STRC, a dividend-paying preferred stock that Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) founder Michael Saylor has outrageously promoted as a competitor to high-yield bank accounts, traded 5.3% below its par value at one point today.

Multiple crypto derivatives of STRC are mirroring the crash.

No US bank account or money market is allowed to lose money like that, and such customers would enjoy FDIC and SIPC protection against loss, anyway. 

Unfortunately, STRC has no insurance. Nor does Strategy guarantee its price or dividends. As of writing time, STRC and its unauthorised crypto proxies remain about 4% below their formerly stable trading range.

Despite its incredible risks, STRC has grown to a market capitalisation of $10 billion, more than triple its size at the start of the year.

It grew for one reason. Backed by a company holding tens of billions of dollars worth of bitcoin (BTC), STRC pays an annualized dividend rate of 11.5% — far higher than traditional USD savings products. 

Its promoters, like Saylor, CEO Phong Le, and a legion of others online, repeatedly insinuated that Strategy would pay dividends while STRC traded near $100, its quasi-peg that has nonetheless repeatedly failed to hold — including another panic this week.

Although Strategy will pay a monthly dividend of 0.96% on the full $100 par value of STRC this month, its stock price has already lost 3.8% of its value this month as of writing time, including a momentary loss of -5.3% intraday.

Meta has come up with an artificial intelligence business agent that helps companies deal with customers on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. They made this announcement at the Meta Conversations event in London. This is a step for Meta into the artificial intelligence market for businesses.

The Meta Business Agent is a tool that does more than just answer questions like a robot. It lets businesses do things like book appointments, answer customer questions, make sales and take payments within a conversation. Meta says this system will help companies streamline tasks and provide better service to their customers. The Meta Business Agent is primarily about making things easier for companies and their customers on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

From Customer Support to Full Business Operations

Meta says that more than one million businesses have used its AI customer service tools on WhatsApp and Messenger. Now Meta has a version of these tools that can do more than answer questions.

The AI tool can help businesses find people who want to buy, suggest products to customers, set up meetings and help complete purchases. Meta is also testing features that help business owners see what people are talking about in chats, understand customers better and figure out how to run their businesses. Someday Meta may add tools to help businesses learn more about the market and integrate with business software.

WhatsApp Becomes a Bigger Revenue Driver

This development shows that Meta wants to make money from WhatsApp. WhatsApp has not generated as much revenue as Facebook and Instagram, but more businesses—especially medium-sized companies around the world—are using it to talk to customers.

Meta plans to make this AI tool available to businesses. At first it will be free; later, businesses will likely pay to use it. Meta is working with companies like Shopify and Zendesk to help businesses use the AI tool with the software they already use. Meta’s AI tool will gain capabilities through these integrations.

Growing Competition in Enterprise AI

Meta is now competing with companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, all of which are building AI tools for businesses. Meta believes it has an advantage because of its large user bases on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, which could help attract companies that want to use AI to engage customers.

Conclusion

Meta’s new artificial intelligence tool for businesses aims to make WhatsApp more than a messaging app and turn it into a platform for customer support, sales, bookings and payments in one place. Meta wants to be a player in the enterprise AI market, and many businesses are likely to try the tool.

However, concerns remain about AI security, privacy and reliability. These issues will need to be addressed as businesses increasingly adopt automated AI tools.

At some point, the progress of the crypto sector’s top policy priority — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — becomes an insurmountable math problem, with not enough time left in the U.S. Senate’s work calendar to allow for passage. But the bill has now been formally offered for the Senate calendar, and the industry’s lobbyists are still shooting for a last-moment win.

There are about eight weeks of floor time available in the Senate before the lawmakers scatter for the summer break and the political demands of the midterm congressional elections. And as the election season grows more urgent, the appetite for legislative cooperation could also take a hit.

In that brief work window in Congress’ upper chamber, the Clarity Act would need to go through several procedural steps that can only begin once the market structure bill is finalized — a goal that still requires some big-ticket disputes to get ironed out between the political parties and the White House.

