The U.S. Senate moved a step closer to confirming Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.
A divided committee vote advanced his nomination. The move comes amid intensifying political scrutiny and market uncertainty.
The Senate Banking Committee approved Warsh in a 13–11 party-line vote. This clears a key procedural hurdle. It also positions him for likely confirmation by the full Senate before mid-May, when current chair Jerome Powell’s term expires.
Warsh, a former Fed governor and Wall Street financier, has pledged a “regime change” at the central bank. He signaled potential change in communication strategy. He also pointed to changes in balance sheet policy and inflation management.
However, the nomination has exposed deep political fault lines. Republicans have largely backed Warsh as a credible successor. Democrats have warned his appointment could undermine central bank independence. They point to perceived alignment with former President Donald Trump’s policy preferences.
The Fed’s policy outlook and internal tensions
Financial markets are bracing for a potentially volatile transition. Investors expect no immediate policy changes. However, divisions within the Federal Open Market Committee suggest Warsh may face resistance. This could complicate any aggressive shift in interest rate policy.
Warsh has acknowledged the likelihood of internal disagreement. He described the Fed’s policymaking process as a “family fight.” Officials remain split between inflation concerns and calls for easing.
His stance is being closely watched. He has historically been viewed as hawkish. More recent signals indicate openness to rate adjustments under specific conditions. This is particularly true if productivity gains materialize.
Crypto market implications
In digital asset markets, Warsh’s expected appointment is seen as a macro turning point. It is not viewed as a crypto-specific policy shift. Traders are focusing on liquidity and real interest rates.
Anthony Pompliano, a widely followed crypto investor and commentator, said in a recent note:
“When the Fed changes, liquidity changes — and that’s what crypto trades on.”
The remark reflects a prevailing view among crypto participants. Leadership transitions at the Fed can influence global dollar liquidity cycles. These cycles are a primary driver of risk assets, including Bitcoin.
Earlier in 2026, Bitcoin prices showed sensitivity to speculation around Warsh’s nomination. Risk assets weakened as markets priced in a potentially tighter policy stance.
Warsh’s likely confirmation marks a major leadership transition in global finance this year. It comes against a backdrop of persistent inflation and geopolitical tensions. Monetary policy frameworks are also evolving.
While the immediate policy path remains uncertain, analysts broadly agree the appointment could reshape expectations around, the pace of rate cuts or hikes, the Fed’s balance sheet trajectory, and global capital flows into risk assets.
Warsh’s nomination has cleared a decisive institutional hurdle. It is widely expected to proceed to confirmation. The key question for markets is no longer whether he will lead the Fed. It is how aggressively he will attempt to redefine its policy direction. It also depends on how much resistance he will face once in office.
Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin 2026 Keynote — CCS Exclusive
CCS Exclusive · Keynote Coverage
Michael Saylor Keynote:
The Birth of Digital Credit
Michael Saylor took the Bitcoin 2026 stage to declare that a new era in capital markets has begun — and that Strategy’s STRC has already become the most liquid preferred stock on Earth.
By CCS Editorial Desk · Bitcoin Conference 2026
Exclusive Analysis
STRC
“Digital credit is a killer application of Bitcoin. We expect to sell tens of billions — then hundreds of billions — then trillions of dollars of digital credit.”
— Michael Saylor, Bitcoin 2026
Full Keynote · Courtesy of Bitcoin Magazine
STRC by the numbers — as presented at Bitcoin 2026
$8.5BAUM
Reached in under 9 months, making STRC the world’s largest preferred stock
11.5%Yield
Tax-deferred dividend — equivalent to ~24% in a high-tax city like New York
2.7×Sharpe Ratio
5× better than the best competing credit instrument; beats Nvidia’s 1.89
$38BRun Rate
April demand annualized — from zero in under twelve months
Chapter I · The Big Idea
Engineering Credit the Way Satoshi Engineered Money
Michael Saylor opened his keynote at Bitcoin 2026 not with a price prediction but with an architectural argument. Just as Satoshi Nakamoto assembled proof-of-work, public-key cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking into ideal capital — a non-sovereign, bearer store of value without counterparty risk — Saylor claims to have done the same for credit.
The vehicle is STRC, the perpetual preferred equity issued by Strategy. Its building blocks are, individually, unremarkable: listed public companies, preferred equity structures, monthly variable dividends, return-of-capital tax treatment, shelf registrations, and ATM programs. Each has existed for decades or longer. The breakthrough, Saylor argues, was the combination — marrying them to a Bitcoin balance sheet to produce what he calls digital credit: liquid, transparent, homogeneous, accessible to any retail account, and carrying no fee.
“Bitcoin represents ideal capital,” he told the crowd. “Digital credit is ideal credit. We engineered it the same way.”
“The world’s built on capital. The world runs on credit. Our company strategy converts capital into credit.”
Chapter II · Stripping Risk from a Volatile Asset
How You Extract an 11% Yield from a 40-Volatility Asset
The mathematics Saylor presented are deliberately simple. Bitcoin has compounded at roughly 38% per year over the past five years — far above gold at 16%, real estate at 6%, or money markets at 3%. Since you cannot pay a credit dividend higher than the expected return of the underlying capital, those asset classes impose a ceiling on what any asset-backed credit product can yield. Bitcoin’s ceiling is the highest of any mainstream asset.
Strategy’s approach is to over-collateralize: at 4-to-1 or 5-to-1 collateral ratios, Bitcoin would need to fall 80% before a credit investor loses a dollar of principal. The capital investor absorbs all of that downside; the credit investor sits safely behind them. Volatility — Bitcoin’s notorious 40-point swings — is mathematically stripped away when you target a par value and pay out only the first slice of return.
In Saylor’s framing, the instrument performs “signal processing on a financial signal.” The first 11% of expected return goes to STRC holders. Everything above that — the excess volatility, the excess return — flows to the common equity. Three distinct products emerge from one underlying asset: digital capital (Bitcoin), digital credit (STRC), and digital equity (Strategy common stock).
