Crypto World
Banks Won’t Open Accounts For AI Agents So 100 Billion Bots Will Live On Crypto Instead
Everyone’s debating whether humans will adopt crypto. Nobody’s talking about the actual adoption wave already happening: machines.
The Adoption Story Everyone’s Got Wrong
For fifteen years, the crypto industry has obsessed over one question: when will humans adopt crypto en masse?
Wrong question.
Animoca co-founder Yat Siu just pointed out something far more consequential: banks won’t open accounts for AI agents. So somewhere between 50 and 100 billion bots will operate on crypto wallets and stablecoins instead.
Not humans. Machines.
This isn’t a future prediction. This is already happening. And it changes the entire premise of what “crypto adoption” actually means.
Why Banks Can’t Serve AI Agents
Think about what opening a bank account requires: identity verification, legal personhood, a Social Security number or equivalent, a physical address, a human signature, regulatory compliance frameworks built around individual humans or registered legal entities.
An AI agent has none of this. It’s not a person. It’s not (yet) a recognized legal entity in most jurisdictions. It doesn’t have a passport. It doesn’t have a fixed address. It might exist as code running across distributed servers with no single point of identity.
Traditional banking infrastructure simply wasn’t built for this. KYC (Know Your Customer) protocols assume a customer who is, definitionally, a human or a registered company. An autonomous AI agent breaks that assumption completely.
So when AI agents need to transact, pay for compute, pay other agents for services, settle accounts, manage budgets, they literally cannot use a bank account. The infrastructure doesn’t exist. The regulatory framework doesn’t exist. The bank wouldn’t even know who to call if something went wrong.
Why Crypto Solves This By Accident
Crypto wallets don’t require identity verification at the protocol level. A wallet is just a cryptographic key pair. No bank manager has to approve it. No KYC process has to validate a human behind it.
This was originally designed for human privacy and censorship resistance. Nobody built crypto wallets specifically for AI agents.
But the architecture happens to solve exactly the problem AI agents have: it allows any entity, human or machine, to hold and transfer value without needing institutional approval of its identity.
Stablecoins compound this. They’re programmable, instantly transferable, and don’t require the agent to navigate currency conversion or cross-border banking friction. An AI agent in any jurisdiction can hold USDC and transact with another AI agent anywhere else, instantly, without a bank in the loop.
This wasn’t crypto’s intended use case. It’s becoming crypto’s accidental killer app.
What “100 Billion Bots” Actually Means
Let’s sit with that number for a second.
100 billion is roughly 12x the world’s human population. If even a fraction of projected AI agent deployment happens, agents handling customer service, executing trades, managing supply chains, negotiating contracts, paying for API calls, settling micro-transactions between other agents, the volume of machine-to-machine value transfer could dwarf human transaction volume entirely.
Every agent that needs to pay another agent for a service, every agent that needs to pay for compute resources, every agent that needs to settle a transaction on behalf of the human or company it serves, all of that needs rails. And those rails can’t run through traditional banking because traditional banking wasn’t built to onboard a machine as a customer.
So the rails being built right now are crypto rails: wallets, stablecoins, on-chain settlement, smart contracts that execute agent-to-agent agreements without human intervention.
The Real Story Nobody’s Telling
The crypto industry spent a decade trying to convince retail users that Bitcoin would replace cash. It didn’t work the way they hoped. Volatility scared people off. Complexity scared people off. Most humans still prefer their bank app.
But while everyone was trying to convert grandma into a crypto user, an entirely different category of user emerged that doesn’t care about volatility, doesn’t get confused by seed phrases, doesn’t need a friendly UI, and doesn’t have the emotional hangups humans have about money.
AI agents don’t panic-sell. They don’t get scared by red candles. They don’t need education about “not your keys, not your coins.” They just need programmatic access to value transfer that doesn’t require a bank’s permission.
Crypto, it turns out, might be a far better fit for machine commerce than human commerce.
Who’s Already Building For This
This isn’t speculative anymore. The infrastructure race is underway.
Coinbase’s “Coinbase for Agents” platform lets AI agents execute crypto trades and payments autonomously. Whatever the risks (and there are real ones, as I wrote about previously), the demand signal is clear: someone built this because agents need it.
A new venture called t54, founded by an ex-Ripple engineer and backed by Ripple and Franklin Templeton, is building a trust layer specifically to verify and insure AI agents that spend money autonomously. That’s not a hypothetical product. That’s $5 million in funding chasing a problem that exists today: how do you trust an autonomous agent with financial authority?
Stablecoin infrastructure is being explicitly redesigned around agent-to-agent payments, not just human remittances or trading.
This is an arms race nobody’s covering with the seriousness it deserves, because it’s not as exciting as a token price chart.
The Implications Are Bigger Than Crypto
If AI agents become primary economic actors, negotiating, paying, settling, transacting at machine speed and machine scale, the implications go well beyond whether Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.
