News
- JUST IN: The FBI officially pins the Binance hack on North Korea, with over $6 billion in crypto stolen, Reuters reports.
$BNB $BTC @binance
- Tesla sent a driverless Cybercab around Austin overnight with skeleton passengers for Halloween. $TSLA @robotaxi
- A federal judge dismissed Trump's $10B defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal with prejudice, so it can't be refiled. $NWSA
- Three 220K-GB300 training sites (one still coming) plus 200K for inference in an old Hormel building. $NVDA $SPCX
- OpenAI now seeks about $20B at a $1.25T valuation, down from $30B at $1.4T, the FT reports. $MSFT $NVDA
- UPDATE: Binance says BTC, ETH, USDT, SOL and other majors are 100% backed. Withdrawals are next.
$BNB $BTC
- Trump just posted this image of all of Greenland turned into one giant U.S. military base. No caption.
- U.S. Embassy warns of a credible threat of a mass casualty event at Moscow's Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve today.
Russia's FSB says the U.S. passed it the warning.
- Musk says Tesla and SpaceX made workers and savers richer.
$TSLA $SPCX
- Musk says Tesla and SpaceX made workers and savers richer.
Elon Musk: "Tesla and SpaceX have created meaningful wealth for hundreds of thousands of employees over time and improved the retirement savings of hundreds of millions of people"
$TSLA $SPCX #Tesla #SpaceX
- Musk says orbital compute probably passes Earth's around the end of 2028.
Elon Musk: "Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute."
His forecast: monthly orbital deployment tops terrestrial by late 2028, then far exceeds it in 2029.
$SPCX #SpaceX
- The CFTC is pushing new security safeguards for crypto exchanges after Binance's $6.3 billion hack, with the agency's chair citing the theft to press offshore exchanges to register in the US.
Coinbase and Robinhood shares fell sharply today as the hack fallout spread across crypto.
- Elon Musk: "Talarico would abolish democracy in America and institute permanent one-party rule!"
The clip he boosted has Talarico calling to end the Senate filibuster and saying he's open to expanding the Supreme Court.
Musk already called him a "FAR LEFT extremist" on Oct 25. The latest Texas Senate polls: Talarico 49, Paxton 43 (CNN/SSRS) and 51-43 (YouGov), with Election Day in 4 days.
The attacks get louder as the lead holds.
- Pakistan's military says it is "cautiously optimistic" about mediating between the US and Iran, but warns of "powerful spoilers," after army chief Asim Munir's second trip to Tehran this month.
Same day, a Treasury report says the US blockade is crippling Iran's economy, and UKMTO says another vessel was struck south of Iran's Lavan Island.
Brent still settled at $117.64. Oil isn't pricing peace yet.
- A US Treasury report says the American blockade and sanctions are crippling Iran's economy, Axios reports.
It fits what officials told Axios this morning: the push on Iran is economic pressure for now, with strikes floated for after the midterms. Brent still settled at $117.64 today, up 2.4%.
- The Nasdaq 100 has now fallen 10% from its October high, putting it on the edge of correction territory.
The slide comes as disappointing tech earnings push the cost of insuring Big Tech debt to record highs, and three Fed officials called for more rate hikes today.
- Houthi forces fired ballistic missiles at Aden Airport and the Maashiq Presidential Palace complex, a spokesperson for Yemen's government forces says.
It's the second Houthi missile attack reported today, after the Saudi-led coalition intercepted one aimed at southern Saudi Arabia this morning.
- Brent crude settled at $117.64 a barrel, up $2.76 or 2.4%, while the Nasdaq 100 tracker QQQ sank 4.3% on the day.
Same day, Fed officials Musalem and Logan called for more rate hikes. Higher oil keeps the Fed hawkish, and tech is pricing it.
- A federal appeals court denied the DOJ's renewed request to temporarily block California from counting about 20,000 mail ballots it alleges were cast by noncitizens, the department's second loss on those ballots this week.
Trump said Thursday, "The judge should not have done that, but we'll appeal." The appeal failed four days before the Nov 3 midterms.
- Google just unveiled Genie 4, a DeepMind world model that turns a text prompt into an interactive simulation you can hear and steer in real time.
It's rolling out now to trusted testers, with Ultra subscribers and Gemini API partners next. Google is pitching these worlds as training grounds for robots and SI agents. Every scene in this clip is SI-generated.
- Joe Rogan on Trump's memecoin: "Clearly Trump made money."
His guest: "We understand this is a conflict of interest, right?"
Rogan: "For sure... Not something that looks good to the average person."
Rogan says buying a memecoin can be "a way to give someone money," while insisting Trump has "done nothing wrong."
