Bitcoin retreats to $70,000 to close out October: CNBC Crypto World

Today, cryptocurrencies head lower as Bitcoin retreats from $72,000. Former FTX executive Nishad Singh avoids prison time. And Faryar Shahzad of Coinbase explains why the company is already funding crypto interest groups for the 2026 midterms. Welcome to CNBC's Crypto World. I'm Mackenzie Segalos. Digital currencies are turning lower this morning, as Bitcoin moves away from the $72,000 mark that it hovered at yesterday. By noon Eastern, that cryptocurrency fell about 2%, while Ether sank around 4.5%. Solana dropping nearly 2% at the same time. And over on Wall Street, Coinbase and Robinhood both reported earnings, and both are headed lower today. Coinbase dropping about 10.5% by around midday after muted crypto trading in the third quarter led to an earnings miss. Robinhood fell more than 15% so far today, after also missing Wall Street's expectations. OK, let's talk about the top stories. FTX executive Nishad Singh avoided prison time in his sentencing yesterday. The ex-employee faced a maximum of 75 years in prison for his role in the collapse of the crypto exchange. But the judge overseeing the case sentenced him to time served and three years of supervised release. Judge Kaplan called Singh's cooperation with the government remarkable, and was convinced that Singh's role in the fraud at the company was far more limited than Sam Bankman-Fried or Caroline Ellison's. Singh is the fourth top employee from FTX to face criminal sentencing, but the first to walk away without a multi-year prison sentence. Gary Wong, the company's ex-technology chief, faces sentencing at the end of November. Next, fintech conference Money2020 just wrapped up in Vegas, and I stopped by to talk to some attendees and find out which parts of the crypto industry are getting the most attention. I'm here at Money2020 in Las Vegas. This is the year's flagship fintech event, where the biggest names in payments talk about what's next for the industry. And this year, what's on everybody's mind is stablecoins, that subset of cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of a real-world asset, which is now virtually synonymous with the U.S. digital dollar. I think what's really interesting at this Money2020 this year is that everybody is talking about fintech. Everybody's diving into the stablecoin industry, stablecoin market. Everybody's focused on integrating finance and technology. It's finally come to this really big place where everybody's getting involved, big players and small players. This is going to be the first year where stablecoins actually settle more than Visa, which is mind-blowing to think about. And I think stablecoins and crypto more broadly have just become much bigger than most people realize. You still see a lot of, like, aha moments when you tell people how big the stablecoin market has gotten, how big crypto has gotten. You tell them 600 million people are already using crypto and their head explodes. AStripe just announced in the last week that it wants to buy a stablecoin an acquisition that many say is designed to help the $70 billion fintech giant diversify its way of facilitating payments. Right now, Visa and Mastercard dominate. They also charge a per-transaction fee to a payment processor like Stripe. But with stablecoins, transactions can cost less than a penny and happen virtually instantaneously. This crypto payment rail has been gaining momentum and attention from some pretty notable names in the business. Earlier this month, Visa announced VTAP, or the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform, which is making it easier for banks to launch their own stablecoins. Blockchain giant Ripple is launching its own stablecoin, as is BitGo. And even PayPal launched a U.S. dollar-pegged coin called PYUSD over a year ago as legacy players look to tap into this new technology. Stablecoins are the bridge between the crypto ecosystem and the traditional financial system. And that's why you see the leading fintechs, right? Stripe and PayPal and Visa and others really, really lean into the use of stablecoins. The question now is whether the big credit card companies will follow suit with their own rival stablecoins. There's also the question of whether the two dominant players in the ecosystem, Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, can keep a hold of their lead. Tether currently has a market cap of more than $120 billion and accounts for roughly 70% of the entire market. Just Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ is looking into Tether for possible violations of sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, a story which Tether says is based on pure rank speculation and that it has no knowledge of any such investigations. Now, whether that probe opens up an opportunity for rivals to take share is yet to be seen. So far, Tether has faced regulatory blowback in the past, but nobody has come close to competing with them for the top slot. Now, outside of stablecoins, the other big talker this year at Money2020 is new use cases for AI in payments. Stripe and NVIDIA unpacked how to use AI to fight fraud and promote growth at the same time. PayPal, Block and Coinbase all talking about the potential for AI to revolutionize payment rails, with Coinbase Ventures just this past week talking about investing in startups building AI on top of blockchains as a way to decentralize the AI stack. The common theme here is that even in the payments industry, AI is seen as a disruptive force that's doing everything from changing the game for home