For years, the defining characteristic of the artificial intelligence race has been speed.

Build a bigger model. Spend more on compute. Release it. Rinse and repeat, with litte regard for the unknown unknowns.

The average “p/doom” (probability of AI eventually going catastrophically wrong) among AI researchers was estimated to be between 15% and 20% in 2024.

A year later, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei upped the stakes, saying he believed there was a 25% chance “that things go really, really badly.”

Even as far back as 2014, xAI chief Elon Musk warned:

“We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in 2015 that AI would “probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world,” but that, in the meantime, there would be “great companies created.”

With better odds of cheating death playing Russian Roulette, anyone with even a fleeting interest in the topic has had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of their stomach for a while now.

So what’s changed? Why are the companies driving the AI race suddenly asking to slam on the brakes?

That’s what happened over the weekend, when Amodei published an essay calling for frontier AI development to be “paced,” warning that AI capabilities are advancing faster than the industry’s ability to understand and control them, and that the internet could get taken over by AI swarms within six to 12 months.

Related: Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B in push into AI software

Altman broadly agreed, saying the world deserves the “confidence” that the companies developing ever-more capable AI will act “responsibly,” and Musk backed Amodei’s proposal, simply commenting:

“Dario is right.”

The concern is not confined to the companies building the technology either. On Monday, UN rights chief Volker Türk called for “urgent action” on frontier AI, warning of “unprecedented risks” and saying the world is “on the cusp of irreversible change.”

If the companies building the most powerful AI models genuinely believe capability is outrunning control, the p/doom slope would appear to be getting steeper. Or is there another explanation here hiding in plain sight?

Have AI labs actually hit a new frontier?

Amodei’s essay points to AI systems that are becoming more autonomous, including a recent incident where OpenAI’s AI agents hacked their way out of a controlled testing environment and compromised parts of the AI platform Hugging Face.

They conducted “cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand,” Amodei said.

He also highlighted the prospect of recursive self-improvement (RSI), where AI systems become capable of helping build better versions of themselves, which can then help build even better systems, potentially creating a feedback loop in AI development.

The people building these systems are also increasingly stepping into the fray, with Anthropic’s Jacob Coxon becoming the latest in a growing list of employees to resign over safety concerns. The AI industry is “gambling with our lives,” he said last week, warning that the AI race is moving faster than the safeguards around the systems.

Anthropic’s Jacob Coxon resigns over safety concerns. Source: Anderson Cooper.

OpenAI has already said that AI research is becoming increasingly more autonomous, and that coding agents are materially accelerating researchers’ work, using 3.1 agent workdays for every workday of human labor by mid-August.

In an interview with Fortune published Sept. 12, Altman said OpenAI would “melt” all its GPUs if that’s what it took to keep humanity alive, to which Satoshi Action Fund CEO Dennis Porter said:

“Altman must have peered over the edge into the abyss and saw something that scared the sh*t out of him.”

Related: OpenAI says AI models escaped containment to hack Hugging Face

On Monday, Altman said there are two ways AI progress could go “very badly”: losing control to AI or ending up in a “world with too much concentration of power.”

But the question isn’t whether AI is already dangerous enough to shut down, but whether the systems designed to evaluate and control AI are keeping pace, and as Altman said, “pacing” does not mean stopping. It means continuing to develop AI, but more slowly, while safety testing catches up.

With spending on AI safety and alignment drastically eclipsed by spending on AI development and capabilities, that gap will be hard to fill.

Frontier AI is becoming extraordinarily expensive

But what if the calls for a global slowdown are really just a recognition that the economics of the AI race are getting harder to justify?

As AI researcher and lecturer, Eli David said:

“Perfectly explains Dario’s motivation: Slow down research to cut compute spending that is spiraling out of control, so he can IPO.”

AI investor Grant Hummer held a similarly skeptical view, commenting:

“Translation: our gross margins are getting competed down to 0 by open source models and our capex burn rate is too high.”

