The institutions that once dismissed

crypto are now rebuilding finance around

its core ideas. 21 financial giants

coming together to build their own

stable coin network and compete with the

crypto incumbents. I'm going to tell you

about that and much more today on the

Daily Wolf. Let's go.

What is up everybody? Welcome to the

Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your

host, Scott Melker, also known as the

Wolf of All Streets. And we've got about

15 minutes to dive into this heap of

news and try to find some signal in the

noise. First of all, I highly suggest

that you watch my 900 a.m. show on

YouTube. I had my friend Mike Alfred on

and it was absolutely dripping with

alpha. A lot of incredible investment

ideas and concepts were discussed. You

should be checking that show out at 9:00

a.m. every single day on my YouTube.

Now, first before we even get into the

first story, we did have some ADB

private payroll data dropping today. We

of course have more job uh data dropping

on Friday from the government, but many

viewed this report as soft. Private

employers added only 38,000 jobs in

August and forecast roughly 47,000.

Of course, uh it's what happens versus

expectations, not what happens in a

vacuum that matters. Manufacturing and

professional business lost 16,000 while

all of the additions came through

education and health services which

added 45,000 jobs. So clearly the labor

market here is cooling. Maybe that will

give the Fed some cover to talk about

cuts, but we don't really have all the

data yet. And of course none of us

really believe all the data anyways

because uh the government always revises

their job data when you're not looking.

So, Bitcoin, you know, the story here

obviously is that Bitcoin is trading

within a increasingly complex macro

picture. We all know that the bond

market is reeling, that Bessant has

tried very hard to uh support that

market, but the bond vigilantes have

laughed and yields have continued to go

up. That's happening all over the world.

Oil prices are up. The situation in Iran

is increasingly more difficult. And of

course, now we have mixed job data.

Nobody really knows what is coming and

that's usually a very hard environment

for Bitcoin which is why I'm so

optimistic that it traded up even in the

midst of all this. So let's dive in now

to the actual first story of the day

which is absolutely massive.

City Goldman other global banks and

asset managers team up on stable coin

venture. This is 21 major financial

institutions committing to establishing

a new stable coin company during the

second half of 2026 subject to closing

conditions. This is Bank of America,

Capital 1 City, Goldman, Wells Fargo,

Fidelity, Wisdom Tree, Deutsche Bank,

Santander, UBS, MUFG, and more. So

listen, this was announced at the end of

last year actually that there were 10 of

them that were looking at potentially

maybe sort of considering the chance

that they would do something. Well, now

we have a firm date and a firm plan and

that is increased from 10 to 21

institutions. So, they're saying that

they will have a dollar denominated

stable coin by the beginning of 2027 and

that a euro stable coin is the next

priority with additional G7 currencies

potentially following

it is heating up in stable coinville. So

the potential use cases that they've

floated in their proposal here is

crossber payments, digital asset

settlement, wholesale and institutional

transactions, but importantly potential

retail payments, which also was not in

the initial proposal they were looking

at. I also found it very very good news

that the tokens are intended to operate

on public blockchains rather than

exclusively inside a private bank

network. They have not announced what

public public blockchains that will be,

but I can assure you that when they do,

that will be extremely bullish for the

underlying tokens. Will it be an

Ethereum or will it be a Salana or

something quieter like others have done

like a Stellar or maybe even a Canton

network? We do not know what it will be,

but it's big news that it is not going

to be behind a walled garden. They say

obviously that these will be Genius

compliant in the United States and Micah

compliant in Europe. So, I mean, I I

honestly think that this is massive

news. It doesn't mean it's massive news

necessarily for the crypto market large

or for prices, but it's very clear that

we are seeing massive institutional

adoption of the underlying technology

that was born of Bitcoin when the

blockchain was first created. Now,

what's obviously interesting is that

this is increasingly uh eliminating the

moat that people believe circle once had

and tether of course. So think about the

announcements that we've had of late. So

obviously Circle went public last year.

