Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner (@Tyler_Did_It). The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

NEAR Intents Hacked for $3.8M, Fully Restored Within Hours

NEAR Intents briefly shut down on Thursday after an attacker extracted roughly $3.8 million from the cross-chain swap service.

The vulnerability sat in the layer that moves funds in and out of the platform, and in how that layer communicated with the main holding user funds. On-chain investigator ZachXBT traced the stolen funds to KuCoin, where they were converted into bitcoin. The team reported the incident to law enforcement and said a full report is forthcoming.

NEAR Intents lets users swap crypto across different blockchains with the option to do so privately. The tool has been a major beneficiary of the privacy boom, handling more than $30 billion in swaps across 35 networks. Cross-chain services that move funds between networks have historically been frequent targets for attackers, a backdrop that shaped how quickly this response was judged.

The response to the hack was fast. The contract-side flaw has been patched, and core services came back within about an hour. Deposits and withdrawals on 11 networks — including BNB Chain, Polygon, and Optimism — stayed down for another 12 hours while the rest of the fix was put in place. Every affected user will be paid back in full.

NEAR fell nearly 9% to $4.86, and shares of the Bitwise NEAR ETF dropped more than 7%. That fund launched two days earlier, meaning its first week included a hack of the exact product Bitwise had cited as proof the network was growing.

Measured on the spectrum of how hacks can go, the newsletter called this as close to "the best version of a bad event" as it gets. Kelp DAO was exploited for hundreds of millions of dollars. Bitget lost $387.5 million and froze withdrawals for four days. MetaMask pulled validators offline and has said almost nothing since. NEAR Intents, by contrast, found the bug, stopped the service, patched it, restarted within an hour, named the problem publicly, contacted law enforcement, and committed to making users whole — a rapid response to a very contained hack with minimal damage.

Some observers have gone as far as calling it a "bullish hack," in the mold of the ZCash exploit discovered by that project's own team. Whether the incident ultimately proves bullish for NEAR, the newsletter noted, will become clear soon enough. The full post-mortem the team has promised is the next concrete milestone to watch.

Macro Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors were green, up 2–4%: BTC +3% at $86,400, ETH +2% at $2,740, SOL +3% at $122, HYPE +1% at $91, and ZEC -1% at $1,380. Top altcoin movers included SKY (+17%), AAVE (+11%), ZRO (+12%), and VVV (+8%).

Oil fell 4% to $89, while gold added 0.3% to $4,220. Stock futures were green as oil and bonds fell: the Dow +0.6% and the Nasdaq +0.7%.

The SEC proposed rules letting investment advisers and funds hold crypto directly, including holding the keys themselves when no custodian is available. The 760-page plan also allows state trust companies to act as custodians and includes quarterly check-ins on whether a custodian has become available. Custody has been one of the most contested questions in US crypto regulation, and as a proposed rule it would still need to clear a public comment period and a final Commission vote before taking effect.

Illinois agreed to delay its crypto tax by six months while a court fight continues.

Trump is hosting a third dinner for the biggest holders of his memecoin on November 22 at his Virginia golf club. The top 185 holders get in, the top 29 receive a reception, and the top four receive an 18-karat gold watch.

Evernorth's shareholders approved its Nasdaq listing, making it the largest public company built purely around XRP. The transaction closes October 7, and the company starts trading as XRPN on October 8 with about 473 million XRP, worth roughly $705 million. The single-token treasury structure has become a familiar model among public crypto companies, giving equity investors a listed wrapper for token exposure.

USDT is coming back to Bitcoin this month through Utexo, a Tether-backed company with a license to issue the stablecoin there. Utexo uses a system called RGB that lets users hold dollars and bitcoin in one wallet, with Lightning support planned next.

Fiserv's digital asset platform went live Thursday, starting with Roughrider Coin from the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

Corporate Treasuries and ETFs

The Bitcoin ETFs saw $103 million in net inflows on Thursday, while the ETH ETFs recorded $55 million in outflows and Solana products had $1.1 million in outflows.

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were green, up 2–5%: DOGE +2%, SHIB +2%, PEPE +2%, PENGU +2%, TRUMP +4%, SPX +2%, and BONK +4%.

Robinhood chain leaders were mixed: Pons -2% to $360 million, AI -2% at $154 million, and Cashcat +3% at $174 million, while Genie +500%, Shroom +24%, and Moo +80% led the top movers.

Solana's top movers were led by www +135x, Hooked +180%, Cards +26%, and Sapling +170x.

Token, Airdrop and Protocol Tracker

Pump led onchain protocols in revenue with $2.62 million, followed by Hyperliquid at $1.44 million, Stonk at $940,000, and Collector Crypt at $750,000.

The Ethereum Foundation launched zkAPI, a way to pay for AI without the provider knowing who you are. Users deposit ETH or USDC once and can then prove they have the funds without revealing which deposit is theirs. The system is live on Ethereum now and was built with the Open Anonymity Project.

What Is Happening in NFTs?

NFT leaders were mixed: Punks flat at 33 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.18 ETH, and Pudgy -7% at 3 ETH. Quotrons (+6%) and OTC Desks (+14%) led the top movers.

The only 7-Trait CryptoPunk sold for approximately $5.9 million on Gondi, though the full sale details were not disclosed overnight.

Source: Decrypt – Morning Minute