Kiwi News: handpicked crypto news for builders

The FBI is releasing information advising the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as "TraderTraitor." The FBI, together with partners at the USSS and IRS-CI, has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages. How You Can Help: FBI, USSS, and IRS-CI are urging private sector entities including THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from addresses TraderTraitor actors are using to launder these stolen assets. A list of addresses associated with this activity is available here: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/al…

It should now be abundantly clear that ETH on Ethereum L1 is a very different beast from stablecoins like USDC and USDT, or ETH on e.g. Arbitrum. It is time to ask really hard questions: Which “beast” do people really want, and when? And how much capacity should there be to move instantly between them? Clearly, we still want strongly censorship-resistant assets like ETH and Bitcoin. But in many cases, having an entity that can intervene in the event of a hack can be a positive. However, the way that power is exercised can feel arbitrary. Is Paolo asleep? Do you have a direct line to Jermey so suddenly they block without court order. I think it would be good to have assets and rollups that offer an additional layer of protection, but under clear, transparent, consistently applied rules that protect smaller users too, not just the well-connected.

Did you know Twitter links can reveal which device was used to share them? Check the URL ending: s=46 → iPhone s=20 → Web Browser s=19 → Android Try it yourself by copying a tweet link. Technology is interesting, isn't it?

BREAKING: France just voted to tax the internet. French lawmakers approved a tax of €0.055 (5.5 cents) for every gigabyte of data that companies like Netflix and YouTube send to French users. It’s a tax on the companies, not users directly, but the cost could get passed on to subscribers. The vote was 11 to 10, with only 35 of 577 lawmakers present. Supporters say it could raise up to €10 billion a year. The French government opposed it, warning it would hit smaller French companies hardest; VLC says it would cost it over €1 million a year.

BREAKING: Arbitrum Security Council has executed a transaction to freeze ~$30.5M from the Binance Exploit. Thanks to all other signers involved. Exploiter address 0x3E2bf1ac6bf0934BBba6456C341c2EcbCED632d5 Trsanction hash: 0xb69c81774f507d46ce776aeaed8b4d31df96dd66ce6fd05073481011835355d6

Our investigators are observing never-seen-before laundering patterns with the stolen funds from the Binance exploit. Thousands of transactions in a short period suggest that the attackers are using automation to obscure the trail of funds. Rather than simply moving funds onward, they repeatedly circulate them among addresses, often sending funds back to addresses involved earlier in the sequence. Read more: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/binance…

Using Ethereum leaves a trail. Your transactions are public, and your wallet shares your address and location with servers every time you open it. Most people have no idea how much that adds up to. So we wrote a field guide for anyone who uses Ethereum and wants to understand their privacy. How to D̶i̶s̶a̶p̶p̶e̶a̶r̶ on Ethereum explains, in plain language: What other people can learn about you Where that information leaks Which tools protect you, and what they don’t You don’t need to be technical to read it. It’s a first edition, printed for .@EFDevcon. We’re handing out copies at our private event in Mumbai this week. Details tomorrow. DM us for early access/ event invite

By design, a Morpho Blue market can't protect its users: it can't freeze the market to mitigate risk, act on the interest rate curve or implement rate limiting, and it has no Umbrella junior tranche to protect deposits. When an isolated market breaks, its lenders take 100% of the loss. If you're a Morpho user facing an adverse event, they will just tweet and let you sink, as they did during the dozens of vault blowups that led to dire user losses. Ask anyone who was in a curator vault during Stream/Elixir. Users won't trust an infra with real size if it doesn't care about them or support them. That's why, even with infinite VC funding, deployed incentives, a competitor that lost its best contributors and paid partnerships, Morpho only added a pathetic +$2.15B in active loans this year. For comparison, I did as much in one week at the Plasma launch.