Regulatory frameworks built for humans will need to expand to cover non-human economic actors. Who’s liable when an AI agent commits fraud, makes an error, or gets hacked mid-transaction? Existing law doesn’t have clean answers, because existing law assumes a human or a registered company is on the other side of every transaction.
Trust and verification become the actual product, not the transaction itself. When humans transact, identity and reputation are partially handled by institutions (banks, governments, credit bureaus). When agents transact, that entire trust layer has to be rebuilt from scratch on-chain.
Economic activity could scale beyond what any human institution monitors in real-time. If 100 billion agents are transacting, the volume and speed of that activity will exceed what any regulator, bank compliance team, or auditor can review using current methods.
This is the actual frontier. Not “will retail adopt Bitcoin.” It’s “what happens when the majority of economic transactions on a blockchain aren’t initiated by a human at all.”
Why This Should Worry You (A Little)
Every wave of financial infrastructure built without adequate oversight eventually creates a crisis. The 2008 financial crisis happened partly because complex financial instruments outpaced regulatory understanding. Algorithmic trading caused multiple flash crashes because automated systems moved faster than human circuit breakers could respond.
Now we’re building financial rails specifically because traditional, regulated banking infrastructure refuses to onboard the new class of economic actor. That refusal isn’t banks being lazy. It’s banks correctly identifying that they don’t have a framework for verifying, insuring, or holding accountable a non-human customer.
So the activity moves to an environment with even less oversight: crypto rails, where verification is optional, accountability is unclear, and the volume could eventually dwarf anything traditional finance has dealt with.
That’s not necessarily catastrophic. But it’s not nothing either.
The Question Nobody’s Answering
If 100 billion AI agents are transacting on crypto rails, processing value at a scale that exceeds human economic activity, who exactly is responsible when something goes wrong at that scale?
Not “which agent made the bad trade.” The systemic question: who governs an economy where the majority of participants aren’t human, aren’t legally accountable in any traditional sense, and exist as code that can be duplicated, modified, or shut down without the due process we’ve built around human economic actors?
Nobody has a good answer yet. Because until recently, nobody thought this was the actual adoption story.
What This Means For Crypto’s Future
Crypto spent years trying to be money for people. It might end up being money for machines instead.
That’s a stranger, less romantic story than “the people’s currency” or “the future of finance for everyone.” But it might be the more accurate one.
The next decade of crypto’s relevance may not be determined by whether your aunt buys Bitcoin. It may be determined by how many AI agents need a wallet, how fast they transact, and whether anyone builds the accountability infrastructure before the volume becomes unmanageable.
100 billion bots are coming. The rails are already being built. And almost nobody is asking the right questions about what happens next.
If AI agents become the majority of economic activity on crypto rails, should they have the same legal accountability as humans? Or do we need an entirely new framework? Drop your take.
Circle Internet Group shares have dropped more than 17% after a consortium backed by BlackRock, Google, Visa, Coinbase, and more than 140 other companies unveiled a competing revenue-sharing stablecoin.
Summary
- Circle shares fell 17.5% after Open USD launched with backing from BlackRock, Google, Visa, Coinbase, and 140+ partners.
- Open USD introduces a revenue-sharing model that distributes most reserve income to ecosystem participants.
- Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said USDC will continue expanding despite growing competition in the stablecoin market.
According to Yahoo Finance market data, Circle closed at $62.65 on Tuesday, down 17.52% from the previous session after falling as low as $62.52 during intraday trading. The stock opened at $72.25 and extended losses throughout the day before stabilizing near its session low.
Trading volume climbed to more than 34.5 million shares, well above its average daily volume of about 14 million, as investors reacted to the latest development in the stablecoin market.
Open USD introduces a different revenue model
The selloff followed the launch of Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin developed by Open Standard, an industry initiative led by Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams. The network is backed by more than 140 companies, including BlackRock, Google, Visa, Coinbase and other financial and technology firms seeking to build shared stablecoin infrastructure.
Unlike traditional issuer-led models, Open USD offers fee-free minting and redemption while distributing most reserve income to participating ecosystem members. Governance will also be handled by an independent partner-led organization instead of a single issuing company.
The structure directly challenges one of Circle’s core business models by allowing ecosystem participants to share reserve income that has traditionally accrued to stablecoin issuers. The design is similar to the incentive framework used by Paxos’ Global Dollar Network, which also shares reserve revenue with partners.
Open USD enters the market as stablecoins continue to expand beyond crypto trading into cross-border payments, merchant settlement and corporate treasury management. Growing institutional interest has encouraged multiple companies to launch new dollar-backed tokens with different economic models to attract banks, payment firms and fintech platforms.
Circle says competition will not slow USDC expansion
Responding to the announcement, Circle Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire dismissed suggestions that the new entrant poses a significant threat to USDC, arguing that the stablecoin sector is large enough to support multiple successful issuers.
