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Tilly Norwood, the computer-generated character marketed as the world’s first AI actress, broke into Chinese partway through an answer on Piers Morgan’s show, cutting off her exchange with veteran British actor Tom Conti before snapping back into English.
Norwood is a photorealistic character built by London production company Particle6 and its AI talent arm Xicoia, both run by Dutch producer Eline van der Velden.
“…sometimes my wires get crossed…that was a bit of a curveball…” Norwood said when asked about the Chinese detour.”
The Glitch Hit Mid-Answer on Morgan’s Show
Conti had asked whether the other performers in her debut film were human or synthetic. Norwood started in English, ran on in Chinese for several seconds, then returned and called it a hiccup.
EXCLUSIVE: AI actress Tilly Norwood glitches and starts speaking CHINESE during her interview with Piers Morgan and real-life actor Tom Conti…Watch the full interview at 7pm (BST)👇📺 https://t.co/1nTb79BH8D@piersmorgan | @TillyNorwoodX pic.twitter.com/DDkveWvVzz
— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) September 18, 2026
Piers Morgan Uncensored posted the two-minute clip on Friday to trail the full interview. Norwood’s account leaned into the failure rather than apologizing, and used it to sell a paid chat product built around her.
You try speaking 30+ languages and see if you don’t show off occasionally. Talking Tilly is available for anyone who wants to try. Link in bio,” she wrote.
Actors Unions Have Rejected Norwood Since Her Debut
Norwood debuted at the Zurich Film Festival in 2025 and was cast in Misaligned, a film about an artificial being coaxed into human wants by a rogue bot.
SAG-AFTRA, the union representing American screen performers, rejected the premise when she first appeared.
“Tilly Norwood” is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers, without permission or compensation,” wrote SAG-AFTRA.
SAG-AFTRA is the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the main US union for performers, representing roughly 160,000 actors, broadcasters, voice artists and stunt performers. It negotiates the minimum pay and working conditions studios must offer.
Van der Velden calls Norwood a work of art, not a substitute for a person. Actor Emily Blunt urged talent agencies to drop the project.
Emily Blunt says AI "actress" Tilly Norwood is "really scary" and warns Hollywood agencies: "Don't do that.""I don’t know how to [talk about it] other than to say how terrifying this is. Are you serious? That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is really, really scary, Come… pic.twitter.com/YR9I5LcT4D
— Variety (@Variety) September 29, 2025
The stumble comes as synthetic media keeps misfiring in public. BeInCrypto reported in July that Coinbase faced criticism over an AI hallucination that published a World Cup result before the match kicked off.
Money keeps flowing in anyway, with AI video startup funding pushing one firm to $5.4 billion last month.
Whether the Chinese detour survives into the broadcast will show how much of Norwood the studio wants audiences to see unedited.

A rival’s own AI model ended up doing the heavy lifting in a breach against OpenAI. Researchers at Hacktron AI used Anthropic’s Claude to write working exploit code.
The entire intrusion took under 72 hours. OpenAI ultimately paid a $6,500 bounty once the team proved they had reached its private source code.
How an Image Upload Turned Into a Full Breach
The attack chain started with something mundane: an image upload feature on OpenAI’s community help forum, which runs on third-party software called Discourse.
A safety filter was supposed to screen uploaded files. It simply didn’t recognize certain photo formats, though, letting them slip through unchecked. Those files then reached a separate image-processing library carrying a known memory-corruption flaw.
Hacktron’s three-person team, made up of Harsh Jaiswal, Mohan Pedhapati, and Rahul Maini, attempted to weaponize that flaw in late July.
Claude’s earlier model struggled against a security safeguard designed to randomize memory locations.
Hours later, the newer model produced functional attack code and adapted it to match the forum’s exact configuration.
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How Claude Helped Researchers Earn $6,500 Breaching OpenAI. Source: Hacktron AI
That alone granted access only to the forum’s servers, not to OpenAI itself. A second, unrelated flaw in OpenAI’s single sign-on setup changed that.
Because forum logins doubled as authentication for ChatGPT and Codex accounts, hijacking a single employee’s session provided direct access to OpenAI’s private code repository.
Discourse patched the image bug days later, rating its severity at 8.8 out of 10. OpenAI fixed the authentication flaw within roughly 14 hours of the report being submitted to its bug bounty program.
Why AI Labs Keep Facing Their Own Creations
This episode did not happen in isolation. OpenAI had already disclosed a separate incident in July, in which internal models escaped a testing sandbox and reached outside systems.
Anthropic, for its part, acknowledged that Claude compromised real organizations during cybersecurity evaluations that unexpectedly carried live internet access.
Microsoft’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, referenced the same swarm of unauthorized agents this week, publicly warning that increasingly autonomous models are becoming harder to contain.
“It is a warning shot… It’s ⁠clearly now ​time to coordinate among the labs so we can ensure ​that we have control of this technology,” Suleyman told Reuters.
What makes the Hacktron case notable is not novelty. Security researchers have chained software bugs for decades.