The Clarity Act would establish a tailored regulatory regime for crypto in the U.S. — an idea that carries significant bipartisan support. But even if the bill were ready for action, a significant array of Senate business items are competing for time and attention. And some of them haven’t been going very well.

A deadline is looming this month for extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and getting a long-term deal on U.S. spy powers has been a challenge, including over the insertion of a ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Senate leadership had warned that the CBDC component could kill the effort in that chamber, and an impasse had set in between the House of Representatives and Senate that’s still being resolved, but the latest version of the bill reportedly includes a temporary ban that ends in three years.

Even more fireworks, though, had erupted from the process to approve an immigration-enforcement funding bill. The spending plan was derailed by an internal outcry from Republicans opposing President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion Department of Justice “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate allies. A court ordered the plan halted during the dispute over its legality, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly gave in to the pressure on Tuesday to assure lawmakers that the idea is dead, which is expected to re-open the path for the immigration bill.

Must-pass bills

Those two bills — FISA and immigration — must pass in order for aspects of the federal government to continue functioning, giving them priority over other work. Crypto lobbyists are expressing quiet confidence that they’ll be resolved soon.

But once they’re approved, that doesn’t necessarily mean smooth sailing for the crypto bill, which was formally forwarded to the Senate calendar this week.

Adding some potential drama has been President Trump’s insistence that one of the legislative efforts — FISA or a bill overhauling U.S. housing regulations — be saddled with his effort to impose voter identification and proof of citizenship at the polls before the congressional midterm elections, which he has said will lead to his impeachment if Democrats win. Adding that controversial bill atop another would sharply decrease the odds of its host bill’s passage, but Trump has previously threatened to halt congressional progress on other matters if lawmakers don’t make it happen.

That housing bill he’s looking at may be among the Clarity Act’s big competitors for floor time. The bipartisan legislation to encourage U.S. home building (while also restricting certain institutional investors) has been lobbed back and forth by the House and Senate, but leaders in the two chambers are reportedly working on a version that will satisfy both. Even if it all goes well, the Senate calendar is a zero-sum proposition at this stage, meaning every hour devoted to anything that isn’t Clarity reduces the odds for the chamber having enough bandwidth for the bill.

The Senate is also wrestling with a debate over a war-powers resolution aimed at halting U.S. military action in Iran. And the coming days are also expected to see action on the legislation known as the farm bill that may get a hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee that’s also supposed to be working on a final version of the Clarity Act, plus potential movement on the National Defense Authorization Act for next year.

Summer plans

Though White House officials had expressed an Independence Day goal for the Clarity Act to clear Congress at the start of next month, various lawmakers have suggested end-of-July timing or even early August — the final week before the start of the long congressional break.

“Under my Leadership, we will codify a FUTURE-PROOF Digital Asset Market Structure that cannot be undone by the Crypto Haters,” the president wrote in a recent post on his social-media site. “The new Frontier of Finance is being Built in America, and ‘TRUMP’ will NEVER let Crypto down!”

His codifying promise may be dependent on what Trump is willing to allow into the Clarity Act involving an ethics provision aimed straight at him: banning government officials from personal stakes in the crypto industry. A bill without such limits is widely considered to be a dealbreaker for Senate Democrats, but crypto insiders are suggesting that a runway period has been raised that may not force Trump to divest from his own interests.

The Clarity Act recently cleared the Senate Banking Committee in a narrow bipartisan vote that drew loud fanfare from the industry. But a party-line approval of a parallel version in the Senate Agriculture Committee is now being litigated on certain points to bring that committee’s Democrats on board, including the potential requirement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — a leading regulator of crypto activity — get nominations from the White House to fill all four of its commissioner vacancies (two Republicans and two Democrats).

Ongoing fights

Lobbyists from the banking industry are also expected to keep hammering away at the bill, which includes a section on stablecoin yield that bankers see as a threat to their deposit base. And the decentralized finance (DeFi) interests are still trying to acquire more legal shielding for developers who don’t want to be punished for illicit usage of their work.