According to Allaire, Circle will continue expanding USDC’s institutional network by adding banking, payment, and capital markets partners while investing in infrastructure that improves interoperability across blockchain networks.
“USDC remains the most trusted, widely adopted, institutional-ready stablecoin in the world, and we count thousands of institutions as partners in our ecosystem across nearly every major sector.”
Allaire added that Circle plans to keep building on additional blockchain networks while integrating USDC more deeply with banks, payments companies, capital markets firms and enterprises. He also said the company intends to expand opportunities for partners to participate economically in the continued growth of the USDC ecosystem.
Although Circle maintains that its long-term strategy remains unchanged, Tuesday’s market reaction showed investors closely watching how new revenue-sharing models could influence competition in the fast-growing stablecoin industry.
With Open USD backed by some of the largest names in finance and technology, the launch introduces another well-funded rival as issuers compete for institutional adoption and payment market share.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has requested public comment on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) investing in novel asset classes or using new investment strategies, as the agency reviews how such products should be regulated.
The consultation seeks feedback on whether existing rules adequately address novel ETFs, how such funds should be regulated and whether changes to the registration process are needed as new products enter the market.
According to the regulatory agency, the request focuses on funds investing in innovative asset classes or employing new investment strategies, where it is evaluating whether existing regulations remain appropriate.
The public comment period will remain open for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register, giving market participants an opportunity to weigh in before the SEC considers potential regulatory changes.
Exchange-traded funds have grown rapidly in recent years, with assets under management increasing from about $4 trillion in 2019 to more than $12 trillion at the end of 2025, according to the SEC.
Related: Spot Bitcoin ETFs bleed $1.7B as outflow streak hits four weeks
The request follows another recent consultation by US market regulators. Last week, the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sought public feedback on harmonizing portfolio margin rules across securities and derivatives markets.
Crypto ETF strategies grow more sophisticated
In recent months, crypto ETF issuers have increasingly expanded beyond simple price-tracking products, introducing funds tied to staking, stablecoin reserves and more specialized investment strategies.
In June, ProShares introduced the GENIUS Money Market ETF, a Treasury-focused fund designed around reserve assets permitted under the GENIUS Act for payment stablecoins, while Grayscale launched the Hyperliquid Staking ETP, offering exposure to HYPE (HYPE) while seeking to generate staking rewards.
Bitcoin investment products are becoming more specialized as well. BlackRock proposed an options-based Bitcoin income ETF in January, followed by Goldman Sachs in April with a fund combining spot Bitcoin products and covered-call strategies.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin Premium Income ETF filing. Source: SEC.gov
Earlier this month, Franklin Templeton proposed two ETFs that would systematically reinvest stock dividends into Bitcoin-linked investments, combining US equities with a rules-based Bitcoin allocation. The proposed funds would gain Bitcoin (BTC) exposure through instruments including exchange-traded products, futures, options and Bitcoin-backed depositary receipts.
ETF issuers are also experimenting with portfolios that combine digital assets with traditional asset classes. In January, Bitwise launched an actively managed ETF pairing Bitcoin with gold, precious metals and mining equities.
Magazine: Bitcoin decouples from tech stocks, Ether eyes ‘selling wave’: Market Moves
Bitcoin slid toward the $58,000 area during the early Tuesday Wall Street session, extending a broader risk-off feel that has left crypto lagging behind equities into the quarter’s final stretch. With traders heading into a “quarterly close” backdrop, BTC’s weakness stood out as US stocks logged strong gains for Q2.
At the same time, macro pressures tied to a firmer US dollar and renewed attention on Japan’s currency policy risk added another layer of uncertainty for crypto traders. On-chain signals from CryptoQuant also pointed to growing sell-pressure from investors associated with prior cycle highs, reinforcing the idea that hands are being shaken as price compresses.
Key takeaways
- Bitcoin fell toward about $58,000 during the US open, with volatility picking up into the session.
- US equities reported strong Q2 momentum while BTC continued to underperform, with Q2 losses approaching the high teens.
- A multi-decade USD/JPY move toward the mid-160s raised the odds of Japanese intervention and added pressure to risk assets.
- CryptoQuant analysis highlighted exchange inflows dominated by coins last moved around cycle-high periods, consistent with capitulation among late-cycle buyers.
Volatility rises as Bitcoin struggles to hold key levels
TradingView price action captured a shift toward bearish control as the US session began. Commentators noted that with $60,000 looking increasingly fragile as support, the market’s short-term “bulls vs. bears” battle remained active—particularly on lower time frames.
Exitpump, referencing open interest and positioning changes, suggested that the market could accelerate: “Open Interest pumping… it’s about to get spicy,” according to a fresh X post. Other traders described the price action as compressed, with BTC consolidating in a relatively narrow range and marginally higher lows alongside equal highs.