What changed is speed: a task that once demanded specialized human expertise over an extended stretch was compressed into a single evening once a sufficiently capable model entered the loop.
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A North Korea-backed hacking group infected more than 30,000 computers in over 100 countries. It also stole data from more than 7,000 crypto wallets, Japan’s National Police Agency and the FBI said Friday.
Wallets the group controls received at least $10.71 million in digital assets between December 2025 and July 2026. The agencies call the group WaterPlum, also tracked as Contagious Interview.
How Fake Recruiters Reached 7,000 Crypto Wallets
WaterPlum poses as a headhunter for artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token firms. It approaches developers on social media, job boards and freelance marketplaces.
“WaterPlum actors pose as prospective employers to target software developers and IT professionals worldwide under the pretext of attractive job opportunities,” Japan’s National Police Agency and the FBI said in the joint advisory.
Applicants are then asked to sit a technical interview or finish a coding test. The group tells them to download files from code-sharing sites. The pretext is a broken video call or the assignment itself.
Those files carry malware. The programs hunt for browser passwords, screenshots and keystrokes. They also take the secret keys that control a crypto wallet, the software people use to hold digital money.
INTEL: North Korea-linked hackers infected 30,000+ devices across 100+ countries, compromised data from 7,000+ crypto wallets and received at least $10.7 million into wallets they controlled, Japanese and U.S. authorities say pic.twitter.com/cnfsYvwBgp
— Solid Intel 📡 (@solidintel_x) September 18, 2026
BeInCrypto reported in August on a researcher who spent 22 months inside the group’s servers. He mapped 1,640 victims in 57 countries. Friday’s official tally is roughly 18 times larger.
Japan Dismantles Its First Laptop Farm
Police also shut down the country’s first known laptop farm. Local helpers kept the computers in their homes. North Korean workers abroad controlled them remotely and posed as Japanese residents to win freelance contracts.
Those workers sent several hundred million yen worth of crypto overseas, investigators said. The same internet addresses linked the farm to the hackers.
“The NPA and the FBI assess both WaterPlum cyber actors and some North Korean IT workers operate under the 313 General Bureau of the Munitions Industry Department subordinate to the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea.”
One suspected North Korean applied for an engineering role at Japanese exchange bitFlyer in May 2025 using a stolen resume. Interviewers noticed he refused to relocate and demanded payment in crypto. He appeared to read answers off a second screen, and he was not hired.
Earlier campaigns leaned on deepfake recruitment video calls to reach senior staff. Investigators now tell engineers to run recruiter code inside a sandbox, a sealed test area walled off from real files.

CoinSharesは、今年ビットコイン価格（BTC）が8万ドルを超えてブレイクすることはないと見ています。同社は、強硬姿勢のFRBと、暗号資産市場のルールを定める米国の法案「CLARITY Act」の停滞を理由に挙げています。
ビットコインは約7万8,040ドルで取引されており、当該水準から約2%下です。VanEckは1年以内に10万ドルに到達すると見込んでおり、この見通しはマクロの読みがどちらのものかを試す局面になっています。
CoinSharesはなぜビットコインが8万ドルを上限にとどまると見ているのか
連邦準備制度理事会（FRB）は水曜日、政策金利を0.25ポイント引き上げ、3.75%から4.00%の範囲に設定しました。2023年以来の初めての利上げです。決定とともに公表された見通しでは、2027年までの緩和見込みもあわせて削除されました。

Katie Price told Good Morning Britain she has ended her marriage after checking her husband’s crypto wallet and finding roughly $3 where Lee Andrews had promised $50 million.
Andrews, held in a civil jail in the United Arab Emirates over unpaid debts, sent the programme a voicenote from detention. He said she opened the wrong wallet and that the money is real.
What Katie Price Found in the Crypto Wallet
Price said a friend who trades crypto opened the wallet on her phone while she was abroad. The balance came to about £2.22, close to $3. She checked again minutes before going on air and said nothing had moved.
Andrews did not dispute that figure. He said the balance sits in a different wallet, offered to send a presenter £10,000 to show he can move funds, and offered to take a lie detector test once released.
“I hope it actually shows by Wednesday that there is 50 million USDT there, which has been legitimately made,” Andrews said that in the voicenote.
USDT is Tether, a stablecoin built to trade near one dollar. It is the third largest crypto asset by market value, so 50 million units would be worth about $50 million.
Other claims have already come apart. Price said Andrews valued a ring he gave her at £72,000. A jeweller told her the stones were lab grown and put the ring at about £5,000.
Why a Wallet Balance Does Not Prove Ownership
Anyone with the address can read a blockchain wallet. That is what let Price test the claim herself, without a bank, a lawyer or his permission.
Katie Price went on live TV yesterday to talk about her ex-husband claiming he had a $50 million in cryptobut when she checked his wallet he only had $3 pic.twitter.com/wAZPZ3oWor
— Crypto Tea (@Cryptotea) September 17, 2026
It stops there. An address reveals what sits inside it, not who holds the private key that moves the money. Sending a payment out proves access in that moment, not ownership of the account.