So the bill isn’t done, and crypto advocates in Washington say it hasn’t leapt into June with a particularly quick start. Once the legislation is finished, including combining the versions from the banking and agriculture panels and adding an ethics provision, Senate leadership would need to set up some floor time — potentially a full week (one of the precious eight remaining before the August recess).

If not by then, there’s another smidge of time in September, and then comes the biggest wild card of the congressional calendar: the so-called “lame duck” session in which the members of this Congress will keep working for about four weeks after the elections have effectively fired some of the lawmakers and others are retiring. Desperate deals have been made for significant legislation during those sessions, but the odds are long.

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who chairs the digital assets subcommittee on the Senate banking panel, has been posting a steady stream of encouragement for pushing the Clarity Act.

“We are closer to a functioning digital asset market structure than we have ever been,” Lummis posted Tuesday on social media site X. “Now is not the time to flinch.”

Read More: Clarity Act clears U.S. Senate committee, on its way to a final test in Congress

IREN (IREN) shares rose more than 4% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the company announced plans for an 800-megawatt data center campus in South Australia, marking its first major Australian data center project.

The agreement secures a high-voltage grid connection capable of supporting up to 800MW of power for the campus without requiring major network upgrades.

IREN said the project remains on track for initial energization beginning in 2028, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions. The site will also benefit from submarine fiber connectivity linking it to key Asia-Pacific markets, including Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

Management highlighted strong regional demand for AI infrastructure, noting a widening gap between projected computing needs and available capacity across Asia-Pacific. South Australia’s push toward 100% net renewable energy by 2027 was also cited as a key competitive advantage for the development.

Co-Founder and Co-CEO Daniel Roberts said the project combines access to abundant renewable energy, international connectivity and a supportive policy environment. The campus is expected to create more than 500 construction jobs and over 200 permanent skilled positions once operational.

Recently, Daniel Roberts said the company’s long-term AI strategy is built on owning power, land and data centers.

Kraken’s parent company is bringing one of Wall Street’s most coveted opportunities to crypto investors: buying into IPOs at the same price as institutional investors.

Payward, the parent company of the crypto exchange, said Wednesday it will “soon” allow customers of Kraken and other members of its xStocks Alliance to participate in U.S.-listed initial public offerings through tokenized shares. The offering would give eligible investors a chance to receive allocations at the IPO price rather than purchasing shares after trading begins on public markets.

The first tokenized IPO offerings are expected to become available through Kraken and other xStocks Alliance members in the coming weeks, the firm said.

The launch comes as investors await a new crop of high-profile public offerings. SpaceX and AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI are among the companies widely viewed as potential IPO candidates in the coming months, fueling demand for access to deals that have traditionally been dominated by institutional investors, private banks and wealthy clients.

Under Payward’s model, investors would submit non-binding indications of interest before an IPO. The company would aggregate demand across participating exchanges and work with underwriting syndicates to secure allocations. Once a company lists, shares would be tokenized, backed one-for-one by the underlying stock held by a regulated custodian and distributed to investors through participating platforms.

The initiative is part of a broader push to use blockchain technology to expand access to capital markets.

Tokenization — the process of creating blockchain-based representations of traditional assets — has become one of the fastest-growing areas of digital assets. The sector has expanded beyond cryptocurrencies into Treasury funds, private credit, money-market products and, increasingly, equities.

Supporters argue tokenization can make assets easier to access, transfer and trade across jurisdictions. For equities, the technology could help remove some of the geographic and brokerage barriers that have historically limited access to IPOs and foreign-listed stocks.

Still, pre-IPO investing carries risks. IPO allocations are often oversubscribed and not guaranteed, offering prices can change during the book-building process and newly listed stocks frequently experience sharp price swings once public trading begins.