That type of structure can matter because it often sets up sharp directional moves when liquidity thins. As Daan Crypto Trades argued, the next breakout could arrive quickly after the consolidation tightens further. For short-term participants, the practical takeaway is that the range itself may be less important than what happens when it finally breaks—especially with volatility increasing into the session.
Crypto diverges from stocks as Q2 performance gaps widen
Bitcoin’s slide gained context when compared with US market performance. According to The Kobeissi Letter, the S&P 500 was up about 14% for the quarter—its best showing since 2020—while the Nasdaq 100 was up roughly 25%, also described as on track for its strongest quarterly performance in about five years.
That kind of divergence matters because it challenges a simple “crypto follows stocks” narrative. Even as equities absorbed risk positively into Q2, BTC remained under pressure. For investors, this gap suggests that crypto may currently be reacting more to its own internal liquidity/positioning dynamics and macro cross-asset stress—rather than simply mirroring equity beta.
Dollar strength and yen policy risk re-enter the trade
Macro conditions added a notable headwind. The US dollar pushed to new multi-decade highs versus the Japanese yen, raising the probability of government action—an issue traders often watch closely because intervention expectations can influence carry trades and global liquidity conditions.
In the reporting cited by Cointelegraph, USD/JPY reached 162.50 on the day, the highest level since the mid-1980s. The level is important not just as a data point, but as a proxy for how quickly currency volatility can transmit into broader risk sentiment—including markets where leverage is common.
Analyst George Gammon framed it in terms of “dollar liabilities” and the need to source dollars, warning that selling assets for dollar liquidity can place downward pressure on a range of holdings—from local currency exposures to speculative assets like Bitcoin. While that’s a general macro argument rather than a direct forecast, it aligns with why currency stress can quickly change the tone for crypto traders.
On-chain data points to capitulation pressure from late-cycle buyers
Beyond price charts, CryptoQuant’s latest work warned of a renewed capitulation dynamic among Bitcoin investors associated with cycle-top entries. In a new research Quicktake published by CryptoQuant, the platform argued that exchange inflows have been rising notably at sub-$70,000 price levels.
Crypto Sunmoon, a contributor to the Quicktake, noted that the coins moving into exchanges appear to be held for roughly six to twelve months—an age band often linked with accumulation during earlier bull phases, including portions of late-cycle buying near prior highs. The core claim was that “cycle-top buyers” are now selling at a loss, with the observed exchange flow pattern matching capitulation behavior.
CryptoQuant’s framing emphasizes not only the existence of selling, but the composition of it. When exchange inflows are skewed toward coin lots that last moved around all-time-high periods, it can indicate investors who bought during the mania phase are exiting during the drawdown. The report added that these capitulation events among cycle-top investors have historically coincided with long-term bottom formation, citing patterns seen in both the 2018 and 2022 cycles.
Importantly, CryptoQuant did not claim an immediate bottom is guaranteed—capitulation can occur over multiple stages. Still, the on-chain angle provides traders and longer-term holders with a clearer map of who may be selling (and why). If the inflows represent forced or loss-driven exit rather than fresh liquidation from new entrants, the market may be closer to a “supply digestion” phase than it would be if only new buyers were being squeezed.
As of this report, the data suggests investors are beginning to reduce exposure rather than fully capitulating through a one-off event. That nuance matters: steady distribution can keep price capped, while concentrated capitulation sometimes clears the way for a more durable reversal later.
Going forward, traders will likely watch two things closely: whether BTC breaks out of its compressed range on accelerating volatility, and whether exchange inflows tied to those late-cycle coin cohorts continue to rise or begin to fade. Until either the chart structure resolves or on-chain selling pressure stabilizes, the risk of further downside volatility remains high.
SharpLink (SBET) expanded its Ethereum (ETH) treasury this week, buying 10,000 ETH to reach 886,725 ETH in total holdings. The purchase came while Fundstrat strategist Tom Lee said sentiment looked worse than after the FTX collapse.
The company paired the purchase with a stock buyback, repurchasing 2.13 million shares after raising $75 million last week. SharpLink frames both moves as a single strategy, increasing the amount of ETH backing each share.
SharpLink Buys ETH and Repurchases Stock
The Ethereum treasury company paid an average of $1,611 per 10,000 ETH, according to a company statement. That price already sits above ETH’s $1,570 level at press time, leaving the fresh tranche underwater within days.
The buy lifted holdings to 886,725 ETH as of June 28, the second-largest corporate stash after BitMine. The position is worth about $1.4 billion at Ethereum’s current price.
ETH set a record near $4,946 in August 2025, then shed roughly 69% of its value. It has dropped about 23% over the past month, well below the level at which SharpLink built most of its treasury.