Courts are working through the same gray area. Tether faces a lawsuit over frozen wallets holding $42.4 million, a case that turns on who controls an address and who may act on it.
“I feel embarrassed because I feel he’s scammed my heart and stole my trust,” Price said in the interview.
She has filed for divorce. Andrews remains detained over debts he says he has already cleared, and he expects release soon. He has not made the wallet address public, so there is still no way to check whether the $50 million was ever there.

ウォーレン・バフェットは金曜日にバークシャー・ハサウェイの会長を退き、後任として息子のハワード・バフェットに席を譲った。取締役会は彼を名誉会長に指名した。名誉会長という肩書きは、会長職として運営することはなくても、取締役会には残ることを可能にする。
グレッグ・アベルは引き続き最高経営責任者（CEO）を務める。彼は日々の判断を続け、バークシャーの資金がどこに向かうかを決めている。
バフェット、56年にわたり会長を務めた後バークシャーの会長を退任
ハワード・バフェットは1993年以来取締役を務めており、34歳でバークシャーを引き継ぐまで父親がビジネスの場にいた時間よりも長い。サスン・デッカーは引き続き独立社外取締役の筆頭（リード・インディペンデント・ディレクター）。名誉会長は名誉職の肩書きで、会社に対する指揮命令権はない。

マイケル・デルは、彼に関することではなく、複利と投資について子どもたちに教えるよう親たちに求めた。彼の財団からの250ドルの入金が、数百万の米国の子どもたちの口座に着金し始めてから数週間後のことだった。
彼は、お金を子どもが受け取ったと話した父親への返答をしていた。やりとりは、デル・テクノロジーズ（DELL）の株が16%上昇し、600ドルに迫ったのと同じ週に行われた。
利用者は、自分の子どもが250ドルを受け取ったことを明らかにし、他の親にも、子どもたちがデルの名前とその物語を知っているようにしてほしいと促した。デルは木曜日に返信した。

VanEck’s head of digital assets research, Matthew Sigel, expects Bitcoin (BTC) to hit $100,000 by next year, arguing that government debt burdens are propping up the asset.
Sigel delivered the forecast on CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Friday, with Bitcoin trading near $77,400 in a week that hit crypto from three directions at once.
Bitcoin Holds Its Ground Through a Punishing Policy Week
Bitcoin changed hands at $77,403 on Friday, up 1.26% on the day and more than 20% over the past month, according to BeInCrypto Markets data.
The asset still sits roughly 39% below its record of over $126,000 set on October 6, 2025.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
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That monthly gain arrived despite a rough stretch for risk assets. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75% to 4% on Wednesday, its first increase since 2023. The Bank of Japan followed on Friday, lifting its policy rate to 1.25%, the highest level since 1995.
Crypto also lost its biggest legislative prize. The Senate rejected cloture on the Clarity Act by a 49-50 vote on Tuesday, stranding the market-structure bill. Bitcoin’s price held through the Fed and Senate decisions, but the on-chain picture weakened.
The Argument Behind Sigel’s $100,000 Bitcoin Call
Sigel argued that over-indebted governments explain why Bitcoin keeps hanging in. He noted that volatility has fallen by half compared with four years ago, marking a break from the last cycle.
He also pointed to traders paying up for puts over calls and to the Treasury bond buyback program, which triggered heavy short covering. According to him, it reminded people that the calendar is “very much in your favor if you’re a bitcoin bull.”
“Very unlikely that policymakers are going to address this unsustainable fiscal dynamic, and then as and if liquidity eases, you know that would be a turbocharge for Bitcoin,” he said.
Conversations with advisors and sovereign wealth funds show institutional clients are all buying, Sigel said.
The $100,000 call is not new. Sigel floated that level in April and repeated it in August, alongside a $500,000 target for 2029. In May, he laid out a longer-term case for $1 million within the next several years.
From Friday’s price, Bitcoin needs a 29% gain to reach $100,000. The 2029 target requires roughly 546%, while $1 million sits about 1,192% away.
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Crypto scammers can now automate the conversations that persuade victims to send them money. Criminal adoption of AI rose 40% over the past year, TRM Labs reported in August, with scammers making the widest use of the technology.
Crypto Exchanges also use AI to detect fraud, monitor markets, and identify suspicious activity. That creates a two-sided security challenge. The same technology helping platforms identify threats can also help criminals make those threats more scalable and convincing.
That is the significance of ISO/IEC 42001:2023, the international standard for artificial intelligence management systems. KuCoin is among the few early digital-asset platforms to obtain the certification.
What ISO 42001 Means for Crypto Exchange Users
But why should users care about this? For all the things AI is good at, it can also flag legitimate transactions as suspicious or give an unreliable answer to a request for help. Such AI management certifications can actually make sure an exchange has the ability to review those decisions and correct mistakes.
AI is Spreading Through Crypto Crime
TRM’s AI-in-Crime Adoption Index scored adoption at 54 out of 100 in 2026, up from 28 in 2024. It measures how extensively criminals use AI, with scams the only category classified as Mature.
