Ledgers AcademyLetters
Original, sourced essays on crypto infrastructure, markets, incentives, custody, and the habits of clear analysis.
The Bitget forensic reports showed a breach that never touched a private key, and a day later the SEC proposed where investment advisers may hold client crypto. A quiet week for price in which custody was the only real subject.
Read letter →September was 2026's costliest month for crypto theft, at about $768.4 million on CertiK's count, and two incidents produced roughly 92 percent of it. Net of the 3,400 bitcoin an attacker returned, the month's unrecovered cost is closer to $497 million.
Read letter →August core PCE rose 0.2 percent on the month and 3.0 percent on the year, below expectations, trimming the case for an October rate rise. Bitcoin spiked to about $85,600 and gave the whole move back, closing its best quarter since early 2024 at roughly 42.7 percent.
Read letter →Bitget covered the loss, reopened bitcoin withdrawals, and about $463 million of net outflow followed in 24 hours, its largest single day on record. Nobody was left out of pocket, and customers left anyway, because a covered loss still proves the loss was possible.
Read letter →The CFTC registered Coinbase Clearing, giving one company the broker, the exchange and the clearing house in American derivatives. A clearing house becomes the counterparty to both sides of every trade, and this registration covers fully collateralised products, which is narrower than the headline.
Read letter →Bitget's User Protection Fund covers this week's $351.6 million loss at today's prices. Reporting puts it at around 5,500 bitcoin, so on 1 August, when bitcoin traded at $62,820, the same coins were worth less than the loss. A fund held in the asset it insures shrinks when it is needed.
Read letter →Bitget published its recovery plan two days after the breach: withdrawals return one asset at a time, bitcoin first on Monday at 08:00 UTC. Every asset has its own keys and its own route out of cold storage, which is why the order exists and why it costs some customers more than others.
Read letter →The largest exchange theft of 2026 landed in the same week US spot bitcoin funds took about $2.4 billion and flipped the year's flows positive. The price ignored both and traded a Monday short squeeze instead, because the money arriving now never touches an exchange hot wallet.
Read letter →Bitget detected unauthorised transfers at 18:31 UTC and suspended withdrawals, putting the loss at roughly $351.6 million and saying a User Protection Fund of over $464 million covers it. The breach reached the wallet layers built to move money without a human.
Read letter →BitMEX stopped trading at 04:00 UTC after 11 years, solvent and with withdrawals still open. A voluntary wind-down works in the opposite direction from a bankruptcy: nothing is frozen and nobody joins a queue, but balances left behind start accruing a fee.
Read letter →Bitcoin opened Tuesday about 6.7 percent higher at roughly $86,597, its best level since January, after more than $1 billion of crypto positions were closed by force on Monday, about $878 million of them short bets. Closing a short means buying.
Read letter →Switchboard deprecated every version of its oracle on 19 September and support ends on 25 September, leaving Kamino, Jito, marginfi and Drift days to migrate. A price feed is what a lending market uses to know whether you are still solvent, and losing one freezes borrowing rather than stealing anything.
Read letter →Seven agencies from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany published the scale of North Korea's fake recruiter campaign: 30,000 devices, more than 7,000 crypto wallets and at least $10.71 million, all reached through a coding test. Plus a flat ETF week, Polygon's permissionless burn and Binance's first foreign exchange perpetual.
Read letter →The CFTC sent crypto market structure rules to the White House review office on 17 September, the first real step toward regulating the market without Congress. The text stays confidential, and a binding rule is roughly a year away.
Read letter →Senate market structure legislation failed its procedural vote, and within 48 hours the SEC opened a five-year window for tokenized stock trading and the CFTC took passive software out of the registration net. Rules made this way arrive faster and can be withdrawn just as fast.
Read letter →The American Reserve Modernization Act became the first strategic bitcoin reserve bill to clear a full House committee, 28 votes to 21, locking forfeited bitcoin for 20 years. It authorises no purchases, and sentiment has fallen from greed to neutral in two sessions.
Read letter →The Federal Reserve raised its target range to 3.75 to 4 percent on a unanimous vote, its first increase since July 2023, and crypto closed higher anyway. Sixteen of eighteen policy makers expect at least one more rise, and a House committee advanced the first bitcoin reserve bill.
Read letter →The CLARITY Act failed its Senate cloture vote 49 to 50 against a 60-vote threshold, with four Republicans crossing over. Crypto had its worst session since June, spot bitcoin funds shed $450.4 million, and two Robinhood engineers were charged over trades placed before listings.
Read letter →Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline closure lifted Brent above $107 and pushed the odds of a Federal Reserve rate rise from about 69 percent to about 87 percent. Bitcoin rose anyway, spot funds took money in after four days of redemptions, and futures open interest kept shrinking.
Read letter →Strategy bought no bitcoin in the week to 7 September and spent $176.3 million retiring STRC preferred shares below par, while Strive and Capital B kept buying and Bitdeer sold everything it mined. The ECB raised rates ahead of Wednesday's Fed decision, and Symbiosis let its bounty deadline pass without a post-mortem.
