Welcome back!

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:

The bulls are back and they're not asking permission. Bitcoin found its swagger again and now the only question is whether the rest of crypto catches on.

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter! 

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Machine Money

By unveiling Cloudflare Wallets, Cloudflare has made its boldest bid yet for a commanding share of the nascent agentic commerce market.

The product comes in two forms: Account Wallets and Virtual Wallets.

Account Wallets are intended for the humans who own and manage Cloudflare accounts. Holders will be able to add, store, receive, and remove funds, and crucially to delegate spending authority to Virtual Wallets operated by their AI agents.

Virtual Wallets, by contrast, are built for AI agents themselves and run via API keys. An agent may spend only within the permissions granted to it, and its outlays are capped by a ceiling that the human account owner sets. The arrangement is designed to strike a balance that has so far eluded the industry: giving agents enough latitude to act on a user's behalf without seeking approval at every turn, while containing the risk that they overspend.

That balance matters because today's agents cannot, in practice, pay for anything on their own. Registration and payment flows across the web were built for people, not software, forcing agents to hand transactions back to a human at the decisive moment. Cloudflare's wager is that removing this friction will let agents do what they are best suited to: canvass dozens or even hundreds of services at low cost and modest risk before settling on the one that fits a given task.

Mechanically, Virtual Wallets connect to Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway and settle over Coinbase's x402 protocol, which embeds payment instructions directly into an HTTP request. The result is stablecoin micropayments fine enough to charge an agent a few cents for a single API call or a piece of content, sums that conventional finance rails handle poorly.

The strategic logic is harder to miss than the plumbing. Cloudflare already sits in front of a substantial portion of global internet traffic and has built the merchant, or sell, side of this market. By adding the buyer side, it now controls both ends of a headless marketplace. And in doing so, the company is positioning stablecoins as the default payment rails of the emerging agent economy, rather than a speculative curiosity at its margins.

Boring. Invisible. Inevitable. Markets reward spectacle, but durable value tends to accrue to the technologies that disappear into the everyday.

AI Compute: Cryptocurrency miners are continuing to repurpose their operations to serve AI platforms. Just recently, Anthropic struck a $9.1bn deal with Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin miner, covering 191 megawatts of capacity over 20 years from its Rockdale campus.

Crypto Staking: BNY and Galaxy Digital have agreed a strategic collaboration intended to advance digital asset infrastructure for institutional markets. The tie-up will introduce support for staking, the process by which investors commit crypto holdings to help validate blockchain networks in return for rewards. The service is to be offered through BNY's Digital Asset Custody platform.

Tokenised Deposits: Wells Fargo plans to launch tokenised deposits for corporate and commercial clients this autumn, aiming to make payments and transfers faster and more efficient. The bank also intends to introduce programmability for tokenised deposits, enabling clients to set conditional transactions through Wells Fargo’s smart contracts.

Tokenised Gold: The UK's Financial Conduct Authority is preparing a regulatory framework for tokenised gold. The move is intended to protect London's dominance in bullion trading amid growing competition from China.

Korean Hackers: The North Korean hacking group Kimsuky is using artificial intelligence to target financial and cryptocurrency firms. The activity is centred on integrating existing open-source AI models into data analysis, malware development, and attack automation.

And that's a wrap!

You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line.

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}