Crypto World
Profitability in Business and Employee Benefits
by Gonzalo Wangüemert Villalba
•
4 September 2025
Introduction The open-source AI ecosystem reached a turning point in August 2025 when Elon Musk’s company xAI released Grok 2.5 and, almost simultaneously, OpenAI launched two new models under the names GPT-OSS-20B and GPT-OSS-120B. While both announcements signalled a commitment to transparency and broader accessibility, the details of these releases highlight strikingly different approaches to what open AI should mean. This article explores the architecture, accessibility, performance benchmarks, regulatory compliance and wider industry impact of these three models. The aim is to clarify whether xAI’s Grok or OpenAI’s GPT-OSS family currently offers more value for developers, businesses and regulators in Europe and beyond. What Was Released Grok 2.5, described by xAI as a 270 billion parameter model, was made available through the release of its weights and tokenizer. These files amount to roughly half a terabyte and were published on Hugging Face. Yet the release lacks critical elements such as training code, detailed architectural notes or dataset documentation. Most importantly, Grok 2.5 comes with a bespoke licence drafted by xAI that has not yet been clearly scrutinised by legal or open-source communities. Analysts have noted that its terms could be revocable or carry restrictions that prevent the model from being considered genuinely open source. Elon Musk promised on social media that Grok 3 would be published in the same manner within six months, suggesting this is just the beginning of a broader strategy by xAI to join the open-source race. By contrast, OpenAI unveiled GPT-OSS-20B and GPT-OSS-120B on 5 August 2025 with a far more comprehensive package. The models were released under the widely recognised Apache 2.0 licence, which is permissive, business-friendly and in line with requirements of the European Union’s AI Act. OpenAI did not only share the weights but also architectural details, training methodology, evaluation benchmarks, code samples and usage guidelines. This represents one of the most transparent releases ever made by the company, which historically faced criticism for keeping its frontier models proprietary. Architectural Approach The architectural differences between these models reveal much about their intended use. Grok 2.5 is a dense transformer with all 270 billion parameters engaged in computation. Without detailed documentation, it is unclear how efficiently it handles scaling or what kinds of attention mechanisms are employed. Meanwhile, GPT-OSS-20B and GPT-OSS-120B make use of a Mixture-of-Experts design. In practice this means that although the models contain 21 and 117 billion parameters respectively, only a small subset of those parameters are activated for each token. GPT-OSS-20B activates 3.6 billion and GPT-OSS-120B activates just over 5 billion. This architecture leads to far greater efficiency, allowing the smaller of the two to run comfortably on devices with only 16 gigabytes of memory, including Snapdragon laptops and consumer-grade graphics cards. The larger model requires 80 gigabytes of GPU memory, placing it in the range of high-end professional hardware, yet still far more efficient than a dense model of similar size. This is a deliberate choice by OpenAI to ensure that open-weight models are not only theoretically available but practically usable. Documentation and Transparency The difference in documentation further separates the two releases. OpenAI’s GPT-OSS models include explanations of their sparse attention layers, grouped multi-query attention, and support for extended context lengths up to 128,000 tokens. These details allow independent researchers to understand, test and even modify the architecture. By contrast, Grok 2.5 offers little more than its weight files and tokenizer, making it effectively a black box. From a developer’s perspective this is crucial: having access to weights without knowing how the system was trained or structured limits reproducibility and hinders adaptation. Transparency also affects regulatory compliance and community trust, making OpenAI’s approach significantly more robust. Performance and Benchmarks Benchmark performance is another area where GPT-OSS models shine. According to OpenAI’s technical documentation and independent testing, GPT-OSS-120B rivals or exceeds the reasoning ability of the company’s o4-mini model, while GPT-OSS-20B achieves parity with the o3-mini. On benchmarks such as MMLU, Codeforces, HealthBench and the AIME mathematics tests from 2024 and 2025, the models perform strongly, especially considering their efficient architecture. GPT-OSS-20B in particular impressed researchers by outperforming much larger competitors such as Qwen3-32B on certain coding and reasoning tasks, despite using less energy and memory. Academic studies published on arXiv in August 2025 highlighted that the model achieved nearly 32 per cent higher throughput and more than 25 per cent lower energy consumption per 1,000 tokens than rival models. Interestingly, one paper noted that GPT-OSS-20B outperformed its larger sibling GPT-OSS-120B on some human evaluation benchmarks, suggesting that sparse scaling does not always correlate linearly with capability. In terms of safety and robustness, the GPT-OSS models again appear carefully designed. They perform comparably to o4-mini on jailbreak resistance and bias testing, though they display higher hallucination rates in simple factual question-answering tasks. This transparency allows researchers to target weaknesses directly, which is part of the value of an open-weight release. Grok 2.5, however, lacks publicly available benchmarks altogether. Without independent testing, its actual capabilities remain uncertain, leaving the community with only Musk’s promotional statements to go by. Regulatory Compliance Regulatory compliance is a particularly important issue for organisations in Europe under the EU AI Act. The legislation requires general-purpose AI models to be released under genuinely open licences, accompanied by detailed technical documentation, information on training and testing datasets, and usage reporting. For models that exceed systemic risk thresholds, such as those trained with more than 10²⁵ floating point operations, further obligations apply, including risk assessment and registration. Grok 2.5, by virtue of its vague licence