Read letter →Canada's banking regulator says a tokenized deposit is legally still a deposit. Symbiosis halts its bitcoin bridge after an unbacked mint, the CLARITY Act faces a Senate cloture vote on Tuesday, and Revolut handed customer passports and bitcoin histories to a fake government request.
Read letter →Petrol pushed US consumer prices to 3.4 percent over the year while the core measure held at 2.4. Ether gained about 7 percent on bitcoin, Nasdaq backed tokenized equities with voting rights, and Liquid's white hats turned out to want a ransom.
Read letter →Nasdaq is investing $100 million in Kraken parent Payward to build tokenized equities that are stated to carry shareholder voting rights. US producer prices run above forecast and Trezor warns of phishing from its own domain.
Read letter →Block asks the OCC to charter Builders Bank & Trust, an uninsured national trust bank for bitcoin and stablecoin custody. PayPal opens PYUSDx, Consensys splits in two, and Brent settles above $100.
Read letter →Liquid's incident report says a range-proof caching bug in Elements let attackers mint about 4,000 unbacked L-BTC and peg out real bitcoin. Visa's stablecoin settlement passes a $20 billion annualised run rate.
Read letter →Harmony proposes shutting down its seven-year-old blockchain and reissuing ONE on Ethereum. White hats return 3,400 BTC to the Liquid federation, and Poland fails a third attempt to override its crypto veto.
Read letter →The IMF says every bitcoin added to El Salvador's official holdings since June 2025 came from private donations, not public funds, as a US$140 million tranche advances. The Liquid sidechain pauses after a $320 million peg-out.
Read letter →Polymarket expands to 67 perpetual markets while US traders remain excluded, BTC and ETH cool, and quantum-security planning moves forward.
Read letter →Bitcoin holds near $79K as completed-session ETF inflows stay positive, a strong jobs report shifts rate expectations, and Cronos turns blockchain finality into a practical risk question.
Read letter →BTC and ETH gain more than 5% as short liquidations pass $416 million, Standard Chartered opens institutional spot trading in the UAE, and ETF flows split.
Read letter →BTC holds near $77K under bond and oil pressure, G20 officials call for coordinated digital asset rules, and prediction-market volume falls 14.5%.
Read letter →A 21-firm bank consortium plans a stablecoin, the SEC proposes blockchain-era transfer-agent rules, and Binance reports $433 billion in TradFi perpetual volume.
Read letter →Fear and Greed drops seven points while Strategy adds 4,603 BTC, ICE and tZERO plan tokenized securities infrastructure, and Flow corrects an exploit estimate.
Read letter →BTC and ETH edge higher on sharply lower weekend volume as Cronos and Fogo halt activity and Argentina's stablecoin use remains dominant.
Read letter →BTC and ETH slip as Cosmos explains a six-chain exploit, Bitwise's Solana ETF reaches $1 billion, and Asian firms expand stablecoin infrastructure.
Read letter →Bitcoin ETF inflows slow while Ether funds accelerate, inflation stays above target, and The Sandbox bridge exploit exposes the accounting behind cross-chain claims.
Read letter →BTC reclaims $80,600 as mining stocks jump up to 67%, Schwab adds Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink, and a Base lending market takes an oracle hit.
Read letter →BTC cools below $79K on hot PCE inflation data, the SEC sends a custody overhaul to the White House, and Revolut launches a euro stablecoin.
Read letter →BTC reclaims $80K for the first time in 101 days, a governance attack drains Term Finance, Thailand opens spot ETF rules, and Jackson Hole takes the stage.
Read letter →Bitcoin reclaims $79K as ETF inflows stack up. The SEC proposes a crypto offering framework and the CLARITY Act slips to September.
Read letter →BTC holds $77K as institutional ETF demand stays steady. MEV bots explained, an active wallet-drainer phishing alert, and the macro data that matters this week.
Read letter →A system-level checklist for evaluating product need, dependencies, economics, security, governance, and token design.
Read letter →Compare proof of work and proof of stake through security costs, concentration, recovery, and real operational trade-offs.
Read letter →A framework for analysing token utility, supply, unlocks, incentives, fees, governance, and the evidence behind value claims.
Read letter →A practical guide to stablecoin reserves, redemption, collateral, liquidity, and the systems that keep (or break) a peg.
Read letter →A practical comparison of custodial accounts, self-custody, keys, recovery plans, and the failure modes that matter.
Read letter →A calmer framework for learning about cryptocurrency, markets, and the systems beneath them.
Read letter →The Letter
Plain analysis of crypto infrastructure, markets and security. No price calls, no referral links, no hype.
Unsubscribe at any time. Read the privacy notice.Reader reviews
Tell other readers what worked, what did not, and who you would recommend it to. Every review is read by a human before it is published, and critical reviews get the same treatment as glowing ones.
Leave a review →