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Strict Crypto Law Advances in Poland

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Today in crypto, Kazakhstan launched its first state-backed crypto reserve in partnership with Binance, Polish lawmakers passed a sweeping bill to regulate digital assets, and Hyperliquid debuted 4,600 Hypurr NFTs on HyperEVM.

Kazakhstan debuts state-backed crypto fund with BNB

Kazakhstan has established a state-backed crypto reserve in partnership with Binance, marking the country’s latest move into digital assets.

The initial digital asset in the fund’s portfolio is BNB (BNB), the utility token that drives transactions, fees, and governance on Binance’s blockchain, according to a Monday announcement on the Kazakhstan government’s website.

The announcement did not specify how much BNB was purchased to seed the fund, nor did it give any details about what other crypto investments might follow.

The fund, called Alem Crypto Fund, was created by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and is managed by Qazaqstan Venture Group under the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC).

“The primary objective of the fund is to make long-term investments in digital assets and to build strategic reserves,” the announcement reads.

Binance has been a close partner of the Kazakhstan government since 2022, when its then CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Digital Development to help develop the country’s crypto regulatory framework.

The news was announced less than a week after Kazakhstan rolled out its own tenge-backed stablecoin, KZTE, on the Solana network through a partnership with Mastercard, Intebix, and Eurasian Bank.

Poland advances strict crypto bill, sparking public backlash

Polish lawmakers approved a bill regulating the crypto asset market, introducing key restrictions and establishing a dedicated supervisory authority.

Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, voted in favor of a Crypto-Asset Market Act on Friday, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration.

Bill 1424, which has yet to reflect the apparent third-reading vote in the Sejm, introduced a licensing regime for crypto asset service providers (CASPs), aligning Poland’s regulations with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework.

The bill’s passage has sparked a strong community response over its restrictive provisions, which introduce criminal liability for violations, including fines up to 10 million Polish zlotys ($2.8 million) and prison terms of up to two years.

The bill designates the Polish financial supervision authority, the Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF), as the primary regulator of the country’s crypto asset market.

Under the legislation, all CASPs — including exchanges, issuers and custody providers, both domestic and foreign — must obtain a license from the KNF to operate in Poland.

To secure a license, CASPs are required to submit a comprehensive application detailing their corporate structure, capital adequacy, internal controls and compliance systems, risk management policies and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures.

Timeline of Poland’s Crypto-Asset Market Act (Bill 1424) as of Thursday (translated by Google). Source: Sejm

Early Hyperliquid user sells airdropped Hypurr NFT for $467,000

Early adopters of the perpetuals-focused layer-1 blockchain Hyperliquid were rewarded handsomely on Sunday after the Hyper Foundation finally airdropped the much-awaited Hypurr non-fungible token collection. 

The whopping $467,000 sake of Hypurr NFT #21. Source: OpenSea

At the time of writing, the Hypurr NFTs have a current floor price of around 1,458 Hyperliquid (HYPE), or $68,700, according to OpenSea data.

However, there have already been eye-watering sales well above that range. The Hypurr #21 NFT with the extremely rare “Knight Ghost Armor” and “Knight Helm Ghost” traits went for 9,999 HYPE, worth $467,000, on Sunday. 



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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)
Crypto Trends

NYDFS Chief Harris to Leave New York Regulator Next Month

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New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris will leave the regulator next month, she announced Monday.

Harris, a former White House special assistant under former President Barack Obama, will depart NYDFS on Oct. 17, 2025, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement. NYDFS Executive Deputy Superintendent of Research and Innovation Kaitlin Asrow will take over as acting head of the agency. NYDFS was the first state regulator to issue specific rules for crypto firms with its landmark BitLicense, which came into effect 10 years ago.

In statements, Hochul and Harris thanked each other, with Hochul saying Harris worked “every day to make our financial system work for New Yorkers, while also rebuilding the Department into a regulator fit for the financial capital of the world.”

Harris first took office as the acting superintendent in August 2021, after Hochul nominated her to the role, and was confirmed by New York’s state senate the following January.

