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Sebastian Thrun - who led Google X and Udacity - is taking the stage at London Blockchain Conference 2025 [4] to connect lessons from building self-driving cars to autonomous blockchain economies. And he's just one of many amazing speakers [4].
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is launching an initiative to allow stablecoins as tokenized collateral for margin requirements in the derivatives market, with acting chairman Caroline Pham calling collateral management the "killer app" for stablecoins in markets. Pham continues advancing crypto policy as part of her "crypto sprint" while President Trump's nominee Brian Quintenz remains delayed in confirmation, working alongside SEC Chairman Paul Atkins to integrate digital assets into traditional financial infrastructure. The CFTC is seeking industry input until October 20 on implementing tokenized collateral policies, with support from Circle, Coinbase, and Ripple executives, following the recent President's Working Group report recommending CFTC guidance on tokenized non-cash collateral adoption.
USDH, issued by Native Markets, has officially launched on Hyperliquid with a USDH/USDC spot market and ~$2.2M in early trading volume. Backed by cash and short-dated Treasuries, USDH was selected through Hyperliquid's validator-run process, where Native Markets beat out Paxos, Frax, and others. Reserves will combine offchain management with onchain transparency via oracles, while a portion of reserve earnings will fund HYPE buybacks.
Morgan Stanley is preparing to launch crypto trading for retail customers through E-Trade in the first half of 2026, partnering with startup Zerohash for liquidity, custody, and settlement services while taking an investment stake in the company. The Wall Street giant will initially offer direct ownership of BTC, ETH, and SOL rather than third-party managed funds, allowing clients to cut management fees while taking on greater risks as the bank develops its own custody wallet for digital assets. Wealth management head Jed Finn called crypto trading "the tip of the iceberg," emphasizing that tokenization of traditional financial assets, including cash, stocks, bonds, and real estate, will significantly disrupt the wealth management industry by enabling immediate interest payments and improved efficiency.
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As the internet becomes real life, societies must insist on openness (free, auditable code/designs) and verifiability (users can prove systems behave correctly) across software, hardware, and biotech. This matters in health, personal/commercial tech, and civic infrastructure, where closed stacks create monopoly power and opaque risks. A world of open, formally verified OSes, secure open hardware, on-device AI, privacy-preserving cryptography, and public-inspectable sensors delivers both security and local sovereignty. The crypto ecosystem should prioritize a fully open and verification-friendly stack for high-security, non-performance-critical applications, then expand outward.
Coinbase's new x402 protocol introduces a standardized way for servers to signal that a payment is required using the long-unused HTTP 402 code. Unlike human-facing paywalls, x402 is machine-readable, enabling AI agents and other automated systems to detect and process payments directly. Instead of card details, agents can authorize stablecoin transfers via cryptographic signatures, which are then routed through a new entity called a “Facilitator” (similar to a merchant acquirer) to post payments on-chain. This unlocks a new use case for stablecoins as native internet money, allowing bots, APIs, and AI systems to autonomously pay for services, data, or content online.
Perp traders are ruthless. Liquidity and users jump to whatever venue offers the best fills, incentives, and UX, hence the rapid rotations from dYdX to GMX to Hyperliquid. Other DeFi verticals turn over more slowly. Aave still leads lending, Uniswap spot, and Lido staking. Expect the top perp DEX to keep changing hands, even as leaders in other categories remain sticky.
Vitalik Buterin has, for the first time, explicitly declared DeFi as Ethereum's killer app, marking a significant shift from his previously withheld praise for crypto financial applications due to his exceptionally high standards requiring broad global impact and unambiguous societal good. Five financial primitives – holding, trading, lending, borrowing, and issuing – make quality banking services globally and permissionlessly accessible rather than limited to geographic elites. The endorsement comes as Ethereum's metrics show significant scale: ETH at $540 billion market cap, DeFi assets at $500 billion, DeFi TVL at $100 billion, and Ethereum L1 scaling from 20 TPS to 10,000 TPS and L2s from 3,000 TPS to 1 million TPS, positioning Ethereum as the most credibly neutral chain for long-term asset storage and the foundation for more impactful DeFi primitives like credit systems.
Active USDe loans on Aave have increased by ~$1.4B since the start of 2025, highlighting growing demand for stablecoin borrowing in DeFi.
The US will push stablecoins as global settlement rails tied to Treasuries, but many nations will instead favor gold.
Prediction markets thrive on data, speed, and resolution, exactly where AI excels.
In less than a week, over $20 million USDC has been deposited into the product, all earning over 10%.