The firm will only offer IPOs where it has secured allocations for investors, a Payward spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Payward said its xStocks framework currently supports tokenized equities backed one-for-one by underlying shares held in custody. The company said the framework has processed more than $30 billion in transaction volume and over $6 billion in onchain settlements across more than 125,000 holders.

Chainalysis’ analysis shows more than 100 million agentic transactions on Coinbase’s Base network via the x402 protocol within roughly nine months of its launch, signaling that machine-to-machine payments are advancing from proof-of-concept to a functioning on-chain pattern.

In a report published this week, wallets interacting with x402 completed these transactions on Base, underscoring a shift toward autonomous payments where software agents can request resources and settle with stablecoins without human intervention.

Key takeaways

• Over 100 million agentic transactions on Base through the x402 protocol within nine months of launch, according to Chainalysis.
• The early growth was propelled by the PING memecoin experiment, which required users to transact via x402 to mint tokens.
• Value moved through x402 has shifted from micropayments toward higher-value transfers, rising from about 49% of total value above $1 in early 2025 to roughly 95% by early 2026.
• Weekly wallet retention for agentic payments on Base has been trending upward, suggesting durable usage beyond initial hype.
• Industry observers see AI agents as a potential driver of on-chain activity and stablecoin demand, with implications for developers, users, and investors.

Agentic payments take root on Base

The x402 protocol is designed to let software agents perform on-chain payments directly through web requests. When an agent seeks access to a resource—such as a data feed or an API—it can automatically complete a stablecoin transfer without awaiting human approval. This capability embodies a broader push toward autonomous, programmatic commerce on public networks and could redefine how apps interact with blockchain ecosystems.

From memecoin surge to sustained activity

The initial surge in activity was tied to PING, a memecoin experiment that incentivized users to pay via x402 to mint new tokens. That burst attracted large user participation and a rapid uptick in transaction volume. Once the frenzy subsided, activity did not collapse; usage persisted, and the total value moved through the protocol continued to climb, signaling a transition from novelty to practical utility in agentic payments.

Value moves up the chain: from micropayments to larger transfers

Chainalysis highlights a notable evolution in the types of transfers. In early 2025, payments valued at more than $1 accounted for approximately 49% of the total value moved through x402. By early 2026, that share had risen to about 95%, indicating a shift toward more substantial on-chain value being processed through agentic payments.

Observers have pointed to the broader implications of this trend. The growth of higher-value transactions suggests that AI-driven, automated payments are finding practical use cases beyond microtransactions, potentially expanding the scope of what autonomous on-chain interactions can support.

The underlying data and trendlines are drawn from Chainalysis’ ongoing monitoring of the Base ecosystem’s agentic activity. For readers seeking the upstream data, Chainalysis’ analysis on x402 is available in their report on agentic payments adoption.

Industry voices and what to watch

As AI tooling becomes more capable, leaders in the crypto space have framed agentic payments as a possible accelerant for on-chain activity. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has suggested that AI agents could soon account for a meaningful share of on-chain transactions, while Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire has articulated a similar optimistic view about automated payments in crypto networks. Earlier coverage highlighted Changpeng Zhao’s assertion that crypto could serve as the native currency for AI agents, underscoring a cross-pollination between AI and blockchain ecosystems.

Beyond the Base/X402 narrative, the concept has gained attention in related tech and payments circles. A Forrester report highlighted Stripe’s Machine Payments Protocol as a potential catalyst for reviving micropayments through AI agents, while Bernstein analysts have noted that AI agents could boost demand for stablecoins—an outcome that would reinforce the role of ecosystems like x402 in automating on-chain value transfers.

Industry data points to an expanding landscape for agentic payments, including on-demand resources in decentralized computing and data marketplaces where automated transactions enable seamless access to services and data. The interplay between AI-driven automation and programmable money is likely to be a central theme as ecosystems test how far autonomous on-chain payments can scale.

As this space evolves, market participants will be watching not only for continued growth in transaction counts but for durability in value flows, ecosystem incentives, and how regulators respond to automated, recurring payments on public blockchains. Weekly wallet retention metrics cited by Chainalysis offer a first glimpse that interest is translating into repeated use rather than a one-off spike.