“It feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago, all at the same time,” Harris said of her four-year tenure earlier Monday during an appearance at the Digital Asset Compliance & Market Integrity Summit hosted by Solidus Labs.

In that time, she said, NYDFS had issued 11 different pieces of regulatory guidance to bolster the regulator’s landmark BitLicense.

“The industry had already changed so much from 2015 to 2021 when I came in, it felt really important that we start to add meat to the bones of the regulation,” she said.

This included guidance for dealing with stablecoins, blockchain analytics and coin listings, among other pieces of information, she said.

“I think it’s a real testament to what we’ve done out of DFS that folks in both chambers of Congress, folks on both sides of the aisle, come to us for our technical expertise, for advice, for edits, much of which have been incorporated — not all — but into the current market structure bill,” she said.

NYDFS also undertook investigations and enforcement actions, including into the Binance dollar stablecoin (BUSD) issued by stablecoin firm Paxos following an investigation dating back to 2023.



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TikTok is just another tool in Larry Ellison’s quest to run the world.
Gaming Gear

TikTok is just another tool in Larry Ellison’s quest to run the world.

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For most of his career Larry Ellison has been content to quietly let Oracle be the company, behind the company, behind the technology that makes headlines. Its biggest products being cloud computing and database products that it sells to enterprise customers like DHL, Northwell Health, and Fanatics. But, now in his 80s, Ellison has begun a second act shifting from Silicon Valley pioneer, to media mogul.

Compared to many of the other people at the top of the Forbes Billionaires list, Larry Ellison tends to keep a low profile. That’s not to say he hasn’t seen his fair share of headlines, especially in recent years. But he, and his company Oracle, aren’t being routinely dragged in front of congress for high profile shouting matches, or being accused of ruining an entire generation of children in op-ed pages.

But over the course of his career, Ellison has developed a reputation for ruthless and sometimes ethically dubious behavior as head of Oracle. Biographer Karen Southwick even called him a “modern-day Genghis Khan.” Her book Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison, released in 2003, already identified Ellison as a man who would stop at nothing to have absolute power over his company, or his industry, purging executives “who dare to stand up to him” and engaging in hostile takeovers of competitors. He even bought most of a Hawaiian island, where the population is suspiciously exuberant in their praise of him.

His ventures into the media space began modestly enough by backing Annapurna Pictures and Skydance Productions, companies founded by his children Megan and David Ellison, respectively. Eventually both of those companies expanded to become major players in the television and video game spaces. But things have accelerated dramatically since then.

He briefly expanded his power at Annapurna in 2018 as his daughter’s studio found itself buried in debt. His role in day-to-day operations isn’t clear, but he spearheaded a reorganization of the company, brokered a deal to pay off the $200 million in debt, and changed how Annapurna would finance films going forward. Rather than rely on bank loans, the studio would seek investors for projects on a case-by-case basis or simply be financed by Megan Ellison entirely.

In 2022 Larry Ellison gave Elon Musk $1 billion to help fund his purchase of Twitter (now X). And last year Skydance Media merged with Paramount creating a conglomerate with almost unmatched reach. While Larry’s son David runs Paramount on paper, it’s the father who actually owns the company. This means that Larry Ellison owns a controlling stake in a broadcast network (CBS), a major streaming platform (Paramount+), multiple movie studios, CBS News, and pay-TV channels like Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, and Showtime.

And now Oracle is likely going to own a major portion of TikTok in the US. Many details of the deal are still murky, and there’s been some contradictory reporting about what will and won’t remain in ByteDance’s control. But as Clare Malone says in a recent New Yorker article, it’s unlikely the deal will do much to address any of the supposed national security concerns around TikTok and, “instead, the deal’s more immediate impact would be to bolster an emerging media conglomerate, under the auspices of the Ellison family, who are assiduously friendly to Trump.”

