Another Trump crypto team scandal...

A WSJ investigation found Tether sent about $6.3 million to Nxum, a consulting firm co-founded by Bo Hines, at the same time that he directed the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets. Signal messages captured Hines sharing Genius Act updates in chats with Nxum partners who dealt with Tether, and he advocated extending the bill's compliance timeline to 36 months, benefiting Tether over some rivals. After the law passed, Tether hired Hines to run its U.S. operations. Nxum maintains Hines had no involvement in the Tether deals, treated his one-third stake passively, and followed ethics recusal rules. Read more →

The field of agentic commerce, where AI agents can carry out internet transactions, is rapidly maturing, and crypto is fueling the boom. Transactions through Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base climbed from about 1,500 in mid-2025 to more than 138 million by the Q3 of 2026. More than 87% of the purchases cost between one-hundredth of a cent and 10 cents, a price where card-processing fees would exceed the purchase itself. Bots are also spending sooner and getting refilled more often, suggesting developers are moving beyond one-off experiments. Read more →

Crypto companies weren’t imagining their banking problems. A new OCC report names digital assets among six industries that major banks restricted, and found that concerns about public image and political controversy influenced who could get banking services. The regulator reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints and 420,000 pages of documents, finding policies that could encourage unfair restrictions at all nine banks examined. Nic Carter chalks it up as vindication for “Operation Choke Point 2.0” – his name for the alleged Biden-era effort to cut crypto off from banks. Read more →

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