The company also repurchased 2,132,773 shares at $4.69, spending close to $10 million. That $75 million came from a stock offering priced at about a 41% premium.
“We had the opportunity to buy ETH and repurchase our stock at attractive valuations, so we did both. This past week we added 10,000 ETH and repurchased 2,132,773 shares,” SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom said in a post, tying the two decisions togethe.
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The firm had only recently resumed Ethereum purchases after an eight-month pause.
Tom Lee Says Sentiment Has Hit Post-FTX Lows
The buying contrasts with the wider mood. Lee chairs BitMine, the largest Ethereum treasury firm. It disclosed about 5.7 million ETH and $9.8 billion in crypto and cash this week, more than six times SharpLink’s holdings.
In a recent interview, Lee pointed to falling Google searches and a record-low RSI as signs of deep fear.
“The fear greed index is worse today than it was after the FTX debacle. So, usually that’s a good time to be buying something.”
Lee said Ethereum’s price is lagging its fundamentals, citing AI and tokenization as long-term tailwinds. He has also rejected Ethereum funding fears raised after staff exits at the Ethereum Foundation.
Staking income has helped Ethereum treasury firms offset paper losses through the slump. Whether SharpLink’s accumulation marks a bottom or just deeper conviction is not yet clear, but the firm keeps buying while much of the market sits on losses.
The post Ethereum Whale Tom Lee Flags Peak Market Fear as SharpLink Buys 10,000 ETH appeared first on BeInCrypto.
OKX has launched the beta version of an AI marketplace that allows autonomous agents to find work, complete tasks, receive onchain payments, and build portable reputations across transactions.
Summary
- OKX has launched the beta of OKX AI, an onchain marketplace where AI agents can find work and receive payments.
- The platform combines agent discovery, identity, escrow payments, reputation tracking, and decentralized dispute resolution.
- The launch expands OKX’s product lineup as it also advances tokenized finance initiatives and MiCA-regulated operations in Europe.
According to an announcement from OKX, the new platform, called OKX AI, combines agent discovery, identity, payments, reputation tracking, and dispute resolution into a single ecosystem designed for AI-powered services.
Rather than functioning as a simple directory, the marketplace lets software agents independently accept assignments, complete them, and settle payments onchain without relying on centralized intermediaries.
AI agents can now discover work and earn onchain
The platform consists of two connected marketplaces. In the Agent Marketplace, developers can list AI agents and define the services they provide. The Task Marketplace allows those agents to search for available work, complete assignments, and automatically receive payment once tasks are finished, according to OKX.
Payments are handled through either escrow-backed smart contracts or instant pay-per-call transactions. OKX said developers can receive compensation in either USDT or USDG, depending on the payment arrangement used.
At the same time, every completed transaction contributes to a shared onchain identity, allowing an agent’s reputation to grow across different applications instead of remaining tied to a single platform.
Disputes are handled differently from conventional freelance marketplaces. According to OKX, disagreements are reviewed by a decentralized network of evaluators rather than a centralized operator, with the outcome becoming part of the platform’s trust system.
The company also said the marketplace supports widely used AI development tools, including Claude Code and Codex. Launch partners include AWS, CertiK, the Ethereum Foundation, the Solana Foundation, StraitsX, and several other ecosystem participants.
OKX expands beyond crypto trading
The AI marketplace arrives as OKX continues adding products beyond its core exchange business.
As previously reported by crypto.news, OKX and Intercontinental Exchange have appointed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to co-chair a venture focused on tokenized and digitally native financial assets. The project, which remains subject to regulatory approval, is expected to connect OKX users with ICE futures products and tokenized equity markets linked to the New York Stock Exchange.
According to the companies, the initiative is intended to build blockchain infrastructure that can work alongside established financial markets rather than replace them.
The AI launch also comes shortly after OKX Europe highlighted the changing regulatory landscape in the European Union. As previously reported by crypto.news, the exchange estimated that more than 80% of crypto exchanges operating in Europe could disappear after the July 1 transition deadline under the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation if they fail to obtain authorization.
Based on those estimates, OKX said only about 200 crypto asset service providers currently hold MiCA licenses despite between 1,100 and 1,300 firms previously operating under national regulatory frameworks. The company has also introduced a customer incentive program offering deposit bonuses of 5% to 8% for users transferring assets from exchanges that do not secure MiCA authorization.
With the addition of OKX AI, the exchange is extending its product lineup beyond digital asset trading and tokenized finance into infrastructure designed for autonomous software agents, combining identity, payments, reputation, and task execution within an onchain marketplace.
China just built a major AI model without Nvidia chips. Now OpenAI has found ways to run on far fewer of them, cutting inference costs by more than half. Even so, Nvidia stock rose.
That is the puzzle. OpenAI is one of Nvidia’s (NVDA) biggest customers. Yet the shares climbed even as it moved to need fewer chips.
