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More →Crypto Long & Short: Why real-world assets need fixed-rate loans onchain
You're reading <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Crypto Long & Short</a>, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. This is your institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week: <em>…and if you’re looking for more institutional insights: ETF Central’s <a href="https://www.etfcentral.com/global-etf-survey/2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>Trackinsight Global ETF Survey 2026</a>, produced with Calamos Investments and S&P Dow Jones Indices, finds nearly 7 in 10 professional investors are reassessing their ETF holdings.</em> <em>Plus, CoinDesk’s latest <a href="/research/digital-assets-quarterly-review-and-outlook-q3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Assets Quarterly Report</a> is out now.</em> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-klemballa-80101812/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>- Kim Klemballa</a> <em>by <a href="/author/peter-gaffney" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Gaffney, co-founder, O2O Capital Partners</a></em> Fixed-rate lending is the clearest growth lever for real-world assets (RWAs) in decentralized finance (DeFi). It unlocks a strategy that credit desks have run for decades but DeFi has never meaningfully implemented: buy a quality income asset, borrow against it at a locked rate below the asset’s yield and buy more of the asset. Stablecoins are steadily sitting around $300 billion in <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/stablecoins" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>supply</a> and aggregate <a href="https://o2ocapital.com/research/rwa-vaults-institutional-track-record" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>vault assets</a> are nearing the $20 billion milestone. Morpho alone carries more than <a href="https://data.morpho.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>$16 billion</a> in deposits, most of it in variable-rate markets priced on pool utilization, which serve crypto-native traders who manage liquid positions in real time but leave longer-dated borrowers with uncertainty. Fixed-rate, fixed-term lending closes that gap by matching the term of the loan to the duration of the collateral, especially for RWAs whose redemptions can settle anywhere from T+7 to T+90. With the borrow cost and maturity known at entry, institutional counterparties can underwrite an RWA looping vault the same way they approve conventional term financing. This is the same bedrock foundation that formed and grew traditional credit markets to $51 trillion in US <a href="https://www.sifma.org/research/statistics/research-quarterly-fixed-income-outstanding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>fixed income</a> versus $1.6 trillion in <a href="https://www.lsta.org/content/morningstar-lsta-leveraged-loan-index-analysis-december-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
Ken Griffin Says AI Is 'Almost Certainly' in a Bubble—And Compares GPUs to Airline Seats
Ken Griffin, founder of the Wall Street giant Citadel, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-stocks-are-probably-in-a-bubble-but-might-be-worth-holding-onto-says-citadels-ken-griffin-87f535ce" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">said</a> Tuesday that investors are “almost certainly” in an AI bubble—though he isn’t telling them to dump their AI stocks. “What’s left in the wake of these bubbles, if we want to use that word, is often game changing for the world. And the companies that are on the other side of that bubble are the market leaders for decades to come,” Griffin said at Citadel’s Future of Global Markets Conference in New York on Oct. 20 This reaches beyond tech investors, since the AI buildout has <a href="https://decrypt.co/359175/nvidia-earnings-steady-markets-ai-spending-debate-intensifies" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">underpinned equity markets</a> over the past year, so many index funds and retirement accounts hold a slice of it. A bubble is what happens when prices climb far faster than the businesses behind them can justify, until reality catches up. Citadel is a hedge fund, a private firm that invests money for wealthy clients and institutions. But the fact that it seems like a bubble isn’t <i>that</i> big a deal if you look at the big picture, according to Griffin. “Any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble,” he said, recalling the internet boom and adding that he wishes he had kept his Amazon stock. The companies that emerge on the other side of a bubble tend to lead markets for decades, he argued, though he stopped short of predicting a collapse. His own firm is a case study: Griffin said AI agents, software that carries out multistep tasks on its own, cut some high-level Citadel research from weeks to a couple of hours. Griffin compared GPUs, the graphics chips that many companies use to train and run AI models, to airline seats. Both have a very low marginal cost to run, meaning the extra expense of serving one more customer is tiny, so prices can collapse once supply outstrips demand. He pointed to the telecom boom around 2000, when companies laid more fiber-optic cable than demand required and communication prices fell. He also doubted that chips five or six years old, which still earn rental rates he called extraordinary, will keep doing so for another five or six years. Buyers are getting pickier, Griffin said, sorting which jobs justify premium models from OpenAI and Anthropic and which can run on cheaper open-source alternatives, meaning models anyone can download and run on their own computers. Corporate America has been uneven at extracting value from AI, he added, with companies studying their bills from the labs and asking where the productivity is. Gartner forecasts worldwide<a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-09-17-gartner-says-worldwide-ai-spending-will-total-1-point-5-trilli
Railway security flaw leads to approximately $371,000 in cryptocurrency being stolen.