They were sort of the darling USDC of

the institutional market and United

States compliance. Tether is still on

the outside looking in when it comes to

compliance in the United States, but

they have USAT and have plans obviously

to bring USDT under the Genius. But I

reported last week on the community

banks and regional banks coming together

for their own stable coin network. Then

we had the news reports months ago of

OpenUSD, which is a consortium of

fintexs and tech companies, Stripe,

Coinbase, and others creating their own

stable coin network. And that was, you

know, through Stripe's tempo. And now

you have the banks themselves coming in

to compete. It just shows you how

important this space is and that this is

100% going to be the underlying

technology of the future. And obviously

the cities and goldmans of the world do

not want that to be owned by private

blockchains. Now there's a ton of money

to be made in stable coins es especially

when rates are relatively high. Tether

is uh probably per employee one of the

highest uh grossing companies on the

planet. They make billions and billions

and billions of dollars simply by

gathering stable coins uh gathering

dollars, minting stable coins, then

holding those dollars in treasuries that

are liquid and earning the interest,

right? It's a massive massive business

and none of these financial institutions

want to see that going to a crypto

incumbent. I mean, it's very clear here

that the technology itself that stable

coins are going to become commoditized.

What everybody wants is the ability to

earn money and to own that space moving

forward. Now, will a consortium of 21

huge institutions

uh be able to agree on governments

economics control? Who will issue it?

Who will custody it? There are a lot of

big questions here. Tether has a huge

leave lead. So does Circle. So I I can't

say that this is going to be successful.

I can only say that every institution on

the planet wants a piece of the stable

coin business and this is arguably

arguably the largest announcement that

we have had supporting that. Now putting

putting dollars on a blockchain does not

remove centralized control especially

when you talk about institutions like

that. But even with crypto incumbents it

may simply transfer that control from a

bank account to the token issuer. And

that leads us into the next story.

Tether sued over a $42.4 million freeze.

The lawsuit challenges Tether for

allegedly freezing 42.4 million USDT

before US warrant. The plaintiffs allege

that Tether acted in response to an

informal US law enforcement request more

than 3 months before a seizure warrant

was issued. So this is two Thai

businessmen suing Tether over the

freezing of their 40 plus million

dollars in USDT that they held across 10

Ethereum addresses. This is a very

important reminder and the issuers of

stable coins will be first to tell you

this is not Bitcoin in self-custody.

This is not decentralized. They will

absolutely work with law enforcement to

freeze your assets if they are given

that directive and sometimes to

preemptively free freeze your assets

ahead of that. Now,

there's also this interesting nuance

where maybe the coins have been involved

in some criminal activity, but the

person who actually received them in

their wallet was not a part of that. And

there's a lot of complexity to how this

goes down. The issue is that this was

allegedly tied to the pig butchering

scams that we've talked about over and

over and over again where people made

billions of dollars scamming people all

over the world using crypto. But they're

asking now the plaintiffs for an order

to unfreeze the tokens which are still

froz fro frozen to prevent tether from

burning and reissuing them before

ownership is resolved and they want

damages and interest. So this is not

primarily a question of whether tether

has the technical ability to freeze

USDT. We know that it does. That ability

has helped recover stolen funds and ask

assist law enforcement over the years.

The real question is at what point do

they freeze them? the directive from

what government and what grounds do

people have uh for recourse if their

assets are wrongfully frozen. This is

just part of the growing pains of the

adoption of a new technology but it will

be interesting to watch and see how this

plays out because it could offer some

precedent moving forward. Now we have

two big pieces of news from the SEC. SEC

proposes to modernize rules for

registered transfer agents and SEC

announces agenda and panelists for

roundt on preparations for 24-hour

trading. The SEC is not stopping. On the

crypto side, they're not waiting for the

clarity act, but they are trying to

write rules and bring together the

industries to make those rules sensible.

So, the first the two things here, this

transfer agent news, the SEC has

proposed the first major modernization

of its transfer agent rules in decades.

Now, if you don't know, transfer agents

are the ones who maintain official

shareholds. They process transactions.

