Top crypto stories of week 40, 2025
Mon 29 September to Sun 5 October 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 29 September to Sun 5 October 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 6 comments in total. Most-shared sources: farcaster.xyz, x.com, rekt.news.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Introducing Kagi News (blog.kagi.com)
Kagi has launched Kagi News, a daily press review that uses AI to condense community-curated RSS feeds from publications across different viewpoints into one briefing with cited sources. The briefing is published once per day around noon UTC and is designed to cover everything important in about five minutes. The company says it does not track, profile, or monetize readers' attention, and that its news sources are open source and managed through a public GitHub repository. Stories are generated in their original language and can be translated with Kagi Translate.
- @pcaversaccio: Ethereum's worst enemy is institutional adoption (farcaster.xyz)
Pcaversaccio argues that institutional adoption is Ethereum's worst enemy, and that Ethereum should be celebrated when traditional finance does not choose it. The post says institutions would gain more influence over future hard fork decisions, complicating core developers' work, and would push compliance features in place of clear bugs, citing discussions around FOCIL as an example. It also warns of an institutional urge to turn Ethereum into a business rather than an economic playground, and the author says they will not let it be tamed or turned into a corporate playground.
- @enclavee3: TEEs broken with $50 hardware, E3s needed for encrypted execution (farcaster.xyz)
- Crypto Face/Off (wrongalot.substack.com)
The author argues that crypto is a new environment rather than a financial vessel, and that the industry's push toward pragmatism, centralization and yield is eroding its core value of trust minimization. The essay ties this to the film Face/Off, comparing crypto's identity crisis to the swapped identities of Sean Archer and Castor Troy. It draws on Marshall McLuhan, including his 1960s observation that official culture tries to make new media do the work of old media, and his "Emperor's New Clothes" image of antisocial people who see environments clearly. The piece claims that a minority of users is quietly opting into crypto through participation rather than optimization.
- $39i, 2025.09.28.22.46.40.319 (objkt.com)
- Joe Lubin confirms SWIFT is using Linea to build its new payments system (cointelegraph.com)
Consensys CEO Joe Lubin has confirmed that SWIFT will build its recently announced blockchain payment settlement platform on Ethereum layer 2 Linea, which SWIFT did not name in its announcement. Lubin made the remark in a fireside chat at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, saying SWIFT had to "soft roll out" the "big news." The article reports that Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Toronto-Dominion Bank are among firms set to take part in trials on Linea. Linea has $2.27 billion in total value locked, the fourth largest among Ethereum layer 2s according to L2BEAT data.
- Kiwistand version 0.11.0 released (github.com)
Kiwistand version 0.11.0 fixes a critical bug in the allowlist crawler that halted allowlist progression after the switch to the Delegator3 contract in August 2025. The release notes say the transfer-loader.mjs code still tried to read input.beneficiaries and input.amounts after Delegator3 replaced the Delegator2 setup function, causing the decoder to throw errors on every Delegator3 transaction. The allowlist stopped updating for several weeks, and users who minted Kiwi Passes during that period were not added and could not interact with the site. The fix in commit c8a92a7c removes the non-existent field access and adds try-catch blocks around decodeFunctionData, and nodes that ran the broken version must delete the op-call-block-logs-load directory and re-sync.
- Starknet Is All In: BTCFi (research.auditless.com)
Starknet has launched a BTCFi campaign, which its author describes as one of the biggest incentive campaigns for Bitcoin as a DeFi collateral asset. The campaign includes a BTC staking primitive where staked BTC is tokenized and generates STRK rewards, and an institutional Bitcoin Yield Fund from Re7 that allocates into Starknet's BTC staking and DeFi strategies. A one-click yield aggregator managed by Re7 will be integrated into various wallets, and 100M in STRK incentives will be allocated across partner protocols for long-term TVL retention. The article argues Starknet is well positioned to become a trustless Bitcoin bridge and a Bitcoin DeFi layer, with the author stating this makes it a concentrated bet on Bitcoin finance.
- Rip to sparks. (farcaster.xyz)
- Meet Phantom Cash. (phantom.com)
- @0xGrimjow: on bridging fees and value loss (x.com)
- Kiwi News Weekly Digest — Oct 03, 2025 (buttondown.com)
- @brave: Cardano now fully integrated into Brave browser with built-in wallet (xcancel.com)
- Rekt - Hypervault - Rugged (rekt.news)
HyperVault, a yield aggregator on Hyperliquid's HyperEVM that advertised 95% APY, was drained on September 25 of about $4.64 million, which was bridged to Ethereum via deBridge and then sent into Tornado Cash while depositors' vaults went to zero. The article says that a September 4 warning from community member HypingBull was followed by Pashov confirming he had never heard of the project and Code4rena showing no pending audit. It also says Zenith's draft audit, delivered privately on September 24, found 42 vulnerabilities, six of them High severity, and that an IP address in DocuSign metadata belonged to Nicholas Olsen, the protocol's supposed founder.
- @protolambda: stepping away from OP Labs after building OP-Stack and Superchain (x.com)
- @notthreadguy: 54% capital gains tax in California is insane (x.com)
@notthreadguy argues that the 54% California capital gains tax shown in their official tax numbers is outrageous, and that short-term gains are taxed even more. They criticize state spending, citing $100k spent at Wallys by Governor Gavin Newsom, and say they are moving to New York City. They also question how Californians can afford a $6.50 iced americano while paying such taxes, and ask why the issue isn't discussed more often.
- @kenny: Farcaster user @davebachinsky breaks kickflip world record (farcaster.xyz)
- Privacy Cluster Leadership Announcement (blog.ethereum.org)
The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new leadership structure for its privacy work, with Igor Barinov joining as coordinator of Privacy @ EF and Andy Guzman taking over as coordinator of the PSE team from Sam Richards. Barinov, founder of Blockscout, Gnosis Chain, and zkBob, will guide strategy and alignment across privacy-focused efforts including PSE, while Guzman will lead applied cryptography, research, and development. The Privacy @ EF Cluster organizes PSE's work across research, product, engineering, and operations, and is built around three pillars: Private Reads, Private Writes, and Private Proving. The announcement notes that more than 700 projects are building in the onchain privacy space.
- Other Internet Book Launch: Berlin & Lisbon (otherinternet.substack.com)
Other Internet has launched its book "Other Internet 2018–2024" with two events this week: Tuesday, September 30 at 6pm at Trust in Berlin, and Friday, October 3 at 7pm at Well Read in Lisbon. The authors Sam, Laura, and Toby, along with friends of Other Internet, plan to read selections from the book, share wine, and talk with attendees. Pre-ordered copies can be picked up at either event, and books are shipping first to the Berlin and Lisbon launches, then to the US fulfillment partner, with arrival estimated at 2-3 weeks.
- Rekt - SBI Crypto (rekt.news)
On September 24, 2025, about $24 million was drained from wallets linked to SBI Crypto, the mining pool subsidiary of SBI Holdings, across five blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash. The article says ZachXBT flagged the outflows on October 1, pointing to instant exchange routing and a Tornado Cash endpoint, with similarities to known DPRK attacks. SBI Holdings' October 2 statement confirmed an "unauthorized outflow" and called the impact on consolidated results "minor," but did not explain how the attack occurred.