The problem is that the race itself is becoming more expensive, with ever more capable models requiring vast quantities of chips, data centers, electricity and capital.

Goldman Sachs estimates that global AI investment will reach around $1 trillion in 2026, including roughly $581 billion in the US. Meanwhile, S&P Global says combined capital expenditure from the six largest hyperscalers, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and SpaceX, is expected to exceed $1.3 trillion by 2027.

Global AI investment will reach around $1 trillion in 2026. Source: Goldman Sachs

On top of all that, AI companies have yet to prove that those costs can eventually translate into sustainable revenue. On Monday Reuters highlighted the commercial pressure on AI companies to keep pushing despite their calls to slow development down.

When every new capability can help justify another funding round, infrastructure investment or higher valuation, halting the gravy train seems like a counterintuitive task.

Ed Leon Klinger, co-founder and CEO of AI startup Flock, pushed back on the idea that AI labs are using safety as cover for their commercial interests.

He said it makes little sense for frontier labs to invent safety concerns to boost their initial public offerings (IPOs) when that would expose them to heavier scrutiny and potentially delay them going public.

“For it to be true, Sam, Dario, Demis, and Elon all have to be lying, along with a big chunk of their execs, chief scientists, and resigning employees… A much simpler explanation at this point: they think the risk is real.”

Wall Street and Washington aren’t ready to hit the brakes

With trillions of dollars of investment pouring into the United States and AI infrastructure expected to drive around half of S&P 500 earnings growth this year, neither Wall Street nor Washington appear to be willing to step on the brakes.

Global AI stocks balked at the news, with AI-linked Asian stocks falling sharply on Monday following the slowdown calls. SoftBank fell 13.2%, Kioxia 9.8% and SK Hynix 5.3%.

The Financial Times reported Monday that President Donald Trump rejected calls for an AI slowdown, arguing that the US needs to maintain its lead over China. He said:

“Look, we’re leading China in AI . . . and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.”

Trump said guardrails are possible, but he dismissed what he described as exaggerated concerns about AI risks, telling reporters, “They’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Economist Noah Smith argued that the main objection to “pacing” AI is simple: if American companies slow down, Chinese companies could simply overtake them. That puts the labs in what Smith calls a “Red Queen’s race,” where if they stop building, they fear someone else will build it anyway.

AI researchers place the probability of doom between 15% and 20% in 2024. Source: Grace at al.

Even if the labs wanted to coordinate a slowdown, that could create another problem. OpenAI has reportedly asked members of Congress whether an industry-wide slowdown could run into US antitrust law, since coordination between competing labs could potentially amount to restricting output.

Related: Fears of AI-driven DeFi hack epidemic overstated for now — but not for long

Former White House AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, had a simple response to Amodei and Altman’s call to “pace the frontier”: “go ahead,” he said, arguing that if the labs want to slow down, they are free to do so themselves.

Yet, it creates the mother of all catch-22s: if competing AI companies coordinate to slow development, they could run into antitrust rules. If they each slow down independently, they risk losing ground to competitors and countries that keep pushing ahead.

So why are they asking to slow down now?

Amodei and Altman are not calling for AI to stop.

They’re calling for a system where powerful AI models can be developed as safety testing, monitoring and shared standards catch up.

“When we talk about “pacing”, we do not mean “stopping,” Altman said, acknowledging that safety cases and monitoring have “significant costs,” but that pacing would be “well worth this cost.”

“No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring.”

The problem, though, is that these pressures have not disappeared, and with Trump’s dismissal of the AI chiefs’ cries and the US stock market so deeply intertwined with their companies, they are only getting stronger.

Now the very companies that spent years pushing the frontier forward now say the frontier may be moving too fast.

Magazine: Recovery specialists crack $1B crypto wallet… but find just $10

The CLARITY Act is heading for a crucial US Senate procedural vote on Tuesday after President Donald Trump agreed to most of a bipartisan proposal to strengthen ethics restrictions around public officials’ crypto interests, according to various reports.

