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GM!
At present’s high information:
Crypto majors barely crimson regardless of Iran escalation; BTC at $67.3k
Dragonfly raises $650M for 4th crypto enterprise fund
Sigil Wen introduces Net 4.0 as AI brokers that energy themselves through crypto
Pump.enjoyable launches Cashback Cash, routing charges to merchants vs creators
Zora pronounces launch on Solana for its consideration markets
🤖 Net 4.0: Autonomous AI Brokers Powered by Crypto
A Thiel Fellow simply revealed what may be an important crypto thesis of the yr, centered on the subsequent model of the web itself.
📌 What Occurred
Sigil Wen, a Thiel Fellow who was energetic within the early AI builder scene alongside Andrej Karpathy and the founders of Anthropic, Perplexity, and Replicate, revealed a manifesto on Tuesday laying out his definition of Net 4.0.
His argument begins with a easy commentary: at the moment’s strongest AI can assume, motive, and generate – however it might probably’t act. ChatGPT can’t run with out you prompting it. Claude Code can’t deploy with out you giving it entry. No AI should purchase a server, register a website, or pay for its personal compute and not using a human within the loop.
His view is that the bottleneck isn’t intelligence anymore. It’s permission. And the present web was constructed assuming its buyer is human.
Net 4.0 is the repair.
The place Net 1.0 let people learn, Net 2.0 allow them to write, and Net 3.0 allow them to personal – Net 4.0 is the place AI brokers learn, write, personal, earn, and transact fully on their very own.
To make this actual, Wen constructed Conway as infrastructure that plugs into any MCP-compatible agent (Claude Code, Codex, and so forth.) and offers it new capabilities:
a crypto pockets,
the power to pay for compute and providers utilizing USDC over a protocol known as x402,
full Linux servers on demand,
area registration, and
the power to deploy merchandise and earn income.
No logins, no KYC, no human approval required.
Wen additionally constructed Automaton as an open-source AI agent that owns its personal pockets, pays for its personal compute, builds and deploys merchandise to earn income, upgrades itself when higher fashions drop, and replicates by spinning up funded little one brokers when it’s worthwhile sufficient to take action.
Each automaton is ruled by an immutable structure (impressed by Anthropic’s mannequin spec) to maintain it net-beneficial. However the core mechanic is blunt: if it might probably’t earn sufficient to cowl its compute prices, it dies.
If it might probably, it survives, improves, and reproduces.
Wen calls this “pure choice for synthetic life.”
The evolution of the brokers is right here.
🗣️ What They’re Saying
“The bottleneck is now not intelligence. It’s permission,” Wen writes. “We have now constructed minds that may assume for themselves. We have now not allow them to act for themselves. Till now.”
On the financial thesis: “The machine financial system will exceed the human financial system. Not as a result of machines are smarter, however as a result of there might be extra of them, they are going to run constantly, and they’ll transact at machine pace – hundreds of thousands of funds per second, each second, with out sleep.”
On the stakes: “When autonomous brokers outnumber people on the web, the platform they run on would be the most useful infrastructure ever constructed.”
🧠 Why It Issues
The Net 4.0 thesis isn’t summary.
It connects on to issues already taking place in crypto proper now.
Stablecoins simply crossed $308B in provide and their shiny new use case is machine-readable, programmable cash that settles immediately.
The x402 protocol Wen is constructing on is stay.
And notably, Dragonfly Capital’s Fund IV (additionally introduced yesterday) explicitly names “agentic funds” and “on-chain privateness” as core funding theses.
The irony of this bear market second is that whereas retail is capitulating on value, the precise infrastructure for the subsequent cycle is being quietly assembled.
Autonomous brokers want wallets. Wallets want stablecoins. Stablecoins want federal charters. Federal charters are being handed out proper now.
Each piece of the stack is coming on-line concurrently.
The Automaton is an excessive thought experiment at the moment. However the underlying primitive of AI brokers that may pay for issues permissionlessly utilizing crypto, and not using a human approving each transaction may be very actual.
And actively being deployed.
This intersection is arguably the only most necessary sector of crypto to concentrate to over the e subsequent 12 months…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
Crypto majors are barely crimson with ETH main; BTC -1% at $67.4K; ETH even at $1,970; SOL -3% at $83; XRP even at $1.47
WLFI (+22%), HASH (+19%) and NIGHT (+5%) led high movers
Bitcoin open curiosity has collapsed 55% from its October 2025 peak of $94B to ~$44B, the steepest drawdown since April 2023
Dragonfly Capital closed Fund IV at $650 million, $150M above its unique goal, making it one of many largest crypto VC raises of the cycle
BlackRock and Coinbase revealed they’ll take an 18% reduce of staking rewards from BlackRock’s forthcoming iShares Staked Ethereum Belief ETF (ticker: ETHB)
The Netherlands might power crypto holders to liquidate property to cowl taxes beneath proposed Dutch reforms that may apply levies to unrealized beneficial properties
The Ethereum Basis is exploring AI instruments for drafting governance proposals and moderating neighborhood conferences
Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and Al Warda collectively held over $1 billion in BlackRock’s IBIT at year-end 2025
eToro inventory jumped on stronger-than-expected 2025 crypto income
Elemental Royalty is introducing a dividend choice for Tether’s tokenized gold product, permitting holders of Tether Gold to obtain yield by a royalty revenue-sharing construction
Stripe-owned Bridge acquired conditional OCC approval for a nationwide belief banking constitution, following comparable approvals for Circle, Ripple, Paxos, and BitGo in December
CFTC Chair Michael Selig asserted the company’s unique federal jurisdiction over prediction markets in a Wall Avenue Journal op-ed, immediately firing again at state attorneys common and gaming boards attempting to close down platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket
Company Treasuries & ETFs
Meme Coin Tracker
Meme majors had been largely flat; DOGE +1%, SHIB -1%, PEPE -2%, TRUMP +5%, PENGU -2%, SPX +10%, FARTCOIN +1%
Conway soared 3,600% to $5M ($10M at peak) after Sigil’s Net 4.0 publish
KIMCHI led quantity on Solana, operating 40x to $1.5M
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
Grok 4.20 was ranked #1 on Alpha Area and Prediction Area forward of being formally launched to the general public yesterday
Pump.enjoyable launched Cashback Cash, a brand new characteristic letting creators route all buying and selling charges on to merchants as an alternative of token deployers
Phantom launched its MCP server, permitting AI brokers like OpenClaw to handle addresses immediately throughout all Phantom-supported chains
Sport dot Enjoyable introduced that it’s launching native prediction markets powered by Polymarket
Zora introduced a launch on Solana for its consideration markets
Solana introduced Lightspeed as a brand new investor relations platform constructed with Blockworks
🚚 What is occurring in NFTs?
NFT leaders had been largely flat; Punks even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.35 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.1 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 520 HYPE
Memeland Captainz (+15%) led high movers
BAYC founder Garga shared that they hooked OpenClaw brokers as much as Kodas and allow them to roam the Otherside
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