Last year the coin's top holders won a private dinner with the president.
Look who benefits.
- The Nasdaq 100 is now down about 4% on the day, with roughly $1.5 trillion in value wiped out, as Nvidia slides 5% and Intel trades more than 30% lower.
It was down 2.8% at the open, and the selling has only built since, with Anthropic's junk-rating warning and Amazon's $80 billion supplier loan raising fresh questions about who pays for the SI buildout.
- The Justice Department is reportedly sending about 1,000 staffers, some of them criminal prosecutors, to polling places in every state for Tuesday's midterms.
It lands the same week DOJ subpoenaed LA County election officials and demanded California records in a criminal noncitizen-voting probe.
- The SEC's enforcement director says the agency is examining whether SI companies are giving investors the full picture of the risks as SI spending booms.
It lands the same day Amazon reportedly tapped an $80 billion supplier loan facility to fund its SI buildout, with tech stocks selling off hard.
- The Trump administration has awarded contracts for nearly 41 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, completing a massive oil exchange meant to curb energy prices after the war with Iran, per Bloomberg.
Yesterday the Energy Department said companies borrowed 16.75 million barrels in SPR loans, and Europe pledged another 42 million barrels from its own reserves.
Emergency stockpiles are being drained to hold prices down days before Tuesday's vote.
- Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan says the Fed needs at least two more quarter-point rate hikes, the third Fed official today after Barkin and Musalem to lean toward tightening, on a day tech stocks are already sliding.
- Google just ran an SI model on a chip in orbit. Sundar Pichai says the Project Suncatcher prototype satellite booted its TPU, took a prompt sent up from Earth and beamed back a complete answer from Gemma: a haiku.
The satellite launched only a few weeks ago, making this the first end-to-end test of Google's plan to put SI compute in space.
- Russia is setting dates for peace talks while rejecting a ceasefire.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov says Moscow and Washington have begun coordinating dates for Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi, expected in November.
Same day, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Russia opposes any ceasefire that would give Ukraine a "breather," and that Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries won't derail the talks.
Hours earlier, the Kremlin accused Kyiv of ignoring Trump's request to stop hitting refineries.
Talks without a ceasefire let the battlefield keep setting the terms.
- BREAKING: The Nasdaq 100 is down 3.4% on the day and the S&P 500 is down 1.7%.
Nvidia is off nearly 5% and Reddit fell as much as 29%, in the same week Nvidia lost close to $1 trillion from its $6 trillion peak. Wall Street is punishing every tech miss.
- Anthropic may not get an investment-grade credit rating after its IPO, Blackstone has told investors, according to the Financial Times.
That would leave one of the biggest SI names rated junk on day one, on the same day Intel's default-insurance costs hit a record and the Nasdaq 100 is down more than 3%.
- The Saudi-led coalition says it intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile the Houthis fired toward southern Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Civil Defence says the danger has passed in Khamis Mushait.
It's the third Saudi intercept claim in two days, after two ballistic missiles were shot down over Riyadh Thursday and the coalition's Mecca drone account that the Houthis denied.
- Reddit shares are down 29% to about $91.60, the biggest intraday drop in the stock's history, after CEO Steve Huffman said Google's SI search mode isn't sending traffic and Google referrals fell by more than 1 million a week in October.
- CENTCOM's Adm. Brad Cooper on Friday: "Iran's Navy is all at the bottom of the sea."
On Thursday, a small boat pulled up to the tanker Louise 1 near Hormuz and fixed two explosives to its hull. Maritime security sources told Reuters they were limpet mines, the first successful use since the war began in February.
Hours before Cooper's video, Iran's IRGC Navy claimed it stopped two tankers south of the strait.
You don't need warships to mine a tanker. One small boat will do.
The victory lap came a day after the attack.
- Coinbase is down 12.9% at $139.87 and Robinhood is down 8.5% at $83.85 as the Binance hack fallout hits crypto stocks, with Bitcoin around $77,270. Coinbase's slide comes the same day filings showed Armstrong, Ehrsam and Choi set up plans to sell up to 13.6 million shares.
- Meta settled with teen plaintiff K.D.B. mid-jury selection in LA's second social media addiction bellwether, leaving Snap as the lone defendant. Meta keeps paying to dodge juries: it settled the other teen days before trial and agreed in August to pay up to $18B to the states.
- The tanker hit in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday was the Panama-flagged Louise 1, and maritime security sources told Reuters it was struck with limpet mines, the first successful use of them since the US war with Iran began in February.
