Cloud mining narrative shifts toward AI infrastructure as platforms like NOW DeFi attract renewed investor interest.

The narrative around crypto mining is shifting. Expansion into the U.S., stronger compliance messaging, and the integration of AI into mining infrastructure are pushing cloud mining platforms away from the old “high-return marketing” narrative toward one focused on infrastructure, automation, and accessibility.

For cryptocurrency investors, this shift is becoming increasingly relevant. While many participants previously relied on a buy-and-hold strategy, more investors are now asking whether digital assets can generate additional income opportunities beyond price appreciation.

Against this backdrop, NOW DeFi is gaining attention among investors. By combining AI optimization, automated operations, and infrastructure resources, the platform provides a simplified way to participate in mining and is helping bring cloud mining back into market discussions.

Cloud mining is moving from a “marketing narrative” to an “infrastructure narrative”

Cloud mining previously faced criticism due to aggressive marketing and exaggerated return claims. By 2026, however, industry competition is shifting toward infrastructure and operational capability.

Many platforms are now focusing on:

• Expansion into mature markets such as the United States
• Greater emphasis on compliance and transparency
• AI-driven hashpower optimization
• Integration with renewable energy and data-center infrastructure

This shift reflects a move from simply promoting returns to offering infrastructure access to mining participation.

Investors begin looking for a second path beyond holding

As the crypto market matures, investor behavior is evolving.

Long-term holding strategies for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets remain common. At the same time, more investors are exploring ways to make their assets more productive, including participation in mining infrastructure as a potential income strategy.

Cloud mining is attracting attention because it lowers the technical and hardware barriers traditionally associated with mining.

Traditional mining still has high barriers

For most individual investors, traditional mining remains costly and complex. Hardware purchases, electricity expenses, and operational management make direct participation difficult.

Cloud mining platforms offer a simpler alternative. By accessing mining infrastructure through cloud-based hashpower services, users can participate without purchasing or managing equipment, making it a practical option for those seeking opportunities beyond holding assets.

NOW DeFi: Lowering the barrier through AI and infrastructure

Within this evolving landscape, NOW DeFi aims to redefine cloud mining participation through a simplified model.

The platform provides cloud-based hashpower services that allow users to engage in mining without operating hardware. NOW DeFi emphasizes efficiency, automation, and accessibility.

Key features include:

• AI-based optimization systems that improve mining efficiency
• Integration with data-center and energy infrastructure
• Automated processes designed for new users
• A simplified interface for monitoring mining activity

This approach is suited for long-term digital asset holders seeking additional income strategies as well as investors interested in mining without managing hardware.

From idle holding to active participation

For many investors, digital assets often remain idle in wallets or exchange accounts, relying mainly on market price movements.

As the market evolves, more investors are considering whether allocating part of their assets to infrastructure-based activities such as mining could provide additional flexibility and potential income.

In this context, NOW DeFi aims to offer an accessible way for users to explore cloud mining and determine how it fits into their digital asset strategies.

How to get started with NOW DeFi

For users interested in cloud mining, NOW DeFi offers a simple onboarding process:

Step 1: Create an account
Visit the nowdefi.com platform and complete the registration process.

Step 2: Choose a suitable mining plan
Select a hashpower plan based on preferred duration and budget.

Step 3: Start and monitor operations
Once activated, mining runs automatically, and users can track activity through the platform dashboard.

This streamlined process allows even users without mining experience to access the cloud mining ecosystem.

In 2026, cloud mining is about accessibility

From an industry perspective, the key shift in 2026 is that successful platforms are no longer defined only by promised returns. Investors increasingly evaluate infrastructure capability, transparency, technological development, and global expansion strategies.

Platforms gaining attention are those able to answer several questions:

• Why is now the right time to participate?
• What can investors do beyond holding assets?
• Is participation simple and accessible?
• Are the platform’s operations reliable and transparent?