I think Malone is underselling things quite a bit in describing the family’s empire as “emerging” however. Paramount Skydance is already one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. And one that has shown a willingness to make decisions destined to please the president, like pushing a prominent critic of the administration in Stephen Colbert, off the air. David Ellison is also rumored to be in talks to acquire Bari Weiss’ The Free Press, and “the new owner of CBS News is weighing giving Ms. Weiss the job of editor in chief or co-president of the network,” according to the New York Times. Weiss portrays herself as a sort of centrist provocateur, though the most frequent target of her antagonism is the “mainstream media,” a foil that lines up nicely with the White House’s interests.

Some of this embracing of right wing interests and offering tokens of appeasement might seem par for the course to keep the White House off your back as a media company in 2025. But Larry Ellison’s behavior over the last 40-plus years has shown he won’t let things like rules, or even good sportsmanship, stand in the way of him getting what he wants. Oracle’s yachting team was caught cheating at the 2013 America’s Cup and Ellison famously hired private detectives to dig up dirt on Microsoft and Bill Gates during the company’s monopoly woes in 1999.

Now Paramount is reportedly looking to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which would give the family ownership of another major movie studio, another major streaming service (HBO Max), CNN, and more. To call the scope such a merger unprecedented would be dramatically underselling things.

What makes this family empire so unique is, as the New York Times points out, if he wants to continue to build out his budding media monolith, money isn’t a constraint. Larry Ellison’s wealth fluctuates by as much as $100 billion a day — more than the GDP of roughly two-thirds of the world’s countries according to the International Monetary Fund. While Ellison hasn’t shown much of a penchant for running a media company so far, his staggering wealth gives him plenty of leeway for making mistakes and learning on the job.

Larry Ellison already had his hands on a significant amount of American medical and financial data through Oracle. He’s helped build some of the world’s largest AI datacenters. Last year he added a major news outlet and traditional media conglomerate to his portfolio and, unless something unexpected happens, he’ll wield significant influence over one of the world’s biggest social media networks. In what feels like record time Larry Ellison has gone from a relatively lowkey, if excessively wealthy and flamboyant, tech CEO to one of the most powerful people in the world. And all the while his politics seem to be taking a more conspiratorial bent.

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Wendy in Alien: Earth Episode 8
Esports

3I/ATLAS tanks energy blast from the Sun as alien tech theories intensify

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3I/ATLAS, long suspected by some to be alien tech, was hit with a direct blast from a massive solar eruption, and new reports reveal the interstellar object could be way bigger than previously believed.

In late September, the Sun fired off a violent coronal mass ejection (CME), a blast of plasma and magnetic fields, directly at the mammoth object as it speeds through the solar system at roughly 137,000 mph.

While comets within our system have been recorded enduring such encounters before, seeing an interstellar visitor withstand a solar strike is unprecedented.

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Back in 2007, NASA’s STEREO A spacecraft watched comet Encke lose and then quickly regrow its tail after a CME impact.

Scientists are monitoring whether the blast alters its trajectory or sheds new material that could reveal more about its makeup.

NASA3I/ATLAS has baffled scientists and sparked numerous alien theories.

3I/ATLAS could be way bigger than believed

This energy blast comes as Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who has long argued that 3I/ATLAS could be alien technology, revealed it could be much bigger than originally thought.

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By analyzing its movement and outgassing, Loeb estimates the mass of 3I/ATLAS exceeds 33 billion tons, far more than expected.

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“Is 3I/ATLAS an unusually massive comet with an unusual chemical composition on an unusually rare trajectory or alien technology?” he wrote in a blog post.

“In both cases, the object could shed CO2 and H2O ices from material that collected on its frozen surface as it plowed through interplanetary and interstellar space. We should not decide about the nature of 3I/ATLAS based on the chemical composition of its skin, for the same reason that we should not judge a book by its cover.”

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Loeb argues that if its core measures larger than three miles, the idea that it formed naturally from known interstellar materials becomes unlikely.

The astrophysicist has even suggested that 3I/ATLAS could be a technological artifact, possibly a probe sent to observe Earth. A paper he co-authored outlined two possibilities if the object is indeed intelligent: either its intentions are benign, or they are not.

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DexertoNASA insists 3I/ATLAS isn’t aliens.

