TheStreet Roundtable

U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent speaks during a press briefing at White House in Washington, DC, on May 28, 2026.
Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has emerged as a central figure in the ongoing negotiations between U.S. and Iran. Whether it’s the seizure of the Asian country’s assets or any possible way to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, he always has a new update.
And he just shared another.
It has been more than seven months since the war in West Asia began, and there seems to be no end to it.
On Feb. 28 that the United States and Israel attacked Iran and assassinated the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top leaders. Iran hit back with attacks on Israeli and American bases in the neighboring region.
Military roundtable: Heckman, Rayburn, Spencer assess Iran stalemate and oil-driven market impact (6:51)
Iran’s ask for Bitcoin payments for safe passage through Hormuz
As one of the world’s most sanctioned countries, Iran has frequently turned to cryptocurrency to settle its financial transactions.
While most traditional financial rails don’t offer their services to Iran, the country has found crypto to be reliable due to its anonymous nature.
In fact, when Iran outlined its terms for ships to cross the Strait of Hormuz, it asked for $1 a barrel to allow a secure passage and asked for payments to be made in Bitcoin (BTC).
A major maritime chokepoint, the strait handles approximately 20% of the global petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. In fact, oil’s price has surged from $67 to $90 since Feb. 28. Since global movement runs on oil, the prices of goods have also surged due to higher transport costs.
The U.S. has been negotiating with Iran for months now to end the blockade, but there has been little progress so far. Naturally, these Bitcoin payments become a significant source of income for Iran.
Ships are anchored off the coast of Khasab in Oman’s Musandam Governorate, near the Strait of Hormuz, on October 2, 2026.
Getty Images
U.S. targets Iranian crypto infrastructure
However, it hasn’t deterred the U.S. from taking action against Iranian entities under Operation Economic Fury.
It started a sanctions campaign of “maximum economic pressure” on the Asian country. The operation targets Iran’s ability to transfer funds, including oil sales, shadow banking, weapons-procurement networks, and crypto.
In July, the Treasury Department announced that its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned two Iranian firms, the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority. Both are integral to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Bitcoin-focused payments program in the Strait of Hormuz.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
Jim Cramer delivers strong verdict on OpenAI
Hunter Biden sends stark warning on U.S. dollar
Ledger asks users to take urgent action amid $86M exploit report
Bessent says U.S. will ‘probably’ seize $1B in Iran-linked crypto this week
On Oct. 9, Bessent told Greta Van Susteren at Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit the U.S. will “probably” seize Iran-linked crypto assets worth $1 billion this week. It was part of what he called an “absolute isolation campaign” of the Asian country.
"We know where it is and we are isolating them."
However, he did not supply more details on the crypto seizure plan.
The latest move is part of the broader U.S. strategy to financially isolate Iran through repeated seizures of its crypto assets.
On May 29, Bessent claimed the U.S. had seized about $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets.
But a Treasury Department press release the same day only redirected to Bessent’s Apr. 29 interview in which he claimed the U.S. has seized nearly $500 million in Iranian crypto assets.
Related: Scott Bessent unveils new evidence that U.S. pressure on Iran is working

VanEck's Matthew Sigel makes bullish Bitcoin forecast (3:31)
Bitcoin has had a difficult few months.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $126,198 in October 2025, followed by series of crashes. Bitcoin trades at about $82,703 at the time of writing, still roughly 35% below its all-time high.
However, at least one Wall Street veteran is still bullish.
John Koudounis, president and CEO of Calamos Investments, still expects Bitcoin to reach $1 million, that target implies a gain of roughly 1,100% from today’s price action.
Koudounis leads Calamos, a U.S. asset manager overseeing about $50 billion in client money that also runs a range of Bitcoin-linked exchange-traded funds — ETFs, the products that let people buy exposure to an asset through a regular brokerage account.
He earned the distinction of being the youngest CEO on Wall Street during his tenure running Mizuho Securities USA, the American arm of Japanese banking giant Mizuho Financial Group.
Related: Trump buys surging stocks, dumps Coinbase
His argument starts with a weekend wire
Koudounis builds the case on the technology underneath Bitcoin.
Blockchain — the shared digital ledger that records every Bitcoin transaction — is “gonna be the way of the future,” he says.
His favorite example is an everyday frustration in banking.
A wire sent through SWIFT, the messaging network banks use to move money across borders, can sit idle over a weekend if it goes out late on a Friday.
L-R) John Koudounis, CEO of global investment firm Calamos Investments, professional basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo, and John Calamos, Chairman and Global Chief Investment Officer of Calamos Investments pose for a photo before they ring the closing bell at New York Stock Exchange on March 31, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
"Who keeps all of that money and the interest over the weekend? The banks do," he told BMTV in an interview, calling it "such an antiquated system."
Bitcoin, by contrast, trades around the clock, every day of the year.
Koudounis also calls it “truly nonpartisan,” noting that banks have refused to serve certain customers in the past.
The data backs the frustration. Per the Financial Stability Board’s latest progress report on the G20’s payment targets, only about half of cross-border payments sent over SWIFT — 50.6% — deliver funds to the recipient within an hour, and the figure has been falling, not rising.
For retail payments, just a third settle within an hour of initiation.
Cost tells the same story, the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide data puts the average cost of sending $200 abroad at 6.36% — more than double the 3% target the G20 set for 2030.
A small slice of a $146 trillion pie
Koudounis first made the $1 million call at a Bitcoin event in Abu Dhabi a year ago, with 2030 as the target date.
He has since kept the number and loosened the deadline: the price may not get there by 2030, he now says, but he still expects it to reach “that level and more.”
Financial advisers worldwide manage about $146 trillion, by his count, and only a tiny share of that has touched Bitcoin.
As more banks accept the asset — and some begin lending against it — he expects Bitcoin to become a small standard slice of most portfolios. Even a modest allocation from a pool that size would mean enormous new demand, which is why Calamos prefers Bitcoin to gold.
His firm, Calamos, sells Bitcoin investments too.
In January 2025, Calamos launched the world’s first Bitcoin fund that protects investors from all losses — if Bitcoin crashes, the fund’s structure shields your money, and in exchange your gains are capped. It followed with versions that protect 90% and 80% of the money.
Oct 6 was Bitcoin’s bottom: Koudounis
He also made a shorter-term call: he thinks Oct. 6 was the day Bitcoin’s fall finally ended.
On Oct. 6 last year, Bitcoin hit the highest price it has ever reached — close to $126,000.
On Oct. 6 this year, exactly one year later, it was trading around $86,000. That’s about a third less. Koudounis believes that day was the low point, and that prices will climb from there.
In the days after his call, Bitcoin fell further, to around $80,600 by Oct. 8.
Rising oil prices stoked fears about inflation, and investors pulled $484.9 million out of U.S. Bitcoin funds in a single day, the most since June.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
Jim Cramer delivers strong verdict on OpenAI
Hunter Biden sends stark warning on U.S. dollar
Cathie Wood dumps tumbling crypto stock to buy NVIDIA-linked AI stock
Mood is cooling while forecasts stay modest
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index runs from 0 (extreme fear) to 100 (extreme greed) and tracks factors such as price swings, trading volume and social media buzz.
It now sits at 58, in “neutral” territory, after spending most of the past week in “greed.” That suggests investors are neither panicking nor rushing to buy.
Source: CoinGlass
The million-dollar club has a patchy record
Giant Bitcoin predictions are almost a tradition among famous investors. The track record is worth knowing:
• Cathie Wood: the ARK Invest chief’s bull case has Bitcoin at $1.5 million by 2030, with her firm’s base case in the $700,000 range.
• Michael Saylor: the Strategy chairman has gone furthest of all, projecting Bitcoin at $13 million over the next two decades.
• Arthur Hayes: the BitMEX co-founder called for $750,000 to $1 million by the end of 2026. With Bitcoin near $82,700 and the year almost over, that one needs a miracle quarter.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments are highly volatile and risky. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
Related: Ledger asks users to take urgent action amid $86M exploit report

An employee holds a Ledger SAS USB dongle used for safely storing and carrying around cryptocurrency passwords inside the startup company’s headquarters in Paris, France, on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018.
Getty Images
Ledger, the French crypto hardware wallet maker, announced on Oct. 9 that it is probing reports of the loss of funds from users in South East Asia who purchased the company’s products from a reseller named CryptoBillis.
The announcement comes within hours of the onchain sleuth Specter claiming Ledger users are reporting instances of wallet draining on X and Reddit.
They said they have identified inflows from hundreds of victim wallets across several blockchains, including Ethereum, TRON, and Bitcoin.
Total losses stand at more than $86 million, Specter claimed.
Exclusive: Ledger exec explains Bybit hack, calls for end of blind signing (4:56)
Ledger asks users to take urgent action
Ledger said it has asked CryptoBilis to halt all the sales and shipments of Ledger devices while it investigates the reports of exploit.
The company also instructed its users who have purchased from this reseller in the last 90 days to:
Not initiate set up if they have not done so far, or
Move their assets to a new Ledger signer with a new recovery phrase if they have set up their devices.
Ledger said it will continue to inform customers of updates as the investigation progresses. However, the company did not confirm if it is investing the potential exploit that Specter alleged.
TheStreet Roundtable reached to Ledger to share more details on its investigation and did not receive a comment by the time of publishing. We will update our report as soon as we receive a response.