Chapter III · A Product That Didn’t Exist
The Largest Preferred in the World — Before Its First Birthday
Saylor displayed a chart of the ten largest preferred stocks globally. STRC sits atop a list that includes preferred issues from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Fannie Mae. Many of those instruments, he noted, are effectively impossible for retail investors to find, let alone trade — some are legally restricted to institutional buyers, and their tickers are nearly ungoogle-able.
STRC is not merely the largest. By Saylor’s presentation, it is 25× more liquid than the next-best preferred stock, turning over roughly 4.5% of its AUM in daily trading volume. Liquidity has grown by a factor of eight in five months. At the time of the conference, daily liquidity was approaching $400 million.
Instrument
Sharpe Ratio
Est. Yield
Liquidity
Tax Treatment
STRC(Strategy)
2.7
11.5%
~$400M / day
Return of capital (deferred)
Nvidia (NVDA)
1.89
—
Very high
Capital gains / ordinary
Top bank preferreds
~0.5
5–7%
Low–moderate
Qualified dividend
Private credit funds
<0.5
8.5%
Illiquid
Fully taxable
Money markets
Negative
3–4%
Daily
Fully taxable
S&P 500 Index
<1
1–2% div
Very high
Qualified dividend
Chapter IV · The Comeback of Preferred Capital
A 100-Year Gap, Closed
One of the more historically grounded passages in Saylor’s keynote was his argument that STRC represents less of an innovation and more of a revival. In the 19th century, preferred stocks financed the railroads and much of the early industrial revolution, comprising as much as 20–40% of corporate capital structures. Over the course of the 20th century, preferred equity fell out of use. Regulatory changes, tax policy, and the rise of bond markets pushed them to the institutional margins.
“Now in the 21st century,” Saylor said, “we’ve reintroduced the idea of preferred credit back into the capital markets.” The difference, he argues, is that this time the underlying collateral is not railroad track or factory equipment — it is Bitcoin, the highest-performing asset class of the last decade.
The shelf registration innovation amplifies this point. Before Strategy began issuing digital credit instruments, the largest shelf registration ever executed on a credit instrument globally was $500 million. Strategy has now filed a $21 billion shelf registration for STRC alone — a figure roughly 40 times the previous world record, according to Saylor.
Chapter V · Adoption and the Three-Million-Household Mark
From Institutional Indexes to Robin Hood Retail
Saylor’s growth numbers border on the incredible. Monthly demand for STRC fell to roughly $80 million in February during a sharp Bitcoin drawdown, then surged to $1.5 billion in March and $3.5 billion in April — a monthly demand run rate that annualizes to $38 billion. “How many products in the world,” he asked, “went from zero to $20 billion a year in their first year? There aren’t many.”
Adoption is broad. By Saylor’s count, roughly 80% of STRC is held in retail accounts — more than 120,000 distinct accounts, across E*Trade, Robinhood, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. He estimates that approximately three million households are currently benefiting from the instrument.
Institutional adoption is accelerating in parallel. BlackRock and Van Eck, two of the largest credit fund managers in the world, both hold STRC as the third-largest position in their respective credit indexes, representing 2–6% of fund assets. As money flows into those indexes, it flows into STRC — and from there, into Bitcoin. Additionally, 21Shares has already launched an STRC-embedded ETF in Europe, while Strive is preparing a U.S.-listed digital yield fund.
Chapter VI · The Layer 3 Vision
Stable Coins, Streaming Dividends, and the $200 Trillion Endgame
The second half of Saylor’s keynote zoomed out to what he calls the “Layer 3” opportunity. If Bitcoin is Layer 1 (the capital asset) and STRC is Layer 2 (digital credit), then Layer 3 is the ecosystem of products built on top: tokenized STRC, ETFs, bank accounts, stable coins, and private funds that use STRC as their yield engine.
He described companies already building in this space — Apex, Saturn, and Hermetica — all constructing Bitcoin-backed yield products or stablecoin-backed yield products on top of Strategy’s infrastructure. Tokenized STRC grew from nothing to over $200 million in just four weeks, and Saylor said he expected it to cross $1 billion in AUM within weeks.
As a concrete near-term move, Saylor announced that Strategy would seek shareholder approval to shift STRC from monthly to semi-monthly dividend payments. The physics analogy he employed was apt: doubling the frequency of a signal takes it an octave higher — higher fidelity, tighter oscillation, lower volatility. If approved, the first semi-monthly dividend payment would arrive July 15th, making STRC the only stock in the world paying a semi-monthly dividend out of roughly 24,000 publicly listed companies.
The long arc of Saylor’s vision: drive Bitcoin to $10 million per coin, build a $200 trillion network, and give every person on Earth access to a high-yield digital savings account yielding 8–10% annually. “Fix the money, fix the world,” he concluded. “Digital credit is the next killer application to fix the money.”
Killing Satoshi, Hollywood Money, and the Next Bitcoin Wave | Crypto Coin Show
Bitcoin • BSV • Culture
Killing Satoshi Could Be the Catalyst BSV Has Been Waiting For
A conversation with Gavin Mehl at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas on BSV’s chart setup, Hollywood’s quiet accumulation, and why a big-budget spy thriller about Bitcoin’s origins matters more than most people realize.
A
Ashton Addison
April 28, 2026 • Bitcoin 2026, Las Vegas
Watch: Ashton Addison meets Gavin Mehl at Bitcoin 2026, Las Vegas
Gavin Mehl caught up with Ashton Addison on the floor of Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas for a quick conversation on BSV’s chart setup and one of the more quietly significant developments in the Bitcoin space: a major Hollywood film built around the story of Satoshi’s identity.
Killing Satoshi: The Film
Killing Satoshi is a spy thriller based on the legal battles surrounding Bitcoin’s origins — covering the COPA trial, the climate trial, and the broader mystery of Craig Wright’s identity claims. Casey Affleck stars in the lead role, with Pete Davidson playing Calvin Ayre. Doug Liman, director of the Bourne Identity, is behind the camera. Ryan Kavanaugh, producer of The Social Network, is handling production.
