Weekly Roundup 10/23/26 (Gold alchemy, rogue financial AI agents, GENIUS implements stablecoin yield) (EP.746)

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news. In this episode:

• Marathon Fusion says it has turned mercury into stable gold

• What would commercially viable alchemy mean for Bitcoin's scarcity argument?

• AI tools uncover a major vulnerability in PHP

• A certificate authority's private keys turn out to be trivially guessable

• Railway warns developers to revoke their secrets after a cyberattack

• Banks are finding third-party AI agents inside customer accounts

• Who's responsible when your AI agent acts without instructions?

• The OCC finalizes its GENIUS Act rules

• Stablecoin issuers can't pay yield directly, but where does that leave third-party rewards?

• a16z reportedly plans to drop "crypto" from its flagship fund's name

• Ali Yahya is leaving to start a company

• Microsoft, Alphabet, and Goldman Sachs object to tokenized versions of their shares

• Should public companies have a veto over tokenizing their stock?

• Polymarket faces growing pains as Kalshi gains ground

• Are perpetual preferred shares a new source of Bitcoin demand?

• Can compute derivatives give investors a way to short the AI boom?

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Marathon Fusion, Alchemy

• OCC, Final Rule to Implement the GENIUS Act

• Fidelity Digital Assets, Perpetual Preferred Stock: The Newest Demand Catalyst in Bitcoin

• Bitwise, Q4 2026 Staking Report

• Wired, The DEA's Premier Crypto Detective: Clues Led Straight to Her Own Family

• Bloomberg, Polymarket Investors Push CEO Coplan for Change as Kalshi Gains Ground

• The Wall Street Journal, Want to Short the AI Boom? She Wants to Give You a Way to Bet on Compute Prices