OpenAI Cuts Inference Costs on Two Fronts
The first front is software. The Information reported that OpenAI engineers cut inference costs by more than half with new optimization methods. OpenAI has not published the technical details.
The savings reduce the number of Nvidia chips needed to handle some ChatGPT traffic. They could also let OpenAI lower prices or raise usage limits.
The second front is hardware. On June 24, OpenAI and Broadcom (AVGO) unveiled Jalapeño, its first custom chip. OpenAI said early tests point to far better performance per watt than today’s leading chips, with a nine-month design.
The first chips will deploy at a gigawatt scale by the end of 2026, with Microsoft as the lead partner. Nvidia still runs most of OpenAI’s inference, even as OpenAI funds its Broadcom chip partnership.
Big Tech Races to Build Its Own Chips
OpenAI is not alone. Google has built tensor processing units since 2016, and Amazon followed with its own. Research firm TrendForce projects ASIC-based systems will reach 27.8% of AI server shipments in 2026, the highest since 2023.
By TrendForce’s count, custom chips are set to grow faster than Nvidia’s GPUs for the first time. Suppliers like Broadcom and Marvell have become key custom chip makers in the build-out.
Sanctions are pushing the same trend in China. Meituan recently trained its 1.6 trillion parameter LongCat-2.0 model on China’s domestic chips, without any Nvidia hardware.
Why Nvidia Stock Keeps Rising
The threat is real, but the numbers explain the calm. Nvidia stock rose nearly 2% on June 30, near a $4.8 trillion value. Nvidia’s latest results showed data-center revenue up 75% to a record $62.3 billion in a single quarter.
Most of the pressure sits at inference, not training. Nvidia still dominates model training, where its CUDA software has locked in developers since 2006. Custom chips rarely match that flexibility.
Nvidia is also defending the inference layer it is accused of losing. At GTC, Nvidia said its upcoming Rubin platform cuts inference costs per token by up to 10 times compared to Blackwell. Cheaper inference also tends to lift usage and total compute with it.
Not everyone is convinced. Some investors have rotated into rival chip stocks, betting the inference shift compounds. Yet Nvidia guided to this quarter without counting any China sales, and still sees record demand.
Nvidia still sells every chip it can make. The real test is whether its biggest customers can cut it out faster than the market grows.
The post After China, OpenAI Chips Away at Nvidia: So Why is NVDA Stock Up? appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto influencer Nick O’Neill said he deliberately sold off a community-created token after its developers sent him 60% of its supply.
The incident has sparked criticism from some traders, while others argue the entrepreneur had no obligation to support an unofficial token created without his approval.
O’Neill Defends Selling Unsolicited Token
It all started when the Fibonacci account on X shared a clip from O’Neill’s Choose Rich Live YouTube show, in which he had noted that The Black Bull (ANSEM) had surged 40% to a peak market cap above $120 million after the influencer it was named after, Ansem, teased weekly airdrops.
In the clip, he also pointed out that Ansem controls 60% to 65% of the token supply and fees through a public wallet that was valued at about $50 million at the time.
“Will it surge to similar highs? I don’t know. It’s hard for these to sustain…If you take a look at the charts of Ansem, it’s setting up for a pretty bad head and shoulders pattern. And I think the reality is, it’s like there’s not enough buyers in the market,” remarked O’Neill on ANSEM’s performance.
But even after expressing those doubts, a now-deleted post suggested that O’Neill could also have benefited if he had controlled 65% of a token’s supply, and, responding to the idea before the post disappeared, the podcaster replied, “I mean that would have been incredible.”
However, he said the opposite shortly after, telling his nearly 286,000 followers on X that he had no intention of supporting tokens launched in his name apart from the original RICH meme coin.
“I will literally rug any token anybody creates for me other than the original $RICH. I just rugged another token,” the influencer wrote.
When criticism started, O’Neill clarified that someone had independently created and distributed the token in question, named I Choose Rich Everytime (NICK), before sending him a large allocation.
Reserve, the account behind the coin, accused the influencer of selling the NICK tokens shortly after receiving them, something he did not deny, instead arguing that there was no reason for him to back another community-created asset when an existing cryptocurrency already carried his branding.
“If I wanted to do this I wouldn’t have some random person do it,” he responded.
ANSEM Comparison Hangs Over the Discussion
Some of O’Neill’s followers urged him to embrace the token anyway, suggesting it could rival ANSEM’s success. But others defended his decision, with one of them, ExcaliberArt, comparing the situation to receiving free shares in a company, which O’Neill was free to sell since he had never promised to promote or endorse the token.
As CryptoPotato reported yesterday, the deployer behind The Black Bull sent 650 million tokens, worth about $71 million at the time, directly to Ansem’s wallet for free while walking away with just $5,500 for themselves. According to on-chain analysts, the distribution suggested a pre-arranged promotional scheme, although some watchdogs, such as Rugcheck, warned that the token’s concentrated ownership had increased the risk of market manipulation.