CoinWorld data: Railway disclosed that its security breach is linked to blockchain investigator Taylor Monahan, with approximately $371,000 in cryptocurrency stolen across 19 EVM-compatible networks. According to Railway's security disclosure on October 21, the cloud deployment platform detected anomalous activity in the system that stores customers' environment variables, which may include sensitive information such as API keys, database passwords, and private registry credentials. Unauthorized third parties may have accessed encrypted variables and obtained their decrypted contents, although the company said the investigation is still ongoing and the number of affected customers has not yet been determined. Monahan reported that attackers stole cryptocurrency from private keys stored by Railway, and the alleged theft involved more than 500 transactions across 200 different addresses. Her findings estimate losses at approximately $371,000, with activity involving at least 19 Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchains. Monahan identified the suspected attacker's address and noted that the first known cryptocurrency theft transaction occurred on October 21 at 19:36 UTC. Railway has not independently confirmed the reported cryptocurrency losses or determined how the attacker obtained the wallet credentials confirmed by Monahan.
Tesla and Nvidia invest $2.8 billion in Samsung Electro-Mechanics
According to Bijie.com, Tesla and Nvidia will invest $2.8 billion in Samsung Electro-Mechanics factories.
The Nikkei 225 index fell to a near three-month low amid risk-averse sentiment.
Nikkei 225 falls 2.65% to close at 62,907.84, its lowest close since July 30, as risk-aversion sentiment runs high. Analysts at Intouch Capital Markets said investors are beginning to question whether the latest round of AI corporate earnings is strong enough to justify current elevated valuations, and whether it is reasonable for companies to keep making large-scale investments in computing infrastructure. The analysts added that renewed geopolitical concerns are further intensifying the pressure on a market environment that is sensitive to economic growth.
Walmart plans to launch an AI shopping agent feature within a month, allowing users to set spending limits and revoke permissions at any time.
According to Bihaiwang news, Walmart plans to launch an AI shopping agent feature within the next month, allowing AI agents to shop on behalf of users. Users can set their own spending limits, track the AI agent's shopping records, and revoke its access at any time. Walmart stated that the AI agent cannot access users' bank card information and cannot change payment methods. The feature is designed to let AI agents carry out shopping tasks on users' behalf while preserving users' control over payment security and spending behavior.
The injured in the attack at Dammam Airport came from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, and Nepal.
Saudi civil aviation authority: Those injured in the attack at Dammam Airport are from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, and Nepal, respectively.
Bybit has obtained an exchange services license from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.
Bybit announced today that Bybit Fintech FZE has successfully obtained a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), with the license scope covering exchange services (spot trading). This license is an important milestone in Bybit's development in Dubai, where the company established its international headquarters in 2022. Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, said that Dubai has made significant progress in building a virtual asset regulatory environment, and Bybit looks forward to continuing to deepen its presence in Dubai, supporting the local digital asset community, and developing its business in strict accordance with the standards set by VARA. Peter Loo, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer of Bybit, said that obtaining this license is an important step forward, and Bybit highly appreciates the work VARA has done in establishing a clear and robust virtual asset regulatory framework. As its business in Dubai continues to grow, Bybit looks forward to continuing to maintain close cooperation with VARA, and hopes in the future to expand the licensed business scope to derivatives trading.
Saudi civil aviation authority: Wednesday's attack on Dammam, Saudi Arabia, has killed two people.
Cointime news, Saudi civil aviation authority: The attack on Dammam, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday has caused two deaths.
Pirate Chain suffered a minting vulnerability attack, has rolled back blocks and released a mandatory update.
According to CoinWorld news, the privacy coin project Pirate Chain suffered a minting vulnerability attack. The attacker exploited two validation vulnerabilities to mint approximately 39.82 million ARRR, increasing the supply by about 20%. The vulnerability has now been fixed, and the community has reached a consensus to roll back the chain to block 4,176,944. The counterfeit tokens have been removed, and balances have been restored to their state before the attack. Pirate Chain has released a mandatory update, v6.0.14, requiring all nodes, mining pools, and exchanges to upgrade immediately.