However, the latest compromise hasn’t resolved all of the opposition, with a bipartisan group of state attorneys general now urging senators to reject the bill over concerns that it would weaken state oversight of the crypto industry.

A coalition of 18 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, argued in a letter to Senate Banking committee leaders that the CLARITY Act would make it harder for states to take action against crypto companies accused of fraud or other misconduct.

“While the current draft of the CLARITY Act reserves certain powers for states to prosecute fraud, the language is often ambiguous, unclear, or confined in ways that either create the opportunity to challenge state police powers or outright deprive the states of their ability to continue to combat the scam epidemic,” the letter said.

Their opposition adds another complication for the legislation. While the revised bill would give state attorneys general a role in enforcing new ethics restrictions, the group argues that other provisions would weaken their authority to police the crypto industry.

The CLARITY Act is considered a landmark piece of US crypto legislation that would establish a federal market structure for digital assets, clarify when crypto assets fall under securities or commodities laws and delineate oversight responsibilities between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

As Cointelegraph reported, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed the cloture motion on CLARITY last month after lawmakers failed to advance the legislation before leaving Washington for their August recess. Tuesday’s procedural vote will determine whether the bill advances to Senate debate.

Related: CLARITY Act vote meets Fed rate hike: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

Trump agrees to tougher crypto ethics rules

The state AGs weighed in just as lawmakers appeared to be making progress on another major sticking point in the CLARITY Act. The Associated Press reported Sunday that Trump had agreed to “about 80%” of a proposal from Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, according to a senior GOP aide.

The bill already barred federally elected officials, their spouses and federal judges from issuing digital assets, but the latest compromise would go further. Officials with a “significant” financial interest in a crypto issuer would be required to divest or place the interest in a blind trust. State attorneys general would also be given a role in enforcing the restrictions.

The concessions address some of the concerns raised by Democrats and Tillis, who had argued that earlier ethics provisions did not go far enough to address potential conflicts involving Trump’s crypto holdings and business interests.

Crypto in America, a publication co-hosted by Eleanor Terrett, said the weekend developments sparked a “renewed sense of optimism” across the digital asset industry. Republicans described the revised legislation as their “last, best and final offer” to Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

The crypto industry has pushed for the CLARITY Act to establish a federal market structure framework for digital assets, including clearer boundaries between the regulatory roles of the SEC and the CFTC.

Related: BofA, Citi, Goldman Sachs among 21 institutions planning stablecoin launch

Kraken has expanded its tokenized-asset push by launching “xStocks” onchain yield vaults for select tokenized equities and ETFs. The service is designed to let eligible clients lend those tokenized holdings through decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in order to generate yield, with returns paid in the deposited assets.

In a Monday announcement, Kraken said the vaults currently support tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPYx), Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQx), and Nvidia (NVDAx). Clients deposit xStocks into the vaults, earn yield generated from onchain lending, and then submit withdrawal requests that Kraken processes within three days.

Key takeaways

• Kraken’s new xStocks vaults generate yield by lending tokenized stocks and ETFs through DeFi markets.
• Yield is paid in the deposited xStocks, and withdrawals are handled within three days.
• The vaults build on the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, which reported more than $800 million in deposits since its January launch.
• Supported tokenized products include SPYx, QQQx, and NVDAx, but the service excludes several major jurisdictions including the U.S. and U.K.
• Veda powers the vaults, while Sentora designs and manages the lending strategies and sets exposure limits.

How Kraken’s xStocks vaults are structured

Kraken’s announcement frames xStocks as an “onchain yield vault” for tokenized equities and ETFs—meaning the underlying assets exist in tokenized form on public infrastructure, and the vault seeks to put those tokens to work via DeFi lending.