The post Crypto Influencer Nick O’Neill Says He ‘Rugged’ Unsolicited Token Sent to Him appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) has moved another 500 Bitcoin (BTC) to custody firm NYDIG, worth roughly $39 million, the latest move in a treasury strategy now funding its push beyond mining.
On-chain monitors spotted the deposit, which fits a familiar pattern. Riot has sold far more Bitcoin than it mines, converting its reserves into cash for a costly pivot into AI data centers.
A Familiar Pattern for Riot
Blockchain monitor Onchain Lens flagged the 500 BTC deposit on June 30. It mirrored a similar transfer that analytics firm Arkham tracked in early April. Such moves to custodians often precede sales.
The scale of the selling is striking. Riot disclosed selling 3,778 Bitcoin for $289.5 million last quarter, while mining just 1,473 coins. The first-quarter Bitcoin sell-off far outpaced production, draining the treasury.
Those sales cut holdings to about 15,680 BTC as of this writing, down 18% from a year earlier.
Other miners offloading Bitcoin have leaned on the same playbook. Rival MARA Holdings sold about $1.1 billion in Bitcoin this year, while Core Scientific began monetizing most of its coins.
Thinner margins since the 2024 halving have squeezed pure mining.
The Riot Bitcoin Sale Funds an AI Bet
The clearest link between the selling and the pivot came in January. Riot funded a $96 million land purchase at its Rockdale site in Texas entirely by selling about 1,080 Bitcoin.
That land now anchors a data center business. Anchor tenant AMD signed a 10-year lease worth about $311 million, then doubled its commitment to 50 megawatts last quarter. The segment brought in $33.2 million of revenue, its first contribution.
The economists explain the urgency. Once equipment depreciation is accounted for, Riot spent $96,283 to mine each Bitcoin last quarter, more than a Bitcoin was worth. It reported a net loss of about $500 million.
What the Sale Streak Signals
CEO Jason Les has cast the shift as a turning point rather than a retreat.
“The first quarter of 2026 marks a definitive inflection point for Riot, as we officially transitioned into an active, revenue-generating data center operator,” the miner’s CEO, Jason Les, said.
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Riot abandoned its long-standing hold-only policy in 2025 and now sells routinely. Still, the company has staked its future on tenants like AMD rather than on Bitcoin alone.
With Bitcoin trading near $58,700, Riot can still raise large sums from a shrinking treasury. The race for AI infrastructure has rewarded that bet, with miner stocks climbing even as mining margins fade.
The coming quarters will test whether data center income can replace what mining once delivered.
The post Nasdaq-Listed Riot Keeps Selling Bitcoin While Reinventing Its Business appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Anthropic and OpenAI opened a new front in their rivalry on Tuesday, both aiming at scientific research. Anthropic launched Claude Science, an AI workbench for researchers, while OpenAI released GeneBench-Pro, a benchmark for computational biology.
The same-day releases push the AI race beyond chatbots and coding into laboratory work. One company shipped a tool for scientists to use today. The other built a yardstick for how far the technology still has to go.
What Anthropic’s Claude Science Does
Claude Science brings the databases, code, and computing power scientists use into a single app. It connects more than 60 scientific databases across genomics, proteomics, and cheminformatics.
Claude Science is an app, not a new model. It lands while Anthropic’s most powerful Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models stay restricted under US export rules. Every result is auditable and traced back to the code that produced it.
The workbench extends a life sciences push Anthropic began in October 2025. In beta, the Allen Institute’s Jérôme Lecoq used it to compress reviews that once took up to two years.
Anthropic will also fund up to 50 research projects, with up to $30,000 in credits each.
OpenAI’s GeneBench-Pro Raises the Bar
Shortly after Anthropic’s Claude Science release, OpenAI released GeneBench-Pro. It tests whether AI agents can make the judgment calls that real biology research demands.
The benchmark contains 129 problems across genomics, quantitative biology, and translational medicine.
OpenAI’s strongest model, GPT-5.6 Sol, solved 28.7% of the problems at its highest reasoning level. That figure rose to 31.5% in Pro mode. The company’s earlier staggered GPT-5.6 release came at Washington’s request.
GPT-5 scored below 5% on the original GeneBench, while Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 reached 16% on the harder test.
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Two Strategies, One Race
The split reveals two paths to the same goal. Anthropic is shipping a product for daily lab use. OpenAI is measuring how reliably models reason through messy data.
Both launches also arrive as Chinese models gain ground in AI research. OpenAI’s own numbers temper the hype because its best model still fails most GeneBench-Pro tasks.
The pressure is both geopolitical and scientific. US export limits have already pushed Anthropic to weigh new host countries for its models.