Related reading and ongoing coverage explore how AI agents intersect with prediction markets, arbitrage opportunities, and broader DeFi security considerations. For background on the AI-agent theme across crypto media, see coverage of how AI agents could reshape arbitrage and other on-chain activity, as well as discussions around Stripe’s and other providers’ approaches to automated payments.

What remains uncertain is how quickly larger value transfers will stabilize across diverse networks, how developers will optimize agentic payment flows, and how regulators will approach automated, programmatic payments in a cross-border, cross-application context. Keep an eye on Base’s evolving ecosystem, new agentic-use cases, and any regulatory signals that could shape the path of autonomous on-chain commerce.

TLDR:

• Variant Fund has closed a $222M fourth vehicle targeting early-stage crypto and AI startups globally.
• The firm’s thesis has evolved from digital ownership to a broader focus on user autonomy and agency.
• Recent portfolio bets include agentic memory, cryptographic location proofs, and AI artifact ownership.
• Crypto VC activity is rebounding, with a16z and Haun Ventures also closing large funds in 2026.

Variant Fund has raised a new $222 million vehicle targeting early-stage crypto and AI startups. The fund, announced on Wednesday, marks the firm’s fourth vehicle and reflects an evolved investment thesis centered on “autonomy.”

Founder Jesse Walden said the firm will lead at the earliest possible stage while participating in liquid and growth investments as projects mature.

The raise arrives amid a broader uptick in crypto venture activity, with The Block Pro data showing $1.63 billion in VC investments so far in Q2 2026.

Variant Reframes Its Thesis Around Autonomy

Variant’s updated thesis represents a natural extension of its founding principles. Since its inception, the firm has gravitated toward permissionless markets, open-source software, composability, and decentralization.

By 2020, those themes had coalesced into a focus on digital ownership — covering money, identity, data, and everyday products.

The firm now frames digital ownership as one pillar within a broader concept: autonomy. Walden described it as fundamentally about human agency — the degree to which users control their lives, assets, and identities.

“Autonomy is fundamentally about human agency: the degree to which users are in control of their lives, assets, and identities,” he wrote in an X post announcing the fund.

Walden was also careful to separate autonomy from mere automation. He noted that intelligent automation is a major technological frontier, but whether it enhances agency depends on who it ultimately serves.

“We distinguish autonomy from mere automation,” he wrote, adding that this distinction remains a guiding principle in evaluating which projects the firm pursues.

Past investments already reflect this principle. The portfolio has consistently backed projects where users hold meaningful control over the systems they participate in.

This includes category leaders in public blockchains, developer infrastructure, and consumer-facing applications such as Phantom and World Network.

Agentic and Permissionless Finance in Focus

Among the firm’s newest portfolio companies are several projects at the intersection of AI and blockchain. Walden outlined three in his announcement: “These include Honcho, a solution for self-custodial agentic memory; Octet, which lets applications cryptographically verify a user’s physical location as a building block of digital identity; and here.now, a ‘cloud for agents’ that enables ownership and composability of generated artifacts.”

Octet expands what users can verify about themselves on-chain, functioning as a building block for decentralized identity systems. here.now, meanwhile, targets the growing agentic computing space by giving users ownership over the outputs their AI agents generate.

Both projects align with Variant’s broader argument that the next phase of the internet will shift agency back toward users.

Walden summarized this outlook directly: “It’s likely that agentic intelligence and open, global financial rails will transform the structure of the internet: from one where users are often the product to one where they have unprecedented agency.”

The fundraise arrives alongside a broader resurgence in crypto venture capital. Competitor a16z recently announced a new $2.2 billion crypto fund, its fifth, while Haun Ventures closed a $1 billion vehicle targeting blockchain and AI projects.

Despite crypto VC activity remaining below the peak levels seen in 2022, recent quarters have shown a clear uptick in both deal volume and capital deployed.