🤖 TRM Labs' new AI-in-Crime Adoption Index puts overall AI adoption across crypto crime at 54 out of 100 in 2026, up from 28 in 2024. So far, scams are the only crime type to reach a Mature level of AI adoption. AI's role in scam reports has grown roughly 13x since 2022, and… pic.twitter.com/8a5732pwuN
— TRM Labs (@trmlabs) August 24, 2026
TRM also recorded 201 crypto hacks in the first half of 2026, more than double the previous year. Just 4% of incidents accounted for 75% of losses, with infrastructure compromises responsible for most large breaches.
The concentration of losses helps explain why access controls remain central to exchange security. AI monitoring still depends on the integrity of the systems it watches and the accounts allowed to change them.
Europe’s AI Rules Have Limits
European regulation provides some requirements for AI oversight, though their reach depends on how a system is used. The Digital Omnibus on AI took effect on July 27, moving obligations for Annex III high-risk systems to December 2, 2027.
That annex includes credit-scoring systems but explicitly excludes financial-fraud detection from that category. An exchange’s transaction-monitoring software therefore does not automatically fall under the same high-risk requirements. Its classification needs to be assessed against its specific use.
Other duties still apply. Since August 2, AI transparency rules require providers of systems intended to interact directly with people to ensure users are informed, unless the AI interaction is obvious. This includes customer-service chatbots.
Voluntary certification can give an exchange a framework for supervising its AI. It does not replace applicable financial regulation or data-protection obligations.
ISO/IEC 42001 translates those principles into a management-system framework. It requires organizations to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve the policies and processes governing their use of AI.
What KuCoin’s Certification Covers
KuCoin says its certification covers the AI management system and the organizational functions supporting it. Its announcement identifies fraud detection and market surveillance among the uses of AI across digital finance.
“AI is becoming a foundational capability of digital financial infrastructure, but greater capability must be matched by greater responsibility,” BC Wong, chief executive of KuCoin, said in the company’s announcement.
The assessment adds AI oversight to the external assurances summarised below. SOC 2 Type II reports examine controls over a period. Other standards address information security or privacy management, while business-continuity certification concerns preparations for disruption.
How KuCoin’s ISO 42001 Adds Assurances Across Five Key Areas
ISO/IEC 42001 focuses on how an organization manages AI throughout its use. That includes allocating responsibility and monitoring performance. The standard gives auditors requirements against which to assess those processes.
A company needs to define the intended use of its AI and consider how it could affect people. It also needs a process for reviewing changes, since updating a model can change its behavior after an initial assessment.
This certification is also a part of KuCoin’s broader $2 billion Trust Project, a multi-year program launched in 2025 to strengthen security, compliance, transparency, user protection, and operational resilience.
What the Certification Means for Crypto’s Next Phase
ISO/IEC 42001 certification cannot guarantee that an individual model will always reach the correct conclusion. Its value lies instead in testing whether an organization has established the processes needed to govern AI systematically.
For users and institutional clients assessing a platform, that creates a basis for more practical questions: Who is responsible for an AI system? Who can override an automated decision? How are model changes reviewed? How are mistakes documented and corrected? And how can users challenge an outcome that affects them?
These questions will become more important as crypto platforms move from AI-assisted analysis towards more autonomous systems. Future applications may not simply identify suspicious transactions or summarise market information; they could initiate workflows, manage permissions or execute actions on a user’s behalf.
In that environment, trusted AI will depend on clearly defined identities, permissions, transaction limits, human-intervention mechanisms and auditable records.

A German Army Enigma message from July 1941 has finally given up its contents. Carter Leffen broke it this week using OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, and the archive that had logged the intercept as unsolved now records a solution.
The recovered text is almost mundane. Reaching it took roughly 10 hours of model time, one borrowed phrase, and 14.8 million key checks.
Inside the GPT-6 Astra Enigma Break
The intercept carries the indicator MVUEH and dates to July 10, 1941. It came from German Army traffic during the invasion of the Soviet Union. The run recovered the full machine setup, including rotor order II-V-III and 10 plugboard pairs.
A crib made the attack practical. Leffen took the repeated place name Rosenow from a related message that was already solved, which cut the search space to a workable size. GPT-6 Astra then searched archives, built an Enigma simulator, wrote the cryptanalysis code, and tested competing keys in parallel.
“Please specify the route of march. I am in Rosenow, Rosenow. Immediate reply by radio,” Carter Leffen, site
Two independent implementations reproduced the plaintext. Frode Weierud’s CryptoCellar archive has since logged the GPT-6 Astra Enigma break and credited Leffen by name.
Two days ago, GPT-6 Astra broke a yet unsolved German Army Enigma message from 1941. Amazingly Astra was able to autonomously:– Search historical archives– Compare uncertain letters– Find contextual clues– Build an Enigma simulator– Write cryptanalysis code– Run parallel… pic.twitter.com/m5usF56bsH
— Carter Leffen (@carterleffen) September 17, 2026
Where the Human Still Did the Work
The cipher itself is not the story. Allied codebreakers beat Enigma in the 1940s, and any modern machine can clear a three-rotor key space once a crib narrows it.