In this evolving narrative, NOW DeFi seeks to address these questions through AI optimization, infrastructure integration, and simplified participation.

About NOW DeFi

NOW DeFi is a digital asset technology platform focused on cloud mining services. By integrating AI optimization, automated operations, and infrastructure resources, the platform aims to provide a transparent and accessible way to participate in cryptocurrency mining.

Users can register by visiting the NOW DeFi official website or downloading the mobile application. After registration, new users can receive the platform’s free hashpower reward, allowing them to participate in cloud mining without purchasing mining hardware.

CZ goes after Etherscan for displaying spam transactions from address poisoning scams, stating block explorers should filter out the malicious transfers completely.

The former Binance CEO posted on X that TrustWallet already implements this filtering, while Etherscan continues showing zero-value poisoning transactions that flood user wallets.

The criticism follows an incident where a user identified as Nima received 89 address-poisoning emails in under 30 minutes after making just two stablecoin transfers on Ethereum.

Etherscan issued a warning about the attack, which aims to trick users into copying lookalike addresses from transaction history when sending funds.

“So many will fall victim to this,” Nima warned after the automated attack campaign targeted his wallet.

CZ goes after Etherscan for displaying spam transactions

Xeift clarified that Etherscan hides zero-value transfers by default, but BscScan and Basescan require users to click a “hide 0 amount tx” button explicitly to remove address poisoning attack transactions.

The difference in default settings leaves some users exposed to viewing spam that could lead to sending funds to attacker-controlled addresses.

CZ noted the filtering may affect micro transactions between AI agents in the future, suggesting AI could be used to distinguish legitimate zero-value transfers from spam.

Dr. Favezy pointed out that swaps create additional risks beyond address poisoning. A swap from the 0x98 wallet that turned $50 million into $36,000 yesterday raised concerns about routing and liquidity source selection.

“I really hope AI agents will be able to route through the right routers and best liquidity sources to avoid situations like this,” Favezy wrote.

Address poisoning floods wallets with lookalike addresses

The attack works by initiating zero-value token transfers using the transferFrom function. Attackers send 0-value tokens to create transfer events that appear in victim transaction histories. Every address defaults to 0 value approval, allowing the event emission.

Attackers then combine this with address spoofing to increase the likelihood victims copy the wrong transfer address.

The spoofed addresses match the first and last characters of legitimate addresses.

Nima’s case shows the scale these attacks can reach, with 89 poisoning attempts in 30 minutes from just two legitimate transfers. The automated nature means attackers can target thousands of addresses simultaneously whenever they detect stablecoin or token movements on-chain.

Two Formula One races in the Middle East are set to be canceled because of ongoing war in the region, according to multiple reports. The FIA is maintaining contact with local authorities as it evaluates the situation regarding upcoming F1 races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The cancellations threaten crypto’s multi-million dollar F1 sponsorship investments. Other major business events across the UAE, including Middle East Energy Dubai and the Dubai International Boat Show, have also been postponed or delayed. This comes as crypto brands already face headwinds on F1 vehicles, with the sector reeling from high-profile collapses like FTX, which sponsored Mercedes AMG F1.

Sources: CoinDesk | Yahoo Sports | Road and Track

This article was generated automatically by The Defiant’s AI news system from publicly available sources.

The blockchain trilemma reared its head once more at Consensus in Hong Kong in February, to some extent, putting Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, on the back foot – having to reassure attendees that hyperscalers like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are not a risk to decentralisation.

The point was made that major blockchain projects need hyperscalers, and that one shouldn’t be concerned about a single point of failure because:

• Advanced cryptography neutralizes the risk
• Multi-party computation distributes key material
• Confidential computing shields data in use

The argument rested on the idea that ‘if the cloud cannot see the data, the cloud cannot control the system,’ and it was left there due to time constraints.

But there’s an alternative to Hoskinson’s argument in favor of hyperscalers that deserves more attention.

