hear the case.

Investors in the US are pulling funds from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana ETFs after Democrats won last week’s midterm elections in both chambers of Congress. According to SoSoValue, net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs exceeded $411 million on Friday. On the same day, Ethereum funds lost $93 million, while outflows from Solana ETFs topped $26 million in November. The crypto market Fear and Greed Index fell to 32, a level indicating fear. Elizabeth Warren is expected to chair the Senate Banking Committee, and the likelihood of the Senate passing the CLARITY Act has declined. Investors now expect the Federal Reserve to raise rates by 0.25% at its December meeting, following strong employment data last Friday.

On November 7, Keplr reported that a private key leak had affected some users with accounts created through social login. Keplr advised potentially affected users not to deposit additional funds and to transfer any remaining liquid assets to accounts secured with recovery phrases or hardware wallets. Keplr’s documentation describes an independent import method for users who have a usable private key saved, but this method had not been verified as a workaround for this incident. Importing an existing key through another interface does not prove that an attacker does not have the same key. Web3Auth and its partners said they had begun asset recovery efforts involving ethical hackers, but the impact on individual accounts and the return of assets remained unclear.

The crypto industry faces a less friendly Congress after Democrats regained control of both chambers: they are projected to win at least 54 Senate seats and more than 253 seats in the House of Representatives. New Democratic committee chairs will gain subpoena power in January and have already requested documents concerning President Donald Trump’s crypto businesses and industry donations. The prospects for crypto legislation passing next year are slim, and regulators are likely to face additional oversight hearings. Voters also approved 40 of 41 initiatives restricting data center construction, which could create problems for crypto mining and AI facilities. Crypto industry political committees spent more than $170 million in the 2026 elections, but lost several of the races most important to the industry.

According to Allium, stablecoin payment volume rose 45% in the first nine months of 2026, reaching $482 billion. Over the same period, stablecoin supply increased by just 0.4%, to $305 billion. Payments accounted for only about 0.5% of total transfer volume, which also includes trading activity and internal transfers. Tokens already in circulation can support more payments through reuse, without the need to issue a comparable volume of new tokens. Supply growth is being held back by weaker trading demand and the costs of holding tokens that do not earn interest.

Web3Auth moved approximately $5.6 million in assets from affected Keplr wallets to secure addresses before attackers could steal them. Web3Auth said a vulnerability in the service exposed the private keys of some Keplr wallets created using Google or Apple sign-in. Keplr co-founder Josh Lee estimated that about 20% of Google and Apple accounts were affected, although attackers exploited only a small fraction of them. Web3Auth did not disclose how much the attackers stole.

Web3Auth said it transferred cryptocurrency from vulnerable Keplr wallets before an attacker could access the funds. On Sunday, blockchain data showed about $5.6 million in cryptocurrency across 12 recovery addresses. Keplr co-founder Josh Lee estimated that about 20% of Keplr accounts created through Google or Apple sign-in were affected by the exposure of private keys. Web3Auth’s statements indicate that the attacker had already drained some wallets, but Web3Auth did not disclose how many or the amount of losses. Keplr said that accounts protected by recovery phrases or hardware wallets were unaffected. Keplr recommended that users who sign in through Google or Apple transfer their remaining funds to wallets protected by one of these methods.

U.S. distillate fuel inventories for the week ending October 30 fell below 100 million barrels, which could complicate efforts to bring down inflation and ease financing conditions for bitcoin investors. According to a report published on November 4 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), inventories stood at 99.26 million barrels—13% below the five-year average. Based on the latest weekly surveys, prices for diesel fuel and residential heating oil declined but remained significantly higher than a year earlier. Fuel costs could hinder the easing of financing conditions if they slow the overall decline in inflation. The inventory decline alone does not indicate how the Federal Reserve or the market will respond.

According to Farside Investors, BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for 94% of net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs between November 2 and 6, totaling $1.282 billion. IBIT saw $1.21 billion in outflows, while Fidelity’s FBTC attracted $93 million in net inflows. The remaining funds collectively lost $72 million, indicating uneven demand rather than outflows from every fund. Flow data does not show how many bitcoins were sold on the open market or whether BlackRock adopted a bearish asset-allocation strategy. Tuesday’s release of the October Consumer Price Index will provide a benchmark for assessing subsequent ETF demand.

Bitcoin News reported that Electrum released version 4.8.4 to fix several vulnerabilities and bugs in its Bitcoin and Lightning Network wallets. The release coincides with Electrum’s 15th anniversary. The Lightning Network fix prevents malformed onion messages from arbitrary sources from disconnecting Electrum from channel peers. This is Electrum’s fourth security update since August.