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More →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
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">
The city of Albuquerque has officially banned Bitcoin ATMs.
CoinWorld news: Albuquerque, New Mexico, has officially banned the use of Bitcoin ATMs. The ordinance took effect on October 21 and aims to crack down on cryptocurrency-related fraud. The ordinance was passed by the city council on September 9 by a 6-3 vote and took effect after being signed by Mayor Tim Keller. All existing Bitcoin ATMs must cease operations immediately, and operators are required to dismantle them within 45 days after the ordinance takes effect. The city government may impose fines and revoke licenses on businesses that fail to comply. City officials said criminals use cryptocurrency ATMs to defraud vulnerable people, especially the elderly. Mayor Keller pointed out that scammers are constantly looking for new methods and have incorporated these self-service machines into their fraud toolkit. The FBI has received more than 13,400 complaints about cryptocurrency self-service machines, with more than half coming from people over the age of 50.
Global markets crash, gold and silver fall sharply.
CoinWorld data: Global markets crashed today, with gold prices falling more than 1% to around $4,087 per ounce, while silver dropped more than 2.4% to $56.20. Japan's Nikkei index fell about 2.3%, with single-day market losses reaching 17.8 trillion yen. Bitcoin fell below $83,000, Ethereum dropped to $2,445, and the global cryptocurrency market capitalization slid to $2.87 trillion. The sell-off was mainly driven by inflation concerns triggered by rising oil prices. Saudi oil fields were attacked by drones and missiles from Yemen's Houthi forces, and both Brent and WTI crude oil prices broke above $111 per barrel. The market expects the Federal Reserve to maintain high interest rates, leading investors to sell off gold and silver.
The Panama Canal's annual cargo throughput hits a new record high.
According to a report from Bijie, the Panama Canal Authority said on the 20th that due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused by the war in the Middle East, the Panama Canal's cargo volume in the previous fiscal year reached a record high. The canal handles about 5% of global maritime trade. During the fiscal year from last October to September this year, nearly 14,000 ships transported goods through the Panama Canal, with cargo volume reaching 521 million tons, surpassing the previous record of 518 million tons in fiscal year 2022.
Corgi became a hit across Silicon Valley thanks to its beauty marketing, but its second café was shut down just two weeks after opening.
Corgi Insurance became popular in Silicon Valley due to its beauty marketing and plans to open 100 cafes within six months, providing office and social spaces. However, the expansion has run into trouble: 16 leases that were close to being signed have been put on hold, the expansion director and some team members have been laid off, and the three stores that had already been signed failed to open. Corgi's second store in San Francisco, which opened in September, was ordered to close just 13 days later due to the lack of a valid health permit, and the building renovation procedures had also not been completed. Nearby residents filed an appeal, accusing it of being "an office disguised as a cafe." A San Francisco Standard investigation found that none of the customers who participated in the opening events had any need to purchase insurance, exposing the limitations of its marketing model.
Pirate Chain: Attacker exploited a vulnerability to illegally mint 39.82 million ARrr
According to CoinWorld news, the privacy coin project Pirate Chain (ARrr) has issued an announcement stating that on October 14, attackers exploited two transaction validation vulnerabilities to illegally mint approximately 39.82 million ARrr, causing the token supply to be temporarily inflated by about 20%. The project team stated that the vulnerabilities have now been fixed, and after reaching consensus among the community, mining pools, exchanges, and DPoW notary nodes, the blockchain was rolled back to block 4,176,944, which was the block before the attack, removing the illegally minted tokens. The official team requires all users, miners, and exchanges to immediately upgrade to version v6.0.14 or higher and stop running older versions.
Caixin News, October 22: The Philippine central bank raised its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.500%, while the market had expected 5.250%.
CoinWorld news, Cailian Press, October 22: The Philippine central bank raised its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.500%, while the market had expected 5.250%.
Palantir assures Europe it cannot cut off NATO's AI systems
CoinWorld news: U.S. software company Palantir has assured Europe that the military AI system it provides to NATO does not have a "kill switch." This comes after disruptions to Ukraine's Starlink service heightened concerns about over-reliance on American tech companies. Ukraine reported last week that its use of the military-grade satellite service "Starshield" was restricted, hampering its ability to carry out multiple missions, such as using interceptor drones to defend against Russian attacks. Ukrainian officials, the United States, and SpaceX CEO Musk have offered conflicting explanations for the service disruption, but Ukrainian and European officials say they suspect political motives. Louis Mosley, Palantir's executive vice president for UK and Europe, said that neither the company nor the U.S. government can shut down the "Maven Smart System" AI platform used by NATO's military headquarters and the armed forces of several European countries.
Chinese prosecutors are seeking the confiscation of 61,800 bitcoins involved in a $5.7 billion fraud case.
Chinese prosecutors are seeking to confiscate 61,800 bitcoins linked to a $5.7 billion fraud case, and a British court has ruled that Chinese law governs the victims' claims to these bitcoins.