Jim Cramer visits the New York Stock Exchange opening bell at New York Stock Exchange on August 3, 2016 in New York City.
GettyImages
OpenAI’s revenue story got about $20 billion smaller on Thursday.
The Financial Times reported that the ChatGPT maker’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September. It was well short of the number previously communicated to investors.
Reuters later confirmed the roughly $50 billion figure, citing a person familiar with the matter. OpenAI had previously indicated a revenue run rate approaching $70 billion, creating what initially appeared to be a sharp downgrade in the company’s growth.
Jim Cramer takes U-turn on Bitcoin (1:59)
The headline quickly hit AI-related markets. OpenAI’s cash-settled pre-IPO perpetual contract on Liquid fell from around $1,725 to below $1,600 before recovering. Liquid’s contract provides price exposure to privately held OpenAI rather than ownership of actual shares.
The selloff also spilled into public technology stocks as investors questioned the returns being generated by massive AI infrastructure spending. Nasdaq-100 futures later recovered some of those losses.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
The apparent $20 billion gap, however, increasingly looks like an accounting comparison rather than a sudden loss of revenue.
Cramer says OpenAI numbers were not ‘apples to apples’
CNBC host Jim Cramer initially pushed back on the market’s interpretation Thursday, saying OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue differently and the figures were not directly comparable.
“Open AI reports revenues differently from Anthropic. This number isn't apples to apples,” Cramer wrote on X.
That was also why he questioned whether the Financial Times report should stand as framed. The earlier $70 billion figure had effectively put OpenAI on a gross-revenue basis comparable with Anthropic, while OpenAI’s own roughly $50 billion figure was reported on a different, net basis.
Reuters said the discrepancy largely came from efforts to compare the two companies using the same methodology.
Tesla Motors CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk, Y Combinator President Sam Altman and The New York Times Financial Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California.
Getty Images
OpenAI, unlike Anthropic, does not include some revenue generated through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud. Anthropic counts the full value of those sales before paying its partners their share.
That interpretation gained support Friday after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI still expects to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, largely driven by its enterprise business.
Cramer later described the episode as an “innocent mistake” stemming from confusion over gross and net revenue, rather than evidence that OpenAI had suddenly lost $20 billion in annualized sales.
Gross v. Net–innocent mistake-Open AI
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) October 9, 2026
OpenAI-linked markets rebounded after the clarification.
At the time of writing, OpenAI’s OAI contract on Liquid was trading around $1,692.60, after falling as low as $1,591.80 over the previous 24 hours.
Related: U.S. government moves more than $1 billion in Bitcoin

Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s son, Robert Hunter Biden, has worn many hats over decades.
A Yale-educated lawyer, he has worked as a lobbyist, investor, and, more recently, a professional artist.
Not known to shy away from voicing his opinion, he recently warned that the U.S. federal debt could hit a massive figure within two years.
Related: Billionaire Ray Dalio reveals deadline for U.S. debt crisis
Hunter Biden’s many controversies
Though Hunter Biden has never held public office or run for political office, his life became the center of a major political controversy ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
When he dropped off his MacBook Pro at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019, there was no way he could have foreseen what the future holds.
The New York Post got hold of the contents in the laptop and published several emails, photos and business records in October 2020, alleging possible corruption by Joe Biden.
Donald Trump and his allies used the raging controversy to criticize the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election.
Though some former intelligence officials initially suggested the story could be Russian disinformation, federal prosecutors later confirmed the laptop was real and its contents matched data obtained from Biden’s Apple iCloud account under a search warrant, according to court filings reported by Fox News.
The former president’s son has faced troubles on other legal fronts too.
In 2024, he was convicted on federal gun charges in June and pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in September.
However, his father pardoned him in December 2024, weeks before leaving the White House.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
Cathie Wood dumps tumbling crypto stock to buy NVIDIA-linked AI stock
Trump buys surging stocks, dumps Nvidia
DJ Khaled said ‘Another one’ and the internet brought up the last one
LAPTOP meme coin flops
Last month, Hunter Biden launched the LAPTOP meme coin to capitalize on the laptop controversy.
A meme coin, as the name suggests, is a type of cryptocurrency inspired by internet jokes, viral trends, or pop culture that relies entirely on social media hype rather than traditional financial utility.
Biden used the opportunity to take aim at Trump’s meme coin, Official Trump (TRUMP), saying 20% of LAPTOP’s supply is allocated to airdrops, including for those who lost money trading TRUMP tokens.
Though LAPTOP peaked at $199.51 on Sep. 9, it soon crashed and is currently trading at $0.075.
Nonetheless, the whole episode showed an individual deeply interested in the world of crypto.
More on Hunter Biden:
Hunter Biden’s meme coin crashed, but he’s still calling $220,000 Bitcoin
Hunter Biden defends LAPTOP memecoin, calls TRUMP crypto a ‘grift’
LAPTOP coin crashes as Hunter Biden blames bots and Eric Trump fires back
Biden warns of U.S. debt hitting $50 trillion in 2 years
On Oct. 6, popular crypto investor and podcaster Anthony Pompliano published an interview with Biden in which the former president’s son admitted to being a “big fan” of Bitcoin.
He revealed he doesn’t own the cryptocurrency right now but aspires to hold it one day.
When Pompliano asked him to address the relevance of Bitcoin in the face of money printing and inflation, Biden said the way the government prints the U.S. dollar whenever it wants to make fiat currency a “sham.”
The value of any asset depends on its scarcity. But there is no limit to how much money a government can print, essentially devaluing the fiat currency.
He reminded how the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value since 1913.
US Vice President JD Vance addresses $40 trillion debt (1:55)
He also brought up how the U.S. government is sitting on a federal debt of $40 trillion, and warned that it could hit nearly $50 trillion within two years.
Inflation is just built in and it’s a built-in tax on the people, he added.
Biden isn’t saying something unusual.
Dollar devaluation, soaring federal debt, and inflation are what make a currency like Bitcoin — with its supply capped at 21 million coins — extremely valuable, Bitcoiners argue. They believe it’s the digital version of gold.
Biden said the idea of a decentralized money protected by a blockchain network is obviously the future.
Biden criticizes his father’s ‘short-sighted’ administration
During the interview, Biden criticized his father’s administration for having what he called a “knee-jerk reaction” to the crypto industry.
The incumbent banking industry made it difficult for the Joe Biden administration to see beyond the negatives of crypto, he remarked.
"I think that they just were very shortsighted."
The crypto industry has frequently criticized the Biden administration for not making crypto rules and pursuing a “regulation by enforcement” agenda.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds up the “GENIUS Act” alongside Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) after signing the bill into law during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House July 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
But once Trump returned to the White House last year, the industry got relief as several securities violation cases got dismissed or settled.
In March the same year, Trump signed an executive order to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. In July, he signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law to regulate the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Biden slams Trump’s ‘personal involvement’
Biden did not spare Trump either.
He was extremely critical of Trump vis-à-vis his approach to the crypto industry due to the president’s “personal involvement” in the industry to bring “profit for himself and his family.”
"They have embedded themselves in terms of investments into organizations that are 100% reliant upon this administration's oversight."
Trump’s financial disclosure in June disclosed that he earned over $1.4 billion in crypto-related income during 2025.
Biden said it made any consensus on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act impossible to reach.
The most important crypto legislation in the U.S. so far, the CLARITY Act is stuck because the Democrats and Republicans have failed to reach a common ground on the ethics provision.
"As much as he (Trump) has promised to be the crypto president, I think that he's done more harm than good," Biden told Pompliano.
Though the House passed the bill in 2025, it couldn’t secure enough votes in the Senate last month and its advance was stalled.
Related: Hunter Biden has a bold 2030 request for Elon Musk