and lack of documentation, appears non-compliant on several counts. Unless xAI publishes more details or adapts its licensing, European businesses may find it difficult or legally risky to adopt Grok in their workflows. GPT-OSS-20B and 120B, by contrast, seem carefully aligned with the requirements of the AI Act. Their Apache 2.0 licence is recognised under the Act, their documentation meets transparency demands, and OpenAI has signalled a commitment to provide usage reporting. From a regulatory standpoint, OpenAI’s releases are safer bets for integration within the UK and EU. Community Reception The reception from the AI community reflects these differences. Developers welcomed OpenAI’s move as a long-awaited recognition of the open-source movement, especially after years of criticism that the company had become overly protective of its models. Some users, however, expressed frustration with the mixture-of-experts design, reporting that it can lead to repetitive tool-calling behaviours and less engaging conversational output. Yet most acknowledged that for tasks requiring structured reasoning, coding or mathematical precision, the GPT-OSS family performs exceptionally well. Grok 2.5’s release was greeted with more scepticism. While some praised Musk for at least releasing weights, others argued that without a proper licence or documentation it was little more than a symbolic gesture designed to signal openness while avoiding true transparency. Strategic Implications The strategic motivations behind these releases are also worth considering. For xAI, releasing Grok 2.5 may be less about immediate usability and more about positioning in the competitive AI landscape, particularly against Chinese developers and American rivals. For OpenAI, the move appears to be a balancing act: maintaining leadership in proprietary frontier models like GPT-5 while offering credible open-weight alternatives that address regulatory scrutiny and community pressure. This dual strategy could prove effective, enabling the company to dominate both commercial and open-source markets. Conclusion Ultimately, the comparison between Grok 2.5 and GPT-OSS-20B and 120B is not merely technical but philosophical. xAI’s release demonstrates a willingness to participate in the open-source movement but stops short of true openness. OpenAI, on the other hand, has set a new standard for what open-weight releases should look like in 2025: efficient architectures, extensive documentation, clear licensing, strong benchmark performance and regulatory compliance. For European businesses and policymakers evaluating open-source AI options, GPT-OSS currently represents the more practical, compliant and capable choice. In conclusion, while both xAI and OpenAI contributed to the momentum of open-source AI in August 2025, the details reveal that not all openness is created equal. Grok 2.5 stands as an important symbolic release, but OpenAI’s GPT-OSS family sets the benchmark for practical usability, compliance with the EU AI Act, and genuine transparency.
A falling CDD Multiple means older Bitcoin isn’t moving much, showing long-term holders aren’t selling, and overall selling pressure is low.
Bitcoin briefly neared $76,000 on Tuesday, a level seen for the first time in six weeks, in spite of the global uncertainty as the conflict in the Middle East entered its third week.
Data from Alphractal shows that Bitcoin’s Coin Days Destroyed (CDD) Multiple has fallen to its lowest level since 2022. This indicates minimal movement of older units.
Veteran Holders Stay Put
Alphractal explained that the metric, which measures the intensity of Coin Days Destroyed relative to its historical average, normalizes current activity against a long-term baseline to assess whether long-term holders are spending at elevated or reduced rates.
Current readings suggest that older BTC remains largely dormant, which points to steady holding behavior among long-term investors.
According to the analysis, many of these holders previously distributed coins at higher price levels, leaving the present market dominated by relatively younger supply in circulation. The low CDD Multiple also implies limited selling pressure from mature holdings.
In previous cases, similar low levels in the metric have coincided with consolidation phases, where reduced activity from long-term holders precedes significant directional moves in the market.
Meanwhile, data from Santiment shows that Bitcoin’s recent move has been accompanied by a sharp rise in market optimism. The uptick has pushed FOMO to its highest level since January 2, as social media data from this week indicates a bullish-to-bearish comment ratio of 1.67 across platforms such as X, Reddit, and Telegram. The positive sentiment has outweighed the negative views.
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Further data reveal Bitcoin is showing early signs of recovery in buyer activity after heavy selling in February. Despite rising geopolitical tensions and expectations that the Federal Reserve will not cut interest rates at the upcoming FOMC meeting, CryptoQuant found that BTC has remained relatively “resilient” compared to traditional assets like equities and commodities.
Buyer Dominance
Data from Binance and Coinbase indicate that trading volumes are gradually changing in favor of buyers. On February 16, the 30-day average volume delta was strongly negative, at -$145 million on Binance and -$88 million on Coinbase, reflecting broad selling by both retail and institutional investors. This has now turned positive, and reached about +$21 million and +$14 million, respectively.
While this is a clear improvement, analysts say that liquidity remains low, and the trend will need further confirmation to support upward price movement.
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[PRESS RELEASE – Kingstown, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, March 17th, 2026]
Non-custodial exchange platform ChangeNOW has announced the rollout of Private Send, a feature designed to prevent direct links between sender and recipient addresses on public blockchains.
Integrated into NOW Wallet, Private Send introduces a toggle within the transaction flow. Instead of a direct wallet-to-wallet transfer, funds are routed through ChangeNOW infrastructure before reaching the final address. To the recipient, the transaction appears standard, while the sender’s address does not appear in the recipient’s transaction history.