Meanwhile other researchers, such as Susanne Pfalzner of Forschungszentrum Jülich, have suggested the object could even act as a “planet seed,” carrying material capable of kick-starting world formation around young stars.

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NASA, however, maintains that 3I/ATLAS is just a comet and not a mothership on its way to invade Earth. Still, the agency itself recently announced possible evidence of ancient alien life on Mars, a discovery that only adds to the atmosphere of speculation.

And even if 3I/ATLAS isn’t the beginning of an alien war, the space agency has expressed a desire to launch nukes at a “city killer” asteroid headed towards the Moon in 2032.

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As 3I/ATLAS continues its journey past Mars in the coming months, scientists and conspiracy theorists alike will be watching closely to see if this enigmatic traveler reveals more of its secrets.



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Sei price chart
GameFi Guides

Sei price nears bearish breakout as transactions plunge 87%

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Sei price has crashed to an important support level and formed a descending triangle as the number of transactions and active addresses plunged in September.

Summary

  • Sei crypto price has formed a descending triangle pattern.
  • The number of transactions plunged by 87% in the last 30 days.
  • Sei’s unique active wallets fell by 20% in the same period.

Sei (SEI), a popular layer-1 network, plunged to the key support at $0.2645, its lowest level in August and September this year. 

Data compiled by Nansen show that the number of transactions plunged by 87% in the last 30 days to 57 million. This crash makes it one of the worst-performing chains in September.

The data show that active addresses dropped by 24% to 13 million. Also, fees dropped by about 12% to just $16,000.

Sei’s performance in the gaming market, where it dominates, also deteriorated. According to DappRadar, the number of unique active wallets dropped by 20% in the last 30 days to 13.45 million. 

More data shows that its total value locked plunged by 17% in the last 30 days. Most notably, Sei’s stablecoin supply dropped to $140 million, its lowest level since March and much lower than the year-to-date high of $296 million. 

Sei price technical analysis 

Sei price chart | Source: crypto.news

The daily timeframe chart shows that the Sei token price peaked at $0.3895 in July and then dropped to a low of $0.2645. It has crashed below the 50-day exponential moving average.

Sei crypto price has formed a descending triangle pattern whose support is at $0.2645. This is one of the most popular bearish continuation signs.

The Relative Strength Index has been in a downward trend. It has moved close to the oversold level of 70, while the MACD has moved below the neutral level.

Therefore, the token will likely have a strong bearish breakout, with the next point to watch at $0.1325, its lowest level this year. This target is about 50% below the current level. A move above resistance at $0.3500 will invalidate the bearish Sei price forecast.



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Battlefield 6
Game Updates

What Saudi Arabia Buying EA Means For Battlefield 6, Sports Games, And More

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Why does Saudi Arabia want to make games? What will the largest leveraged buyout in history mean for EA and its employees? How will the consequences of the new $55 billion deal ripple out across the rest of the video game industry? I reached out to some analysts to get their take on the sale and what it tells us about the state of gaming now, and where it’s headed. Here’s what they said.

A “soft-power” play

“This is the second-largest deal in games history—$50 billion for a mature publisher whose growth engine has stalled,” Joost van Dreunen, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and author of SuperJoost Playlist, wrote in an email to Kotaku. “It shows how sovereign capital, not just Big Tech, is now dictating who controls cultural IP. It also highlights how public-market fatigue with slow-growth publishers is pushing them toward privatization.”

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has mandated $38 billion be invested in turning the country into a gaming powerhouse, with sizable chunks of that already being spent on buying up mobile game makers, taking over esports, and acquiring equity in major gaming companies (it already owns 10 percent of EA going into the sale). While other private equity partners are part of the sale, Bloomberg reports that the majority of the funding comes from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

In the latest edition of his newsletter, van Dreunen points to the illogic of the the deal’s financial math, which values EA much more highly than its current cash flow would suggest it should be for a leveraged buyout in which $20 billion is financed through debt. He argues the deal underpins Saudi Arabia’s willingness to overpay for U.S. cultural IP, as well as Wall Street’s loss of interest in legacy gaming businesses whose growth potential has stalled out in recent years. “At the center sits the irrational financial logic that tells you it’s about power, prestige, and staking Saudi Arabia’s claim in American entertainment,” he writes.

