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The Thursday brief: OpenAI’s math dump, crypto’s bunker mode, and McDonald’s AI pricing suit

Aaron Harme

OpenAI released hundreds of AI-made math results without the receipts its own advisers asked for, and by Wednesday an Ethereum researcher was telling crypto holders to start moving coins to fresh wallet addresses. A new class action says McDonald’s AI pricing tool lets its franchisees share data they’re supposed to keep apart.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal wants FanDuel to name the stars in its VIP videos and says prediction markets are next, and four states sued TP-Link over how Vietnamese its routers really are.

In this Brief

  • OpenAI posted 372 math results without the model, prompts or per-result compute its advisory group wanted
  • Ethereum’s Justin Drake wants crypto in “bunker mode,” and Vitalik Buterin says quantum-safe math may be exposed too
  • A proposed class action calls McDonald’s franchisee pricing tool “algorithmic price-fixing”
  • Blumenthal says FanDuel still won’t name its VIP video stars, and Kalshi’s defense has its own VIP program in it
  • Four states sued TP-Link, and a 0.5% sourcing figure sits at the center of the Florida complaint

OpenAI’s 372 math results came without the receipts

Setup: Scientific American reports OpenAI posted 372 results on Tuesday night from a model it hasn’t released, each claimed to solve or make substantial progress on a major open problem in math or theoretical computer science. Many are already verified in Lean, software that checks a proof’s logic step by step. The advisory group of mathematicians OpenAI announced on Sept. 21 had recommended releasing the model, the exact prompt and the compute time behind each result. OpenAI published an average compute time and no prompts, and a spokesperson said the company is “not bound by these recommendations.”

The Lean-checked proofs are very likely correct. What outsiders can’t check is OpenAI’s claim that nearly every result came from a single prompt to a single AI agent, a month after its Navier-Stokes proof took a 10,000-agent swarm. “We should ask for receipts,” said MIT mathematician Andrew Sutherland.

See full breakdown at @Aaron_Harme on X.

Crypto researchers want “bunker mode” after the AI math dump

Setup: Cointelegraph reports Ethereum researcher Justin Drake urged the industry on Wednesday to prepare for “bunker mode,” warning that AI-driven math could break ECDSA, the elliptic-curve signature scheme that guards most crypto wallets, before quantum computers do. He wants a slow move to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, because a wallet’s public key is exposed the first time it signs. Vitalik Buterin backed the warning and said lattices, the math meant to survive quantum computers, could “take serious hits from the next two years of AI math.”

Quantum computing is a hardware threat the industry can watch arrive. A math break would show up as a paper, and Scott Aaronson writes that his sources say AI companies have started testing whether their newest internal models can break important cryptographic protocols.

Longer cut: Vitalik Buterin backs crypto ‘bunker mode’ as AI math puts wallet security on notice.

McDonald’s AI pricing tool draws an antitrust class action

Setup: The Guardian reports a proposed nationwide class action, filed Oct. 2 in federal court in Chicago, alleging that the AI pricing tool McDonald’s built lets its independently owned restaurants share nonpublic price and sales data. Antitrust law requires competing businesses to set prices on their own. The complaint calls the result “algorithmic price-fixing.” McDonald’s says the complaint is “filled with inaccuracies” and that the tools are optional and “do not automate, coordinate or fix pricing in any way.”

The case will turn on what “optional” meant in practice. Reuters reported last month that some owners were pressured to use the tools and that deviations from its recommendations were recorded, reporting McDonald’s called “speculative and uninformed.”

See full breakdown at @Aaron_Harme on X.

Longer cut: McDonald’s AI pricing tool hit with antitrust class action over franchisee data sharing.

Blumenthal wants FanDuel’s VIP video names, and Kalshi is next

Setup: Front Office Sports reports Sen. Richard Blumenthal and two House Democrats told FanDuel on Tuesday it still hasn’t said which athletes and entertainers recorded personal videos for its VIP bettors, or what safeguards keep the program from enticing problem gamblers to keep betting. FanDuel has said it sent roughly 30 such videos over two years. Blumenthal said DraftKings and prediction markets will get the same questions.

A Kalshi spokesperson answered that “a VIP at a sportsbook or casino is a losing customer or someone they expect to lose.” Kalshi runs a VIP loyalty program of its own, and like FanDuel and DraftKings it has a market-making arm posting the prices customers trade against, so “we’re not the house” rests on a wall inside the company.

See full breakdown at @Aaron_Harme on X.

Longer cut: Blumenthal presses FanDuel on VIP bettor videos, and puts Kalshi next in line.

Four states sue TP-Link over its routers’ China ties

Setup: Ars Technica reports Florida, Montana, Iowa and Nebraska sued TP-Link on Tuesday with nearly identical complaints under state consumer-protection laws, accusing the router maker of misleading buyers about its security and its ties to China. TP-Link calls the suits “built on false premises” and says it’s an independent US company whose devices are made in Vietnam.

The Florida suit cites a 2025 Bloomberg report in which TP-Link confirmed that parts bought in Vietnam made up 0.5% of the value of inputs at its plant there. That’s a thin base for “made in Vietnam” while the FCC’s ban on new routers built wholly or partly abroad has exempted Netgear, Asus, Eero and Starlink and left TP-Link’s Wi-Fi 8 routers off US shelves.

See full breakdown at @Aaron_Harme on X.

Also noted

  • CNBC: The EIA’s Winter Fuels Outlook puts heating oil at $5.26 a gallon this winter, up 34%, with the average oil-heated home spending $2,115, about 21% more, assuming a warmer Northeast.
  • Guardian Australia: OpenAI used AI to help write parts of the email telling Services Australia that an OpenAI agent had gotten into its systems, days after its chief strategy officer told a parliamentary hearing he didn’t believe so.
  • Michigan Gaming Control Board: Coinbase agreed to stop offering sports event contracts to Michigan customers and close open positions by 12:00 a.m. ET Oct. 10, while its appeal waits at the Sixth Circuit.
  • Billboard: Michael Smith got 18 months for an AI streaming scheme that collected more than $8 million in royalties, below the 46 to 57 months federal guidelines called for.
  • The Next Web: The Dutch tax office is moving email and calendars off Microsoft 365 to servers it controls in 2027, after a government review board found no workable exit strategy.
  • TechCrunch: CIA officer David J. Rush pleaded guilty to wire fraud after inventing a special access program and taking more than $190 million, including gold bars.
  • Awful Announcing: Washington State’s athletic department signed a multi-year deal with AI storytelling company FanWord while two sports information director jobs sit unfilled.
  • Gizmodo, citing OpenRouter data seen by the Wall Street Journal: OpenAI’s share of business spending on OpenAI and Anthropic models through the platform went from under 25% at the start of 2026 to nearly 50% in September.

Sources

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