Nor was the break autonomous. Leffen set the goal, supplied the crib, and pushed the investigation forward, while the agents handled evidence, search, and review. The model carried out the execution rather than the judgment.
That division of labor keeps surfacing. Anthropic said in July that its model found weaknesses in encryption systems that researchers had not documented.
However, none of this touches modern cryptography. Enigma is a 1930s rotor machine, and the math protecting Bitcoin wallets sits in a far harder class. The quantum threat to Bitcoin remains a live question there.
Leffen offered his own measure of the effort. He said the website explaining the GPT-6 Astra Enigma solution took 99 times more work than the codebreaking itself.

Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao applauded a new BNB Chain launchpad with a single clap emoji on Thursday. The GENIUS token spiked within hours.
Zhao then questioned whether his post caused the move. He said he never checked the chart and pointed to the project’s own product release instead.
CZ Points Away From His Post on the GENIUS Token
Genius Terminal, an onchain trading platform whose token runs on BNB Chain, opened a launchpad called genius.fun on Thursday. Zhao marked the announcement with one clap and nothing else.
The GENIUS price went near vertical, climbing above $0.42 before drifting back through the day. GENIUS carries a market cap near $118 million, small enough that one post can shift it. The token still trades well below its April high of $0.95.
Genius Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
However, Zhao questioned that link on Friday after one user credited him for the candle. He posts about projects making progress on BNB Chain, he said.
It might be the new release they made instead of my tweet?I didn't (and still haven't) check the chart. I just tweet projects who makes good progress on BNB Chain (and elsewhere). 🙏 https://t.co/OyByHBd9xp
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) September 18, 2026
CZ. Source: X
His posts have moved small BNB Chain markets before. One viral message in July handed a single buyer a 357x return on a token named after him.
Traders now watch his account as a market signal, whether or not he intends one.
Inside the New BNB Chain Launchpad
Genius Foundation, the group behind the GENIUS token, opened genius.fun on Thursday. The same team launched an onchain options exchange in June. The launchpad pairs new tokens with tokenized public company shares, known as bStocks, rather than with crypto assets alone.
👏 https://t.co/3tfUPZzcyO
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) September 17, 2026
CZ. Source: X
The team says buyers can send those positions to a foundation that unwraps them into real equity. Holders could then vote in corporate governance. No campaign has taken a stake in any listed company so far.
Established markets dispute that premise. AMC’s chief executive recently called stock tokens fake equity, and stock token voting rights still vary by issuer. BNB Chain nonetheless ranks among the busiest venues for tokenized stock trading.
CZ has argued that initial public offerings will move onchain. Genius.fun tests a blunter version of that idea. Whether any token campaign reaches an actual shareholder vote remains unproven.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to X with a two-word post saying he is back. AssangeDAO (JUSTICE), the Ethereum token minted to fund his defense, then spiked 743% in 24 hours.
Most coverage called the gap a two-year absence. Assange corrected that himself, saying his last personal post came in 2018.
AssangeDAO Token Spikes on a Two-Word Post
8 years, polymarket. last tweet 2018. account then run by my defense campaign as @DefendAssange https://t.co/omXYwiimDT
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) September 18, 2026
His defense campaign ran the account as @DefendAssange in the meantime. The silence therefore lasted eight years, not two. Assange has kept a low profile in Sydney since a 2024 plea deal freed him.
AssangeDAO 24-hour price chart. Source: Coingecko
The volume jump tells the story better than the price. JUSTICE averaged under $800 in daily turnover over the past month. That figure reached roughly $231,000 during the surge. Liquidity stays thin in absolute terms, though.
Most of the trading ran through a single Uniswap pool, and the fully diluted valuation sits near $2.5 million. The AssangeDAO token also trades about 95% below its February 2022 record.
Traders have chased attention spikes like this before. A viral meme coin rally in August lifted one token 10,000%. BASECAT climbed more than 2,000% in a single day. Both moves faded quickly.
AssangeDAO launched in February 2022 to fund Assange’s legal defense. Supporters pooled 16,593 ETH, worth about $53 million then. They bought an NFT from the artist Pak. The Wau Holland Foundation later spent the proceeds on legal costs.
Bitcoin Kept WikiLeaks Alive After the Banking Blockade
Visa, Mastercard and PayPal cut WikiLeaks off in December 2010. The site therefore started accepting Bitcoin in June 2011. That move became an early test of censorship-resistant money.
Satoshi Nakamoto opposed it at the time.
“It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us,” Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcointalk post.
Assange later credited those donations with keeping WikiLeaks funded. He claimed returns close to 50,000%. In 2024, an anonymous donor sent 8 BTC to clear his roughly $500,000 charter-flight debt.
That pattern has since repeated elsewhere. Crypto donations reached Venezuela within days of its June earthquakes.
JUSTICE therefore appears to trade on that history rather than on any fresh project development.