MPC and Confidential Computing Reduce Exposure

This was somewhat of a strategic bastion in Charles’ argument – that technologies like multi-party computation (MPC) and confidential computing ensure that hardware providers wouldn’t have access to the underlying data.

They are powerful tools. But they do not dissolve the underlying risk.

MPC distributes key material across multiple parties so that no single participant can reconstruct a secret. That meaningfully reduces the risk of a single compromised node. However, the security surface expands in other directions. The coordination layer, the communication channels and the governance of participating nodes all become critical.

Instead of trusting a single key holder, the system now depends on a distributed set of actors behaving correctly and on the protocol being implemented correctly. The single point of failure does not disappear. In fact, it simply becomes a distributed trust surface.

Confidential computing, particularly trusted execution environments, introduces a different trade-off. Data is encrypted during execution, which limits exposure to the hosting provider.

But Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) rely on hardware assumptions. They depend on microarchitectural isolation, firmware integrity and correct implementation. Academic literature, for example, here and here, has repeatedly demonstrated that side-channel and architectural vulnerabilities continue to emerge across enclave technologies. The security boundary is narrower than traditional cloud, but it is not absolute.

More importantly, both MPC and TEEs often operate on top of hyperscaler infrastructure. The physical hardware, virtualization layer and supply chain remain concentrated. If an infrastructure provider controls access to machines, bandwidth or geographic regions, it retains operational leverage. Cryptography may prevent data inspection, but it does not prevent throughput restrictions, shutdowns, or policy interventions.

Advanced cryptographic tools make specific attacks harder, but they still do not remove infrastructure-level failure risk. They simply replace a visible concentration with a more complex one.

The ‘No L1 Can Handle Global Compute’ Argument

Hoskinson made the point that hyperscalers are necessary because no single Layer 1 can handle the computational demands of global systems, referencing the trillions of dollars that have helped to build such data centres.

Of course, Layer 1 networks were not built to run AI training loops, high-frequency trading engines, or enterprise analytics pipelines. They exist to maintain consensus, verify state transitions and provide durable data availability.

He is correct on what Layer 1 is for. But global systems mainly need results that anyone can verify, even if the computation happens elsewhere.

In modern crypto infrastructure, heavy computation increasingly happens off-chain. What matters is that results can be proven and verified onchain. This is the foundation of rollups, zero-knowledge systems and verifiable compute networks.

Focusing on whether an L1 can run global compute misses the core issue of who controls the execution and storage infrastructure behind verification.

If computation happens offchain but relies on centralized infrastructure, the system inherits centralized failure modes. Settlement remains decentralized in theory, but the pathway to producing valid state transitions is concentrated in practice.

The issue should be about dependency at the infrastructure layer, not computational capacity inside Layer 1.

Cryptographic Neutrality Is Not the Same as Participation Neutrality

Cryptographic neutrality is a powerful idea and something Hoskinson used in his argument. It means rules cannot be arbitrarily changed, hidden backdoors cannot be introduced and the protocol remains fair.

But cryptography runs on hardware.

That physical layer determines who can participate, who can afford to do so and who ends up excluded, because throughput and latency are ultimately constrained by real machines and the infrastructure they run on. If hardware production, distribution, and hosting remain centralized, participation becomes economically gated even when the protocol itself is mathematically neutral.

In high-compute systems, hardware is the game-changer. It determines cost structure, who can scale, and resilience under censorship pressure. A neutral protocol running on concentrated infrastructure is neutral in theory but constrained in practice.

The priority should shift toward cryptography combined with diversified hardware ownership.

Without infrastructure diversity, neutrality becomes fragile under stress. If a small set of providers can rate-limit workloads, restrict regions, or impose compliance gates, the system inherits their leverage. Rule fairness alone does not guarantee participation fairness.

Specialization Beats Generalization in Compute Markets

Competing with AWS is often framed as a question of scale, but this too is misleading.

