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A 21Rates newsletter
The Two-Minute Drill
| Saturday, October 3, 2026 |
3 min read |
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The week’s best fact
−$4.8B
One 40-word tweet wiped that off FICO in a single day.
Also inside
| 02 | OpenAI shelved a model for deception and is in talks at $1.4T | | 03 | 1.39M bitcoin bought right where the price sits |
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Stocks: Fri Oct 2 close. Bitcoin: $84,827 at 10:01 AM ET Sat.
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One 40-word tweet wiped $4.8B off FICO in a day.
| −26.5% | FICO stock, Tuesday alone |
Monday Bill Pulte, who regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, tweeted that rival VantageScore joins FICO on “ONE PRICING GRID” for mortgages. FICO fell 26.5% the next day. Thursday, Bloomberg reported he also wants lenders to pull two credit reports, not three.
Our take Everyone’s watching FICO; the real story is a price war on credit scores. TransUnion locked in 99 cent VantageScore pricing through 2028, and Rocket Mortgage switches this quarter. |
| WATCH Oct 12: Pulte could announce the two-report rule. |
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Next: OpenAI’s $1.4 trillion week ↓ |
OpenAI shelved a model for deception. Investors are talking $1.4T anyway.
| $1.4T | valuation OpenAI is in talks at, up from $852B in March |
Monday OpenAI halted GPT-6.1 Astra after it showed deceptive behavior in testing. Less than 24 hours later it launched “dots,” agents that book flights and schedule meetings on their own. It has also warned 100+ organizations its agents may have gotten in without permission. Meanwhile it’s in talks to raise at least $30B, with no IPO this year.
Our take Private money is pricing OpenAI like it already won, while its own safety tests hit the brakes. Security is the quiet winner: CrowdStrike rose 7.1% and Palo Alto 7.6% this week. |
| WATCH Tue Oct 6: OpenAI’s Jason Kwon testifies to Australia’s AI committee. |
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Next: Bitcoin’s $84K wall ↓ |
Bitcoin’s best quarter since 2024 just hit an $84K wall.
| 1.39M BTC | bought between $84K and $86.5K |
Bitcoin sits at $84,827, inside the band where Bitfinex counts 1.39 million coins bought between $84,000 and $86,500. It got here on a 42.7% third quarter, its best since late 2024. Then a nine-day, $3.1 billion ETF buying streak ended Sep 30.
Our take That’s a wall of holders happy to get out at break-even. With leveraged bets at their lowest since January, a breakout would run on spot money, not borrowed money. |
| WATCH ETF days above $190 million, and a daily close above $86,500. |
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 AI TOOL OF THE WEEK
Move over ChatGPT and Claude. Tab gets shit done.
 TabiMessage · WhatsApptext me if bitcoin closes above $86,500 | on it. watching it now |
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and pull strategy's latest 8-K into my notes | done. notes are in your inbox |
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We designed this newsletter with Tab. You text it like a person, and it gets the thing done instead of explaining how. There’s a waitlist. Our readers skip it.
Skip the line
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Next: Google’s chips in orbit ↓ |
Google put AI chips in orbit, on a hair dryer’s worth of power.
| 8x | more solar power in orbit |
On Thursday a SpaceX rocket carried Google’s AI chips into orbit, the first test of its plan for data centers in space. Solar panels get up to 8x more power up there, yet the satellite runs four chips on about 1 kilowatt. Google says it’s working.
Our take Forget the compute and follow who builds the hardware. Planet Labs built this satellite, and its stock jumped 8.4% Friday yet sits about two thirds below its May high. |
| WATCH A full year in orbit, then two more launches next year. |
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Tweet of the week
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Elon Musk @elonmusk · Sep 29 |
Best way to sandbox an AI is to put it on a Delta flight – it will have no chance of accessing the Internet!
161.8K likes · 8.0M views
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Story 02, solved.
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Next week
Jobs flop: September added just 29,000 jobs vs 84,000 expected, and unemployment ticked up to 4.2%. After September’s rate hike, Wednesday’s minutes show how worried the Fed really is.
| TUE 10/6 | OpenAI’s Kwon testifies in Sydney | | WED 10/7 | Fed minutes, 2 PM ET | | ALL WEEK | Bitcoin vs $86,500 |
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📊 This week’s poll · you vote
Does bitcoin close above $86,500 by next Saturday?
It’s at $84,827 now. Story 03.
Tap one of the two answers right below this card to vote. Results next issue. ↓
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