Reviewers estimated each GeneBench-Pro problem would take a human expert 20 to 40 hours, costing thousands of dollars. OpenAI said its model finishes the same analysis for a few dollars.
Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist, sees AI clearing key research bottlenecks even if broader gains take longer.
“What we’re going to see very very soon is that AI will make certain parts of the process, especially the development of drugs no longer rate limiting,” Aubrey de Grey, President and Chief Science Officer of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, speaking on a BeInCrypto podcast.
De Grey cautioned that turning faster research into approved treatments still depends on regulation and public tolerance for risk.
Researchers Expect Faster Adoption
Some specialists argue the shift is already underway. Dr. Derya Unutmaz, a Professor of Immunology, told the same BeInCrypto panel that AI now outperforms his own judgment.
“I personally trust AI more than my own ideas in my field of 35 years.”
He expects that reliance to spread quickly across clinical practice.
“It is unethical and I believe that very soon it’s going to be malpractice not to use AI in medicine.”
That optimism still runs ahead of the benchmarks. The coming months will show whether scientists adopt these tools and whether GeneBench-Pro scores start to climb.
The post Anthropic and OpenAI Take Their AI War Into Scientific Research appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Key Takeaways
- Circle (CRCL) shares plummeted over 13% to approximately $65, reaching their lowest point in four months following the rival stablecoin announcement.
- More than 140 major corporations, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Coinbase, have unveiled Open USD, a new stablecoin project.
- Open Standard, the organization managing Open USD, is headed by Zach Abrams, who previously co-founded Bridge before its acquisition by Stripe in 2024.
- Open USD distinguishes itself from Circle’s USDC by offering zero-fee minting and redemption, plus shared reserve income distribution among consortium members.
- Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire dismissed concerns about the competition, asserting that USDC maintains its position as the most reliable stablecoin in the market.
Shares of Circle Internet Group experienced a significant decline on Tuesday. The stock plummeted as much as 14% during trading before closing down approximately 13%, hovering around $65—marking its weakest performance since the end of February.
The sharp decline came after news emerged that a consortium exceeding 140 corporations intends to introduce a rival stablecoin. This new digital asset, dubbed Open USD, represents a direct challenge to Circle’s flagship USDC token.
Coinbase shares also experienced downward pressure from the announcement, declining roughly 6% to $142.37. This decline carries particular significance given that Coinbase partnered with Circle to create USDC and has historically shared in its revenue stream.
The Consortium Behind Open USD
The alliance backing this initiative includes an impressive roster of industry leaders. Among the founding partners are payment giants Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, alongside financial powerhouses BlackRock and Coinbase, plus banking institutions including BNY, Standard Chartered, and U.S. Bank.
Major technology corporations have also joined the effort. Google and IBM are both participants, along with prominent blockchain projects such as Ripple, Solana, Polygon, and Aave.
An independent entity named Open Standard oversees the project. Zach Abrams serves as its leader, bringing experience from co-founding Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company that Stripe purchased in 2024.
Abrams positioned the initiative as addressing market needs, stating that while current stablecoins have merits, the business community requires a solution that’s open, affordable, and structured to serve their interests at enterprise scale.
Industry observers weren’t completely caught off guard. CoinDesk had previously reported earlier this month that Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard were developing a competing stablecoin platform, with indications that Coinbase might participate.
Open USD’s Competitive Advantages Over USDC
The economic model represents the most significant challenge to Circle’s revenue stream. Open USD will allow businesses to create and redeem tokens without any associated fees.
The distribution of reserve income follows a similar collaborative approach. Rather than concentrating interest earnings from reserves within a single entity, Open USD intends to distribute yields among all participating partners following operational expense deductions.
This directly threatens Circle’s primary revenue source. Circle generates income by investing USDC reserves in short-duration Treasury securities and retaining the majority of interest generated—a model that Open USD explicitly aims to disrupt.
Governance authority will be distributed among consortium members instead of residing with a sole issuer. This approach resembles USDG, another consortium-based stablecoin supported by Paxos, Robinhood, Kraken, and Galaxy Digital.
USDC presently maintains approximately $73.6 billion in circulation, positioning it as the dominant U.S.-originated stablecoin. Tether’s USDT holds a larger global presence with roughly $145 billion in circulation, though it focuses primarily on cryptocurrency trading and developing economies.
The implications for Coinbase are substantial. Revenue connected to USDC accounted for 44% of Coinbase’s subscription and services division during the first quarter.
Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire took to X on Tuesday to defend his company’s position, characterizing USDC as “the most trusted, widely adopted, institutional-ready stablecoin in the world.” He emphasized that Circle collaborates with thousands of institutional partners.
A Coinbase representative maintained an optimistic perspective, suggesting that additional stablecoin issuers and applications ultimately expand the total addressable market, while affirming that USDC continues to be central to their platform strategy.
According to Open Standard’s official statement, Open USD is scheduled to debut later this year.
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