“It’s Bourne Identity meets Bitcoin — it’s going to tell the whole story of what happened during those trials. It’s a spy thriller.”
— Gavin Mehl, at Bitcoin 2026
The film is headed to Cannes, with a full release expected by end of 2026 or early 2027. For BSV, the cultural timing matters. BSV has been trading in a steady ascending channel since January, holding structure while many lower-quality projects have gone to zero. A major mainstream film centered on BSV’s core narrative — the identity and legitimacy of Satoshi — could be a meaningful catalyst, particularly as the broader Bitcoin cycle turns.
Hollywood Money Is Already In
Institutional ETF holders have to disclose. Private capital from Hollywood does not. The smart money buys first and talks later — and a production of this scale, involving names like Casey Affleck and the Bourne Identity director, suggests significant conviction behind the scenes. The film is not just entertainment. It puts BSV’s story in front of a mainstream global audience at exactly the point in the cycle where a narrative push matters most.
BSV Chart Outlook
BSV Market Cap, 1D — EngineeringRobo AI overlay via TradingView, April 29, 2026
The chart above comes from EngineeringRobo’s AI indicator suite and the Birbicator, both overlaid on BSV’s market cap daily chart. The picture is more constructive than the headline price action suggests.
BSV is currently sitting at a market cap of $314.2M, trading between the SMA 50 and SMA 200 on the daily. The broader trend has been a prolonged descending channel from the highs, but price has been coiling tighter and the recent structure shows a series of higher lows — a classic base-building pattern. The EngineeringRobo overlay has printed AI Buy signals at multiple points through this consolidation, most recently near the $250M range lows.
The multi-timeframe dashboard tells a nuanced story: bearish on the weekly and 3H, but bullish on the 1D and multi-timeframe composite — the timeframe that matters most for medium-term positioning. The 45M is also flashing bullish, suggesting short-term momentum is beginning to align with the daily trend. RSI is neutral across the board (50.7 on BSV, 52.5 on the total crypto market), meaning there is room to run in either direction without being overbought.
Correlation to BTC sits at 0.50 — lower than most altcoins — which means BSV can move independently if a catalyst presents itself. Volume is elevated (24H volume flagged HIGH), and volatility at 2.84% is manageable. Smart Money is balanced, not yet showing aggressive accumulation, but not distributing either.
The setup: BSV is not ready for a breakout yet, but the daily structure is turning. A film like Killing Satoshi hitting mainstream audiences in the second half of 2026 — combined with a broader Bitcoin cycle turning higher — provides exactly the kind of narrative and macro tailwind that could accelerate a move off this base.
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After riding the tap-to-earn wave and crashing dramatically, TON is making a strategic comeback. The network is placing itself in the race to become the go-to platform for autonomous AI agents by introducing a new open, self-custodial wallet standard, which grants each agent a personal on-chain wallet.
Released today, April 28, 2026, the new standard introduced by the TON Tech team is pivotal to the network’s rise after its failed attempt at infiltrating the gaming era. With TON currently trading at $1.29, the pressure is on the network to find the next credible growth engine.
Toncoin price. Source: CoinMarketCap
What is the agent wallet standard?
TON’S new agentic wallet standard was created to give AI agents their own on-chain financial identity. Each wallet is made up of a smart contract that consists of two separate keys: one for the user and the other for the agent, allowing the agent to approve and carry out transactions using only its own operator key.
This means the agent can make swaps, pay fees, and interact with decentralized apps on its own without needing access to the user’s main wallet or exposing user credentials.
Additionally, the system is also designed to ensure users keep full control, as any fund placed in the agent’s control is limited to the amount the user chooses. Furthermore, the user can change the agent’s key, remove its access, or withdraw funds whenever they wish through a dedicated dashboard at agents.ton.org.
Lastly, there’s no cap on how many agents a user can deploy, so users who wish to have multiple agents can do so, with each agent having access to its own independent wallet and balance.
An earlier Cryptopolitan report cited McKinsey analyst projections that AI agents could be running anywhere from $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
TON joins the agentic payment wave
The agentic AI trend is growing immensely throughout the ecosystem, with TON’s edge in this race being its integration with Telegram, which grants developers direct access to over a billion daily users, an added benefit most chains can’t provide.
While the future looks bright, it’s worth noting that the agentic wallet contracts have not yet passed a formal security audit. TON’s own documentation described the current version as a developer preview, hinting that the product needs further testing before being widely adopted.
What TON has made clear, however, is that it is no longer counting on casual games to carry the network. However, given what happened with Hamster Kombat and its evident crash, the crypto market is going to need more than a promising architecture before rewarding TON with a sustained recovery.
Can TON avoid a repeat of the tap-to-earn era downturn?
In 2024, the TON blockchain introduced one of the fastest-growing digital products in history called Hamster Kombat. The project ended up pulling in over 300 million users and was publicly praised as a breakthrough moment in Web3 adoption.
After the launch of its native token HMSTR in September 2024, Hamster Kombat lost over 260 million active players, thus shedding 86% of its users within three months. The token itself dropped more than 76% from its launch price, eventually taking a toll on other projects, including Catizen, Tapswap, and other tap-to-earn games.
With the lessons from the collapse now in the history books, the question now is whether the TON blockchain can return to those highs. And if it does, how will it avoid returning to its current lows?
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Our SEI price prediction anticipates a high of $0.21 by the end of 2026.
In 2028, it will range between $0.35 and $0.43, with an average price of $0.36.
In 2030, it will range between $0.78 and $0.91, with an average price of $0.81.
The Parallel Stack, a robust, open-source framework designed for crafting rollups and Layer 2s that harness parallel processing, is now on SEI V2. The stack enhances Ethereum’s performance by addressing the most common bottlenecks Layer 2 blockchains face. Such developments are anticipated to drive SEI value over the long term.
Regarding price performance, SEI shows signs of trading higher; however, it remains influenced by broader market sentiment. How high will SEI go? Is SEI a good investment? What will SEI’s value be in 2026? Will SEI rise? Read on and discover the SEI price prediction from 2026 to 2032.
