Senate Report Targets Tether's Iran Exposure

Alleged Rug Ring Hits Robinhood Chain | Robinhood Brings Perps to US

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
September 30, 2026

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Good Morning.

Robinhood is bringing leveraged perps onshore under a regulated banner, a genuine step toward keeping US traders out of offshore venues, yet its own chain is the backdrop for alleged rug rings and a priority fee that may buy nothing at all. Meanwhile, a Senate report faults Tether for freezing too little, even as the issuer points to $550M it did freeze. The pattern is not simply that crypto is getting safer or riskier, but that the infrastructure for accountability is arriving unevenly, and often only after someone outside the system goes looking.

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In Today's Email:

What Matters: Senate Report Targets Tether's Iran Exposure 👀
Case Study: Alleged Rug Ring Hits Robinhood Chain 🔎
Governance & Features: Robinhood Brings Perps to US 🇺🇸

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Narratives: Industrialized Rugs

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WHAT MATTERS

Senate Report Targets Tether's Iran Exposure

State of play: A Senate investigation alleges Tether's USDT has become the backbone of Iran's shadow banking system, exposing a structural tension between the stablecoin's unmatched liquidity and its ability to police sanctions at scale.

Democratic investigators on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations analyzed on-chain data from 846 sanctioned or blocked wallets tied to Iran.
Of 757 wallets implicated in Iranian terrorism financing, 87% transacted predominantly in USDT.
Investigators attribute the preference to USDT's dominance on Iranian exchanges and its deeper liquidity compared with rival stablecoins.
The report accuses Tether of repeatedly failing to freeze wallets, even those with publicly known links to Iranian entities or terror groups.
Tether countered that it helped freeze $550M in Iran-linked USDT over the past year.

Why it matters: Any link between the largest stablecoin and sanctions evasion puts pressure on Tether, the exchanges listing USDT, and the case for stablecoins as compliant infrastructure.

Our take: Tether freezes wallets only when governments ask, and this report reframes that passivity as a choice. The bigger risk is a precedent requiring issuers to run proactive surveillance.

For builders and investors: Compliance tooling becomes a differentiator, and heavy USDT exposure deserves a second look.

CASE STUDY

Alleged Rug Ring Hits Robinhood Chain

State of play: On-chain researcher Wazz alleges a single operation extracted $18.43M across 53 token launches on Robinhood Chain in two months, a claim that, if accurate, shows how launchpad tooling lets serial extractors industrialize rugs.

Wazz says 45 launches are linked by money flows, with one launch's proceeds funding the next launch's deployer key, often seconds before it signs.
Nearly every launch was allegedly sniped for over 70% of supply and bundled across 70 to 200 wallets, mostly through Pons V2.
The operation reportedly ran fake launches of PINK, CRUMBS, and DEED before revealing the real contracts, harvesting the same hype twice.
CRUMBS, LEGS, and PINK were the largest alleged extractions at $3.12M, $2.9M, and $1.44M respectively.
Most funds reportedly sit in ETH and cannot be frozen, though Wazz says every linked wallet is tagged in a database he plans to release.

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INSIGHTS

Axiom's $10.8M Priority Fee Questioned

State of play: Pseudonymous researcher Moka alleges Axiom's default "Priority" fee has quietly collected $10.86M since July while delivering no measurable speed advantage, effectively operating as an undisclosed second trading fee on top of the published 1%.

The fee is a flat 0.001 ETH transfer inserted into each trade and routed to Sherwood Express, an undocumented relay run by Hello Moon.
It was switched on by default on Robinhood Chain on July 21, jumping from zero to 86.7% of trades without users opting in.
Robinhood Chain's sequencer ignores bids above the base fee, and in 1,058 same-second races tipped trades won only 50.1% of the time.
On Base and BSC, tipped trades beat equal-gas rivals just 51% and 48% of the time, while the real priority fee costs a fraction of a cent.
Small traders bear the most cost, with the median buy paying 1.72% extra and one in twenty paying over 33%.

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

Robinhood Brings Perps to US

State of play: Robinhood is positioning itself as the regulated US home for offshore-style crypto trading, announcing in-app perpetual futures for eligible users in the coming months as it moves to capture demand that has long flowed to venues abroad.

Perps will cover BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK, and HYPE, with up to 10x leverage on BTC and ETH and 3x on the rest.
Bitstamp will support the product, with fees set at 0.01% per trade through year end and P&L settled every 15 minutes.
Robinhood also plans 24/7 trading for a curated list of US stocks and ETFs via Bruce ATS, pending regulatory review.
A new Robinhood Agents feature lets users build AI agents in-app for research, strategy, and automated trading.
Its agentic trading service, launched in May, has drawn over 150,000 accounts, with agents calling its tools nearly 30M times a day.

Other notable feature updates:

Avant Protocol launches on Base via Morpho.
Aave V4 proposed for deployment on Monad.
Maple Finance upgrades Syrup tokens to CCIP 2.0.
Ondo Perps launches spot trading for Ondo Stocks.
Morpho launches P2P Orders on Morpho Midnight.
Robinhood launches perpetual futures for US users.
WOO X launches dedicated MiCA-aligned EU platform.
SteakhouseFi partners with Loopr on Robinhood Chain.

QUICK BITES

Coinbase receives DCO approval from CFTC.
The SEC Is finally modernizing transfer-agent rules.
OpenAI valuation could hit $1.4T in new funding round.
Tether’s USDT at center of Iran’s shadow banking network.
Robinhood to launch perps, weekend stock trading for US users.
Kalshi in advanced talks to raise new funding at $40B valuation.
Ethereum schedules Glamsterdam upgrade on Sepolia for Oct. 6.
Comer presses Crypto.com, Hyperliquid and PredictIt on identity checks.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Lorenzo Valente’s read on Tokenized Equities.
RWA Foundation’s read on RWA Perps Report September.
Miles Jennings’s read on exchange rules for blockchain apps.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.