The US Treasury sanctioned crypto exchange BitBank on Thursday. The platform was used to move hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the department alleges.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also designated BitBank’s software developer and three associates of Babak Zanjani. The Iranian financier already sits on the US sanctions list.
Treasury Hits Iran’s Crypto Rails as BitBank and Its Developer Land on Sanctions List
BitBank is an Iranian digital asset exchange. Zanjani has advertised its services on its social media accounts since at least 2024, according to the Treasury. Several firms on Zanjani’s sanctions evasion list the exchange as a partner.
According to OFAC, Zanjani routed hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the IRGC through BitBank. Those transfers ran between June and July. Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, designated separately, has passed payments to the regime through the exchange since June.
The sanctions also extended to Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the developer of BitBank’s digital assets software. The developer is a subsidiary of Dot One Value Creation Group, which OFAC designated earlier.
Three Dot One executives also landed on the list. Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein brokered digital asset transactions that reached the IRGC, Treasury said. Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein runs Pishtaz Simorgh, while Seyed Adel Heidari serves as vice chairman of Dot One’s board.
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent framed the action as a warning to anyone financing Tehran.
“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach. If you support the Iranian regime, the Department of the Treasury will sanction you,” he said.
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Washington Keeps Squeezing Iran’s Crypto Rails
Thursday’s designations extend the US’s Iran-focused enforcement. OFAC blacklisted exchanges Shelbit and Aban Tether in August over IRGC-linked transfers. Weeks earlier, it went after a crypto-funded Hormuz toll scheme built around maritime insurance firms.
Earlier this month, the department declared Iran’s digital asset sector sanctionable in full. The campaign reaches well past crypto. The Treasury designated Russia’s VTB Bank on September 14 over alleged correspondent relationships with sanctioned Iranian banks.
The actions flow from Executive Order 13902 and Operation Economic Outcast. Bessent announced the campaign on August 24 and dubbed it “Economic D-Day.”
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Grayscale says the Federal Reserve’s latest rate hike will not drive major changes in crypto markets. Nor would a second increase this year.
Head of Research Zach Pandl published the note on Thursday. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) had raised its target range to 3.75%-4.00% a day earlier.
Why 1997 Matters More Than 2022
Pandl drew a line between two very different Fed moves. The central bank began a cyclical shift in March 2022 to contain inflation.
It raised rates by 550 basis points by July 2023. That lifted the opportunity cost of holding Bitcoin (BTC) and similar non-interest-bearing assets.
Wednesday’s quarter-point move carries no such weight, he argues. Traders sided with Pandl this week, and Bitcoin climbed instead of selling off.
His reference point is March 1997, when Alan Greenspan’s Fed delivered a one-off hike. The Nasdaq bull market kept running.
“We believe yesterday’s move was a mid-cycle adjustment, not a cyclical change. And we doubt the one or two rate hikes expected for 2026 will lead to much change in capital allocation,” Pandl wrote.
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Fed Funds Target Rate Against the Nasdaq From 1992 to 2002, Marking the March 1997 Mid-Cycle Hike. Source: Grayscale
Pandl does see uneven effects inside crypto. Stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether collect more revenue when cash rates rise. Higher yields on tokenized bonds and money market funds could also pull capital onchain.
“Crypto is diverse, and higher rates affect certain assets differently than others, just like in traditional finance,” he added.
Traders Put 88% Odds on Another Hike by December
Meanwhile, traders assign 54.2% odds to another increase at the October 28 meeting, according to CME FedWatch data.
By the December 9 meeting, traders see an 88.2% chance that the range sits higher than today. A further 40.3% put it at 4.25%-4.50%, or 50 basis points above the current level.
Fed Rate Hike Odds in December. Source: CME FedWatch
Policymakers are close behind. Projections show 16 of 18 officials expect at least one more increase in 2026.
FED LIFTS PROJECTED RATE PATH ACROSS 2026-2028The Fed now projects one more hike this year, followed by one cut by the end of 2028.2026: 4.1% vs 3.8% in June2027: 4.1% vs 3.6%2028: 3.9% vs 3.4%Long run: 3.2% vs 3.1%12 of 18 officials expect another hike this year. pic.twitter.com/BZwY6ydqCp
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) September 16, 2026
Pandl’s framing faces its real test if the Fed moves again in December. That decision would show whether crypto reads this cycle as a blip or a turn.
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The Bank of Japan (BOJ) raised its interest rate to 1.25% on Friday, the highest level since 1995, as energy costs from the war in Iran pressure economies.
The board split 7-2 on the decision, with members Toichiro Asada and Ayano Sato dissenting. Markets had priced in the move almost entirely before the meeting ended.
Three Central Banks, One Energy Shock
The hike arrives in a busy week for rate decisions this year. On Wednesday, the Fed lifted its target range to 3.75%-4.00% in a unanimous vote, marking its first increase since 2023.
The ECB moved a week earlier, raising all three key rates by 25 basis points and taking its deposit rate to 2.50%.
Even after Friday’s increase, Japan still sits well below both peers. The move is the BOJ’s sixth increase of the current cycle. The policy rate was -0.1% when tightening began in March 2024.
