Richard Heart caught “off guard”, QDay draws closer: the hodler’s Digest 9 min read HEXUSD HEX wipes out $246 million in market capitalisation following the arrest of its founder. The market capitalisation of HEX fell from $561 million to $315 million this week after its founder Richard Schueler, better known to the crypto community as Richard Heart, was detained by authorities in Istanbul on 14 October. Police seized $7.15 million in cash, as well as firearms and ammunition, during a dawn raid in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, and searched 15 related addresses, according to the Turkish Minister of Justice, Akın Gürlek. Police seized nine luxury vehicles registered in the name of Schueler’s wife, according to the Anadolu news agency. The seizure also reportedly included 28 watches, 300 bags and 19 graphics cards. Interpol issued a “red notice” against Schueler two years ago for allegations of tax fraud and assault, after Finnish authorities requested his arrest. A spokesperson for the National Bureau of Investigation of Finland declined to comment on the case. Turkish media refer to Schueler as “Whale James” and have linked him to an unregistered $1 billion securities offering in the United States. This case was however dismissed by a US judge in February 2025. Images circulating in the Turkish media appear to show a surprised Heart, without trousers, with his lower body blurred, which has sparked much mockery on social media. HEX’s outspoken critic, Eric Wall, who has debated Schueler on video and social media, said he initially thought the image was AI-generated, but now believes it is real: “I am fairly certain I died in a plane crash in 2015 and, since that day, I am only still alive in a marginal reality where everything is designed to be as funny as possible.” HEX supporters claim that authorities have not yet confirmed whether Schueler has been officially arrested or charged. Images circulating in the Turkish media. Ledger’s response to wallet tampering costs $849 and will ship next year. Ledger unveiled a new device on Thursday offering better protection against tampering, days after confirming that wallets sold through a reseller in Asia contained malicious implants. The French hardware wallet manufacturer introduced Atom, an $849 device that combines a crypto wallet with everyday applications in a smartphone-like design. Atom separates Android applications from sensitive wallet operations and integrates protections that, according to Ledger, would block the implants used during the recent incident in Asia. The company claims the device detects tampering even when switched off. With marketing scheduled for summer 2027, Atom will also support validations by AI agents, encrypted messaging and post-quantum cryptography. Meanwhile, a war of words has broken out between former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles and Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier. Karpeles claims that at least two people informed Ledger as early as December 2025 of the presence of spyware inside tampered Ledger wallets, and points out that the company had even mentioned the problem on its website in March 2026. He claims the company did not take the necessary steps to secure its reseller supply chains, now suspended across Asia after the theft of more than $90 million. Gauthier responded sarcastically on X that Karpeles was “not a white knight” and recalled his failures in the period leading up to the Mt. Gox hack. Karpeles replied: “I was hoping you would do better than that. I held Ledger to a higher standard than Mt. Gox, because I trusted you to do better by learning from my failure, to be better than me.” Source: Made with Google AI QDay draws even closer as Starknet votes on its transition to a post-quantum L1. Google demonstrated a new process called “magic state distillation” on its Willow quantum processor, which reduces errors by a factor of 40. This technique achieved a record accuracy rate of 99.99% for a specialised quantum state required for advanced calculations. Meanwhile, Theta Labs has published three new quantum circuits likely to reduce the number of qubits needed to break elliptic curve cryptography by 28%, compared to Google’s current estimate of 1,175 logical qubits. While there are fears that AI is now so proficient at mathematics that it could break elliptic curve cryptography even before the arrival of QDay, Starknet has opened a vote to transform from an Ethereum L2 to a post-quantum L1. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson believes that Ethereum’s post-quantum roadmap might be too slow to meet the AI challenge, meaning Starknet must consider becoming a fully post-quantum L1. “Protecting cryptos against quantum computers is urgent: we must therefore move at lightning speed,” he told Cointelegraph. More than 99% of votes cast to date are in favour of this evolution. The Starknet token lost nearly 50% of its value this week, following a sharp rise last week. Standard Chartered pushes back its $2 trillion forecast for stablecoins to 2030, while the EU adopts USDC. Standard Chartered says stablecoin transactional activity continues to grow while overall market value stagnates, suggesting that existing stablecoins are circulating more frequently rather than new supply driving growth. The bank now says it expects the stablecoin market capitalisation to reach $2 trillion by 2030, two years later than initially forecast, after the market peaked at around $309 billion this year. Meanwhile, the European Banking Authority has classified Circle’s USDC stablecoin as a significant electronic money token under the European Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework. This classification has only been granted to 45 projects. Binance.US aims for a $1 billion valuation as part of a possible $100 million fundraise. Binance.US is reportedly seeking to raise up to $100 million in a funding round that could value the crypto exchange at $1 billion. According to a Bloomberg article published on Thursday, the US-based crypto exchange is seeking private investment to grow its business. The potential $1 billion valuation would be significantly lower than the $4.5 billion pre-money valuation obtained in 2022, when it raised $200 million in seed funding. Winners and Losers At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) was down 3.8% at $81,484, Ether (ETH) was down 5.7% at $2,386 and XRP (XRP) was down 8.3% at $1.28. Total market capitalisation stood at $2,720 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Monero (XMR), up 9.7%, Injective (INJ), up 5.6%, and Celestia (TIA), up 5.1%. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Starknet (STRK), down 46.7%, Pump.fun (PUMP), down 27.1%, and Raydium (RAY), down 26.5%. Forecast of the week According to Hougan, from Bitwise, third-quarter charts herald a “crypto spring”. Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, says the third quarter may have been “one of the best quarters in crypto history”, arguing that a clear rebound in crypto prices and the growth of on-chain markets herald the start of a “crypto spring”. In its quarterly market review published on Thursday, Bitwise reported a 46.4% quarterly increase in its large-cap crypto index, as well as $6 billion in inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which brought year-to-date net flows back into positive territory. “Page after page, it’s always the same: the most recent part of the chart is trending strongly upwards,” Hougan wrote. “This is exactly what you want to see if you are looking for the beginnings of a crypto spring.” FUD of the week MSCI adopts index exclusion rules that could push out Strategy. Index provider MSCI has adopted new rules that could lead to the removal of Strategy, Metaplanet and Upexi from its global indices, while several other companies holding cryptocurrency reserves remain at risk of exclusion. In August, Strategy opposed these changes, but also downplayed potential disruptions, stating that funds tracking MSCI’s Global Investable Market indices hold approximately 13 million shares, or 3.1% of its basic shares outstanding. The company stated that these holdings represented less than one day’s trading volume. Russia will ban direct peer-to-peer crypto transactions from July 2027. Russia will ban direct peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency transactions between individuals from July