Hyperscalers optimize for flexibility. Their infrastructure is designed to serve thousands of workloads simultaneously. Virtualization layers, orchestration systems, enterprise compliance tooling and elasticity guarantees – these features are strengths for general-purpose compute, but they are also cost layers.

Zero-knowledge proving and verifiable compute are deterministic, compute-dense, memory-bandwidth constrained, and pipeline-sensitive. In other words, they reward specialization.

A purpose-built proving network competes on proof per dollar, proof per watt and proof per latency. When hardware, prover software, circuit design, and aggregation logic are vertically integrated, efficiency compounds. Removing unnecessary abstraction layers reduces overhead. Sustained throughput on persistent clusters outperforms elastic scaling for narrow, constant workloads.

In compute markets, specialization consistently outperforms generalization for steady, high-volume tasks. AWS optimizes for optionality. A dedicated proving network optimizes for one class of work.

The economic structure differs as well. Hyperscalers’ price for enterprise margins and broad demand variability. A network aligned around protocol incentives can amortize hardware differently and tune performance around sustained utilization rather than short-term rental models.

The competition becomes about structural efficiency for a defined workload.

Use Hyperscalers, But Do Not Be Dependent on Them

Hyperscalers are not the enemy. They are efficient, reliable, and globally distributed infrastructure providers. The problem is dependence.

A resilient architecture uses major vendors for burst capacity, geographic redundancy, and edge distribution, but it does not anchor core functions to a single provider or a small cluster of providers.

Settlement, final verification and the availability of critical artifacts should remain intact even if a cloud region fails, a vendor exits a market, or policy constraints tighten.

This is where decentralized storage and compute infrastructure become a viable alternative. Proof artifacts, historical records and verification inputs should not be withdrawable at a provider’s discretion. Instead, they should live on infrastructure that is economically aligned with the protocol and structurally difficult to turn off.

Hypescalers should be used as an optional accelerator rather than something foundational to the product. Cloud can still be useful for reach and bursts, but the system’s ability to produce proofs and persist what verification depends on is not gated by a single vendor.

In such a system, if a hyperscaler disappears tomorrow, the network would only slow down, because the parts that matter most are owned and operated by a broader network rather than rented from a big-brand chokepoint.

This is how to fortify crypto’s ethos of decentralization.

TLDR:

• IOTA’s code reveals a three-tier securitization model mirroring traditional structured finance architecture.
  
• The infrastructure could support invoice factoring, SME lending, and energy project financing on-chain.
  
• Analysts link the testing to SALUS and ADAPT platforms operating within the AfCFTA trade framework.
  
• No IOTA Foundation statement confirms the purpose, but the architecture suits digital capital markets.

IOTA is currently testing a full securitization infrastructure on its blockchain, based on early code analysis. The architecture mirrors traditional structured finance models, dividing pooled assets into senior, mezzanine, and junior tranches.

This points toward a broader financial layer being constructed on the IOTA network. Community observers are connecting this work to platforms like SALUS, ADAPT, and TWIN. All three platforms operate within the African Continental Free Trade Area framework.

IOTA Code Points to a Foundational Structured Finance Layer

Securitization involves pooling real assets, like loans or invoices, and converting them into tradeable instruments. On IOTA, the code being tested applies this same principle across the network.

This structure points to a foundational layer for managing and structuring real-world assets on-chain.

The architecture reflects the three-tier model widely used in traditional structured finance. Senior tranches carry the lowest risk and hold first priority on repayment.

Mezzanine tranches occupy the middle ground, balancing risk and return. Junior tranches carry the highest risk but offer the greatest potential return.

Community analyst Salima flagged this on X, noting the architecture fits platforms like SALUS and ADAPT. She pointed out that the code does not appear to be a standalone product.

Rather, it resembles the base layer for managing digital real-world assets at scale. Any direct link to AfCFTA trade platforms remains unconfirmed at this stage.