Gaming continues to consolidate in search of growth

The conventional wisdom was that amid the post-pandemic flurry of market consolidation, EA would merge with someone sooner or later. It reportedly engaged in acquisition talks with Apple and others back in 2022, with a potential deal to to merge with NBCUniversal eventually falling apart over price. Pundits have called on Disney to buy the publisher of Madden and FIFA (now EA Sports FC) for decades. “We couldn’t be in a stronger position as a standalone company,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said back in 2022.

What’s changed since then? EA hasn’t has a new runaway success story since Apex Legends, which shadow-dropped back in 2019 and stumbled last year amid declining interest. EA Sports FC, Madden, and now College Football are the core games sustaining the publisher, but it’s unclear where they go from here. Battlefield is taking on Call of Duty again for the first time in years, but it’s an expensive live-service gambit at a time when few new multiplayer games seem to be able to stick for any length of time.

“EA’s mobile games business has traditionally underperformed and should be a much larger part of its overall business,” Piers Harding-Roll, Games Research Director at Ampere Analysis, told Kotaku in an email. “This alignment could help transform EA’s mobile business. EA’s revenue growth in recent years has been benign, so the opportunity to drive growth and build out a long-term strategy by bringing together a cross-section of expertise is attractive to both parties.”

The publishers attempts to adapt its hit franchises into mobile games have either been canceled (Battlefield), quickly closed down (Apex Legends), or struggled to bring in boatloads of money (Madden). “The deal creates opportunities for Saudi Arabia to strengthen its console & PC presence, and provides EA with an opportunity for synergy with [Saudi-owned mobile developer] Scopely for ongoing mobile expansion, now that both are under the PIF,” Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research and Insights at Niko Partners, told Kotaku in an email.

Leveraged buyouts are a recipe for pain

Big private-equity deals involving lots of debt often bring with them sharp cuts. Business analysts will call this “right-sizing” or “rationalizing the business,” but what it means is people paid a fraction of their CEO’s salary get fired. EA currently has roughly 15,000 employees, a number many industry watchers expect to decline. “Leveraged buyouts deposit a large amount of long-term debt on the company being acquired and an additional $20 billion of debt will need to be serviced through cutting costs and building more margin from existing businesses to generate more free cash flow,” Harding-Roll said.

There’s been a lot of debate on whether going private will free the company up to invest in franchises long-term rather than invest almost exclusively in games that deliver predictable quarterly returns. Could a lack of shareholder pressure yield more single-player blockbusters, or provide EA with enough runway to give the next Mass Effect as much time in development as it needs? Or will the debt crunch incentivize EA to lop off anything that’s not generating revenue and retreat even further into annualized sequels?

“EA’s empire is heavy on sports and sprawling studios, so some ‘right-sizing’ is inevitable—expect a sharper split between the sports division and everything else, some studio consolidation, and likely relocation of certain functions to Saudi Arabia,” van Dreunen told Kotaku. “Being private could also tilt its content strategy back toward longer-cycle franchises rather than quarter-to-quarter live-ops churn. Battlefield gets a cushion, but there will be trims and a sports-versus-everything-else carve-out.”

Unconventional players in uncharted waters

Video games are a notoriously chaotic business, mergers are inherently unpredictable, and a sovereign wealth fund has never owned one of the biggest gaming publishers in the world before (following Activision’s sale to Microsoft, EA is the biggest non-platform, non-Chinese company in gaming by revenue). While it’s reasonable to explain the deal by pointing to Saudi Arabia’s global PR blitz and synergies in sports and mobile gaming, it’s also reasonable to think it’s way too early to tell how this will shake out, especially when you throw a $20 billion loan into the mix.

