Good morning! It’s Matt. Quick housekeeping: yesterday’s pod had a weird audio issue — my pause-gaps between stories vanished thanks to a glitch in the voice-enhancer, so the segments ran together. My choice was either publish the jumbled but enhanced version, or a raw track that sounded rough. I picked the former. Sorry about that — today should be back to normal, and once I’m back in a proper studio instead of the road rig, quality will step up another notch. Alright, church announcements over — let’s get into it.
💼 Australian Retirement Funds Missed Out on Crypto Rally
🏦 US Fed Hosts Payments Innovation Conference on Crypto and AI
🤖 Brian Armstrong Wants Half of Coinbase Code Written by AI
🔑 Who Owns the Most Ether in 2025
🐻 Bitcoin Bear Market in October With $50K Bottom Target
📅 Bitcoin Breaks Red September Streak Third Year in a Row
📊 Bitcoin ETFs See Biggest Inflows Since Early August
📉 Trader Cobb & Market Training via The Grow Me Co
Australia’s pensions are barely touching crypto
Australia’s self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) — which collectively control about a quarter of the nation’s AU$4.3T retirement pool — are sitting on ~AU$3.02B (~US$1.9B) of crypto as of June. That’s less than 0.3% of their portfolios and, notably, the figure has barely budged since mid-2024 despite this year’s rally. Crypto exposure doubled last year, then stalled. Given SMSFs’ conservative mandate, most won’t size up until regulators finish the rulebook. Fair question for readers abroad: should pensions hold Bitcoin/ETH directly, via ETFs only, or not at all? The upside is obvious in bull runs; the drawdown risk is just as real when retirees’ money is on the line.
The Fed is convening a payments summit — stablecoins, tokenization, AI
Circle Oct 21 on your calendar: the Federal Reserve is hosting a payments innovation conference focused on stablecoins as settlement assets, tokenized credit markets, and AI’s role in fraud, risk, and credit. Governor Christopher Waller framed it as “safety and efficiency” in rails, but the subtext is bigger: stablecoins and tokenization are being treated as core plumbing, not curiosities. Expect talk of reference pricing, interoperability, and bank–custodian partnerships.
One piece that set off my spidey sense: AI-driven credit scoring. In theory, smarter models mean better risk pricing. In practice, we already live in a gamified score system that rewards “playing the credit game” more than basic financial responsibility. Layering opaque, data-hungry models atop that — fed by phones, cars, shopping patterns, — risks turning every behavioral breadcrumb into a gatekeeper for mortgages, insurance, and jobs. If they go there, “explainable” and auditable models with human oversight have to be non-negotiable.
Coinbase wants AI writing half its code
Brian Armstrong says Coinbase’s goal is 50% of daily code authored with AI by October (it’s ~40% today). He admits he previously came down too hard on devs who resisted AI tooling, but the direction of travel is clear — and it mirrors the rest of tech. Productivity gains are real.
So are the trade-offs: reduced code comprehension over time, safety regressions you don’t notice until prod, and the obvious job-security shadow. Critics also keep hammering the “data cow” point: these models are trained on human work, but the economic upside tilts to platforms. Expect this tug-of-war to intensify as more companies standardize “AI-first” engineering.
Ethereum’s concentration: 10 addresses, 61% of supply (with asterisks)
By the latest tally, the top 10 Ethereum addresses hold ~61% of all ETH. Most of that isn’t a “whale” problem so much as an infrastructure reality: the Beacon Deposit Contract alone carries ~56% as proof-of-stake collateral. Then you’ve got exchange hot/cold wallets (Coinbase, Binance, Upbit, Robinhood), ETF/ETP custodians (BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, Grayscale), plus a handful of corporates and early builders (Vitalik, Lubin, Winklevoss) in the mix.
Two takeaways. First, staking collateral and exchange pools are concentrated by design; that doesn’t necessarily equal control over governance or markets. Second, dispersion on the user side is still thin: out of ~130M unique addresses, fewer than 1.3M hold a full ETH. Some of that’s expected — most people fund multiple wallets with gas money — but it’s a reminder that broad retail ownership is still early.
October: bear-trap or launchpad?
Two headlines sitting side by side today tell the whole story. One camp says the four-year cycle demands a new bear market beginning in October with a slide toward $50K. The other argues September’s “red month” curse has already been broken two years running, and with rate-cut hopes, ETF inflows, and institutional demand, “Uptober” can continue for a third straight year. Can both be wrong? Sure. The honest answer is that macro (rates, jobs, credit), flows (ETFs, pensions), and sentiment (risk appetite) will settle it on the field.
My framework: 110K is the line of scrimmage. Dips into 109–107K are acceptable churn. I start paying close attention near 105K; lose that with momentum and Q4 looks shakier. Craig Cobb zooms further out than I do and says even 90K wouldn’t break the higher-timeframe uptrend — you may not like that ride, but structurally it’s still a series of higher highs and higher lows. Different timeframes, different conclusions; know which game you’re playing.
Mailbag
SavageMailman: “I can’t be the only one who hears Matt saying BTFD (not financial advice) when SOL was under $100.”
I hope you weren’t. And the real muscle wasn’t clicking “buy” — it was holding through doubt, FUD, and chop. The mental game is the game.
Crypto movies: Leo Cox recommends Cold Wallet on Tubi/Prime. IMDb has it at 5.1 — perfect “on in the background while you cook” territory. I’m still waiting for a truly great crypto-adjacent film… which is why I’m oddly hopeful for Killing Satoshi when it lands
Prices
Prices — As of 8:44 a.m. ET
🔴 Bitcoin (BTC): $110,661 (↓ 0.7% 24h, ↓ 2.3% 7d)
Range: still holding.
Resistance: ~112K.
Support: ~105K is the first “uh-oh” level; Craig’s macro view tolerates down to 90K.
🟢 Ethereum (ETH): $4,397 (↑ 1.0% 24h)
🔴 XRP: $0.283 (↓ 0.6% 24h)
🔴 BNB: $847 (↓ 0.7% 24h)
🔴 Solana (SOL): $207 (↓ 1.0% 24h, ↓ 3% 7d)
🟢 Dogecoin (DOGE): $0.216 (↑ 0.3% 24h)
🔴 TRON (TRX): $0.338 (↓ 0.2% 24h)
🔴 Cardano (ADA): $0.815 (↓ 1.9% 24h)
🔴 Total Market Cap: $3.82T (↓ 0.7%)
Bitcoin share: $2.20T
Ethereum share: $530.9B
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Hit me on Substack, Spotify comments, or matt@dailycryptonews.net with questions, rants, or your Uptober vs. Downtober call. See you tomorrow — and as always, happy hodling.