Pauline Shangett, CSO at ChangeNOW, says, “Public blockchains were supposed to be about financial freedom, not financial surveillance. Yet today, analytics firms map billions of addresses into clusters, building profiles on ordinary users. Private Send isn’t about hiding from regulators, it’s about stopping the default exposure of every move you make. One click, and the direct link between you and the recipient disappears. That’s it.”
Role of Blockchain Analytics
Blockchain analytics has become standard infrastructure across the industry. A common misconception is that holding crypto in self-custodied wallets ensures anonymity. Analytics firms map billions of addresses into identifiable clusters, linking wallet activity to individuals or entities. Private Send was developed in response to this environment by introducing an intermediary into the transaction flow. The blockchain records the transaction without establishing a direct connection between the sender and the recipient.
Transaction Flow Structure
- Users toggle “Private Send” in NOW Wallet’s standard send flow
- Transaction routes: sender → ChangeNOW → recipient
- Recipient sees funds arriving from a ChangeNOW address
- No additional apps, registrations, or technical knowledge required
Key details
- Most assets available in NOW Wallet
- All transactions undergo standard AML screening
- Geographic availability matches ChangeNOW’s existing restrictions
- Requirement: latest version of NOW Wallet
Typical use cases
- Moving funds between personal wallets without consolidating on-chain history
- Paying vendors or contractors without exposing full portfolio activity
- General privacy-conscious transfers where direct address links are undesirable
Private Send is not a mixing service or an anonymization tool. It operates entirely within ChangeNOW’s compliance framework and does not alter the final transaction record; it only changes the path to the destination.
About ChangeNOW
ChangeNOW is a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange platform that values speed, security, and user liberty. Since its launch, it has served over 8 million customers worldwide, offering access to over 110 blockchains and 70+ fiat currencies. By combining the best rates from top centralized and decentralized platforms, ChangeNOW offers a seamless experience with simplified onboarding where users have full control over their assets.
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Hyperliquid whale positioning hits $3.64B as leverage splits evenly between longs and shorts.
Summary
- Coinglass data via ChainCatcher show total Hyperliquid whale exposure at about 3.644 billion dollars, with 1.821 billion in longs and 1.823 billion in shorts, leaving the long‑short ratio effectively flat at 1:1.
- Longs are sitting on roughly 57.38 million dollars in unrealized profit while shorts are down around 11.16 million, reflecting how the recent grind higher in majors has quietly rewarded leveraged bulls.
- One standout wallet, 0x6c85…f6, is running a 20x ETH long from 2,012.11 dollars with about 15.14 million dollars in paper gains, illustrating how a sharp reversal could turn today’s star trades into the first forced sellers in a cascade.
Leverage on decentralized derivatives venue Hyperliquid (HYPE) has reached eye‑watering levels, with on‑chain data showing whale positions almost perfectly balanced between longs and shorts even as individual traders rack up eight‑figure unrealized profits. According to Coinglass figures cited by ChainCatcher, total whale exposure on Hyperliquid now stands at about 3.644 billion dollars, split into 1.821 billion dollars of long positions and 1.823 billion dollars of shorts. That leaves the long‑short ratio effectively at 1:1, a rare equilibrium that suggests aggressive positioning on both sides of the tape rather than a one‑sided bet on continued upside.
At a P&L level, the skew is less balanced. Long positions are currently sitting on roughly 57.38 million dollars in profits, while shorts are down about 11.16 million dollars, reflecting how the recent grind higher in majors like BTC (BTC) and ETH (ETH) has quietly rewarded leveraged bulls. One address stands out: the whale wallet 0x6c85…f6 has taken a 20x leveraged long on ETH at an entry price of 2,012.11 dollars and is now running an unrealized gain of about 15.14 million dollars. That single trade captures the core dynamic on Hyperliquid right now—a structurally high‑leverage environment where a handful of well‑timed positions can print institutional‑scale P&L in days, but where a sharp reversal could erase paper profits just as quickly.
For market structure, the 3.6 billion‑dollar positioning and near‑perfect long/short balance turn Hyperliquid into a leverage fulcrum for the broader alt and perp complex. When books are this tightly matched, the direction of the next large move often comes down to exogenous catalysts—ETF flows, macro surprises, or idiosyncratic headlines—rather than slow positioning drift. With longs in aggregate comfortably green and shorts nursing losses, the path of least resistance in the near term is still higher; but if the tape turns, those same profitable longs become forced sellers, and the 20x ETH whales that look brilliant today are exactly the ones that can drive a cascade tomorrow.
The Solana blockchain turned six years old yesterday, and the community has taken the opportunity to reiterate its motto, “Just one more hard quarter.”
Although intended as a source of pride about the grit and determination of workers under the leadership of founder Anatoly Yakavenko, the motto could just as easily describe the experience of using the Solana blockchain.
Since its first multi-hour outage in 2020, Solana users have endured weeks of combined mainnet disruption, bridge collapses, wallet drains, market manipulation, and the criminal conviction of its once-most influential tokenholder and supporter, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
However, after six years of near-death experiences, Solana is still here. Whether it can credit resilience or stubbornness for its success depends on the user’s perspective on those difficult times.