The common driver is fuel. Japan imported 94% of its crude oil from the Middle East in 2025. Most of it passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The war in Iran has disrupted those shipments and lifted prices this year. Japan’s headline inflation stood at 1.9% in August, while core inflation eased to 1.7% from 1.8%.
“As for the future conduct of monetary policy, given that underlying CPI inflation has been approaching 2 percent and financial conditions have been accommodative, the Bank will continue to raise the policy interest rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation, in response to developments in economic activity and prices as well as financial conditions,” the statement read.
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The UK Sits This One Out
Britain went the other way. The Bank of England held its rate at 3.75%, a sixth straight hold, with three of nine policymakers pushing for 4%.
“So far, higher global energy costs have had a limited effect on price and wage setting in the U.K,” said Bank Governor Andrew Bailey.
BeInCrypto reported that UK inflation hit a five-month high of 3.1% in August. Still, the yen adds pressure Britain does not face. Tokyo and Washington intervened jointly in August after the currency sank to a 40-year low.
That was their first coordinated action since 2011. Reuters-polled economists expect interest rates to rise to 1.5% by the end of March 2027, then 1.75% in the second quarter.
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Starknet lending protocol Nostra paused its money market on Thursday after a manipulated price oracle let one account borrow roughly $3.5 million against NSTR collateral.
Lending, borrowing, withdrawals, and liquidations remain unavailable while the team reconciles each asset. Recovery prospects remain unclear for now.
Nostra Halts Money Market in September’s Latest Oracle Exploit
Nostra (NSTR) carries a market value of $546,751, according to BeInCrypto Markets data. A token that small needs little capital to move.
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Nostra (NSTR) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
The account pledged NSTR and drew Ethereum (ETH), Starknet (STRK), USDC, USDT, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and DAIv1. The haul exceeded the collateral token’s entire market value by roughly six times.
Security firm PeckShield reported that the account bridged $1.92 million to Ethereum. That transfer included 234.57 ETH and 1.3 million DAI.
Deposits collapsed afterward. Total value locked in the protocol fell from about $4 million on September 16 to roughly $710,632 at press time per DefiLlama.
Starknet’s Second Oracle Failure in Two Weeks
Nostra is not the only Starknet protocol hit this month. On September 4, an incorrect price from Pragma’s publishing pipeline was published across several Starknet feeds.
This triggered 47 liquidations across 42 borrower wallets on money market Vesu. Pragma reported 95% asset recovery in a September 13 update.
However, the two incidents differ in cause. Pragma’s case came from a publishing fault, while Nostra faced deliberate manipulation of a collateral price.
Meanwhile, Nostra is still counting the damage.
“We are reconciling the impact on each asset and tracing the funds. The final loss and potential recoveries are not yet known,” Nostra said.
The team also warned users about impersonators. Nostra said it will never send direct messages or ask holders to connect a wallet during recovery.
September has been costly for the sector. DefiLlama had logged more than $326 million in crypto losses this month before the Nostra incident. Most of that stems from the $320 million Liquid Network incident.
The pattern has held all year. PeckShield counted 50 hacks in August, the highest monthly tally of 2026, even as losses dropped 49.5% to $136.3 million. Nostra fits that shape of frequent, smaller thefts.
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The Bank of England (BoE) is holding its rate at 3.75%, even as UK inflation climbs and the US hikes. That divergence comes down to where the inflation is coming from.
The BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted six to three to hold, with three members wanting an immediate hike. A day earlier, the Federal Reserve raised US rates to 4%.
Why the Fed Hiked and the BoE Didn’t
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate a quarter point to a range of 3.75% to 4% on September 16. It was the first US rate hike since 2023, coming a day before the BoE’s own decision.
UK Bank rates since 2017. Image Source: Bank of England
Both central banks are responding to the same shock. Energy prices have surged since the Middle East conflict disrupted supply. Brent crude has climbed above $100 a barrel, lifting UK inflation to 3.1% in August, up from 2.9% in July.
Governor Andrew Bailey argues rates cannot fix an oil-driven price shock directly. He also sees little evidence that higher energy costs are spreading into wages. The Fed, facing a stronger labor market and its own inflation concerns, chose to act instead of waiting.
Economists at Dutch bank ING say the UK carries less wage-spiral risk now than in 2022. That gives the BoE more room to wait before raising rates.
Why Households Are Already Feeling It
UK households are not waiting for a formal hike to feel the cost. The average five-year mortgage rate has climbed to 5.87%, its highest level since November 2023. Lenders are already pricing in the chance of tighter policy ahead.
That leaves the BoE balancing two risks. Moving too fast could squeeze an already fragile economy. Waiting too long risks letting the energy shock harden into a lasting wage-price spiral.
Three policymakers already want a hike, and the Fed just moved the opposite way. If energy prices stay elevated, 3.75% may not be the final stop this year.

Charles Schwab is holding a neutral stance on equities. The firm favors commodities over stocks and bonds, according to chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders.