Overview
Cryptocurrency
Sei
Ticker
SEI
Current price
$0.05937
Crypto market cap
$414.16M
Trading volume
$25.61M
Circulating supply
6.97B
All-time low
$0.007989 on Aug 15, 2023
All-time high
$1.14 on Mar 16, 2024
24-hour high
$0.06063
24-hour low
$0.05885
SEI price prediction: Technical analysis
Metric
Value
Volatility (30-day variation)
8.66%
50-day SMA
$0.06359
200-day SMA
$0.1522
Sentiment
Bearish
Green days
10/30 (33%)
Fear and Greed Index
21 (Extreme Fear)
SEI price analysis
On April 28, SEI’s price dropped 0.89% in the past 24 hours and was up 12.02% over the past 30 days. Its 24-hour trading volume dropped 28.39% to $26 million, signaling low conviction in the market trend.
The chart shows SEI is moving sideways at $0.06 following a months-long bear run. Its MACD histogram shows waning positive momentum with falling trading volumes signaling less trading interest. Traders are waiting to see if SEI will reclaim $0.08 if it bounces back.
The 4-hour chart highlights SEI’s run in the last 7 days. The trend shows it trades at its highest price range this month. A drop below $0.058 could send SEI back to previous lows with support at $0.053.
SEI technical indicators: Levels and action
Daily simple moving average (SMA)
Period
Value
Action
SMA 3
0.06129
SELL
SMA 5
0.06147
SELL
SMA 10
0.05921
BUY
SMA 21
0.05762
BUY
SMA 50
0.05885
BUY
SMA 100
0.07032
SELL
SMA 200
0.1103
SELL
Daily exponential moving average (EMA)
Period
Value
Action
EMA 3
0.06114
SELL
EMA 5
0.06088
SELL
EMA 10
0.05982
SELL
EMA 21
0.05858
BUY
EMA 50
0.06136
SELL
EMA 100
0.07667
SELL
EMA 200
0.1168
SELL
What to expect from the SEI price analysis next?
SEI remains bearish, with the trend indicating it is moving sideways. A drop from the current level could send SEI to $0.05. Short-term indicators signal consolidation.
Why is SEI down?
Sei’s price decline occurred without a specific negative catalyst in the last 24 hours. Instead, the move extends a broader bearish trend.
Recent news
As part of SEI’s SIP-3 (Giga Upgrade) initiative for mid-February, the coin is set to part with its initial EVM architecture. The inbound IBC transfers are to be disabled as part of the initiative.
Will SEI reach $1?
According to the Cryptopolitan price prediction, SEI will rise above $1 in 2031, reaching a high of $1.37.
Can Sei Coin reach $10?
Per the Cryptopolitan price prediction, SEI is unlikely to reach $10 before 2031.
Will SEI reach $100?
Per the Cryptopolitan price prediction, SEI is unlikely to reach $100 before 2031.
Does SEI have a good long-term future?
According to Cryptopolitan price predictions, SEI will trade higher in the years to come. However, factors like market crashes or difficult regulations could invalidate this bullish theory
Is SEI a good investment?
SEI has growing utility, and its EVM compatibility helps it steal a share of Ethereum’s dominance. While the technical analysis is bearish, price predictions paint a different picture.
SEI price prediction April 2026
SEI will average at $0.106 in April. The price will range between $0.049 and $0.136.
Month
Potential low ($)
Potential average ($)
Potential high ($)
April
$0.049
$0.106
$0.136
SEI price prediction 2026
This year, SEI will trade between $0.07 and $0.18, with an average of $0.21.
Year
Potential low ($)
Potential average ($)
Potential high ($)
2026
0.0708
0.1758
0.2078
SEI price prediction 2027 – 2031
Year
Potential low ($)
Potential average ($)
Potential high ($)
2027
0.2459
0.2529
0.2946
2028
0.3539
0.3640
0.4261
2029
0.5210
0.5392
0.6199
2030
0.7849
0.8065
0.9054
2031
1.1300
1.17
1.3700
2032
1.6600
1.7200
2.0200
SEI crypto price prediction 2027
The SEI forecast climbs higher into 2027. It will range between $0.2459 and $0.2946, with an average price of $0.2529.
SEI coin price prediction 2028
The analysis suggests a further acceleration in SEI’s growth in 2028. According to the Cryptopolitan price forecast, it will trade between $0.3539 and $0.4261, with a year-round average of $0.3640.
SEI token price prediction 2029
Based on SEI’s price movements in 2029, the maximum price is $0.6199, the minimum is $0.5210, and the average is $0.5392.
SEI price prediction 2030
The SEI coin price prediction for 2030 suggests a price range of $0.7849 to $0.9054 and an expected average trading price of $0.8065. This long-term prediction also hinges on SEI’s rising global market recognition and adoption.
SEI prediction 2031
SEI forecast for 2031 sets the high at $1.37. On the lower side, it will drop to a low of $1.13, with an average price of $1.17.
SEI price prediction 2032
Per expert predictions, the price of SEI will range between $1.66 and $2.02, with an average of $1.72.
SEI market price prediction: Analysts’ SEI price forecast
Firm
2026
2027
2028
Gate.com
$0.05354
$0.005434
$0.06993
Coincodex
$0.09070
$.1431
$0.09405
Cryptopolitan SEI price prediction
SEI key price levels are expected to rise in the coming years, according to price prediction tools. The coin will reach a high of $0.2078 before the end of 2026. In 2028, it will range between $0.35 and $0.43, with an average of $0.36. However, SEI is still highly volatile. Negative market sentiment, such as market crashes, could derail the predictions. Always seek independent professional consultation for investment advice.
Despite opposition from its employees, Google signed an AI contract deal with the Pentagon. Foreign governments in Europe and Asia are now seriously reevaluating doing business with firms linked to the U.S. government.
The growing pattern of U.S. AI firms deepening ties with the Pentagon has escalated the urgency for European and Asian governments to find alternatives that are clean from American influence for their tech needs.