Analyst makes the case for Superplanet, Strive and Robinhood on Roundtable 100 (11:45)
The Roundtable 100 ranking list surprised investors this week when the analysts ranked Shopify Inc. (Nasdaq: SHOP) 31 places above Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL).
While Shopify is popular among startups looking to onboard their first customers, Apple is best-known for its much-coveted line of electronic gadgets.
What Shopify and Apple do
Founded in 2006, Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that lets businesses start, run, and grow online stores. Whether it’s Tesla or Red Bull, Shopify has turned out to be useful for many companies.
The $216 billion company is especially popular among startups that are trying to reach out to their first customers.
Apple, on the other hand, is the world’s second-most valued company after NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA).
Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, the Big Tech company is best known for its line of gadgets like iPhones, iPads, Macs, and AirPods.
The 50-year-old company has a market cap of around $5 trillion. Yet, the Roundtable analysts ranked it 31 places below Shopify.
Related: Analyst picks three stocks he says deserve a bump on Roundtable 100
Shopify at No. 55, Apple at No. 86
Published with TheStreet, the Roundtable 100 ranks 100 publicly traded technology growth assets. Committee analysts score each asset on team, safety, value, innovation, and market dominance, with the average forming its power ranking.
The analysts gave Shopify a score of 59 out of 100 this week. But Apple could secure a score of only 49.
Find out Shopify’s score on the Roundtable 100
While the e-commerce company rose one place higher to No. 55, the Big Tech giant slipped three places to No. 86.
The rankings don’t make sense at first, but once one looks at how the Roundtable 100 analysts score a company, everything falls into place.
The analysts don’t rank a company on the basis of how much it has peaked. Instead, its potential to grow in the future is what the analysts look at.
This week, they decided that Shopify has more growth potential than Apple. Hence, the rankings.
Check out Apple’s score on the Roundtable 100
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
On the radar
The Roundtable 100 analysts update the power rankings every Friday and keep looking for new additions.
One such company is Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR). Led by billionaire Michael Saylor, it began as a business software company but decided to turn into a Bitcoin (BTC) proxy in 2020.
Michael Saylor, chairman and chief executive officer at MicroStrategy, speaks during the DC Blockchain Summit in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.
Getty Images
Its business model — selling new shares to raise money to buy more Bitcoin, every week if it can afford to — is pioneering as several companies like Metaplanet and Twenty One Capital have followed the same strategy to build Bitcoin balance sheets.
Despite its ups and downs just like Bitcoin, Strategy is the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder. Latest, it holds 848,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
Though the company’s stock is down over 50% over the last 12 months, it has recovered this year’s loss following the recent uptick.
Related: Pudgy Penguins maker shuts down its next big bet within 18 months

Donald Trump's Evolving Stance on Cryptocurrency (1:56)
U.S. President Donald Trump barely touched crypto stocks in August, even as he went big on tech.
A new financial disclosure lists 517 trades in August.
Trump bought Strategy and made a big purchase of Meta. He sold Coinbase and several chip and cybersecurity stocks.
The trades were reported in an OGE Form 278-T filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
It is a form federal officials use to list stock buys and sales worth more than $1,000.
For context, it gives values as ranges, not exact amounts.
Related: U.S. government moves more than $1 billion in Bitcoin
Trump makes small crypto moves
Trump’s crypto-linked activity was limited to two trades on Aug. 10.
He bought shares of Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, a software company that has made Bitcoin its main treasury asset.
The purchase was in the range of $1,001-$15,000.
He also sold $1,001-$15,000 worth of Coinbase shares, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. The filing doesn’t show purchases of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or direct crypto holdings.
The relatively small crypto trades stand out against Trump’s much larger technology transactions in August.
Meta purchase leads tech trades
The biggest tech transaction in the filing was a Meta purchase worth $5,000,001 to $25,000,000 on Aug. 21.
Meta, parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was bought three more times in smaller amounts and sold once, for $1,001 to $15,000, on Aug. 10.
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 29: Visitors take pictures by a sign posted in front of Meta headquarters on January 29, 2025 in Menlo Park, California. Meta will report fourth-quarter earnings today after the closing bell. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Getty
Trump also traded other big tech stocks. Here is the biggest move in each:
Microsoft: biggest purchase was $1,000,001 to $5,000,000 on Aug. 10. One small sale of $1,001 to $15,000.
Nvidia: biggest purchase was $500,001 to $1,000,000 on Aug. 17. He also sold $500,001 to $1,000,000 on Aug. 21.
Amazon: biggest purchase was $250,001 to $500,000 on Aug. 17. No sales.
Alphabet: two purchases of $100,001 to $250,000 each on Aug. 17. One small sale of $1,001 to $15,000.
Palantir: biggest purchase was $50,001 to $100,000 on Aug. 17. No sales.
The filing also lists a $1,000,001 to $5,000,000 purchase of SpaceX bonds on Aug. 18, paying 5.35% until July 2031. Bonds mean he lent money to SpaceX. He did not buy a stake in the company.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
Analysts rank Shopify 31 places above Apple
Eric Trump issues blunt warning to big banks
DJ Khaled said ‘Another one’ and the internet brought up the last one
Chip stocks see broad selling
The filing shows a flurry of activity in semiconductor and technology stocks, with several large sales on Aug. 21 followed by smaller trades in Broadcom, Nvidia and Dell Technologies later in the month.
Broadcom: sold $500,001 to $1,000,000 on Aug. 21, plus one small sale and one small purchase later in the month.
Dell Technologies: sold $500,001 to $1,000,000 on Aug. 21 and $15,001 to $50,000 on Aug. 28. No purchases.
How the stocks have moved since the disclosed trades
Meta and Strategy have risen sharply since the trade dates in the filing. The gains were smaller for Microsoft. The two stocks Trump sold, Nvidia and Coinbase, have also risen.
Meta: up 30.7% to $718.73 from $549.90 on Aug. 21, the day of his biggest Meta purchase.
Microsoft: up 3.1% to $521.95 from $506.06 on Aug. 10, the day of his biggest Microsoft purchase.
Strategy: up 54.3% to $150.20 from $97.33 on Aug. 10, the day he bought its shares.
Nvidia: up 7.2% to $230.13 from $214.72 on Aug. 21, the day of his large sale. He also bought Nvidia in August.
Coinbase: up 17.5% to $174.67 from $148.68 on Aug. 10, the day he sold its shares.
Trump’s crypto and AI stance
The August trades came as Trump continued to publicly embrace the crypto industry.
On Aug. 19, he called on Congress to pass a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act, which would set clearer rules for digital assets.
Trump made the comments at a White House event attended by crypto executives including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.
Trump has also made AI and the broader technology sector a priority for his administration.
On Sept. 29, he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use “Super Intelligence” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI” in official communications, arguing that the newer term better reflects the capabilities of today’s technology.
Trump doubled down on the terminology on Oct. 8. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote that the White House considers anyone who uses “Artificial Intelligence” instead of “Super Intelligence” to be “THE ENEMY!”
Donald Trump’s Truth Social post from October 8, 2026. (Source: Truth Social)
Trump’s crypto income remains much larger
Trump’s small crypto trades are only part of the bigger picture. His biggest crypto earnings are from businesses tied to his family.
In his 2025 annual financial disclosure reported July this year, Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto ventures, according to Reuters.
Much of that came from World Liberty Financial, the crypto business co-founded by Trump and his sons, as well as sales of the Trump meme coin.
The filing showed almost $800 million in income tied to World Liberty Financial, including more than $520 million from token sales and more than $250 million from selling interests in the business.
Trump also reported $635 million from sales of his meme coins.
Related: Sheriff reveals an AI chatbot turned in its own user