“I can’t say I know what it all means yet, or what this deal will result in when it comes to EA’s games and studios,” Mat Piscatella, Circana’s Director of Gaming Research, told Kotaku. “I’d hazard to even attempt to speculate at this point. Of course, leveraged buyouts have a certain history that generally hasn’t been great for the acquired companies, but I do not know if that will be the case here given the parties involved.”

“It’s very much about aligning gaming and esports alongside entertainment and sports as key diversification pillars for the Saudi economy,” Ahmad added. “The deal also begs the question of what will come in the future regarding mergers and acquisitions for the global games industry, given the ongoing consolidation trend, and the ability for smaller companies to break through to walk among the giants.”

While more layoffs may be a grim inevitability, the analysts Kotaku spoke with didn’t predict any seismic shifts in the immediate aftermath of the deal, set to close next summer. “I don’t expect any significant changes to the upcoming slate of games over the next couple of years,” Harding-Roll said. “The biggest opportunities remain growth of the Battlefield franchise, growth of the EA Sports FC franchise during the World Cup 2026 and bigger exposure to mobile gaming.”



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EA CEO says company values will 'remain unchanged' under the new ownership of Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner's investment firm
Product Reviews

EA CEO says company values will ‘remain unchanged’ under the new ownership of Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner’s investment firm

by admin



Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson says the company’s acquisition by a consortium made up of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners investment firm, and private equity firm Silver Lake represents “a new era of opportunity,” and that “our values and our commitment to players and fans around the world remain unchanged.”

Wilson shared the sentiment in a memo sent to employees shortly after the deal, valued at $55 billion, was made public.

“This moment is a recognition of your creativity, your innovation, and your passion,” Wilson said. “You have built some of the world’s most iconic IP, created stories that have inspired global communities, and helped shape culture through interactive experiences. Everything we have achieved—and everything that lies ahead—is because of you.


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“We are entering a new era of opportunity. This is one of the largest and most significant investments ever made in the entertainment industry. Our new partners bring deep experience across sports, gaming, and entertainment. They are committed with conviction to EA—they believe in our people, our leadership, and the long-term vision we are now building together.”

I’m not sure how much “deep experience” the new partners—in reality, new owners—really bring to the table. Affinity Partners is owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who to the best of my knowledge is not a big videogame aficionado but does have significant financial involvement with Saudi Arabia, perhaps most notably a $2 billion investment in Affinity Partners made by the PIF just six months after Kusher left his role as senior adviser to the president during the first Trump administration.

The PIF is known for being a big player in gaming and esports, with holdings—directly or through its Savvy Games Group subsidiary—in Capcom, Embracer, ESL, Nexon, Nintendo, Take-Two, and more. It’s also faced accusations that it’s using these properties as a form of “sportswashing” to distract from its human rights record as well as more specific allegations, such as the finding by multiple Western intelligence agencies that Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammad bin Salman—also the chairman of the PIF—ordered the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Saudi Arabia has also faced allegations of sportswashing in actual sports, most notably the PIF’s controversial takeover of Newcastle United FC in 2021.

The news, which began to break yesterday, has caught the gaming industry by surprise. Partly because nothing about it immediately screams ‘potential for exciting synergies!’ in the same way you might argue of other megabucks deals, like Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard, or Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, although your mileage may vary on how those have turned out. It also begs the question of what’s in store for EA’s non-sports games, particularly the likes of its RPG output. Still, Wilson said that all is well, and predicted a bold, fruitful future for EA.

“Our values and our commitment to players and fans around the world remain unchanged,” Wilson wrote. “With continued rigor and operational excellence, we can amplify the creativity of our teams, accelerate innovation, and pursue transformative opportunities that position EA to lead the future of entertainment. Together, we’ll create experiences that are bold, expressive, and deeply connected to inspire generations of players around the world.

I find that bit interesting too: Talk of amplifying creativity and accelerating innovation is largely meaningless but it does bring to my mind thoughts of AI, and all the wonderful things C-suite executives think (or hope, or wish) it could do in place of actually creative people.