Even its own social media manager was conflicted, posting a birthday message with a picture that hinted at a solider in the trenches.
Solana outages since its founding year
Solana’s mainnet, built by former Qualcomm engineer Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder Raj Gokal, and other developers, went live on March 16, 2020.
Their first catastrophe struck before the network’s first birthday.
On December 4, 2020, a bug in Turbine, Solana’s block propagation system, halted the entire blockchain for six hours. A validator transmitted two conflicting blocks for the same slot, and the network split into partitions.
Nine months later, a series of misfortunes began that would eventually make Solana outages so well-known that its offline status became a meme.
On September 14, 2021, bots flooded the network during Grape Protocol’s IDO on Raydium. Over 300,000 transactions per second overwhelmed validator memory. The chain went dark for 17 hours.
Then 2022 arrived. There’s no other year containing more media attention about a blockchain repeatedly failing than Solana’s outages across almost every month of 2022.
The miracle of Solana surviving 2022
Between January 6 and 12, bots spamming duplicate transactions degraded Solana’s network so badly that transaction success rates dropped 70%.
Another wave of outages from January 21 to 23 repeatedly knocked Solana’s public RPC endpoints offline.
- On February 2, hackers exploited the Wormhole inter-blockchain bridge between Solana and Ethereum, minted 120,000 fraudulently wrapped ether, and stole over $320 million. Within hours, Jump Trading covered the loss from its corporate balance sheet.
- On April 30, NFT minting bots hit the Candy Machine program with millions of requests per second, crashing Solana’s blockchain’s consensus-making. The blockchain was down for about seven hours.
- On June 1, a durable nonce bug stalled blocks for over four hours.
- On August 2, a hacker drained over 9,000 wallets of millions of dollars worth of Solana assets. Slope, a once-popular Solana wallet, had leaked private keys through a misconfigured Sentry server.
- Less than two months later on September 30, a validator’s malfunctioning hot-spare node produced duplicate blocks. A fork-selection bug halted consensus for over eight hours.
- On October 11, Avraham Eisenberg manipulated Mango Markets’ MNGO price oracle and drained over $110 million from the Solana-based exchange. A jury convicted him in April 2024.
Read more: CHART: It’s been 262 days since Solana’s last major outage
‘Sam coin’ crashes as Sam crashes
Solana’s worst days in history began on November 11, 2022. FTX, Alameda Research, and over 100 affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Founder SBF had held massive solana (SOL) positions and had become so influential in the Solana community that many people called SOL a “Sam coin” alongside FTT and his other doomed darlings.
The panic around SBF’s demise sent SOL from roughly $33 to under $10 by late December, a 97% collapse from its November 2021 cycle high of $259.
SOL bottomed below $8 in December 2022.
Going into 2023, Solana’s ecosystem hemorrhaged developers, projects, and credibility.
In fact, the bankruptcy estates of Alameda and FTX still hold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of SOL as of writing time. Bankruptcy trustees periodically unstake and liquidate tokens for creditor distributions.
Survival and Solana’s 6th birthday
Unfortunately, Solana kept breaking. On February 25, 2023, a malfunctioning validator broadcast an abnormally large block which overwhelmed Solana’s “Turbine” deduplication logic.
Yet again, the blockchain was offline for nearly an entire day.
Almost a year later, on February 6, 2024, an infinite recompile loop halted Solana’s mainnet for five hours. The bug had been spotted a week earlier but never patched.
With at least seven total blockchain outages totaling at least three full days of combined downtime, Solana users have suffered weeks of degraded performance and years of uncertainty about whether mainnet will remain stable.
Moreover, users have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in a bridge hack, manipulations of DEX exchanges, and multiple drains of wallets affecting thousands of users.
At its worst moment, they suffered alongside the collapse of one of history’s most notorious fraudsters and dubiously generous patron, SBF.
With SOL now trading at roughly $96 per coin on its sixth birthday, Yakovenko called the celebration “six years of perfection.”
The community motto describes history more aptly: “Just one more hard quarter.”
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The Winklevoss-backed Zcash treasury company reported $4.8 million in net income in 2025, driven by unrealized gains on its ZEC holdings.
Zcash (ZEC) surged as much as 20% on Monday evening, March 16 — spiking from $231 to as high as $284 — after ZEC digital asset treasury (DAT) firm Cypherpunk Technologies (Nasdaq: CYPH) released its full-year 2025 financial results showing a swing to profitability.
ZEC remains up roughly 9% on the day as of press time today, March 17, trading over $270, making it the top performer among the top-100 large-cap crypto assets, per CoinGecko data.
ZEC’s rally over the past 24 hours appears to be driven by Cypherpunk’s positive financials for 2025, which is the year the company rebranded from a biotech firm to a Zcash-focused DAT. Per the release, Cypherpunk reported net income of $4.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, a dramatic reversal from a net loss of $67.8 million in 2024.
According to the firm, the turnaround was driven by $50.4 million in unrealized gains on the fair value of its ZEC treasury holdings, marked to market at period end, Dec. 31. At that time, ZEC was trading near $530 and those holdings were valued at $147.4 million on its balance sheet, according to the firm’s press release.
Shares of CYPH also rallied yesterday and today, and are currently up over 13% today at nearly $0.80, and up over 40% in the past five days, per Yahoo Finance data.