Google faces backlash over Pentagon AI deal
In 2025, the Pentagon signed agreements of up to $200 million each with major AI companies, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Reportedly, the Pentagon attempted to make versions of OpenAI and Anthropic available on classified networks without the standard restrictions they apply to users.
Google’s latest Pentagon deal reportedly drew significant criticism from its own employees. The company previously faced a major internal revolt over Project Maven, a 2018 Pentagon drone-imagery contract that it ultimately chose not to renew after thousands of employees signed petitions and some resigned in protest.
The new deal allows the Pentagon to use Google’s AI for “any lawful government purpose”, but also includes safeguards such as “the parties agree that the AI System is not intended for, and should not be used for, domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (including target selection) without appropriate human oversight and control.”
However, the agreement also says Google does not have the right to control or veto lawful government operational decision-making.
The primary cause of concern for American citizens, foreign partners, and adversaries is that there is a gray area as to what constitutes lawful government use. As Cryptopolitan reported, the Pentagon and the Trump admin publicly disputed with Anthropic about limits that the AI firm insisted on.
The race to make Europe great again is on
Foreign governments do not trust that U.S.-based AI companies can serve foreign clients without also serving U.S. national security interests. The 2018 CLOUD Act that compels American tech firms to hand over data to U.S. law enforcement, even when that data is stored on foreign soil, only strengthens this concern.
France, for instance, announced last year that its Health Data Hub would leave Microsoft Azure for a domestically operated cloud company called Scaleway.
Scaleway was also among four companies that won a separate €180 million sovereign cloud tender from the European Commission, worth roughly $211 million. Amazon’s AWS European Sovereign Cloud notably did not make the cut.
The European Commission’s tender carried the additional goal of encouraging the market to “offer sovereign digital solutions that comply with EU laws and values.”
France is also replacing Windows with Linux across government systems. Austria, Denmark, Italy, and Germany are swapping Microsoft’s productivity suite for open-source tools like LibreOffice. As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, Germany has decided not to even consider Palantir for its military, at least for now, according to Vice Admiral Thomas Daum.
The EU’s Apply AI Strategy, published in March 2026, promotes what it calls a “buy European” approach to AI procurement.
However, France’s domestic intelligence agency recently renewed a contract with Palantir despite the push to reduce reliance on U.S. providers and Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp’s, controversial opinions on defense technology.
European search engine Qwant partnered with German nonprofit Ecosia to launch Staan, a privacy-focused search index, but Ecosia has roughly 20 million users compared to Google’s billions.
Scaleway and OVHCloud are credible cloud providers, but neither is near the scale of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Whether or not these alternatives can compete on capability remains an open question.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s unsettling blockchain-based side gig, a startup with the uninspired name “World,” has left us scratching our heads for years.
The startup claims that gazing into its spherical “Orb” iris scanner will solve the problem of “verifying humanness,” a cryptic value proposition most recently adopted by dating platform Tinder.
But considering the company’s latest gaffe, Altman appears to have failed to ponder the orb long enough. In an April 17 announcement, Tools for Humanity — also founded by Sam Altman, and which contributes to the World project — announced it was selling the first tickets to global music sensation Bruno Mars’ upcoming world tour via a new product called Concert Kit.
Unfortunately, there turned out to be a glaring problem: Bruno Mars and his management had no idea about any of it, once again highlighting Altman and his companies’ propensity to distort the truth. In a joint statement to Wired last week, Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation said that the partnership “does not exist” and that Tools for Humanity had never even approached them.
Now, as Vice reports, the startup has updated its website, with a spokesperson confirming that it “does not have any agreement with Bruno Mars to test or feature Concert Kit.”
Worse yet, Tools for Humanity now claims it’s instead partnering with Thirty Seconds to Mars — the rock band of actor Jared Leto, who’s been accused of a startling number of sex crimes.
It’s hard to look past the sheer irony of a company that claims to verify human identity hallucinating a major partnership with a superstar — only to recruit an unrelated music act that also happens to have the word “Mars” in its name. (It’s unclear if the Thirty Seconds to Mars partnership was drawn up before or after the latest gaffe.)
But we’d be remiss not to note that it would be far from the first time Altman has been caught lying, or at least misinterpreting reality to a baffling degree to suit his agenda.
Former OpenAI staffers claim that Altman has fibbed about a great number of things, from hiding non-disparagement agreements employees were forced to sign to mothballing the company’s foundational promise of realizing artificial general intelligence (AGI) that purportedly “benefits all of humanity.”
Altman’s shaky track record was put on full display earlier this month in an extensive investigation by journalists Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker. According to the piece, Altman has picked up at lengthy reputation at OpenAI and beyond for stretching the truth to — and often beyond — the breaking point.
“Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of,” an internal list obtained by the publication reads, with the first item being: “lying.”
Washington is turning stablecoins into regulated payment instruments while trying to keep issuer-paid yield away from holders. That combination changesthe economics of digital dollars and puts the value of user balances up for grabs across the intermediary stack.
The GENIUS Act bars permitted payment stablecoin issuers and foreign payment stablecoin issuers from paying holders any form of interest or yield solely for holding, using, or retaining a payment stablecoin.
The FDIC’s April 7 proposal would turn parts of that law into operating standards for FDIC-supervised issuers, including reserves, redemption, capital, risk management, custody, pass-through insurance, and tokenized-deposit treatment.
That leaves a practical question for a market that reached roughly $320 billion in stablecoin supply in mid-April. If holders cannot receive direct issuer-paid yield, the value created by tokenized dollars still has to land somewhere.
The redistribution runs through the operating stack. The fight shifts to issuers, exchanges, wallets, custodians, banks, asset managers, card networks, and tokenized-deposit providers. They are the parties positioned to collect reserve income, distribution payments, custody fees, payment fees, settlement benefits, loyalty economics, or deposit economics.
The rulebook pushes yield into the plumbing
The stablecoin framework begins with reserves. GENIUS requires permitted issuers to maintain identifiable reserves backing outstanding payment stablecoins at least 1:1, with reserve categories that include cash, bank deposits, short-term Treasuries, certain repo arrangements, government money market funds, and limited tokenized reserve forms.
