Finance

CHONGQING, CHINA – JULY 17: In this photo illustration, a person holds a physical representation of a Bitcoin (BTC) coin in front of a screen displaying a candlestick chart of Bitcoin’s latest price movements on July 17, 2025 in Chongqing, China. (Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Bitcoin rallied on Friday to within striking distance of its record high as the U.S. government’s shutdown entered its third day.
The world’s oldest cryptocurrency is trading up roughly 2% on the day at $123,874. That’s about 1% below its all-time high price of just north of $124,000 that it reached in mid-August.

Investors are flocking to the decentralized asset after U.S. lawmakers failed to strike a deal on federal funding, forcing the U.S. government to shutdown on Wednesday. Bitcoin is up 12% this week alone.
“The shutdown matters this time around,” wrote Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick. “During the previous Trump shutdown (22 Dec 2018 to 25 Jan 2019) Bitcoin was in a different place than now, so it did little.”
“However, this year bitcoin has traded with ‘US government risks’ as best shown by its relationship to US treasury term premium,” added Kendrick.
Standard Chartered expects a new high soon and ultimately the crypto hitting $135,000 after that.

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Bitcoin, YTD

Traders are turning to crypto and other assets to hedge against mounting political and economic tensions. Spot gold rose 0.5% to $3,876.55 per ounce on early Friday, with prices gaining more than 2% this week.
Traders also poured some money into stocks on Friday, despite the increasing geopolitical uncertainties. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also rose .5% and .27% on the day, respectively. More

OnePay, the fintech firm majority-owned by Walmart, will soon offer cryptocurrency trading and custody on its mobile app, CNBC has learned.
OnePay will offer customers access to bitcoin and ether later this year with help from the startup Zerohash.
By allowing OnePay users to hold bitcoin and ether in their mobile app, customers could presumably convert their crypto into cash and then use those funds to make store purchases or pay off card balances.

Walmart-backed OnePay offers credit and debit cards, high-yield savings accounts, buy now, pay later loans and a digital wallet with peer-to-peer payments.
Photo obtained from OnePay website

OnePay, the fintech firm majority-owned by Walmart, will soon offer cryptocurrency trading and custody on its mobile app, CNBC has learned.
OnePay will offer customers access to bitcoin and ether later this year with help from the startup Zerohash, according to people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified before an official announcement.

The move shows that OnePay, founded by Walmart and venture firm Ribbit Capital in 2021, sees crypto as a core offering as it builds out its “everything app” for digital finance.
The fintech firm has methodically added new products in its quest to become an American super app akin to overseas offerings like WeChat. The company now offers banking services including high-yield savings accounts; credit and debit cards; buy now, pay later loans and even wireless plans.
By allowing OnePay users to hold bitcoin and ether in their mobile app, customers could presumably convert their crypto into cash and then use those funds to make store purchases or pay off card balances.
A spokesman for New York-based OnePay declined to comment.
Crypto continues to gain mainstream adoption after the U.S. government’s stance towards the nascent technology flipped with the election of President Donald Trump. Big banks that couldn’t previously develop crypto offerings are now starting to do so; last month Morgan Stanley said it would soon offer retail clients direct access to crypto through its E-Trade subsidiary.

The overall trend has boosted a constellation of public and private companies involved in crypto. Last month, Zerohash raised $104 million in funding from financial firms including Morgan Stanley and Interactive Brokers, part of its strategy to enmesh itself with banks and brokers that are building crypto products.
For OnePay, which benefits from its ties with the world’s largest retailer, there are signs that its mobile app is gaining traction, even before the crypto rollout.
The fintech firm is now No. 5 on Apple’s app store ranking for free finance apps, ahead of larger companies including JPMorgan Chase, Robinhood and Chime. Nearly all the apps ahead of OnePay in that list, including PayPal, Venmo and Cash App, already offer crypto.
From the time it was created, OnePay’s big advantage was in its distribution channel. The firm’s app is integrated into the in-person and online checkout process at Walmart’s U.S. locations, giving it access to the 150 million Americans who shop there every week.
But OnePay was created as an entity separate from the retailer so it wouldn’t be limited to only Walmart customers, instead appealing to the broader population of Americans who are underserved by traditional banks. More