Cathie Wood, chief executive officer of Ark Investment Management LLC, during the Federal Reserve’s Payments Innovation Conference in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. The conference brings together industry experts to share perspectives on the evolving landscape of money and payments. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Over the years, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood has earned a reputation as an investor who is deeply interested in emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence (AI). Her latest bet on CoreWeave, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWV), shows her sticking to the conviction that AI infrastructure will be one of the defining growth stories in the next few years.
Wood once revealed that her firm was the first public asset manager to gain Bitcoin (BTC) exposure in 2015. The leading cryptocurrency wasn’t worth even $500 back then and traditionalists would sharply criticize the investment.
Even though BTC is currently trading around $82,000 — much lower than the peak above $126,000 it hit a year ago — it’s still far above the 2015 price and Wood’s bet seems to have paid off.
How Cathie Wood became one of crypto’s earliest believers (3:41)
As per StockCircle, two of ARK Invest’s biggest holdings are Elon Musk‘s Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) and SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX).
While Tesla uses AI across its vehicles and robotics programs, SpaceX uses the technology across its spaceflight systems and satellite networks.
Both the companies are among the world’s largest Bitcoin holders too. Tesla and SpaceX hold 11,509 and 18,712 BTC respectively.
These investments reflect Wood’s deep belief in both AI and crypto.
Related: Cathie Wood sends bullish Bitcoin response to 'dead cat' warning
ARK sells Robinhood shares for two days in a row
StockCircle data shows that Robinhood Markets (Nasdaq: HOOD) is also among ARK Invest’s biggest holdings.
Robinhood is a commission-free e-brokerage platform that is extremely popular among young retail traders. It lets users buy and sell stocks, options, cryptocurrencies, and tokenized equities from a single app.
The Robinhood logo on a laptop cpmputer arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Monday, May 8, 2023.
Getty Images
The company’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto and international, Johann Kerbrat, just disclosed that the company recently added approximately $25 million worth of Bitcoin to its corporate balance sheet.
But ARK decided to trim its stake in the e-brokerage. The investment firm sold 63,446 HOOD shares worth $7.1 million on Oct. 6 and 151,903 HOOD shares worth $16.6 million on Oct. 7.
The HOOD stock is down 28% over the last year and has lost 7% of its value in the last month. It was trading at $108.20 at the time of writing.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
Conversely, ARK buys CoreWeave shares twice in a row
ARK Invest decided to accumulate more shares of CoreWeave, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWV). Wood’s investment firm bought 97,639 CRWV shares worth $8.9 million on Oct. 6 and 214,589 CRWV shares worth $18.9 million on Oct. 7.
CoreWeave started out as a crypto miner but switched gears and turned into an AI engine in the hope of a larger and more stable revenue stream.
While crypto mining remained a very profitable venture for years, the lower prices, higher power costs, and reduced rewards over the past few years made it far less profitable. And the AI boom was far more lucrative.
Companies like CoreWeave already had a ready data infrastructure, and they didn’t take long to make the pivot.
The CoreWeave logo arranged on a laptop in Forest Hills, New York, US, on Friday, April 10, 2026.
Getty Images
CoreWeave buys or leases NVIDIA’s (Nasdaq: NVDA) AI GPUs, builds data centers around them, and rents out computing capacity to Big Tech clients such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Alphabet’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
The AI company also announced yesterday that it is entering the Indian market through a collaboration with AdaniConneX.
The CRWV stock is down 40% over the last 12 months and is down 15% this month. It was trading at $84.15 at the time of writing.
Related: Elon Musk takes direct aim at Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani

A smartphone displaying the Anthropic logo is shown in the foreground with a blurred Claude Mythos themed background in Tunis, Tunisia on July 11,2026.
Getty Images
When deputies in Lee County, Florida, arrested a woman over threats last week, the tip had not come from a neighbor or a family member. It came from the AI company whose chatbot she had been using.
Carli Michelle Heller of Bonita Springs is accused of typing threats against the Lee County Sheriff’s Office into Claude, the chatbot built by Anthropic, on Sept. 26 and Sept. 27, according to WINK News.
One message said she was going to "shoot up the sheriff's right the [expletive] now." Another said, "This is 100% last chance I'm done. I got a new [expletive] gun today."
According to the arrest report, Anthropic’s automated safety systems flagged the messages, a human review team examined them, and the company reported them to law enforcement. TheStreet could not independently verify the arrest report.
Deputies detained Heller at her home without incident. She told investigators she used AI like a “diary.”
Heller is charged with making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Her court date is set for November.
Editor’s Inputs: The charge is an allegation, and Heller is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
"Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, and like any technology, it can be misused," Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said in a statement. "When someone uses AI to make or facilitate a threat, we have to take that threat seriously." He added that users of AI platforms are "never truly anonymous."
Related: Veteran trader who nailed Bitcoin's 2018 crash predicts 60% upside for XRP
What Anthropic’s policies say
Anthropic’s consumer terms state that the company reserves the right, “at our sole discretion, to report information from or about you,” including “Inputs, Outputs, or Actions to law enforcement.”
Inputs and outputs are what a user types and what Claude writes back.
The company’s privacy policy, updated Sept. 10, states that personal data may be shared with “government authorities, law enforcement, or other third parties” when the company has a good-faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the law, “prevent serious harm to any person or to property,” address “fraud or other illegal activity,” or “enforce our terms, or protect the rights, property, security, or safety of Anthropic, our users, or others.”
The policy’s scope goes beyond threats of violence.
It covers harm to property, illegal activity generally, and the protection of Anthropic’s own rights, and it permits sharing with third parties other than law enforcement.
The same policy states that flagged content can be “re-identified” to enforce the company’s rules, meaning conversations analyzed anonymously can be linked back to the account that wrote them.
A separate Anthropic support page says the company requires a subpoena, warrant or other valid legal process before releasing user information in response to government requests, with an exception for emergencies involving risk of death or serious physical injury.
TheStreet Roundtable has reached out to Anthropic for comment and did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
Other AI companies have similar policies
Comparable disclosure language appears in the privacy policies of OpenAI, Google and Meta.
OpenAI has said it scans ChatGPT conversations and may refer cases involving threats of serious physical harm to others to law enforcement.
The practice is becoming more visible as more people use chatbots for personal conversations.
Related: ‘Godfather’ sentenced to 78 months over $37M Meta fraud

People walk past an advertisement feature Donald Trump with Solana, XRP, USDC Bitcoin in Hong Kong.
A wallet marked by Arkham Intelligence as belonging to the United States government moved 12,267 Bitcoin worth about $1.01 billion on Wednesday.
Arkham Intelligence is a blockchain analytics platform that tracks and identifies cryptocurrency wallets and onchain transactions.
Data showed the 12,267 BTC, linked to funds recovered from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, leaving a U.S. government-tagged wallet in a single transaction.
HIVE chairman Frank Holmes says U.S. Bitcoin reserve could trigger ‘exponential’ shift (1:17)
The funds trace back to the 2016 Bitfinex hack, when 119,754 BTC was stolen from the exchange. U.S. authorities later recovered more than 94,000 BTC after obtaining private keys tied to the stolen funds.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at around $82,500, down roughly 1% on the day.
Source: Arkham Intelligence
The onchain movement does not by itself indicate that the Bitcoin was sold, and neither the Treasury Department nor the Department of Justice had publicly explained the transfer at the time of writing.
Government wallets can move digital assets for custody, administrative or legal reasons without selling them. Arkham currently attributes about 306,795 BTC, worth roughly $25.3 billion, to U.S. government-controlled addresses.
The transfer comes two days after another government-linked movement. On Oct. 6, onchain tracker Lookonchain reported that a U.S. government wallet transferred 834 BTC, worth about $71.6 million, to Coinbase Prime.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve still lacks public details
Trump signed an executive order on March 6, 2025, establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve funded initially with Bitcoin forfeited through criminal or civil proceedings.
The order said Bitcoin placed in the reserve “shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets of the United States.” It also directed the Treasury and Commerce departments to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional BTC.
However, key details about how the reserve operates remain undisclosed.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
As of Oct. 2, U.S. government records cited by America.gov did not provide an official reserve balance, custody arrangement or confirmation that Treasury had fully operationalized the reserve. The government site noted that the executive order says the U.S. “holds a significant amount of BTC” without specifying how much.
The House Financial Services Committee advanced the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 in September by a 28-21 vote, but the bill has not become law.
Related: Samsung taps Solana to bring stablecoins to 82 million devices