It also requires reserve disclosures and redemption policies, restricts reserve reuse, and calls for capital, liquidity, risk management, AML, and sanctions controls.
That makes compliant payment stablecoins look more like regulated cash-management products than free-form crypto instruments. Issuers can hold large pools of income-producing assets. At the same time, the statute blocks those issuers from paying stablecoin holders direct interest or yield merely for holding or using the token.
The economic trade-off looked uneven in the White House’s April 8 yield-prohibition note, which estimated a baseline $2.1 billion increase in bank lending from eliminating stablecoin yield, equal to a 0.02% lending effect, alongside an $800 million net welfare cost.
The same note said affiliate or third-party arrangements could remain unless CLARITY variants close that channel.
That caveat is where the post-CLARITY money map starts. A direct issuer-yield ban controls the issuer-holder relationship. It leaves open the harder economic question of how platforms, partners, payment apps, and bank structures treat the same value once it moves through distribution or product design.
CryptoSlate has already explored how the CLARITY fight is tied to stablecoin yield, regulatory control, market structure, and banking-sector pressure.
The commercial layer asks whether the law captures only the obvious form of yield, or also the ways a platform can turn stablecoin economics into something that feels like rewards, pricing power, or bundled financial service access.
The split runs through two layers. One side of the stack is statutory and prudential: reserve assets, redemption rights, capital standards, and supervision. The other side is commercial: distribution, wallet placement, exchange balances, merchant pricing, and settlement liquidity.
The policy debate becomes sharper when those layers are separated, because a ban at the issuer level can still leave value moving through the rest of the stack.
Issuers and exchanges already show the money trail
One clear example is USDC. Circle’s public filings describe a business built around reserve income, distribution costs, and partner economics. Its 2025 Form 10-K says Coinbase supports USDC usage across key products and that Circle makes payments to Coinbase tied principally to net reserve income from USDC.
The mechanics are more explicit in Circle’s S-1/A. The payment base is generated from reserves backing the stablecoin after management fees and other expenses.
Circle keeps an issuer portion, Circle and Coinbase receive allocations tied to stablecoins held in their own custodial products or managed wallets, and Coinbase receives 50% of the remaining payment base after approved participant payments.
That structure is the money map in miniature. A holder may see a stable dollar token. In the reserve and distribution structure, the reserve yield can move through issuer retention, platform-balance economics, ecosystem incentives, distribution agreements, and payments to approved participants.
Coinbase’s own filing shows why that channel is economically meaningful. Its 2025 Form 10-K reported stablecoin revenue as a business line and said a hypothetical 150 basis-point move in average rates applied to daily USDC reserve balances held by Circle would have affected stablecoin revenue by $540 million for 2025.
The point is specific: a large platform with distribution, balances, liquidity, and a deep issuer relationship can capture economics that the statute keeps away from holders in direct form.
Asset managers and custodial infrastructure sit on the same map. BlackRock’s Circle Reserve Fund showed a 3.60% seven-day SEC yield as of April 27, while Circle’s filing describes BlackRock as a preferred reserve-management partner and discusses the reserve-management relationship.
Stablecoin economics can accrue to the reserve stack, the manager, the custodian, the issuer, and the distributor before a user ever sees a token in a wallet.
Intermediary
Economic lane
User-facing form
Policy constraint
Issuer
Reserve income and issuance scale
Stable dollar token and redemption promise
Issuer-paid holder yield is barred under GENIUS
Exchange or wallet
Distribution payments, platform balances, loyalty incentives
Rewards, fee offsets, product access, liquidity
Third-party reward treatment remains the live CLARITY fork
Custodian or asset manager
Reserve management, custody, safekeeping
Operational trust and reserve transparency
FDIC and issuer rules shape permitted reserve and custody practices
Payment integration raises intermediation and resiliency questions
Bank or tokenized-deposit provider
Deposit economics and insured-bank balance-sheet activity
Deposit-like digital dollars with bank treatment
FDIC says qualifying tokenized deposits would be treated as deposits
Wallets and payment rails turn yield into product economics
The Fed’s April 8 FEDS Note gives the policy version of that table. It identifies complex intermediation chains, vertical integration, and accelerating retail adoption through wallet partnerships as structural stablecoin vulnerabilities.
It also points to integration with payment networks, banks, retail applications, broker-dealer funding, and card networks.
The Fed is studying a market where the issuer is only one node. Wallet providers, infrastructure firms, payment processors, brokers, banks, and card networks can all sit between the reserve asset and the user experience.
The company described instant crypto-to-stablecoin or fiat conversion, a 0.99% merchant transaction rate through July 31, 2026, support for more than 100 cryptocurrencies and wallets, and PYUSD rewards for funds held on PayPal at the time of the announcement.
That is a different economic shape from direct issuer yield. The holder sees payment access, merchant savings, wallet connectivity, or rewards attached to a platform. The platform can monetize conversion, distribution, customer balances, merchant pricing, and product stickiness.
Visa’s December 2025 USDC settlement launch shows the card-network version of the same intermediary lane. Visa said U.S. issuer and acquirer partners could settle VisaNet obligations in USDC, with Cross River and Lead Bank among initial banking participants.
It described more than $3.5 billion in annualized stablecoin settlement volume as of Nov. 30, 2025, and framed the product around seven-day settlement, liquidity timing, treasury automation, and operational resiliency.
Those benefits accrue through payment networks, issuing banks, acquiring banks, fintech partners, and corporate treasury operations. The user-facing return is payment access, faster settlement, or better pricing rather than issuer-paid yield.
That distinction is central to the policy fight. A yield ban can reduce the visible consumer return on a token while allowing platforms to compete through pricing, access, loyalty, and settlement benefits. The economics remain, but the claim on them becomes mediated by the platform relationship.
Banks gain leverage if the third-party channel closes
The banking lobby understands that channel. The Bank Policy Institute argued in August 2025 that GENIUS’s issuer-yield prohibition could be undermined if exchanges, affiliates, or distribution partners are still able to pay interest indirectly on stablecoins.