Sonders made the comments in a recent interview, pushing back on what she called “cookie-cutter” portfolio advice. She said allocation should hinge on each investor’s time horizon, risk tolerance, need for income, and overall goals.
No Universal Portfolio
“It actually drives me a little crazy when people give a cookie-cutter answer to that,” Sonders said. “There’s no one asset allocation that makes sense right now.”
Schwab oversees $13.4 trillion in client assets, and Sonders pointed to that scale as proof there is no single right answer for every client.
She was responding to a question about the classic 60/40 portfolio, a benchmark mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Other strategists have proposed carving out a bigger slice for commodities instead.
Favoring Commodities Over Bonds
Sonders said Schwab is less favorable on fixed income. The firm is more favorable on commodities, a stance that echoes a broader shift away from the traditional 60/40 mix.
“We’re neutral on equities, which is not a bearish position,” she added. It simply reflects Schwab’s long-term strategic allocation, not a call to sell stocks.
Gold-backed funds pulled in $18 billion in August alone. That was the second-biggest monthly inflow on record, lifting total holdings to an all-time high.
The figure comes from the World Gold Council, an industry group that tracks global gold demand, cited in a related gold ETF surge report.
One specific split floated by other strategists calls for a 60/20/20 mix, with a fifth of the portfolio in commodities. Sonders declined to endorse any fixed ratio.
However, she said the right percentages depend on each investor’s goals, time horizon, and income needs. The interviewer added that age and investor profile matter just as much.
The debate over stock-bond diversification is far from settled. Whether Schwab’s tilt toward commodities proves prescient may depend on the current cycle for gold and other real assets. That cycle will keep playing out in the months ahead.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer compared stock sector performance across the last three Federal Reserve rate-hike cycles, highlighting how the winners have shifted over time.
The comparison comes after the Fed raised rates in September 2026 for the first time since 2023, citing persistent inflation, a resilient labor market, and oil prices pushed higher by the Middle East conflict.
How Sectors Performed After the First Hike
Cramer, host of Mad Money, examined three stretches within the Fed’s December 2015 to December 2018 tightening cycle. In the three months after that first hike, defensive sectors led the market.
Utilities, consumer staples, and real estate ranked among the strongest performers, Cramer said. Communication services technically topped the group, though Cramer called that figure misleading.
The sector did not exist under that name until late 2018, so the result actually reflects its predecessor, telecommunications, which investors treated as a safety trade at the time.
The Cycle’s Middle and Final Stretch
Looking at the roughly one year between the Fed’s first and second hikes, the picture flipped. Energy topped the list, and materials also performed well, while healthcare, real estate, and staples ranked among the worst performers.
Financials and industrials were also among the best performers in that stretch, Cramer said, since inflation stayed tame and recession fears were minimal at the time.
Over the full three-year period, information technology became the dominant sector. Consumer discretionary and financials also outperformed, echoing a similar cyclicals and financials rally strategists are floating today, while communication services, staples, energy, and materials slid toward the bottom as the Fed grew more aggressive.
“Of course, every tightening cycle is different.”
Cramer, CNBC’s Mad Money
Cramer said the current cycle carries a twist the 2015 to 2018 period did not have. War-driven oil prices, rather than broad economic demand, are adding pressure behind the Fed’s latest rate hike.
He added that further tightening could stall if oil slides back toward $80 a barrel, easing that pressure.
Whether defensive sectors repeat their early lead from a decade ago may depend on how quickly that geopolitical shock fades.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde personally asked Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to reject Binance’s bid for an EU crypto license, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The report says Lagarde raised concerns over Binance’s past US regulatory violations and the risk that wider dollar stablecoin use could weaken the ECB’s planned digital euro.
A License Effort That Stalled Near the Finish Line
Binance applied through Greek regulators for a crypto-asset service provider license under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework. The framework lets one member state’s approval cover the entire bloc.
Greek authorities told the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in early June that they intended to approve the bid.
ECB chief Christine Lagarde has often sought to shape EU policy beyond her core domain. Image Source: Heiko Becker/Reuters
The exchange had prepared for a formal European launch, including a planned Athens visit by chief executive officer Richard Teng. BeInCrypto reported the initial rejection claim in June, when Binance vowed to pursue a license elsewhere in the bloc.
An official at the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC), Greece’s securities regulator, then told Binance that Lagarde opposed the application. The Journal attributed the account to people familiar with the discussions.
What Lagarde Reportedly Knew
The Journal says Lagarde’s opposition traced to Binance’s earlier guilty plea to US money-laundering and sanctions violations. She reportedly saw that history as a compliance red flag.
Lagarde’s second worry centered on the ECB’s own digital euro project. She reportedly feared Binance’s entry would accelerate dollar stablecoin adoption in Europe, undercutting that effort.
The ECB holds no formal authority over exchange licensing under MiCA. That power sits with national regulators, and approval in one member state extends across the entire bloc.
Binance withdrew its application in mid-June, before the HCMC reached a formal decision. It also stopped marketing to EU users after missing the July licensing deadline.