Solana Policy Institute president on stablecoin rules (3:13)
Samsung Wallet and Samsung Pay will support stablecoins on Solana, the Solana Foundation announced on Oct. 7.
Solana is a high-speed blockchain network designed for fast and low-cost transactions.
Whereas Samsung Wallet is the digital wallet pre-installed on Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, where users already store credit cards, boarding passes and IDs.
Starting in the last week of October, Samsung Wallet users in the United States will be able to send money across borders using USDC directly from their Galaxy phones.
USDC is a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value that is the same as that of the U.S. dollar, issued by Circle.
Solana Foundation President Lily Liu framed the partnership as a turning point for stablecoin adoption.
"Samsung's decision to work with Solana puts digital dollars into everyday life through one of the world's most trusted technology brands," Liu said. "This is the moment when stablecoins stop being a crypto product and start being how people move money."
Related: Eric Trump issues blunt warning to big banks
Why Samsung chose Solana
The feature is built into Samsung Wallet rather than sitting alongside it as a separate app.
Users can send a remittance from the same interface they already use for everyday payments, with integrated on- and off-ramps converting between local currency and USDC automatically.
Solana’s infrastructure runs behind the scenes, so the experience feels like a regular money transfer rather than a crypto transaction.
At launch, the feature will be available across 82 million U.S. Galaxy devices, with additional markets to follow subject to local regulatory requirements.
"Stablecoins have the potential to make moving money around the world faster and easier, and we want Galaxy users to be able to take advantage of that without having to navigate the complexity of traditional crypto tools," said Woncheol Chai, EVP and Head of the Digital Wallet Team at Samsung Electronics' Mobile eXperience division.
"Solana helps us bring that experience to Samsung's scale."
(L to R) Jacquelyn Melinek (StrataMedia), Wonseok Baek (Head of Group, North America, Samsung Wallet, Samsung) and Vibhu Norby (Chief Product Officer, Solana Foundation) at Token2049 event, Singapore.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
Solana’s stablecoin momentum keeps building
The Samsung deal adds to a streak of major stablecoin integrations on Solana. Column, an FDIC-insured U.S. bank, recently launched stablecoin support with Solana as the default network. Visa uses Solana for USDC settlement.
Stablecoins currently on Solana are worth about $16.3 billion in total, according to DefiLlama, a platform that tracks blockchain data. USDC is by far the biggest, at roughly $6.9 billion, or 42.5% of all stablecoins on the network.
That matters for the Samsung rollout because USDC is the token Galaxy users will be sending.
Major enterprises, like PayPal and Western Union, are already using Solana for stablecoin activity. PayPal’s own stablecoin, PYUSD, holds about $704 million on the network. Over the past week, the total grew by about $212 million, or 1.3%.
The announcement was made alongside Solana’s presence at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, one of the crypto industry’s largest annual conferences, where the Solana Foundation has been showcasing its institutional and payments infrastructure throughout the week.
Related: DJ Khaled said 'Another one' and the internet brought up the last one

Book Review: Eric Trump’s ‘Under Siege’ (3:03)
Eric Trump thinks artificial intelligence, not a crypto-specific trend, will drive the next phase of digital asset growth.
Trump was speaking at the Token2049 conference in Singapore on Oct. 7. “The thing that’s going to spawn the growth of digital assets by far the quickest is actually the AI trade,” he said.
TOKEN2049 bills itself as the world’s largest crypto event. The two-day Singapore edition runs October 7 and 8 at Marina Bay Sands, with more than 300 speakers and 500 exhibitors listed on its official site.
Eric Trump, a son of President Donald Trump, co-founded World Liberty Financial. It is a Trump family-linked crypto project that issues USD1, a dollar-backed stablecoin.
A stablecoin is a crypto token built to hold a steady $1 value. He is also co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, a Nasdaq-listed company that mines Bitcoin and holds it as a reserve asset.
Related: ‘Godfather’ sentenced to 78 months over $37M Meta fraud
Machines with wallets
Trump’s argument rests on AI agents. These are software programs that can carry out tasks on their own.
He used the example of agents booking hotels or arranging travel, then paying through digital wallets with stablecoins and no human stepping in.
A digital wallet is an app that stores crypto and sends payments.
He also acknowledged that money moving from crypto into AI stocks over the past year had weighed on crypto prices. He expects that rotation between the two to continue.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
Victory lap over banks
Trump told the audience, “I think today we could all declare victory” over big banks.
He also went on to promote tokenization, which means turning ownership of real-world assets such as real estate, art or music royalties into digital tokens on a blockchain, a shared digital ledger. He mentioned that this lets everyday investors buy into assets once reserved for the wealthy.
His record on these claims is mixed.
World Liberty Financial’s February plan to tokenize interests tied to a Maldives resort was open only to accredited investors, a category based on wealth and income.
World Liberty Financial said it would split stakes in the resort in the Maldives into digital tokens that investors could buy. It partnered with Dar Global, the resort’s developer, and Securitize, a company that issues tokenized investments.
His forecast of a strong fourth quarter in September 2025 did not come true either. Bitcoin, which peaked at $126,000 in October 2025, trades above $83,000 at the time of writing.
Related: ‘Godfather’ sentenced to 78 months over $37M Meta fraud

Slazas explains why he moved Circle higher in Roundtable 100 (4:11)
DJ Khaled, the Grammy-winning producer behind some of rap’s biggest hits, is the face of a crypto promotion for the first time in nearly a decade.
His last one, back in 2017, ended with a $152,725 settlement at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and it seems like the internet has not forgotten.
On Oct. 6, USDC account on X posted a photo of the producer in a Chelsea FC jersey branded “USDC by Circle,” captioned “Another one.”
Related: Circle announces new blockchain amid blockbuster earnings
For context, ‘Another one’ is a phrase Khaled shouts every time he announces a new record, and it became a meme years ago.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire followed about four hours later: “DJ Khaled welcome to team USDC.”
Circle issues USDC, a stablecoin, which is a cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady $1 value.
The company sponsors Chelsea’s shirts, which is where the jersey comes from. Neither post announced an actual deal with Khaled, who has his own ties to the club through a Roc Nation partnership announced in May.
Soon after the post, some users pushed back, reminding Khaled of his 2018 run-in with the SEC
What happened in 2018
The SEC charged Khaled, whose legal name is Khaled Khaled, on Nov. 29, 2018, over his promotion of Centra Tech’s initial coin offering.
An ICO is a way of raising money by selling new crypto tokens directly to the public.
Centra had paid him $50,000.
Khaled called the offering a “Game changer” on his social media accounts and never mentioned the payment, which meant his followers had no way of knowing the endorsement was an ad.
DJ Khaled wears USDC by Circle tshirt
X/@USDC
He settled without admitting or denying the findings, returned the $50,000, paid a $100,000 penalty plus $2,725 in interest, and accepted a two-year ban on promoting securities. The ban ran out in 2020.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. was charged the same day over his own Centra promotions and paid $614,775 with a three-year ban.
Centra itself had raised more than $25 million before its three co-founders were indicted for fraud, including making up partnerships with companies like Visa.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
Editor’s Inputs: In all fairness to Khaled, his case was the opening act of a crackdown that eventually caught half of Hollywood.
Kim Kardashian paid $1.26 million in 2022 for an undisclosed $250,000 Instagram post about the EMAX token.
NBA great Paul Pierce paid $1.4 million over the same token in 2023, and that March the SEC charged eight celebrities at once — Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, Akon, Lil Yachty and Ne-Yo among them — over paid posts for Justin Sun’s Tron and BitTorrent tokens.
Then-SEC chair Gary Gensler, made crypto enforcement his signature.
However, the industry Khaled came back to is unrecognizable from the one he left. Centra was a fraud whose founders went to prison; it raised $25 million.
Circle is a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, and USDC — with roughly $75 billion in circulation — operates under the federal stablecoin rules Congress passed in 2025.
The reaction
“You really want people who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to the SEC for illegally not disclosing payments they received for promoting ICOs representing your brand?” one user asked Circle, posting the SEC’s litigation files.
Another called Khaled a “known blatant ICO scammer.”
They did it for the memes pic.twitter.com/VUFY4bLBcS
— fewture 🎲 (@fewture) October 6, 2026
A few replies went after Circle’s stock instead. “Stop making me want to sell all my circle stock,” one user wrote. Another joked that the chart would soon “be a circle.”
One user suggested Kim Kardashian as Circle’s next signing. Someone else asked when Khaled would drop a “new tune on USDC,” and one reply posted a GIF of Khaled saying “Man, I’m proud of you,” with the comment, “They did it for the memes.”