BPI framed that as a loophole that could increase deposit-flight risk and weaken credit creation.
Crypto trade groups answered from the other side. Their August 2025 response argued that third-party rewards are competitive consumer benefits rather than evasion of the statute.
The dispute determines whether the post-GENIUS stablecoin market becomes a platform-rewards market or a bank-protected payments market.
The FDIC proposal adds the second bank lane. It says tokenized deposits that satisfy the statutory definition of deposit would be treated no differently from other deposits under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.
That gives banks a cleaner argument if stablecoin rewards face stricter limits: deposit tokens can keep the economics inside the banking perimeter, where interest, insurance, and lending relationships already have a legal home.
CLARITY’s market-structure section-by-section summary points to another intermediary layer. Digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers would face registration, listing, custody, segregation, disclosure, and customer-election requirements.
Customers could elect into blockchain services such as staking under conditions, while access to the exchange could not be conditioned on that election.
Those provisions reinforce the same intermediary shift by moving economic activity into supervised channels. The contested issue is who owns distribution, customer balances, wallet access, custody, settlement, and optional services.
As of press time, USDT was around $189.71 billion in market capitalization and USDC around $77.63 billion.
CryptoSlate rankings also showed USDe around $3.79 billion, PYUSD around $3.42 billion, and RLUSD around $1.6 billion. That scale means the issuer-yield rule lands first on the largest payment-stablecoin rails.
The next test is the definition of indirect yield. If lawmakers and regulators allow third-party rewards, the advantage sits with platforms that own users, balances, payments, and distribution. If they limit those arrangements, banks and tokenized-deposit providers get a stronger path to keep digital-dollar returns inside deposit products.
The emerging U.S. framework decides whether stablecoin holders can receive yield and how much of the economics of digital dollars becomes visible to users. The rest is absorbed by the intermediaries that move, custody, package, and settle those dollars.
Big Tech OwnsYour Compute.Here’s Who’sTaking It Back.
While Big Tech races to build ever-larger data centers, 80% of existing GPU capacity sits idle. io.net is betting that the future of AI compute looks nothing like the past.
The numbers coming out of the hyperscalers are staggering. An estimated $650 billion is being spent on AI data center infrastructure in 2026 alone, with Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud racing to stake out compute real estate across the United States and beyond. Headlines about planned campuses have become routine. So have the headlines about delays.
Grid constraints, community opposition, soaring construction costs, and permitting backlogs have pushed back roughly half of planned US data center openings. The irony is sharp: the industry most loudly declaring a compute shortage is struggling to build its way out of one.
But there is a more uncomfortable truth underneath the construction race. The data centers that already exist are chronically underused. Industry estimates suggest that around 80% of global GPU capacity goes unutilized at any given time. Compute workloads are spiky by nature. A company trains a model, then the chips sit. Inference traffic surges and then falls quiet. The infrastructure built for peak demand idles through the troughs.
“Instead of having to build lots of data centers all over the world constantly, we should be juicing the data centers we have more effectively.”
Jack Collier, CMO, io.net
It is this inefficiency, not just the cost, that io.net was built to address. The company aggregates spare GPU capacity from secondary data centers, mining operations, and consumer-grade hardware, pooling it into a single marketplace that anyone can access. Three providers — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — control roughly 70% of global compute. The remaining 30% is fragmented across thousands of secondary operators and consumer hardware. io.net connects that fragmented supply into a single, accessible network.
The Business Case
Under $2 an Hour for an H200. That Is Not a Typo.
The flagship claim io.net makes is cost. H200 GPUs, among the most powerful chips available for AI workloads, are listed on the io.net platform today for under $2 per hour. The same hardware on AWS or Google Cloud runs $25 to $30 per hour. For a startup burning 40 to 60 percent of its operating budget on compute, that difference is not marginal. It is existential.
H200 on io.net
<$2
per hour
H200 on AWS
$25–30
per hour
Devices live
10K+
across 138 countries
Cluster setup
~2 min
no waitlist, no KYC
Token
$IO
staked by suppliers
Leonardo.ai, the AI imaging company recently acquired by Canva, is perhaps io.net’s most prominent case study. The team uses io.net for inference workloads and has credited the cost savings with giving them room to innovate faster. That kind of reference point matters when trying to convince web2 companies that decentralized infrastructure is not an experiment.
And that, according to io.net CMO Jack Collier, is where most of the company’s revenue actually comes from today. “Most of our revenue comes from web2,” he noted, “people who don’t even know that they’re building on crypto rails.” The blockchain layer, in other words, is infrastructure, not identity.
Why Web2 Companies Aren’t Switching Faster
Lock-in is real. Once a business has built its stack on AWS or Azure, the connective tissue runs deep through every service, billing integration, and workflow. Extraction is costly and disruptive. Add to that the narrative pressure from hyperscalers themselves, who have significant marketing budgets dedicated to reinforcing fears of GPU shortages, and the inertia becomes easier to understand. io.net’s answer is to let the price differential speak for itself and build the track record one customer at a time.
Resilience and Geography
When AWS Goes Down, Everything Goes Down. That Is the Problem.
Centralized infrastructure carries a centralized failure mode. When a major cloud provider experiences an outage, the cascade is immediate and broad. Thousands of services, often unrelated to one another, go dark simultaneously because they all share the same dependency.
Decentralized compute inverts this logic. io.net customers can distribute their workloads across GPU clusters in four or five countries simultaneously. If one node fails, traffic reroutes. For global products, this also enables something else: local inference. A company serving customers in Japan can run its models from Japan. Customers in South Africa get inference from South Africa. Latency drops. Performance improves. The infrastructure adapts to geography rather than forcing geography to adapt to infrastructure.
This geographic flexibility, available today across more than 138 countries, is one of io.net’s less-discussed advantages. It quietly solves a problem that hyperscalers solve only expensively and slowly, by building new regional data centers.
