Clayton Takes the Helm of Trump's 'Super Intelligence Force'
President Donald Trump confirmed on Truth Social on Sunday that Jay Clayton, currently serving as the U.S. director of national intelligence, will lead a newly created federal body called the Super Intelligence Force. The announcement came after Friday media reports of the appointment and followed a Cointelegraph report on September 20 that Trump intended to build an "AI Force" modeled on the Space Force and install a dedicated artificial intelligence czar.
In his post, Trump wrote that the new force "is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence."
The selection has drawn sharp criticism from within the crypto community. Clayton oversaw the SEC during Trump's first term and, on his final day in that role, initiated the securities prosecution against Ripple. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he led the criminal case against Roman Storm over the Tornado Cash protocol. Storm responded to the news by noting that "Trump's good buddy Elon Musk is renaming SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI to honor the President's directive renaming 'artificial intelligence' to 'superintelligence.'"
NEAR Gains Traction as SHIELD AI Blocks Stolen and Exploited Funds
The NEAR ecosystem has enjoyed a strong run, with the token more than doubling over the past month. This week brought both praise and controversy after the chain's SHIELD AI system intercepted stolen funds from Bitget's hack on its INTENTS cross-chain swaps platform. A Bitwise NEAR ETF also debuted, drawing nearly $60 million in initial inflows.
SHIELD additionally stopped a $3.8 million exploit of NEAR Intents caused by a bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacting with the NEAR Intents smart contract. Sentiment turned bearish for roughly seven and a half minutes before NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevченко publicly stated, "we have identified you, sir," and issued a 48-hour ultimatum to return the stolen assets or face legal action. The funds were subsequently returned, and Shevchenko urged would-be exploiters posing as white-hat researchers to "use bug bounties instead of disrupting the services."
The intervention, however, sparked a broader debate. THORChain has consistently refused to block swaps on its platform, citing decentralization principles. Legal observers are also questioning whether SHIELD's willingness to freeze funds could expose it to liability for everything transacting on the platform going forward.
Hayes Warns of Coming Money Printing; Blast Shuts Down
Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom fund, argued that a combination of the AI infrastructure buildout, the U.S. debt crisis, and mounting financial stress in France will force expansive monetary easing. Speaking at CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition during Korea Blockchain Week, Hayes noted that AI firms require trillions of dollars to finance data centers even as their service prices decline.
"They've not really given themselves a lot of options other than print money and make it less bad," he said. He also flagged the possibility of China pivoting to monetary stimulus and pointed to credit-default swap spreads tied to BNP Paribas and widening French government bond yields as signs of European fiscal strain.
In separate news, Ethereum layer-2 network Blast announced it is shutting down after operating costs outstripped revenue. In a Friday post on X, the team said it sees no "credible path" to economic sustainability and urged users to withdraw assets to Ethereum mainnet. Blast was founded in November 2023 by Tieshun "Pacman" Roquerre, the creator of NFT marketplace Blur, and attracted over $2 billion in deposits before its February 2024 mainnet launch. According to DeFiLlama, its DeFi total value locked has since fallen by more than 98% from a June 2024 peak.
Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade and Peter Brandt's Bullish Pivot
The Ethereum Foundation has scheduled the Glamsterdam upgrade to activate on the Sepolia testnet on October 6. Node operators will need to update both execution-layer and consensus-layer clients before go-live. Key changes include enshrined proposer-builder separation, which moves the handoff between specialized block builders and validators into the protocol itself, and block-level access lists that record the accounts and storage slots touched in each block, enabling clients to process transactions in parallel for higher throughput.
On the trading front, veteran analyst Peter Brandt has reversed course after warning in July that Bitcoin could slide into the high $40,000 range. "There's a good possibility we have seen the low and now are entering a new bull market cycle in Bitcoin," Brandt told Cointelegraph in the latest episode of Trade Secrets. He has also raised his peak forecast, now targeting a late-2029 high between $300,000 and $600,000, up from the $250,000-to-$300,000 range he outlined in July. "The bull market cycle this time has a very good chance of reaching half a million," he added.
September's Record Hack Toll, Tether-Iran Freeze, and Market Wrap
September proved to be the worst month of the year for crypto security breaches. PeckShield logged 55 major incidents with $766.5 million in stolen funds, while CertiK recorded 97 incidents and estimated losses at $768.4 million. The largest events included the $388 million Bitget hack and a $320 million exploit of the Liquid Network, though more than $270 million was later recovered. Smaller incidents hit Safe Wallet ($7.8 million), DCENT ($6 million), and Duelbits ($5.9 million). CertiK cautioned that "September was a stark reminder of how quickly the threat landscape can shift."
Aave founder Stani Kulechov clarified that Aave v3 was unaffected by an exploit that drained roughly $305,000 from two Safe multisig wallets via a third-party adapter. "This is not Aave v3 contract, it's third party external adapter built on top of Aave, zero effect on Aave v3," he wrote on X.
Stablecoin issuer Tether disclosed that it helped authorities freeze nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT during 2026. The company reported freezing more than $130 million across four wallets this year and over $344 million linked to the Central Bank of Iran in April. The disclosure came alongside a report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which found that 84% of 846 crypto wallets sanctioned over Iran ties transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in USDT. Senator Richard Blumenthal called on the Treasury and Justice departments to investigate potential sanctions violations.
The Bitget hack has also ignited a legal and philosophical debate. THORChain has stated it will not—or cannot—block addresses associated with the $387.5 million theft. Crypto lawyer Yuriy Brisov noted that prosecuting the developers for money laundering is far from straightforward given the permissionless, decentralized architecture of the protocol.
Closing the week, Bitcoin rose 1.4% to $85,821, Ethereum gained 0.6% to $2,701, and XRP slipped 0.8% to $1.50. The total cryptocurrency market cap stood at $2.92 trillion per CoinMarketCap. Among the top 100 coins, the week's top gainers were Midnight (NIGHT) at +60.6%, Pump.fun (PUMP) at +26.3%, and StarkNet (SRK) at +14.5%. The top decliners were Lighter (LIT) at −22.2%, Zcash (SEC) at −16.4%, and Ethena (ENA) at −14%.