A small boat fixed two charges to the hull and slipped away. A September attempt failed to detonate. The last limpet attacks on tankers in the region were in 2019, including the Kokuka Courageous (pictured).
- UPDATE: The US Secret Service now confirms it's working with private-sector partners, including Circle, to identify, freeze, trace and recover the funds stolen from Binance.
It's also coordinating with the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia to identify the hackers.
This morning the federal probe rested on a single Reuters source. Now it's on the record, while Binance withdrawals stay off and about $3B of the $6.3B haul sits frozen.
- Putin says Moscow wants better ties with Europe and that the conflict will produce no winners. In a Rossiya 24 interview clip spreading today, he says of Ukraine's occupied regions: "This is not their territory, this is the territory of historical Russia."
Both cannot be true.
A Russian drone hit a crowded Dnipro rail platform Thursday, killing 15, the regional governor says. The Kremlin is now pushing a phone call instead of a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky, the Kyiv Independent reports.
Peace talk for Europe. Annexation talk at home.
- Japan is asking Anthropic and OpenAI for more access to their most advanced AI models, Nikkei reports. Tokyo plans to fold stronger cooperation with U.S. AI developers into a cybersecurity package due as early as next week.
Frontier models are turning into national-security assets, and allies now want a direct line to them.
- UPDATE: Polymarket says 689 of 726 wallets hit in the breach have now been refunded in full, with the last 37 paid as each is verified.
It's going further too: traders who lost money during the trading pause or had positions taken get $1.19M across 5.5K wallets, starting today. Compare that with Binance, where withdrawals are still off after a $6B+ hack.
- Cook Political Report now projects Democrats gaining 12 to 25 House seats, more than enough for a majority, with 222 seats at least leaning Democratic, 195 leaning Republican and 18 toss-ups. It lands four days before Election Day, as Trump adds Iowa and Kansas rallies back to his Sunday schedule.
- Binance CEO Richard Teng says the hacker behind the $6.3 billion heist used a self-destruct mechanism that wiped their tools and traces as they went. Withdrawals stay off until the rebuilt system passes rigorous testing, and a full proof-of-reserves report is promised by Monday.
- US officials say yesterday's 20+ person Iran meeting focused on a blockade and economic pressure, not strikes, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. Strikes could still come right after the midterms.
Another week of "strikes soon" headlines, and now the option on the table is shifting. Oil isn't waiting: major banks just raised their 2026 Brent forecast to $90.40 from $88.13 in a WSJ survey.
- Intel's 5-year credit default swap widened to a record 123.5 basis points, on track for its biggest one-day move since October 2022, per Markit data. Bond markets are now pricing more risk on Intel the same day the stock heads for its worst drop on record.
- The Cook Political Report moved 12 more House races toward Democrats, including three Republican seats, CO-05, PA-01 and SC-01, that shift from Lean Republican to Toss Up. It lands days before the Nov 3 midterms, the same morning Trump warned that a Democratic win would bring "a 1929 style economic depression."
- Trump Media shares fell to $5.53 today, a record low, one day after Reuters reported Wall Street firms pay up to $100,000 a month for early access to Trump's Truth Social posts.
The stock is down 58% this year and 39% since the end of September.
Trump's trust owns about 41% of the company.
Selling a head start on the president's posts hasn't saved the stock.
- All clear, for now.
The White House says the US "will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections." And Trump's Iowa and Kansas rallies are back on for Sunday, CNN reports, a day after he scrapped them for tele-rallies.
The catch: US officials have told Gulf allies to brace for a short, intense campaign after Nov. 3, and Israeli sources say joint strike plans are already drawn up. Qatar's mediators are in Tehran today pushing a deal to head that off.
So the all clear runs through Tuesday.
- China's commerce ministry says it firmly opposes the FCC's vote to bar Chinese labs from testing electronics sold in the US, and warns of "additional necessary countermeasures" if Washington keeps going.
Beijing says the move breaches the consensus reached by the two heads of state and calls the US stance on a mutual-recognition deal "extremely negative." It's the second US move against Chinese tech in two days, after plans to cut Chinese telecoms off from direct access to US phone numbers.
- Trump will now hold rallies in Iowa and Kansas on Sunday after all, CNN reports, a day after scrapping both trips for tele-rallies.
Officials told CNN the stops were rearranged to fit around the tele-rallies. When he canceled, Trump was asked whether his health was the reason and said "I feel perfect."
- Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin says the SI investment surge is straining supply chains and driving demand-side inflation, the kind the Fed can lean against.
That lands the same morning the Nasdaq 100 opened down 2.8% after Amazon and Intel earnings, so the SI boom is now a rates story too.