The physical artwork of “Pudgy Penguin #6873” created by Pudgy Penguins, available for sale as an NFT, left, in the premier area at a CoinUnited cryptocurrency exchange in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, March 4, 2022.
Getty Images
There’s a cartoon penguin sitting in the toy aisle of 2,000 Walmart stores, and it has one of the strangest origin stories in retail.
Pudgy Penguins started life in 2021 not as a toy, but as an NFT (non-fungible token) collection — digital artworks of chubby penguins that people bought and sold with cryptocurrency.
Quick refresher on what that means. An NFT is a digital certificate of ownership. Anyone can download a picture of a penguin; the NFT is the record proving you own the original, stored on a blockchain — a shared digital ledger that can’t be altered or deleted.
The NFT market peaked in 2021 and crashed soon after. Most penguin, ape and pixel-art projects died with the hype. Pudgy Penguins did something no one expected: it waddled out of crypto and into real stores.
Exclusive: Rarible co-founder says NFT bubble is over, names two major narratives (5:02)
How a crypto penguin ended up at Walmart
The company turned its cartoon characters into a toy brand.
In September 2023, it partnered with Walmart to launch Pudgy Toys — plushies, figurines, games and collectibles — in 2,000 U.S. stores and on Walmart’s website.
Pudgy Penguins soft toys on Walmart website
The plushies became a hit with shoppers who had no idea the penguin ever lived on a blockchain, and last month the company announced its toys will feature in Walmart’s holiday shopping season catalog.
While the toys thrived, though, the company was pouring money into a second, far more ambitious project.
Related: 95-year-old luxury carmaker shuts down iconic project
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
Pudgy Penguins parent to shut down blockchain project
In January 2025, Pudgy Penguins’ parent company, Igloo Inc., launched its own blockchain, called Abstract.
The idea is to turn the penguin’s millions of fans into crypto users, giving them a network of their own for games, apps and digital collectibles.
On Oct. 6, Igloo CEO Luca Netz announced it’s shutting down.
Igloo funded Abstract for 18 months and lost tens of millions of dollars building products and signing up brands, he said — but the project never found enough people who actually needed it.
The company could have raised money by launching its own crypto token, he added, but chose not to, because there was no real demand for the product.
"The entire team at Abstract has worked tirelessly with a tremendous amount of passion to make the consumer crypto vision come true. I cannot fault a single one of them for this outcome."
Abstract processed over 325 million transactions, generated $40 million in revenue, and attracted brands like Red Bull Racing and Disney for digital experiences that brought in over 400,000 users. But the team said thin activity, slow interest from big institutions and limited budget left no path forward.
Abstract’s journey since its launch in January 2025
Abstract shuts down on Dec. 15, and users holding funds on it need to move their assets off the chain before then, through the project’s Migration Hub or its native bridge.
Any funds not moved by the deadline will become inaccessible.
Related: Billionaire Ray Dalio reveals deadline for U.S. debt crisis

The most anticipated video game on Earth has taken 12 years to make.
Grand Theft Auto 6, due in November after two delays, carries an estimated budget of $1 billion to $2 billion — likely the most expensive entertainment product ever made, by anyone, in any medium.
Thousands of people across multiple studios built its world the old way, manually.
Rockstar’s owner is proud of that.
"Their worlds are handcrafted," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said, insisting "generative AI has zero part" in the game. "They're built from the ground up, building by building, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood."
However, nobody, in gaming thinks the $2 billion game is a viable business. And on Oct. 2 in Tokyo, one of the industry’s oldest companies proposed a way out.
First, who is Capcom?
Capcom is one of the oldest and biggest names in video games.
The Japanese company, founded in 1979 and based in Osaka, made Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, Mega Man and Devil May Cry. If you’ve ever held a game controller, you’ve probably played something Capcom made. A new Resident Evil film is in theaters right now.
PARIS, FRANCE – OCTOBER 27: Posters from video games ‘Resident Evil 2 Remake’ developed and published by Capcom and “Devil May Cry 5” developed by Capcom Production Studio 1 and published by Capcom are displayed during the ‘Paris Games Week’ on October 27, 2018 in Paris, France. ‘Paris Games Week’ is an international trade fair for video games and runs from October 26 to 31, 2018. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)
At its own conference in Tokyo, the company announced it is turning the system it uses to build all its games into what it calls an “AI-generation game engine.”
To understand why that matters, you need to know what a game engine is.
It’s the software that handles everything a game needs — the graphics, the sound, the physics of how a character jumps or a door opens. Developers don’t build each game from nothing. They build it inside the engine.
Can’t AI just make the whole game?
People have tried.
The most famous attempt is Oasis, an AI version of Minecraft that went viral in 2024 — a game with no code at all, where an AI model dreams up each frame based on what you press. Viral AI remakes of GTA work the same way.
Playing them is another matter.
Oasis runs at a blurry 360p, forgets the world behind you when you turn around, and teleports you somewhere else mid-action. PC Gamer summed up the genre as showcasing “AI’s unlimited ability to copy things but worse.”
Zelnick’s deeper objection is about the art.
"There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model," he has said — AI can only look backward at what exists, and hits come from what doesn't exist yet.
More on TheStreet Roundtable
95-year-old luxury carmaker shuts down iconic project
A $37 million Meta scheme and five deputies earn a ‘Godfather’ over 6 years in prison
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
Capcom’s only choice
At its March shareholders’ meeting, Capcom said:
"We will not implement assets generated by AI into our games. However, we plan to proactively use it as a contributing technology to improve the efficiency and productivity of the game development process."
In simple words: no AI-made monsters, faces, music or artwork will ever appear in a Capcom game. Humans make everything you see and hear.
Capcom already tried this.
In January 2025, GameSpark reported the company built an AI tool that reads design documents and suggests ideas for the thousands of small objects that fill a game world — barrels, signs, furniture.
Why would they need that? Technical director Kazuki Abe explained with Monster Hunter: the team has to come up with “hundreds of thousands of unique ideas” for a single game. The AI suggests, humans decide. Staff reportedly loved it.
The problem, as Capcom programmer Sashi Ishida explained it, modern games look so detailed that even a tiny change takes a huge amount of work. Making games has become slow and expensive — GTA 6 is the extreme proof.
The whole industry is moving this way
A survey this year found 36% of people working in games already use AI on the job every day. mostly for research and brainstorming, not the creative work.
The reason is money.
Games cost more to make than ever, and the industry has been through waves of layoffs.
At a conference last October, Dead Space creator Glen Schofield argued AI could help fix that — not by replacing people, but by making them faster.
The giants are all moving.
Microsoft has built generative AI that can create video game scenes, trained on its own titles.
Ubisoft runs an AI tool that predicts where bugs will appear in code before they happen.
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson has told investors AI sits at “the very core” of the company’s business. And Rockstar’s own parent, for all the handcrafting pride, is running “hundreds of pilots” of generative AI inside Take-Two — in the tools, not the art.
Wall Street has put a number on the prize.
A Morgan Stanley analysis estimates generative AI could hand the game industry $22 billion in extra operating profit by cutting the cost of making content — the single biggest expense in gaming.
Editor’s take
Development costs are what push the sticker price on your games.
The standard new release sat at $60 for roughly 15 years, jumped to $70 in 2020, and crossed $80 in 2025 when Nintendo priced Mario Kart World there — the first ordinary edition at that level since the cartridge era.
Two price hikes in five years, after a decade and a half of none, and both arrived as budgets ballooned toward GTA 6 territory.
"If AI genuinely cuts the cost of making games, it's the industry's main lever against the next jump to $90." Mehab Qureshi, Senior Editor, TheStreet.