Wilson previously expressed great enthusiasm for the potential impact of AI on game development in 2024, when he took a big bong rip (figuratively, you understand) before waxing poetic about billions of people around the world “creating personal content and expanding and enhancing the universes that we create”—and also how to use it to make the company 30% more efficient, which if you’ve been following along for any length of time at all you’ll recognize as another way of saying ‘layoffs.’

For now, though, Wilson—who will remain in his position as CEO after the deal is done, for some time at least—is grateful to the people at EA who made the $55 billion buyout possible. And surely not just because he and other senior management will likely have been sat on very sizeable stock options before the sale happened.

“Thank you for your creativity, your commitment, and the passion you bring to EA every day,” he wrote. “This is a historic moment, and with the support of our new partners, the future we are building together is brighter than ever.”



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The Best And Biggest PC Gaming Deals
Game Reviews

The Best And Biggest PC Gaming Deals

by admin


The leaves are turning orange and brown. Pumpkins and scarecrows are appearing on porches all around your town. It’s fall, the best season of the year. And as with every seasonal shift, fall brings with it a big ol’ limited-time Steam sale featuring hundreds and hundreds of discounted PC games.

On September 29, Valve kicked off the big Steam Fall Sale. There is precisely a metric shit-ton of games on sale on Steam from now through October 6, so you have a week to dig through everything and hopefully find a good deal on big games like Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Diablo IV, and many, many more. To help you out, I’ve dug around for a bit and pulled out some of the biggest and best deals currently available on Steam.

Also, as a heads up: The LCD Steam Deck is currently 20 percent off on Steam, too. If you’ve been wanting to jump into PC gaming, this is a great way to do that, and many of the games listed below will run great on a Steam Deck.

Anyway, here’s my list of highlights, arranged alphabetically. And yay, the comments are back, so we can all help each other find good deals. If you spot anything not on this list that you think is worth buying or checking out that’s on sale right now, leave it in the comments below.

  • Assassin’s Creed Mirage – $15 ($50)
  • Assassin’s Creed Origins – $6 ($60)
  • Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – $18 ($70)
  • Control Ultimate Edition – $4 ($40)
  • Cyberpunk 2077 – $21 ($60)
  • Dead Island 2 – $15 ($50)
  • Death Stranding – $20 ($40)
  • Desperados III – $4 ($40)
  • Diablo IV – $23 ($50)
  • Doom Eternal – $4 ($40)
  • Dying Light – $5 ($25)
  • Far Cry Primal – $4 ($30)
  • Forza Horizon 5 – $30 ($60)
  • Greedfall – $3 ($35)
  • High on Life – $10 ($40)
  • Hogwarts Legacy – $12 ($60)
  • Horizon Forbidden West – $36 ($60)
  • Left 4 Dead – $2 ($10)
  • Monster Train – $2 ($25)
  • Monster Train 2 – $20 ($25)
  • Monster Hunter Wilds – $49 ($70)
  • Persona 5 Royal – $21 ($60)
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – $30 ($60)
  • Ready or Not – $25 ($50)
  • Red Dead Redemption II – $15 ($60)
  • Resident Evil 4 remake – $20 ($40)
  • Resident Evil 7 – $8 ($20)
  • Resident Evil Village – $10 ($40)
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider – $3 ($30)
  • Rome: Total War Remastered – $8 ($30)
  • Sea of Thieves – $20 ($40)
  • Sniper Elite 5 – $5 ($50)
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – $8 ($40)
  • Two Point Campus – $3 ($30)
  • Warhammer 40k: Space Marine II – $30 ($60)

 



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Bitcoin Rockets 4% Amid Massive $442 Million Whale Move
NFT Gaming

Bitcoin Rockets 4% Amid Massive $442 Million Whale Move

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  • Bitcoin sees 140% volume surge as whales activate
  • BTC holds above $110,000

The Bitcoin ecosystem has witnessed renewed momentum as trading activities soared dramatically over the last day. 

On Monday, September 29, on-chain tracking platform Whale Alert identified a massive Bitcoin transfer involving over 3,900 BTC, according to its latest X posts.