Biotech to DAT Pivot
Cypherpunk was launched in mid-November last year and is backed by Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and the firm is the only publicly traded focused on Zcash.
Like several other DATs that launched last year as the experimental strategy exploded into a trend, Cypherpunk pivoted to a DAT via a rebrand from an entirely different industry, namely biotech. The company’s biotech past as Leap Therapeutics still shows up in the books, and the release notes that R&D expenses for what is now the company’s subsidiary fell by more than half last year from the previous year, which also helped it achieve net income.
Buying High, Reporting Profitable
As The Defiant previously reported last month, ZEC had fallen more than 50% since Cypherpunk’s last disclosed purchase on Dec. 30, 2025, when the company added 56,418 ZEC at around $514 per token.
According to the release, total holdings now stand at 294,743.10 ZEC at an average purchase price of $335.89 per token — about 19% higher than current prices, meaning the treasury remains underwater on a cost basis.
Still, Monday’s move suggests markets read the first-ever profit report as a validation of the DAT model applied to ZEC.
ZEC was the top-performing large-cap crypto asset of the year, as The Defiant previously reported, having surged more than 800% over the course of 2025.
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which is the second-largest privacy coin by market cap after Monero (XMR), began its extended price rally in the fall, starting in early September. The timing coincided roughly with the Winklevoss’ investment into Leap.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed criminal charges against Kalshi Tuesday, charging the prediction markets platform with operating an unlicensed gambling business and offering election wagering in the state, actions she said violated the state’s laws.
Mayes charged KalshiEx LLC and Kalshi Trading LLC with 20 counts, alleging the platform accepted bets from Arizona on a wide range of events in violation of Arizona law, including sports and elections, like contracts betting on the outcomes of the 2028 presidential race and 2026 state gubernatorial race.
“Arizona law prohibits operating an unlicensed wagering business, and separately bans betting on elections outright,” the attorney general said in a statement.
The charges come just days after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) signaled a more supportive federal stance toward prediction markets, issuing new guidance and launching a rulemaking process under Chairman Mike Selig.
That effort asserted the CFTC’s “exclusive jurisdiction” over event contracts and frames platforms like Kalshi as regulated derivatives venues rather than gambling operators, setting up a direct clash with states such as Arizona that continue to treat sports and election-related contracts.
“Sadly, a state can file criminal charges on paper thin arguments,” a Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement. “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it. As other courts have recognized and the CFTC affirms, Kalshi is subject to federal jurisdiction. It’s different from what sportsbooks and casinos offer their customers, and it should not be overseen by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws.”
Different courts have ruled in different ways on whether prediction market providers are subject to state laws. A federal judge in Nevada ruled last year that the company’s sports-related contracts are subject to state gaming regulators. A Massachusetts state court similarly found that sports-related conduct might be subject to state regulations in that state. A federal judge in Tennessee ruled the other way earlier this year, at least temporarily blocking state regulators from enforcing a cease-and-desist against Kalshi.
Notably, most of these contracts and cases were related to sports gambling, and not election-related bets, as Arizona’s case is.
In her statement, Mayes said, “Kalshi may brand itself as a ‘prediction market,’ but what it’s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections.”
She added that state law prohibits both unlicensed wagering businesses and betting on elections outright.
The charges escalate a widening legal fight between Kalshi and state regulators. The company sued Arizona on March 12 in a preemptive move, part of a broader strategy that has recently included litigation against Iowa and Utah, Mayes’ filing added. Arizona officials also criticized the approach, saying Kalshi is attempting to bypass state-level gambling rules by turning to federal courts.
“Kalshi is making a habit of suing states rather than following their laws,” Mayes said. “In the last three weeks alone, the company has filed lawsuits against Iowa and Utah, and now Arizona.”
Mayes criticized Kalshi saying that instead of operating within the legal frameworks such as Arizona’s, “Kalshi is running to federal court to try to avoid accountability.”
The filing also cited a recent federal court setback for Kalshi in Ohio, where a judge denied the firm’s request for a preliminary injunction and affirmed the state’s authority to enforce its gambling laws.
Kalshi has positioned its event contracts as federally regulated derivatives rather than gambling products, a distinction now being tested across multiple jurisdictions.
Crypto trading and investment company GSR has acquired advisory companies Autonomous and Architech in a $57 million deal to expand its services for tokenized projects, combining launch support, treasury management and capital markets infrastructure under one platform.
The acquisition brings together Autonomous’s operational and financial services for token launches with Architech’s focus on token design and liquidity strategy, integrating both into GSR’s existing trading, market-making and asset management business.
To be sure, many crypto projects face challenges due to their reliance on different providers for structuring, token economics, fundraising, and exchange listings, which can lead to inefficiencies and a lack of coordination, according to Philipp Maume and Mathias Fromberger, writing recently in the Chicago Journal of International Law.
GSR said that its platform will provide treasury services, including liquidity planning, risk management and capital allocation for digital asset reserves.
Architech, founded in 2024, has advised on token launches with a combined peak fully diluted value of more than $10 billion, according to the company. Autonomous provides treasury operations, financial management and coordination with exchanges, custodians and market makers.