Full Interview — CCS Blockchain Interviews
Jack Collier, CMO of io.net, speaks with Ashton Addison of the Crypto Coin Show about decentralized compute, the IDE, Agent Cloud, and the future of AI infrastructure.
Fixing the Economics
The Incentive Dynamic Engine: From Inflation to Utility
Most decentralized physical infrastructure networks, DePIN projects in crypto parlance, share a structural problem. They incentivize suppliers by minting new tokens and distributing them as rewards. When token prices rise, suppliers flood in. When prices fall, they leave. The network’s supply is held hostage to speculation rather than anchored to real demand.
io.net has responded with what it calls the Incentive Dynamic Engine, or IDE, scheduled for full implementation in Q2 2026. The shift is fundamental: instead of paying suppliers a fixed amount of IO tokens each month, suppliers are now compensated in proportion to actual demand on the network. Payments are denominated in USDC-equivalent value of IO, meaning suppliers receive stable dollar-value compensation regardless of token price fluctuations.
Revenue above what is needed to pay suppliers flows into a reserve vault. That vault absorbs volatility. In price downturns it subsidizes supplier rewards. In stronger markets, excess emissions from that vault are burned. io.net has committed to burning at least 50 percent of those excess emissions permanently, meaning the total IO supply contracts over time as the network grows.
IDE Change
Detail
Status
Network model
Supply-driven → demand-driven
Q2 2026
Supplier payments
USDC-equivalent IO (stable dollar value)
Q2 2026
Emissions burn
50% minimum of vault excess
Ongoing
Network direction
Inflationary → deflationary over time
By design
“Tokens aren’t just there as an investment vehicle. They’re there to power a trustless network.”
Jack Collier, CMO, io.net
The result is a tokenomic model where the value of IO is tied directly to the utility of the network it powers, not to sentiment cycles. For anyone evaluating whether a blockchain project is serious, that kind of alignment is among the clearest signals available.
The Agent Economy
AI Agents That Buy Their Own Compute
One of io.net’s more forward-looking product moves is Agent Cloud, launched in March 2026. The premise is simple and slightly startling: AI agents, which already automate enormous swaths of software work, can now autonomously purchase the compute power they need to run. No human in the loop. No approval workflow.
Launched
Mar 25
2026
Protocol
MCP
library by io.net
Payment
Both
crypto or fiat
Guardrails
Yes
spend limits built in
Agent Cloud is built on a Model Context Protocol library created by io.net. An agent with access to a wallet can query the io.net marketplace, identify the GPU configuration it needs, and complete the purchase automatically. Guard rails prevent runaway spending, with limits on how many devices can be acquired and for how long.
The concept points toward something larger. If AI agents are going to be first-class economic participants, they need infrastructure that is programmatically accessible. Centralized cloud providers require account creation, billing agreements, and human oversight at the procurement layer. A permissionless marketplace, accessible via API and payable in crypto or fiat, removes those friction points entirely.
“Our CEO talks quite passionately about a world where AI agents are being spun up themselves and are able to purchase their own compute power and run entirely autonomously,” Collier said. It is a vision of compute as a commodity that intelligent systems consume on demand, the same way applications consume electricity or bandwidth.
Where This Goes
The Demand Curve Only Runs One Direction
The case for decentralized compute rests on a straightforward projection: AI demand will grow faster than centralized infrastructure can be built, and the inefficiency of today’s capacity utilization leaves enormous room for networks that can aggregate and reallocate idle supply. io.net is not alone in making this argument, but it is among the furthest along in proving it with revenue.
From zero to $25 million in annualized revenue, in roughly a year of serious commercial operation, against a global data center market measured in the hundreds of billions, there is a long road ahead. But the trajectory is real, the product is live, and the customers are increasingly the kind of companies who do not think of themselves as crypto users at all.
That quiet expansion — blockchain as invisible infrastructure rather than explicit identity — may be the most durable growth story in the space. Spin up a cluster at io.net in two minutes. No waitlist. No KYC labyrinth. Just compute, available to whoever needs it.
Earlier this month, it seemed like Ethereum (ETH) was on its way to reclaim $2,500, but the bears intercepted the move.
Currently, the asset trades at around $2,300, and some analysts believe a more substantial correction could be knocking on the door. On the other hand, certain on-chain indicators suggest that the bulls might regain control in the near future.
Plunge on the Way?
According to X user Ted, the asset is “looking weak” right now. He claimed that Bitcoin has reclaimed its key level, while the second-largest cryptocurrency keeps getting rejected from the $2,400 resistance zone.
The analyst added that the major support zone for ETH is around $2,200-$2,250 and claimed that a drop to that range won’t be a surprise before a rebound forms.
Prior to that, Ted has been paying attention to the asset’s sideways movement lately. He predicted that this week would be “very crucial” for the market, citing uncertainty surrounding the ongoing peace talks between the USA and Iran.
“If Ethereum manages to reclaim the $2,400 level, it’ll tap the $2,470-$2,500 liquidity. And if it loses the $2,300 zone, a retest of the $2,150-$2,200 support level will happen quickly,” he stated.
Crypto Tony – a popular trader with almost 600,000 followers on X – also weighed in, saying they await a plunge to the support level of around $2,290, which could offer the opportunity for opening a possible long position.
The Indicators Point in a Different Direction
Contrary to the aforementioned skepticism, several metrics suggest that ETH could be on the verge of a price rally. First on the list is the Relative Strength Index (RSI), which has dropped to 30. This means that the asset has entered oversold territory and could be due for an upward move.
ETH RSI, Source: RSI Hunter
Next is the declining amount of ETH stored on exchanges. CryptoQuant’s data shows that the figure recently tumbled to a nearly 10-year low of approximately 14.47 million. This development is seen as bullish since it reduces the immediate selling pressure.
ETH Exchange Supply, Source: CryptoQuant
Last but not least, there is renewed interest from institutional investors. According to SoSoValue, spot ETH ETFs have seen significant inflows lately, indicating that pension funds, hedge funds, and other big players are ramping up their exposure to the asset, forcing the issuers of these products to back the purchased shares with actual Ethereum.