They distribute dividends. They manage

ownership changes following mergers and

other corporate actions. This is a

421page proposal, but it specifically

addresses tokenized securities,

blockchains and distributed ledgers,

smart contracts, cyber security and

asset protection, and whether blockchain

records can be reconciled with official

ownership records. This is a crypto

story. This is the modernization of the

financial plumbing of the United States

financial system and it's happening in

real time at the SEC. The other story

there obviously is the 24-hour trading.

I say to all my friends on Wall Street,

welcome to hell. We've been doing this

the whole time. You can flip me and

coins, Bitcoin, and Ethereum on a Sunday

night at 3:00 a.m. when we decide to

launch uh war in Iran. Well, welcome to

the party. You no longer get to go sit

in the Hamptons. you're going to have to

be at work at 3:00 in the morning on

Sunday like the rest of us. So clearly

we're uh seeing a wholesale shift in the

adoption not only of the crypto

technology underlying but the 24/7 365

market that has been revolutionized by

our industry. Now the next story is not

a crypto one but I can guarantee you it

will be. OpenAI is about to release its

first AI model with critical cyber

abilities. Maybe don't.

What are these headlines?

[clears throat] It's like you know Astra

which is like Hydro or Fable or Dave I

don't know man just make up a name right

but during their testing for Astra

discovered and exploited two previously

unknown vulnerabilities it built a

working browser compromise it escaped a

software sandbikes box all the things it

can go exploit you and there's nothing

you can do about it of course it can

also help people identify potential

exploits but we're just releasing into

the wild these AI models repeatedly that

can do nefarious things without any

humor human telling them to do it. And

it's fine. It's fine. I just love the

headline. They're about to release its

first AI model with critical cyber

abilities. Just don't or put some

guardrails in place. Listen, this is the

future, right? We have to hope obviously

that uh the good guys are going to beat

the bad guys when it comes to these

things. But we're going to be seeing

this kind of thing over and over and

over again. the crypto side of that

story obviously

is that it's going to be used to take

advantage of a uh crypto and smart

contracts in general, but all of these

dead protocols that I keep telling you

about that have, you know, sometimes

hundreds of millions of dollars in

market cap still attached to them, but

there's nobody working on security,

there's no active development, there's

no community, and you may be holding a

token right now in your wallet that has

nobody working on it that you know Astra

is going to come out there and hack and

take it. This is happening on a every

other day basis seemingly and so I just

want you to be aware that as AI becomes

more complex be becomes starts to think

on its own your cris crypto becomes

increasingly more at risk. And now we

have our favorite segment of most shows

which is how not to invest. Hit it.

>> How not to invest. [music]

>> How not to invest.

And the story of the day for how not to

invest is

buy meme coins with credit cards on

Robin Hood wallet and FOMO appears to

sidestep card network rules. So listen,

there's the story that it's sidest

stepping card network rules which in and

of itself is interesting and I'll tell

you about that very briefly. So

basically the block uh they did some you

know uh so sleuththing and they were

able to buy meme coins directly through

Robin Hood wallet and FOMO using

ordinary credit cards. uh connected

through Apple Pay and Google Pay uh

using checkout system crossment. But

what's interesting here is you're not

supposed to be able to do that because

many card issuers restrict

cryptocurrency purchases. They think

that crypto transactions are treated as

cash advances which carry higher fees.

Well, these were labeled as digital

goods, digital assets basically, and not

as crypto specifically, more like buying

digital art or something like that. So

that's an interesting story. Somebody

earned Chase points by doing it, right?

Okay, great. The real story is here is

don't buy volatile assets on credit

cards.

You're going to pay 20% interest to buy

a memecoin that could go to zero before

your transaction actually goes through.

I think the average hold time for these

things is less than 5 minutes. This is

just a bad idea. It's almost worse than

leverage. Buying it on a credit card

with a high interest rate that

inevitably will send you into bankruptcy

is not the way to interact with

memecoins or the broader crypto market

or probably any financial asset.

Kind of the opposite side of the barbell

and spectrum here from the stable coin

story that I told you at the beginning.

That's all we got for the Daily Wolf

today. I will be back on the next Daily

Wolf tomorrow. Peace.