What stands out is that this process could run entirely on IOTA without external financial rails. No third-party intermediaries or legacy systems would be required.

Portfolios of real-world assets could become programmable digital financial structures on-chain. Investors could then participate based on their individual risk profiles.

Trade Finance to Capital Markets: IOTA’s Potential Use Cases

The infrastructure on IOTA could support several practical financial applications. Invoice factoring and trade finance are among the most immediate potential use cases.

SME lending and productive financing also fit within this securitization model. Equipment leasing and energy projects are additional sectors where this architecture could apply.

Digital capital markets for real-world assets represent a wider area of interest. Tokenized portfolios could open participation to a broader global investor base.

This removes the geographic barriers that traditionally limit access to structured finance. IOTA’s feeless and scalable design makes it technically suited for this type of infrastructure.

The timing of these tests aligns with growing global interest in real-world asset tokenization. Traditional finance is increasingly exploring blockchain alternatives to legacy securitization models.

If IOTA’s architecture develops further, it could serve as a foundational layer for this shift. No official statement has come from the IOTA Foundation as of this writing.

As the code evolves, observers are watching for further technical developments and announcements. The current architecture does not confirm any specific platform or official partnership.

What is clear is that IOTA is building technical groundwork for real-world asset finance. The full scope and intent of this infrastructure is yet to be publicly confirmed.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) said it finalized the sale of 5,000 ether (ETH) in an over-the-counter transaction with one of the top crypto treasury firm Bitmine Immersion Technologies.

The sale cleared at an average price of $2,042.96 per ETH, the Foundation said, placing the transaction’s value at roughly $10.2 million.

The non-profit organization, established in 2014 to support the Ethereum blockchain and its ecosystem, said the funds will support its core operations, including protocol research and development, ecosystem growth, and community grants.

The transactions, it said, are in line with the policy that governs its reserve management. The framework aims to strike a balance between holding ETH and maintaining sufficient fiat or fiat-like assets to cover operating costs. EF currently aims to keep annual operating expenses near 15% of treasury value with a 2.5-year operating buffer, a strategy that determines how often it sells ETH.

The sale comes less than a month after the Ethereum Foundation began staking up to 70,000 ETH to support its operations and deepen its role in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Bitmine, helmed by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, was the counterparty in the deal and is the largest publicly traded ether treasury firm, currently holding around 4.53 million ETH, worth more than $9.4 billion.

The firm’s portfolio is almost entirely ether. The company also holds around 195 BTC and more than $1 billion in cash, along with equity stakes. These stakes also include a share of Beast Industries, the company behind YouTube creator MrBeast, after a $200 million investment in it, along with a 7% stake in the worldcoin treasury firm Eightco.

Read more: ‘Mini crypto winter’ nearly over, says Tom Lee as Bitmine ramps up pace of ether acquisition

Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, called Bitcoin (BTC) a “Ponzi Scheme” that has less value than Pokémon cards, collectibles he said had a wide appeal and a multi-decade history.

Johnson wrote an opinion article published in the Daily Mail on Friday that began with a story about a friend who had given 500 British pounds, or about $661, to a man who promised to “double his money” by investing it in BTC.

The friend continued to pay additional “fees” to the scheme’s promoter over the next three and a half years, but was never able to retrieve his funds, despite sinking 20,000 British pounds, or about $26,474, which led to financial hardship, Johnson said. 

“He was struggling to pay his bills. He wasn’t the only one, said my friend. Other people in the neighborhood were going through the same nightmare,” Johnson added. Johnson then argued that collectible Pokémon cards are a more tradable asset than BTC:

“These curious little Japanese cartoon beasties seem to exercise the same fascination over the five-year-old mind as they did 30 years ago. The kids drool over them. They boast and squabble about them.

Even if you remain pretty impervious to the charm of Pikachu, you can just about see why a decades-old Pikachu card is still a tradeable asset,” he added.