WTI crude oil rose 2% intraday, currently trading at $101.50 per barrel.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions on 10 individuals and one entity. The targets are linked to North Korean IT workers defrauding U.S. companies, with the proceeds funding Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. Sanctioned Russian national Ilya Boykov has exchanged approximately $3.5 million in cryptocurrency for North Korea’s Alis company since 2024. Russian national Vitold Obertas has completed nearly $2 million in cryptocurrency exchanges for North Korean officials since January 2025. Also sanctioned are North Korea-controlled, Russia-based entity FFTDC and its six IT workers, who have generated over $750,000 in revenue since 2025. Australia and the European Union have also taken similar sanctions actions this month.

U.S. midterm elections will take place next week. Prediction market data puts Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate at 64% and the House at 90%. If control of Congress changes hands, crypto policy could shift from pushing legislation to ramping up regulation, and the Clarity Act is unlikely to advance. Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks noted a Democratic-led Congress will not prioritize the bill. If Democrats capture the Senate, Elizabeth Warren will serve as chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Wintermute’s Head of Policy Ron Hammond predicts Warren will use subpoena power to focus on reviewing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)’s new bank license approvals for Ripple, Coinbase, and World Liberty Financial.

Avail has launched ShieldTX, a privacy tool for Hyperliquid traders. The tool creates an independent wallet for each perpetual contract position, reducing on-chain copy trading bots’ ability to link transaction records and replicate trading strategies. Avail analyzed 332,317 trading wallets on Hyperliquid, sampled 7 of the top 100 traders plus suspected copy trading wallets, and estimated that the median additional cost per trade for copied traders due to execution price impact is 63 basis points, or 0.63%. The research also found that roughly 29% of Hyperliquid’s top 150 accounts use sub-accounts, though these related wallets may still be linked on-chain. (The Block)

Asset management giant Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco), which heavily participated in AI data center debt financing in 2025, has successfully avoided some losses from the AI bond market correction and turned a profit by selling off a portion of its positions early, implementing interest rate hedges, and abandoning some subsequent transactions. Pimco previously took part in approximately $18 billion in debt financing for Meta’s Louisiana data center project and around $10 billion in financing for Oracle’s Michigan data center project, respectively. Documents show that the firm’s current holdings of these two related debt positions are each reduced by roughly 50% from their prior levels. About 6 to 8 months after purchasing the Meta-related bonds, Pimco sold around $3 billion worth of the bonds at a price above par. Meanwhile, Oracle-related bonds have fallen from 98.7 cents on the dollar at issuance to around 88 cents. As AI infrastructure financing continues to expand, Pimco has grown more cautious recently, having successively abandoned participation in large debt deals linked to Broadcom and Anthropic, SoftBank’s roughly $11 billion junk bond issuance, and some Oracle data center loans. However, the firm still joined a large financing round for SpaceX, subscribing for around $4 billion in debt to support its AI business expansion. (Bloomberg)

The "Big Short" figure Michael Burry stated via his Substack account that Anthropic’s newly public IPO S-1 filing reveals catastrophic systemic risks in the broader AI boom, not limited to Anthropic alone. His core arguments are as follows: 1. Massive compute commitments: Anthropic has signed approximately $537 billion in compute and infrastructure purchase/lease agreements, primarily with Amazon, Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, Broadcom, and other firms. Pending deals (including those with SpaceX AI) could add hundreds of billions more, bringing the total close to $800 billion. This is roughly 12 times its current annual revenue run rate of around $65 billion, and over 20 times its trailing 12-month revenue. 2. Circular and interconnected financing structure: Major tech giants act as Anthropic’s lenders, suppliers, distributors, and shareholders simultaneously. The financing arrangement is described as "garish and audacious". This high interconnectivity appears as a safety net during an upcycle, but once growth stalls or enters a downturn, the entire ecosystem becomes extremely fragile. He draws a parallel to vendor financing during the dot-com bubble. 3. Slowing growth + accelerating costs: Quarterly revenue growth dropped from ~144% in the prior quarter to roughly 46%, while compute costs surged by ~78%. Burry notes the S-1 data is as of June 30, failing to fully reflect changes in the developer ecosystem in Q3 and beyond, adding "nothing changes my overall view". He argues Anthropic’s structure works when AI grows at a sustained rapid pace, but any significant slowdown could trigger a chain reaction or even collapse. The risk, he emphasizes, lies in the system’s "circularity and interconnectedness", not just technical issues.

Shareholders of Strategy approved the company’s daily dividend proposal with a 99.3% approval rate. Moving forward, STRF, STRC, STRK, and STRD will accrue interest and distribute dividends on every calendar day.