Aptos CEO says crypto will power ‘one global market’ for everyone (5:02)
Shelby, the decentralized data infrastructure project built by Aptos Labs, has entered private beta with its first customer workloads now running in production, the company announced.
Three companies across enterprise AI, distributed 3D rendering, and physical-world spatial data are the first to go live on the platform.
Aptos is a Layer 1 blockchain originally incubated at Meta. Shelby was first announced as a high-performance data layer for Web3, essentially infrastructure that sits beneath applications and handles how data is stored, moved, and made available.
Since then, the project has sharpened its focus toward AI and other compute-heavy workloads, where the relationship between where data lives and where computing happens is becoming increasingly important.
Related: A $37 million Meta scheme and five deputies earn a 'Godfather' over 6 years in prison
Three customers, three very different problems
The first cohort was chosen to stress-test Shelby against distinct data and compute patterns rather than a single use case.
Teepin is building enterprise AI infrastructure around proprietary data and open-source models. Its integration with Shelby starts at the data layer, creating a path from storage into broader AI and compute services over time.
Pictor Network is building infrastructure for distributed 3D rendering, where GPU capacity is spread across multiple locations and data availability directly affects how efficiently that computing power can be used.
PathPulse is building spatial intelligence from video captured in the real world, a pattern that generates large volumes of data in one place that may need to be processed and analyzed somewhere else entirely.
Together, the three give Shelby very different environments to work against: proprietary enterprise data, distributed GPU workloads and high-volume physical-world data.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
The common thread
Across all three, a shared problem emerges. Data and compute don’t stay in one place, and the infrastructure connecting them needs to keep up as workloads shift between providers, regions and hardware types.
That’s the gap Shelby is designed to fill. Rather than forcing teams to manually copy, stage and synchronize data every time the compute environment changes, Shelby aims to make the data layer flexible enough that teams can choose infrastructure based on the workload rather than being locked in by where the data already sits.
A co-build, not a finished product
Aptos Labs is framing private beta explicitly as a co-build rather than a launch.
Each customer engagement starts with the specific workload, where data lives, how compute is being used, which tools the application depends on, and the goal is to identify which requirements repeat across customers, which are unique and where the product roadmap should go next.
The company said it will share more detail on each customer’s usage, data volumes and measurable results as the engagements progress.
Shelby sits alongside Aptos’ broader infrastructure push, which includes the recently announced MonoMove execution engine upgrade offering up to 55x faster smart contract execution and the Decibel exchange for onchain trading.

Peter Brandt XRP
Peter Brandt has been trading for more than 45 years now. Whether it’s old-school favorites like gold or new-age innovations like Bitcoin (BTC), there is hardly any asset that escape his radar.
Not only did the veteran trader correctly predict the gold crash in 1980, he also called the Bitcoin crash in 2018.
Thanks to his long experience, a large number of traders listen to him for signs of the next major move on Wall Street. One look at his X feed reveals an experienced trader deeply interested in analyzing complex price charts.
Related: Treasury's major decision made this risk asset beat gold by 10-to-1
1980 gold crash forecast
Brandt once disclosed that he was on call with his floor broker on Jan. 21, 1980, when gold hit the then-peak of $850 an ounce.
The surge preceded traders piling on the bullion in the face of inflation. But as the central bank stepped in and raised interest rates, gold crashed by around 80% to $450 an ounce within months of the peak.
Gold was trading 60% below its peak by mid-1980 as the pent-up demand got exhausted, a price movement Brandt says he had already foreseen.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
2018 Bitcoin crash forecast
Though cryptocurrencies are a relatively recent phenomenon, Brandt frequently addresses their price actions. Whether an asset exists physically or virtually, it remains just an investment for him.
In 2018, Bitcoin’s price exceeded $10,000 in January, but he predicted a crash below $4,000 the same year.
By December, BTC was trading around $3,800.
Bullish yet cautious XRP price target
On Oct. 5, Brandt wrote a long X post analyzing the XRP price action. With a market capitalization of $90 billion, it is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency.
Understanding Ripple, XRP and XRPL (3:17)
He said that he could identify a cup-and-handle pattern forming on the XRP chart, which could very well be the right shoulder of a head-and-shoulders pattern.
The cup-and-handle pattern is a bullish indicator. Price descends and then ascends, forming a semicircular pattern that looks like a cup. The price again descends, the downtrend looking like a handle. Traders look at this pattern to spot a breakout as a potential bullish movement.
The head-and-shoulders pattern, on the other hand, is a bearish indicator. The price pattern looks like a left shoulder, followed by a head and a right shoulder. The support line connecting the lowest points of the drops resembles a neckline. Any breakout below it means a crash ahead.
Brandt said he sees XRP surging to $2.14 based on the patterns. But the right shoulder is “poorly formed and abbreviated,” indicating more consolidation before a surge.
But he warned that XRP has a ton of “overhead supply” which is “negative” for it. In simple words, overhead supply is the selling pressure that occurs when an asset’s price rebounds toward a previous high.
He expressed concern that XRP could face selling pressure as it surges and the cryptocurrency wouldn’t be able to move past the resistance level.
XRP price analysis chart shared by Peter Brandt on X
Brandt urged the crypto community to not treat his words as gospel and cautioned that price targets are not “sacred.”
XRP was trading at $1.51 when he shared his price target of $2.41, implying an upside of nearly 60%.
Last month, he predicted a long-term XRP surge to $5.40 despite his well-known skepticism of the cryptocurrency and its fan club.
At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency was exchanging hands at $1.43.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments are highly volatile and risky. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
Related: XRP doesn't need a cult following to make the bet, veteran trader says

CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, South African-Canadian-US businessman Elon Musk speaks during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2026.
Getty Images
Starlink was built to deliver internet from space to places that ground networks struggle to reach.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX developed the service and launched its first satellite fleet in 2019.
SpaceX’s 2025 progress report dates the first Starlink launch to 2019 and the start of commercial service to 2020. NASA recorded the deployment of 60 Starlink communications satellites in May 2019, followed by another 60 that November.
Elon Musk's Tesla doesn't sell Bitcoin (1:42)
The network has since grown into a broadband business serving homes, businesses, ships and aircraft. But the expansion has not carried it past every national regulator, and India remains a market where the company has secured licenses without beginning commercial service.
What Starlink actually delivers
Unlike a fiber connection, Starlink sends data between a customer’s terminal and satellites overhead. Its technology page describes a constellation of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, roughly 550 kilometers above the planet.
That is much closer than traditional geostationary satellites, which orbit at about 35,786 kilometers. The shorter distance reduces the time a signal takes to travel, making satellite broadband more useful for video calls, streaming and online games.
SpaceX builds and operates the satellites in Redmond, Washington, and manufactures customer kits in Bastrop, Texas. It also launches its own satellites, giving the company control over both the network in orbit and the rockets that expand it.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
Starlink’s current service-plan page advertises coverage in more than 150 countries and territories. That is not a count of 150 sovereign countries, and it does not mean every location is open to every service plan.
In its 2025 report, the company said it was connecting more than 9 million customers across all seven continents and had expanded to 35 additional countries, territories and other markets during that year. Those are company-reported figures for 2025, not a fresh October subscriber count.
The business also includes Direct to Cell, which connects ordinary mobile phones through partner carriers. That is a separate offering from the dish-based broadband service and depends on local approvals and operator agreements.
A satellite overhead is not a license
Starlink’s reach does not remove the need for permission on the ground. Its support documentation includes a “DISABLED BLOCKED COUNTRY” alert for terminals operating where service is restricted or unavailable.
Namibia offers one example of an outright licensing setback. In a March 2026 update, Starlink said the country’s communications regulator had declined its application. The company disputed the noncompliance finding and said local ownership requirements were the main issue.
India’s position is different. The government has granted Starlink permissions, even though the service has not launched.
Popular on TheStreet Roundtable
Major dollar project shuts down, leaving holders with just 4 cents
U.S., China find rare common ground on unlikely subject
Trump’s new AI czar left the SEC a day after it declared war on crypto
A government account of the licensing process says Starlink received its telecom license on June 6, 2025, and space-regulator approval for its first-generation constellation capacity on July 8, 2025. A January 2026 parliamentary reply lists Starlink, OneWeb India and Jio Satellite as licensed operators.
The same government reply describes satellite services as a way to reach remote, coastal, border and mountainous areas that are difficult to cover with fiber or microwave links. The disagreement is over the conditions for starting service, not whether satellites can reach India.
Musk points to unnamed oligarchs
Musk escalated that dispute in an October 7 post on X, responding to a DogeDesigner post calling for Starlink’s remaining clearances and spectrum allocation.
"Unfortunately, we are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people," Musk wrote. "You can guess who they are … This is a crime against the people of India!"
He did not name the people he was accusing or provide evidence in the post establishing that they were responsible for the delay. His statement is an allegation, not a finding that India’s regulatory process has been captured.
DogeDesigner’s post cited SpaceX executive Lauren Dreyer’s India Mobile Congress remarks, saying Starlink had built 20 Indian gateway sites and developed controls to keep Indian user data in the country. Its argument was that the network could connect remote classrooms, clinics and businesses while providing backup communications after disasters.
There is also a business relationship behind the competitive dispute. The government’s licensing summary says both Airtel and Reliance Jio partnered with Starlink in March 2025 to expand satellite internet access. Musk’s unnamed allegation does not establish that either partner caused the outstanding delays.
Related: Markets are in denial, warns 'Big Short' investor Michael Burry