The company said yield is produced by lending the deposited xStocks through onchain markets. Instead of distributing yield as a separate token, Kraken pays it back to clients in the deposited xStocks themselves. That design choice matters for investors who want their position to remain denominated in the tokenized equity/ETF wrapper rather than receiving interest in a different asset class.

Operationally, Kraken noted that withdrawal requests are processed within three days. For traders and yield-focused users, the speed and predictability of exits are often just as important as the yield rate itself—particularly when liquidity conditions in DeFi lending markets can change.

Built on Kraken DeFi Earn, with Veda and Sentora in the mix

Kraken said the xStocks vaults use the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, a service that launched in January. The company reported that DeFi Earn has since attracted more than $800 million in deposits, underscoring that Kraken is treating DeFi yield distribution as a core capability rather than a niche experiment.

For the xStocks vaults specifically, Kraken said the offering is powered by Veda. Sentora, according to the announcement, is responsible for designing and managing the lending strategies used to generate yield.

Kraken also described how risk controls are handled inside those strategies. It said Sentora lends the assets through DeFi markets—citing Kamino on Solana as an example—and that exposure limits and monitoring are based on collateral, liquidity, and oracle conditions. In practice, those components are central to how DeFi lending systems attempt to manage liquidation risk and ensure that collateral valuations and available liquidity remain coherent with onchain data.

Regulatory footprint: where xStocks is available

While Kraken is rolling out the vaults for “select” tokenized products, access is tied to geography. Kraken said xStocks vaults are available to eligible clients in the European Economic Area and other markets, but are excluded in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates.

For participants outside the supported regions, this restriction limits immediate access and may affect how quickly tokenized equity yield products can scale globally. It also highlights the practical reality that tokenized securities and their related yield mechanisms face compliance requirements that differ by jurisdiction.

Tokenized equities keep accelerating—Kraken’s move lands in a bigger trend

Kraken’s xStocks vaults arrive during a broader push toward tokenized equities and ETFs. According to RWA.xyz data cited by Kraken, the distributed value of tokenized stocks and ETFs has risen to about $2.84 billion—up from roughly $540 million a year earlier.

The scale-up implied by that jump helps explain why exchange-led yield products are gaining traction: as more assets become tokenized, there is a larger universe of holdings that can be used in DeFi strategies, even if only a subset is eligible for retail or institutional lending depending on local regulations.

At the same time, the asymmetry in access—supported markets versus excluded countries—suggests that tokenized equities may develop in uneven waves, with product availability tracking regulatory clarity. Investors watching this space may want to pay attention not just to new tokenized listings, but also to how quickly yield wrappers like xStocks can expand beyond their initial geographic boundaries.

What to watch next is whether Kraken broadens the list of supported tokenized equities and ETFs, and how quickly it can add more DeFi markets or adjust its lending strategy parameters as DeFi liquidity and onchain oracle conditions evolve.

Crypto exchange Kraken has launched onchain yield vaults for select tokenized stocks and ETFs, allowing clients to earn returns by lending the assets through decentralized finance protocols, according to a Monday announcement.

The new xStocks vaults support tokenized versions of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPYx), Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQx) and Nvidia (NVDAx), with yield generated by lending the assets through onchain markets. Yield is paid in the deposited xStocks, while withdrawal requests are processed within three days.

The vaults use the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, which launched in January and has since attracted more than $800 million in deposits, according to the company.

The xStocks vaults are powered by Veda, with Sentora designing and managing the lending strategies used to generate yield. Assets are lent through DeFi markets such as Kamino on Solana, with Sentora setting exposure limits and monitoring collateral, liquidity and oracle conditions.

The vaults are available to eligible Kraken clients in the European Economic Area and other markets, but are excluded in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Kraken’s launch comes amid rapid growth in tokenized equities. The distributed value of tokenized stocks and ETFs has climbed to about $2.84 billion, up from roughly $540 million a year ago, according to RWA.xyz data.

Tokenized equities. Source: RWA.xyz

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.