Autonomous will continue operating under its existing brand within GSR, while Architech will be integrated into a new digital asset advisory unit.
Related: Mastercard agrees to acquire BVNK in $1.8B stablecoin deal
From ICOs to structured token launches
Token fundraising in crypto has shifted significantly since the initial coin offering (ICO) boom of 2017 and 2018 saw projects raise capital directly from retail investors with minimal coordination across service providers. Today, token launches are often structured through private funding rounds, followed by coordinated exchange listings and liquidity provisioning.
Projects such as Monad raised $225 million in 2024 in a funding round led by Paradigm ahead of a planned token launch.
In November, Coinbase launched a platform for regulated primary token offerings, giving US retail investors access to token sales with compliance requirements, lockups and controlled distribution. The platform debuted with the token sale from Monad, marking one of the first broad opportunities for US retail investors to participate in public token sales in recent years.
Projects are also experimenting with new issuance models tied to broader financial strategies.
Crypto exchange Backpack said its planned token distribution will be linked to business milestones and a potential IPO, with a portion of supply managed within a corporate treasury. In February, the company was reportedly in talks to raise $50 million at a $1 billion pre-money valuation.
Magazine: What’s a ‘Network State’ and are there real-life examples? Big Questions
Global trading and investment firm GSR has expanded its tokenized-asset platform by acquiring two advisory shops, Autonomous and Architech, in a $57 million deal. The strategically timed acquisition unites launch support, treasury management, and capital-markets infrastructure under a single umbrella, aiming to streamline how projects structure token economics, raise funds, and secure liquidity across venues. Autonomous brings in a hands-on treasury-and-exchange coordination capability, while Architech adds token-design acumen and liquidity-strategy expertise, positioning GSR to offer end-to-end guidance for tokenized projects within its existing trading, market-making and asset-management businesses.
Key takeaways
- GSR refashions its service stack by merging Autonomous’s treasury operations and Architech’s token-design work into a unified platform for token launches, treasury planning and market access.
- Autonomous will continue operating under its brand, whereas Architech will be folded into a new digital asset advisory unit within GSR.
- Architech has advised on token launches with a peak fully diluted value above $10 billion, underscoring the scale of projects the firm has influenced.
- The deal reflects a broader industry shift from ad hoc token offerings toward integrated, capital-markets-grade services that cover design, fundraising, liquidity, and governance.
- Regulatory-era developments in token offerings—illustrated by late-2023 to 2024 moves toward regulated primary token offerings in the U.S.—are accelerating institutional participation in tokenized markets.
- Recent market developments, including major platform launches for regulated token offerings and continued consolidation of advisory services, signal a maturing ecosystem for tokenized finance.
Tickers mentioned: $COIN
Market context: Tokenized-asset infrastructure has been consolidating as projects seek cohesive support across design, fundraising, liquidity and custody. In November, Coinbase (EXCHANGE: COIN) launched a platform for regulated primary token offerings, enabling US retail investors to participate in compliant token sales with lockups and controlled distribution. This follows a wave of private rounds and coordinated exchange listings that have become more common as the market shifts away from the early, largely retail-driven ICO model toward regulated, institution-friendly structures. The ongoing evolution is shaping how startups approach token launches and how investors assess risk, liquidity and governance around tokenized ecosystems.
Why it matters
The combination of Autonomous and Architech under GSR’s umbrella signals a shift in crypto advisory services from bespoke, one-off engagements to scalable, end-to-end offerings. By unifying treasury operations, market coordination, token economics, and liquidity strategy, the firm aims to reduce the coordination overhead that often slows token programs or introduces misalignment across providers. For developers, this could translate into faster go-to-market timelines with clearer governance and risk frameworks; for investors, it could mean more predictable token dynamics and better access to liquidity planning and treasury management as part of a broader capital markets workflow.
Architech’s track record—in which token launches it advised carried a combined peak fully diluted value topping $10 billion—illustrates the scale of projects that could benefit from a more integrated advisory approach. Autonomous’s specialization in treasury operations and exchange coordination promises to complement that capability with practical liquidity and counterparty-management processes, including interactions with exchanges, custodians and market makers. The resulting platform could provide token issuers with a unified playbook covering design, fundraising, treasury discipline and market access, reducing the friction that has historically characterized multi-vendor arrangements.
The market context is notably influenced by regulatory experiments and institutional interest in tokenized assets. For example, the Push toward regulated primary token offerings in the U.S. has begun reshaping how early-stage projects structure their sales, given the compliance and distribution controls involved. Articles and industry commentary cited in the deal’s background underscore the importance of aligning token economics with broader financial strategies, rather than viewing token launches as isolated events. Initiatives such as Backpack’s planned token distribution tied to milestones and potential IPOs demonstrate a broader experimentation with how token supply can be linked to corporate milestones and governance goals. This ongoing evolution—paired with the Coinbase platform’s entry into regulated primary offerings—points to a more integrated ecosystem where liquidity planning, treasury reserves, and token design are not disjointed steps but a continuous lifecycle managed within a single platform.