Berkshire Hathaway reached a deal to buy Occidental Petroleum’s petrochemical unit, OxyChem, for $9.7 billion in cash.
The deal marks Berkshire’s largest since 2022, when it paid $11.6 billion for insurer Alleghany.
Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub said the debt reduction resulting from the deal will enable her company to restart buying back stock.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced Thursday it reached a deal to buy Occidental Petroleum’s petrochemical unit, OxyChem, for $9.7 billion in cash.
The deal marks Berkshire’s largest since 2022, when it paid $11.6 billion for insurer Alleghany. It also comes at a time in which the conglomerate is sitting on $344 billion in cash, near a record for the company.

Shares of Occidental rose 1.4% in premarket trading Thursday following the announcement.
Berkshire is already a major investor in Occidental, holding a 28.2% stake as of the end of June. Buffett — who is 95 and stepping down as CEO at the end of the year — has said he wouldn’t take complete control of the Houston-based oil company.
OxyChem manufactures water treatment, healthcare and other commercial chemicals. Occidental said it will use $6.5 billion of the proceeds to pay down debt.
Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub said the debt reduction resulting from the deal will enable her company to restart buying back stock.
“The problem has been getting our debt down faster, so this resolves the one outstanding issue that I think will now unlock our stock and allow shareholders to feel more comfortable, hopefully, to add to their positions and others to come in,” Hollub said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday. “So now we’re going to be able to start our our sharing purchase program again….This is the last step that we needed in our major transformation that we started 10 years ago.”

The last time Berkshire did a deal in the chemical space was in 2011, buying Lubrizol for a similar $10 billion figure.
“We look forward to welcoming OxyChem as an operating subsidiary within Berkshire,” said Greg Abel, Vice Chairman of Non-Insurance Operations at Berkshire, in a press release.
Abel, who will replace Buffett as CEO of Berkshire in 2026, added that Hollub is showing her “commitment to Occidental’s long-term financial stability, as demonstrated by their plan to use proceeds to reinforce the company’s balance sheet.”
Both companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the transaction earlier this week.
Buffett first got involved with Occidental in 2019 when he helped bankroll Occidental’s purchase of Anadarko Petroleum with a $10 billion commitment. He received preferred shares and warrants to buy common stock in return. 
Hollub said as Occidental grows its cash position, it will start redeeming Berkshire’s preferred stock in 2029. Occidental currently pays a 8% dividend on Berkshire’s preferreds. More

The Trump-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial is not a political organization and concerns about conflicts of interest are “complete nonsense,” Donald Trump Jr. tells CNBC.
“I don’t think anyone actually believes that my father … would be looking at ledgers on the blockchain to see who bought what, and that carrying any kind of favor,” he said. 

Donald Trump Jr. and Zach Witkoff of World Liberty Financial at Token2049, a prominent crypto conference in Singapore, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025.

Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday dismissed criticism that a crypto venture tied to his family had any potential conflicts of interest, as his firm, World Liberty Financial, seeks global investors.
Concerns that World Liberty Financial investors may be seeking favor with the Trump administration are “complete nonsense,” Trump Jr. told CNBC on the sidelines of Token2049, a prominent crypto conference in Singapore.

“I don’t think anyone actually believes that my father or [Zach’s] father would be looking at ledgers on the blockchain to see who bought what, and that carrying any kind of favor,” he said. 
The U.S. President’s eldest son, who is a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, was accompanied at the event by the firm’s CEO Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East under the Trump administration.
Witkoff, who was involved in his father’s real estate business before World Liberty Financial, echoed the sentiment. “Don and my World Liberty mission is big, but our dads’ mission is much bigger. They’re not focused on stablecoins, nor are they involved in a stablecoin business,” he said. 
The company — first founded in September 2024 — launched its stablecoin six months later. The token, dubbed USD1, is pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by short-term U.S. government treasuries. It also has a publicly traded “governance token,” or the crypto version of a shareholder vote, called WLFI. 