ownership and mortgage processing to reshaping consumer lending. All right, for our main story, crypto's influence on the 2024 race has been a major focus this year, but Coinbase says that it's already looking ahead to the next national election in 2026. The company's CEO, Brian Armstrong, announced that Coinbase was committing another $25 million to Fairshake and helping boost advocates working for stand with crypto, not for this election in five days, but for 2026. Crypto World's Tanaya McKeel spoke to the company's chief policy officer, Faryar Shahzad, to learn more. Coinbase just announced it's contributing $25 million to the pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake for the 2026 election, along with upping stand with crypto's advocates for those midterms. So you're already looking past the election that's happening five days from now. Tell me why Coinbase is making this move right now for the next national race. Well, we've been very pleased with the impact that our political efforts have had already. At this point, we've been able to have good conversation with candidates up and down the ballot at the presidential level and the House, the Senate. And we've been really gratified by the degree to which we've been able to bring the 52 million Americans who own crypto into the political debate and really make a difference. So we're very pleased with what we've been able to do. We already feel like crypto's won the election cycle, and we're eager to kind of stay at it and repeat for the for the 2026 midterms as well. Looking back at 2024 for just a moment, we had Paul Graywall on earlier this week. He expressed optimism about the race for president, regardless of the outcome. He said the same thing on the call last night. How are you feeling about this upcoming election and this bid for crypto candidates? And is this good news, regardless of who wins? Because it seems like just a couple of months ago it was it was a little bit more binary, at least in sentiment. What are your thoughts? No, I very much agree. I mean, it's it's, you know, just as a starting point, it's hard to imagine that you'll have any administration, Democrat or Republican, undertake the same sort of singular attack on one industry as the Biden administration has. So I think getting past the current administration will be a step up in a dramatic way. And for sure, the Trump campaign and President Trump personally have really taken a very forward leaning stance on crypto issues. And we've we've been very pleased by that. But we've also been very pleased by the fact that the vice president has also integrated commentary around blockchain technology, crypto distributed ledger technology and some public remarks. And the conversations we've had with her team have been encouraging as well. So it'll be it'll be a step up and we're hoping it'll be a very significant step up from the status quo. Outside of electing the candidates themselves, what work are you doing to persuade voters who are maybe anti crypto? There is a large contingent of voters who are distrustful of the crypto industry. What do you hear from them? You know, I'm actually not sure if you're the premise of your question is accurate. You know, we joke sometimes that you can get a minivan and fill it with every anti crypto voter in the United States and still have a bit of room left in the car. We're not seeing any sense of anybody being anti crypto. There's a, you know, people obviously have good questions, you know, hard questions about, you know, applications of crypto in this case or that case. And I think that's fair enough. But the American people are generally very optimistic for many people. They understand that innovation is the strength of the country. And to have an administration target a particular area of innovation, one that the U.S. led technology has always been a source of strength. And I think that's true for crypto as much as it is for any other sector as well. And I think that's resonates for Democrats, Republicans left, right across the country. And I think that's part of the power of our community that we've been able to show already this cycle. And then on the congressional side, these interest groups are backing a lot of pro crypto candidates. Should they get into office next year? What's the priority that you expect for them? What's on the to do list? Well, we're still working as a as an industry to try to get legislation through. And that's why these independent groups have been working very hard to get a better, more open minded Congress, you know, elected. And I think they'll be very successful in doing that. There's something like three hundred and fifty five candidates across the House and Senate who are rated as being A's or B's by the standard crypto organization. That's an extraordinary sign of progress from an issue that not a lot of candidates had a view on. And now you have a significant majority of all the candidates running who are taking a positive stance on it. And then you look at all the incumbents who've you know, who have records on voting on crypto issues, particularly House members, Democrats and Republicans, you know, upwards of close to three hundred of whom voted in favor of sensible crypto legislation. So I think the records developing of the sort of the center on crypto issues among Democrats and Republicans is really a constructive one. And there's more work to be done. We actually have to get the legislation done, but I think we'll make good progress next year. OK, that's all for Crypto World today, but we'll be back again tomorrow and we'll see you then.