For investors and builders, the deal underscores a clearer pathway from concept to liquidity and exchange readiness. By bringing treasury management and liquidity strategy into the same framework as token design and launch support, GSR’s expanded platform could reduce the risk of mispriced tokens or misaligned incentives. The consolidation also mirrors the broader transformation of the crypto advisory space, moving toward repeatable processes that can scale with project complexity and regulatory expectations while maintaining a focus on risk controls and governance.
In sum, GSR’s acquisition of Autonomous and Architech signals the industry’s intent to professionalize token launches and capital markets infrastructure. If the integration proceeds as described, projects may soon navigate from ideation to market access and ongoing liquidity within a single, coordinated ecosystem rather than juggling multiple specialist providers. The market could increasingly reward teams that demonstrate disciplined treasury management, robust liquidity planning, and cohesive token economics, all bundled into a scalable advisory platform backed by a proven trading and asset-management operation.
The move also invites scrutiny of how such integrated platforms will interact with evolving regulatory regimes and with traditional financial partners. As more projects seek to tokenize real-world assets or build complex incentive structures, the ability to coordinate legal, financial and technical dimensions under a unified umbrella could become a competitive differentiator. GSR’s strategy appears designed to capitalize on that opportunity, aligning token issuance with ongoing capital-management activities, and embedding exchange-ready liquidity and risk controls into the lifecycle of token projects.
Ultimately, the acquisition reinforces the idea that the crypto market is maturing toward a more integrated, institution-friendly model. If successful, this approach could accelerate the pace at which tokenized ventures move from concept to market while maintaining the discipline and oversight that institutional participants demand. For now, the industry will watch how autonomously branded and Architech-integrated advisory units perform within GSR’s broader ecosystem, and how quickly this consolidation translates into real-world efficiency and market participation for tokenized assets.
What to watch next
- Integration milestones for Autonomous and Architech within GSR’s platform (quarters following the deal).
- Rollout of the new digital asset advisory unit and the first combined client engagements.
- Regulatory developments affecting primary token offerings and treasury-management practices in major jurisdictions.
- Adoption signals from token projects seeking end-to-end advisory and liquidity services under one platform.
- Continued coverage of regulated token offerings in the U.S., including implications for retail versus accredited investors.
Sources & verification
- GSR’s acquisition coverage and details on Autonomous and Architech via Chainwire’s report on the $57 million deal.
- Architech’s advisory activity and its claimed peak fully diluted value (> $10 billion).
- Autonomous’s treasury operations and coordination with exchanges, custodians, and market makers.
- Coinbase’s November launch of a regulated primary token offerings platform, including the Monad token sale coverage.
- Chicago Journal of International Law commentary on regulation of ICOs and the need for coordinated service-provider engagement.
Integrated platform signals a new era for tokenized finance
GSR’s strategic purchase of Autonomous and Architech for $57 million marks a concerted effort to unify token-launch services, treasury management and capital markets infrastructure. The deal stitches together Autonomous’s treasury operations and exchange coordination with Architech’s token-design and liquidity-strategy capabilities, embedding them into GSR’s trading, market-making and asset-management framework. The objective is to reduce the fragmentation that has historically complicated token programs when multiple vendors handle different pieces of the lifecycle. By offering end-to-end support—from design to liquidity and governance—GSR aims to deliver a more predictable and scalable path for token projects.
Autonomous will continue to operate under its existing brand within GSR, while Architech will be integrated into a newly formed digital asset advisory unit. Architech’s leadership notes that its advisory work on token launches has connected with a peak fully diluted value above $10 billion, underscoring the scale of projects the firm has guided. This combination could help projects achieve faster go-to-market timelines with a more disciplined approach to treasury and liquidity risk management. The synergy between token economics and market access is particularly important as regulatory scrutiny intensifies around token offerings and as institutions seek structured pathways into tokenized markets.
From the ICO-era to today’s regulated, institution-friendly environment, fundraising approaches have evolved. The piece notes that the industry has shifted toward private funding rounds followed by coordinated listings and liquidity provisioning, a path exemplified by high-profile rounds such as Monad’s $225 million funding in 2024 led by Paradigm ahead of a token launch. In the same breath, Coinbase’s platform for regulated primary token offerings introduced in November represents a real shift in retail access to compliant token sales. The Monad token sale, linked in coverage, serves as a benchmark for how regulated, investor-protected launches might operate in practice. For readers exploring how these trends shape the market, this integration offers a blueprint for how a combined treasury and design platform can function in tandem with regulated, primary offerings.
Industry observers have long argued that token issuance needs to be aligned with corporate finance and governance. The new platform proposed by GSR could help align token economics with treasury reserves, risk management and liquidity provisioning. Projects may benefit from a streamlined approach to structuring, fundraising and exchange readiness, particularly when a single provider can offer governance and compliance oversight in parallel with technical design. The potential to shorten timelines and reduce risk could be attractive to teams looking to bring tokens to market with a higher degree of assurance and oversight, especially in markets where regulatory expectations are continually evolving.
In this context, the deal also underscores the ongoing consolidation of advisory services in the crypto space. Rather than engaging disparate specialists for token economics, treasury, and liquidity, a growing number of players are seeking to bundle these capabilities under a unified platform. The influencers in this transformation include not only GSR and its newly integrated units but also the broader ecosystem of regulated platforms and exchanges that are expanding access to compliant token offerings. As the market continues to mature, such integrated platforms may become a standard capability for token projects seeking to navigate the complexities of fundraising, treasury risk, and market access in a single, coordinated workflow.