Further data revealed that the large BTC transfers were executed via unidentified wallet addresses in two separate transactions. Together, the transfers amounted to more than $442 million.

Notably, these transactions have raised eyebrows across the crypto community, coming at a time when investor sentiment suddenly shifted, driving crypto asset prices sharply upward.

Bitcoin sees 140% volume surge as whales activate

Following the move, Bitcoin not only posted strong daily gains, rebounding above the $113,000 mark, but also recorded a massive 140% surge in trading volume over the last 24 hours.

While the large transactions coincided with the market’s positive momentum, it appears that rising whale activity has contributed to the asset’s price recovery, though the mysterious nature of both transfers makes it difficult to confirm whether they were buy attempts or sell-offs.

Historically, large and unidentified BTC transfers like these are often traced to institutional redistribution activities or moves by high-net-worth investors.

With multiple significant BTC transactions spotted among firms such as BlackRock and Strategy today, it appears that whales are actively positioning ahead of what could be a major market event.

BTC holds above $110,000

After days of trading deep in the red and falling below $110,000, confidence seems to be returning as Bitcoin now holds well above that level, trading at $113,856 at the time of writing.

Source: CoinMarketCap

With trading volume rocketing 140% and price gains reaching 4%, analysts predict Bitcoin is heading toward resistance between $113,500 and $114,000, potentially setting the stage for a strong start to the new month.



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XRP
Crypto Trends

Pundit Claims That Ripple Is Building The Banking System Right On The Blockchain Using XRP

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Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

Both Ripple and XRP have been a topic of debate in the crypto community for years. However, recent discussions have reignited interest in its current and future role within the global finance sector. Market experts are now asking whether XRP is genuinely reforming the financial system or simply recreating existing banking structures on the blockchain. Despite scrutiny, the cryptocurrency continues to have a significant influence on the cross-border payments industry. 

Ripple To Replicate Traditional Banking With XRP

Market expert Xaif Crypto shared a video post on X social media, highlighting the views of Jeff Booth, a Canadian Entrepreneur and author best known for his bestselling book ‘The Price of Tomorrow.’ According to Xaif Crypto, Booth emphasized that XRP is essentially mirroring the existing traditional banking system rather than subverting it.   

In the video, Booth elaborates that traditional bank models rely on creating money through lending and charging interest—a system that has remained largely unchanged for centuries. The Canadian author noted that while the concept of decentralization and blockchain-based money transfer is promising, applying it within a closed, controlled system for governments and banks may undermine its transformative potential. 

His analysis underscored the nuances in the ongoing debate over the purpose of cryptocurrencies. He also stressed that not all participants in the crypto space are acting with ill intent, highlighting that some are genuinely attempting to innovate and transform the space. Nevertheless, replicating traditional banking practices on a decentralized ledger raises both philosophical and practical challenges. 

Booth notes that if the blockchain merely reproduces a system based on perpetual interest and money creation, it may reinforce the very inequalities that decentralized technology was created to address. His commentary further suggested that while XRP may be a step toward modernizing banking infrastructure, it may not fully achieve the vision of a truly reimagined financial system that is decentralized and equitable. 

XRP As A Foundation For The Digital Era

A contrasting perspective comes from crypto analyst Pumpius on X, who highlighted comments from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse from years ago. According to him, Garlinghouse asserted that XRP, along with Bitcoin, has the potential to surpass traditional assets such as gold and diamonds. 

Unlike gold, which has historically functioned as a long-term store of value, or diamonds, which rely on scarcity and luxury appeal, Pumpius stated that XRP is positioned as programmable money with global settlement capabilities. He underscored that altcoin is not merely a speculative asset but a structural component of the emerging digital economy. 

By enabling rapid, programmable transactions, Pumpius declared that XRP could serve as the backbone for trade, settlements, and identity anchoring for the digital era. The analyst’s vision frames the asset as the foundation of a new monetary order, where traditional assets face competition from digital ones designed for efficiency and integration into global finance rails.

XRP trading at $2.88 on the 1D chart | Source: XRPUSDT on Tradingview.com

Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.



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