Decentralized AI – Part II

Last Friday's weekly was about the economic opportunity around decentralized AI: “The $50bln AI opportunity nobody is talking about ”. Later that same day, the urgency behind that opportunity became much harder to ignore.

At 5.21pm Eastern Time last Friday, Anthropic, received a U.S government directive requiring the company to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all foreign nationals. From one moment to the other US citizens would have better access to intelligence than the rest of the world. The directive even applied to foreign-national employees of Anthropic. Anthropic said that because it could not immediately enforce that restriction cleanly, it disabled the models for everyone.

It was a harsh reality check on where we are heading. Access to frontier intelligence is rapidly becoming a geopolitical issue rather than a purely commercial one.

We know that new technologies get adopted first where the friction and the urgency is highest, and it is no different for blockchain. For example, you can explain the growth of USD stablecoins largely by how difficult it is for much of the world's population to get their hands on stable currency and by the enormous friction in cross border payments.

The developments of last Friday mean that the urgency for decentralized AI has suddenly become much stronger.

We will discuss the subject with Jake Brukhman, founder of CoinFund in a webinar on September 25th, 15.00h CET.

Also this week

• Fidelity launches GENIUS-aligned money market fund for stablecoin issuers
• State Street launches GENIUS-compliant money market fund for stablecoin issuers
• Federal Reserve rolls out proposed rulemaking requiring stablecoin issuers to maintain customer identification program
• Coinbase launching tokenized US stocks, backed 1:1, with holders able to receive dividends
• CME Group sues CFTC over perpetual futures approval
• Trump-backed World Liberty Financial nears OCC approval for federal trust charter: report

Relevant financial updates

• Flutterwave, a centralized payments platform, has raised an undisclosed amount in a Series E round led by Ripple at a $3.2bln valuation
• Trace Finance*, a centralized payments platform, has raised $32mln in a Series A round led by CoinFund with investments from Coinbase Ventures, Jump Capital, Haun Ventures, Valor Capital Group, and 8 others.
• EarnOS*, a digital advertising platform, has raised $18.5mln in a round led by 1kx and Verona with investments from Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Social Graph Ventures
• Karta, a stablecoin-based card company, raised $15 million from Galaxy Ventures, Illuminate, Canary, and Clocktower Ventures
• El Dorado, a decentralized payments platform, has raised $9mln in a Series A round led by Paradigm with investments from Coinbase Ventures, Verda Ventures
• Range*, a stablecoin transaction monitoring platform, raised $8 million from TX Ventures, Maven 11, SixThirty Ventures, and others
• Power.Win*, a gambling platform, has raised $5mln in a funding round led by Polychain Capital
• Re*, a decentralized insurance platform, has received a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures

*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 19/06

Interesting things to read

• Space Needs a Trust Layer, by Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit

Upcoming events

• Fund Forum Monaco, June 22-24, 2026
• Legends4Legends 2026 Amsterdam, 1 October, 2026