Crypto World
Crypto.com partners with KG Inicis to enable crypto payments for tourists in South Korea
Crypto.com has partnered with KG Inicis to introduce crypto payment options for foreign tourists visiting South Korea.
Summary
- Crypto.com has partnered with KG Inicis to enable crypto payments for foreign tourists across South Korea through its merchant network.
- International travelers will be able to pay using digital assets, while merchants can choose to settle transactions in fiat or crypto instantly.
The two companies plan to roll out Crypto.com Pay across KG Inicis’ merchant network, according to a March 17 press release.
The integration will allow international travelers to pay for goods and services using digital assets at both physical stores and online platforms. Meanwhile, merchants will have the option to receive payments instantly in fiat or digital assets.
“A payment infrastructure that bridges digital assets with the real economy will become a core competitiveness of the future finance and commerce industries,” a spokesperson for KG Inicis told media.
“We plan to expand an infrastructure where digital assets can be utilised in actual economic activities, all while ensuring a solid legal and regulatory foundation.”
KG Inicis is one of South Korea’s largest payment gateway providers and handles hundreds of millions of transactions annually, according to the release. It also boasts around 190,000 affiliated merchants and commands nearly 40% market share.
Outside of payments, the two companies plan to explore additional areas of cooperation, including joint marketing efforts and new product development. However, these initiatives remain subject to regulatory approval.
The latest partnership fits into Crypto.com’s broader expansion plans. Last month, the company secured conditional approval for a U.S. national trust bank charter, just days after receiving ISO certification for AI systems management. The crypto exchange has also launched a prediction market platform dubbed OG.
Crypto use in tourism on the rise
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency use in tourism has gained traction across Asia as governments test new ways to integrate digital assets into spending ecosystems.
Last year, Thailand introduced plans for an 18-month TouristDigiPay program, allowing visitors to convert crypto into Thai baht for everyday spending.
Similarly, Bhutan has rolled out a crypto payment system for tourism through a partnership with Binance Pay and DK Bank, enabling travelers to pay for hotels, tickets, and services using digital assets.
The second-largest perpetual futures DEX by volume began the rollout of its mainnet, which uses ZK proofs to keep trades private.
Aster, the BNB Chain-native perp DEX backed by YZi Labs, has launched the genesis phase of Aster Chain, its privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain, the team announced on X.
According to the announcement, Aster Chain is launching in a phased sequence: Chain Genesis is already live, with a partnership reveal slated for tomorrow, public staking for ASTER token holders opening later this week, and an ecosystem expansion and “Aster Code partners program” to follow. A brand and UI upgrade is also in the pipeline, per the announcement.
Aster underlined that the new L1’s primary feature is its privacy architecture, with “Account Privacy” turned on by default. Per Aster Chain’s documentation, every order place in the default privacy mode is verifiable and encrypted via Zero-Knowledge (ZK) cryptography. In addition, every transaction is routed through a one-time stealth address, making it impossible to link a wallet to its trading activity.
For traders who want to selectively disclose their activity — to an auditor, counterparty, or regulator — Aster is introducing a “viewer pass” mechanism: a user-generated key that decrypts their on-chain records for anyone they choose to share it with, while keeping everything else locked.
Aster Chain’s documentation also states that the chain is designed to be high-performance, “optimized for ultra-low latency trading environments.” Per the documentation, the L1 has a block time of 50 milliseconds and processes up to 100,000 Transaction Per Second (TPS). It also boast zero gas fees.
“This performance enables Aster to deliver a trading experience comparable to centralized exchanges while preserving decentralized settlement and verification,” the documentation states.
The launch of a privacy-focused L1 for the DEX builds on past moves. Last June, as the so-called perp DEX wars were just heating up, Aster launched a “hidden orders” feature, allowing traders to conceal order size from the public order book. Aster launched the feature less than three weeks after Binance co-founder CZ publicly floated the idea of “dark pool” perpetuals trading.
Perp DEX Mania
Aster Chain’s mainnet launch comes as the protocol cements its place near the top of a market that barely existed at scale two years ago — on-chain perps trading.
Aster is currently the second-largest perp DEX by trading volumes after Hyperliquid, with $3.36 billion in trades in the past 24 hours and $18.6 billion in the past week, per data from DefiLlama.
As The Defiant has tracked, 2025 became the breakout year for on-chain perpetuals, with a wave of challengers — Aster among them — emerging after Hyperliquid’s token launch in late 2024, and rising popularity following. That momentum only accelerated: September marked the first time perp DEX volume exceeded $1 trillion in a single month, nearly 50% higher than August, with Aster, Hyperliquid, and Lighter locked in an increasingly fierce battle for dominance.
When the DEX’s ASTER token launched in September, the token surged 875% on its opening day, quickly reaching a $1.9 billion market cap — driven in large part by CZ’s vocal promotion on X.
The launch of a proprietary chain now positions Aster squarely against Hyperliquid’s core advantage: a purpose-built L1 as the foundation for its market dominance.
Meanwhile, ASTER is up 7% on today’s news, trading around $0.76, or a $1.88 billion market cap.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
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