Critics have questioned the company’s open connections to the Trump administration as it pursues deals abroad and expands into areas such as debit payments and tokenized commodity assets.

Trump Jr. and Witkoff downplayed their political connections during a keynote speech at the crypto conference, emphasizing that their firm, which they say is seeking to improve and democratize finance, is “100% not a political organization.” 
According to World Liberty Financial’s website, a Trump-affiliated firm called DT Marks DEFI LLC, along with members of the Trump family, receives a major share of the platform’s revenue and holds WLFI tokens.
However, it also states that Donald Trump, his family or any members of the Trump Organization or DT Marks DEFI LLC are not an “officer, director, founder, or employee of, or manager, owner or operator of Word Liberty Financial or its affiliates.”
The growth of the company comes against the backdrop of the President’s embrace of the crypto industry in his second term. 
Once a skeptic, Trump has rebranded himself as a “crypto president,” backing policies welcomed by the industry and appointing long-time crypto advocates, such as David Sacks, to his cabinet.
Trump also launched his own meme coin, called $TRUMP, in addition to his involvement with World Liberty Financial.
Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters, have led calls for investigations into World Liberty Financial, labeling the company an “unprecedented conflict” that could sway crypto policy.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Zach Witkoff’s name. More

France is in a giant fiscal hole. This year the government will run a deficit, where its spending exceeds its revenues, of €160bn ($190bn, or more than 5% of gdp). Investors in its bonds are nervous; politicians need to close the gap. Left-leaning economists, and a growing number of centrist ones, believe that a wealth tax is part of the answer. Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics, for instance, has proposed an annual levy of at least 2% on fortunes larger than €100m. Although the arguments of economists today are subtler than those normally used to support levies on wealth, they are just as wrongheaded. More

Mention 2007 to a group of professional investors, and watch them bristle. The year was a bad one. It marked the end of the great moderation—a long period of low inflation and steady economic growth that began in the 1980s—and the start of strains in credit markets which became the global financial crisis. More

Nobody expected President Donald Trump to save a country from financial crisis. Yet on October 14th he will meet Javier Milei, Argentina’s president and an ideological ally, to discuss the details of a rescue package. America has already promised Argentina a swap line worth $20bn—an amount representing half the South American country’s foreign reserves—in order to address investors’ fears about the durability of Mr Milei’s currency reforms, which had sent the peso tumbling. Treasury officials are also considering a raid on the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, a stash of dollars that was last used to assist a foreign country in 2002. More

Shares of Samsung hit their their highest since January 2021, rising over 4%, while SK Hynix stock surged more than 9% to hit its highest since 2000.
The partnership will “focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data center capacity in Korea,” OpenAI said.

Headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California, on October 28, 2018.
Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images

Shares of South Korean chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix surged Thursday, a day after the two companies partnered with artificial-intelligence major OpenAI as part of the U.S. firm’s Stargate initiative.
Shares of Samsung hit their their highest since January 2021, rising over 4%, while SK Hynix stock surged more than 9% to hit its highest since 2000.

OpenAI said in a statement that this partnership will “focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data center capacity in Korea.”
The ChatGPT-maker said the two chipmakers plan to scale up production of advanced memory chips, which are critical to power its AI models.
The announcement came as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung in Seoul, and the top leaders at Samsung and SK Hynix.
Earlier this month, SK Hynix had announced that it was ready to mass-produce its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, cementing its leading position in the AI value chain.
HBM is a type of memory that is used in chipsets for artificial-intelligence computing, including in chips from global AI giant Nvidia — a major client of SK Hynix. 

HBM4 chips are expected to be the main AI memory chip needed for Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin architecture — a more powerful AI chip for global data centers.
SK Hynix has been a main chip supplier to Nvidia, while rival Samsung has reportedly been working to get its HBM4 chips certified by Nvidia. 
— This is breaking news, please check back for updates. More