Federal Reserve's crypto stance over the years (3:35)
Adam Iza called himself ‘The Godfather’. For a few years, he lived like one:a mansion in Bel Air, and addresses in Beverly Hills and Newport Beach, with tens of millions of dollars, moving through a company called Zort.
This week, the name caught up with him. U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson sentenced Iza, now 26, to 78 months in federal prison. He also ordered him to pay $23,402,766 in restitution, which is money meant to repay victims.
It is the second time in about a month that a federal court has sent Iza away.
The new sentence runs alongside a 15-year term handed down in Connecticut, so he will serve both at once.
Then there was his security. And for eight months, Iza’s security detail included off-duty deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Related: Where does your Bitcoin actually go when you borrow against it?
A back door into Meta’s ad machine
The money came from Meta, though not in any way the company intended. From December 2020 to September 2024, Iza fraudulently got into Meta Business Manager accounts.
Businesses use these dashboards to buy and run ads on Facebook and Instagram. He also got into the lines of credit tied to those accounts, which let advertisers spend now and pay later.
He then sold that access to advertising companies at what prosecutors call substantial profits. Meta’s clients were billed for ads they never ran, and Meta later refunded them.
Prosecutors say the business brought in about $37 million between 2020 and 2024. In his plea agreement, Iza admitted to $36,360,844 in gross income. The IRS never got its share. Zort filed no corporate tax returns from 2020 through 2023, leaving a tax loss of $13,286,152.
Image for representation purpose only.
Iza covered his tracks carefully. He hid his ownership of Zort and concealed his messages with ad clients. He had associates buy personal items with the proceeds. He also moved company income to cryptocurrency custodians, which are firms that hold digital assets for their clients.
Deputies on the payroll
Between August 2021 and April 2022, Iza hired off-duty sheriff’s deputies as personal security. According to federal prosecutors, the job soon went far beyond guarding a door.
Working with corrupt deputies, Iza got confidential law enforcement information and personal data on his financial and personal adversaries. Court-approved search warrants are normally tools for solving crimes. Here they were used to track, harass and intimidate people.
Everyone was well paid. According to IRS Criminal Investigation, the tax agency’s law enforcement arm, about $1 million in cash payments from the scheme’s proceeds went to sheriff’s deputies.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:
McDonald’s quietly changes how 14,000 stores price your Big Mac
America’s most taxed state pauses its plan to tax each crypto transaction
Analyst warns Bitcoin is flashing a 2023 warning sign
Men who aided Iza
Eric Chase Saavedra, 42, of Chino, was the former sheriff’s deputy who built the pipeline. He founded Saavedra & Associates LLC to provide security, hired deputies for it and improperly obtained search warrants aimed at Iza’s adversaries. He was sentenced on Sept. 28 to 21 months.
Michael David Coberg, 45, of Eastvale, another former deputy, went further. He is serving 63 months for his role in an extortion and for setting up a sham drug-possession arrest of another Iza adversary in Paramount in 2021.
A third former deputy, Scott Allen Simpkins, 34, of Brea, got 18 months for obstructing a federal investigation. That investigation concerned the extortion of $25,000 from a party planner at Iza’s Bel Air mansion.
In all, five former deputies now stand convicted of federal crimes. Prosecutors spelled out what was at stake: “Individuals with substantial financial resources must understand that they cannot purchase access to confidential databases, investigative tools, warrants, arrests, badges, or firearms for use in private disputes.”
Iza pleaded guilty in January 2025 to three charges.
The first was conspiracy against rights, a federal crime of plotting to strip people of their constitutional protections. The others were wire fraud and tax evasion.
Danbury, and the end of the run
The final act played out across the country. On Aug. 25, 2024, attackers in Danbury, Connecticut, carjacked a Lamborghini Urus and kidnapped the two people inside.
The victims were the parents of someone involved in a Bitcoin theft worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency, a digital currency that moves without a bank in the middle. Six Florida men were arrested.
Connecticut prosecutors say Iza funded the plot and directed its logistics by phone and encrypted messaging. On Sept. 24, 2024, he was taken into custody in California on separate federal charges. He has been in federal custody ever since.
The fallout also reached the people closest to him. Iris Rabaya Au, 37, of Irvine, is Iza’s former girlfriend, and she handled much of the money. According to IRS Criminal Investigation, she set up shell companies and opened bank accounts at his direction. She then spent the proceeds on luxury real estate, high-end cars, jewelry and roughly $16 million in cryptocurrency.
Au was sentenced on Sept. 21 to 18 months for a false tax return that left out more than $2.6 million she moved into her own accounts. On top of $1,484,343 in restitution, she must give up the of fast cars, designer handbags and three “Godfather” sculptures.
The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation ran the case. They had help from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the same agency whose deputies once guarded Iza.
Related: Some Californians under 23 will get $900 a month, no questions asked

Roundtable (Nasdaq: RTB), an AI/DeFi-powered Enterprise Media OS, today announced that Erin Schaefer has joined its Board of Directors. As a transformative leader in digital innovation, Ms. Schaefer brings a 20-year track record of senior technology leadership, scaling and leading high-stakes, multi-billion-dollar commercial engines for Google, YouTube, and Niantic Games, and more recently, leading General Catalyst ($43B+ AUM) as Chief Operating Officer. Throughout her career, Schaefer has been at the forefront of leading global operations at the frontier of technology.
Ms. Schaefer’s 14-year tenure at Google included serving as Managing Director of Global Operations at YouTube, Managing Director of Global Brand Advertising Strategy, and leading Americas video advertising, where she built the brand commercialization engine from scratch into a $10B+ global revenue business. As COO at General Catalyst, she directed the operating model, capital allocation and Applied AI transformation. As General Manager at Niantic, Erin oversaw US Gaming Studio and Publishing, leading to a multi-billion-dollar exit.
Schaefer’s appointment brings together three pioneering digital media leaders whose careers often intersected as architects and competitors. Before Schaefer led and helped build Google’s brand and YouTube advertising businesses, Heckman architected the landmark Google-MySpace partnership that launched Google’s social advertising marketplace, before his News Corp strategy team architected Hulu’s business model to compete directly with YouTube. Their paths crossed again when Heckman created the world’s largest premium media marketplace, partnering with MSN, Yahoo and AOL – as global media strategy leader at Yahoo – while Schaefer led Google’s directly competing “brand-advertising” business. Earlier still, Roundtable co-founder Eyal Hertzog created MetaCafe, the first social video platform, with tens of millions of users, while inventing the algorithmic personalization feed.
“Partnering with Erin Schaefer brings an extraordinary track record to an already extraordinary team of digital media pioneers,” said Founder James Heckman. “She adds a rare combination of transformational technology leadership and major brand relationships. We’re honored to have Erin help guide our team.”
“My entire career has been about using technology to help passionate voices build sustainable businesses, from YouTube creators to the brands that support them,” said Erin Schaefer. “Professional journalism deserves the same. I believe this elite team of media technology pioneers can give it a brighter future, and James and Eyal Hertzog have built the platform to do it, with the full technology stack of AI, DeFi, and on-chain publishing under one roof.”
Schaefer is uniquely positioned to solidify Roundtable’s elite team, bringing her own major media ecosystem, strategy, and experience and sharing the goal of preserving sovereignty for professional media. Founding team and board members include former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Great Britain (hon Liz Truss), inventor of both the social video platform and DeFi technology (Eyal Hertzog), platform engineering head for MSN before leading 6 global platforms (Bill Sornsin), and founder and internet pioneer, James Heckman, responsible for 11 successful digital platforms, including 3 public exits, multiple acquisitions (including 2 to Yahoo, 1 to News Corp), and Publisher of an NFL publishing network.
Ms. Schaefer holds a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She has served on public, private company, and nonprofit boards, including the Hillsborough Schools Foundation, where she is currently president. The appointment is detailed in the Company’s Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
About Roundtable (RTB Digital, Inc.)
Roundtable (NASDAQ: RTB) is an AI/DeFi-powered Enterprise Media Operating System, integrating distribution, publishing, monetization, community, syndication, and DeFi payment operations, powering professional and major media brands. The Web3 platform was developed over years by digital pioneers and co-founders Eyal Hertzog and James Heckman. For more information, visit roundtable.io.
Disclosure: Roundtable and its affiliates have a direct financial interest in the securities of the company discussed. This communication should not be construed as investment advice.