Scenius Sync (Issue # 210)

Ethereum Foundation cuts budget by 40%, Meta to create prediction markets app, CFTC sues Kentucky over prediction markets, Kalshi seeks $40B valuation, & MoonPay acquires accounting startup Entendre

Scenius: The intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. The communal form of the concept of genius.

Welcome to The Scenius Sync.

Our mission with this publication is the following:

1. Distribute thought leadership that made an impression on us this week

2. Share the essential stories driving the crypto industry and markets.

3. Highlight innovative applications and mainstream adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.

If you find this newsletter valuable, please subscribe and share The Scenius Sync with your network 💪

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Opinions & Alpha 📡 🧠

1. The Rise of the 149 person company — Haseeb Qureshi, Dragonfly

   • Key Insight: “at 150+ people, you are forced off the subscription model, which is known as the “Team” plan. You have to switch to “Enterprise,” which is priced as $20/seat base, plus API pricing per token used. Enterprises must pay linearly based on token costs, and SemiAnalysis believes API tokens are priced at roughly 75% gross margins. This is a massive price hike that kicks in suddenly at 150 seats.”

2. Crypto’s Graham Moment — Dean Eigenmann

   • Key Insight: “The point of these laws isn’t that they create transparency, because crypto is already drowning in transparency. The point is that they start drawing legal categories and defining economic rights, which pulls apart the trap that kept tokens hollow. Builders may soon be able to design tokens that openly capture value without the regulatory uncertainty that defined the industry’s first decade. Investors get a defined set of assets with real economic rights to underwrite. “

3. Investing in Ornn: A Market for Compute — Ali Yahya, a16z

   • Key insight “Every other capital-intensive commodity—oil, real estate, energy—has developed the tools needed to price, hedge, finance, and trade risk. These markets have trusted price benchmarks, forward curves to plan and hedge against, frameworks for underwriting asset prices down the road, and instruments that turn future cash flows into investable assets.

     Compute has almost none of this. Prices are opaque and negotiated deal by deal. Operators raising capital to build new capacity can’t easily hedge the revenue projections they’re underwriting against. Investors who want exposure to the growth of AI infrastructure have few direct ways to get it. The result is a multi-trillion dollar asset class financed largely through private spreadsheets and handshakes”

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Essential News 🗞

1. Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum Foundation will cut budget 40% in major reset

   • The Ethereum Foundation (EF) will slash its budget by roughly 40% this year as part of a shift toward a leaner, endowment-style operating model, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a blog post published Tuesday.

     The reduction comes on the same day the EF confirmed a 20% reduction in headcount and follows the resignation of co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang. Her departure brings the total number of senior Ethereum Foundation figures to leave since January to nine, underscoring the scale of the organization’s ongoing turmoil. Buterin said the spending cuts are aimed at transitioning the foundation from spending around 15% of its remaining treasury annually before 2026 to a long-term target of roughly 5% per year after 2030.

   • See the X post here.

   • On a similar news: Ethereum Foundation cuts 20% of its workforce as new 5-cluster structure takes shape

2. Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta to Create a Prediction Markets App

   • Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like points system instead, one person said, though the company had not ruled out the eventual use of real money betting. The app is internally referred to as “Arena” and would function independently from Meta’s social networking apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans.

3. Franklin Templeton Files for ETFs That Funnel Stock Dividends Into Bitcoin

   • Global asset manager Franklin Templeton filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday to launch two exchange-traded funds that reinvest dividends into Bitcoin. The Franklin U.S. Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin U.S. Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF each hold a basket of U.S. stocks, a VettaFi U.S. large-cap 500 index for one and a VettaFi U.S. innovation 100 index for the other, then systematically reinvest the dividends those companies pay into Bitcoin, rather than back into the shares. The “DRIP” in the funds’ name riffs on the dividend reinvestment plans long used to compound stock holdings and here repurposed to accumulate Bitcoin. Each underlying index starts with a 5% Bitcoin weighting and 95% equities, per the filing, with Bitcoin exposure capped at 20% and trimmed back at quarterly rebalances.

   • In a Franklin Templeton related news: Franklin Templeton launches Franklin Crypto, acquires 250 Digital – Details

4. Kentucky becomes latest state sued by CFTC over prediction markets

   • Kentucky has become the latest battleground in the fight over prediction markets after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued the state as part of its push to establish federal oversight of the industry. On Tuesday, the derivatives regulator sued the state over what it says it has “exclusive jurisdiction” over, after the state originally sued Kalshi, Polymarket and others last week for allegedly operating unlicensed, illegal sports betting and gambling platforms in the state. “Kentucky’s attempts to shut down federally regulated DCMs [designated contract markets] intrude on the exclusive federal scheme Congress designed to oversee national swaps markets,” the CFTC said in the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Kentucky is now the ninth state to be sued by the CFTC.

5. Trump signs executive orders setting 2031 deadline for post-quantum migration

   • U.S. President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders to accelerate America’s quantum innovation while protecting the country from quantum computing threats. According to the official White House website, Trump issued Executive Orders 14409 and 14411 on Monday. EO 14409, titled “Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks,” focuses on mitigating the threats posed by large-scale quantum computers to current encryption standards. “The advent of large-scale quantum computers, particularly in the hands of adversaries, will pose a significant threat to widely used cryptographic security systems,” the order said. “Ongoing cyber activity against our Nation also presents the risk of adversaries collecting United States information now, and decrypting it later once large-scale quantum computers are operational.”

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Kalshi Seeks $40B Valuation Weeks After $1B Raise: FT

   • Prediction market Kalshi is in talks to raise fresh funds at a valuation of about $40 billion, the Financial Times reported, in a round that could close as soon as the third quarter. That would nearly double the $22 billion valuation Kalshi reached just last month, when it raised $1 billion from backers including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, and Morgan Stanley.

     The jump caps a vertiginous climb for Kalshi, which was worth around $5 billion in October 2025 and $11 billion by December. A public listing may follow. CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC on Wednesday that Kalshi is “basically thinking about” an IPO, though not this year. “A company of our financial profile with the rate of growth that we’re seeing, that sort of conversation has to happen,” he said. The Information has reported that a listing is unlikely before late 2027 or 2028.

   • Relatedly, Kalshi sues Illinois, Pritzker over state bill implementing prediction markets regulatory regime

2. Kraken-incubated Ink upgrades to Optimism’s OP Enterprise Fully Managed in multi-year infrastructure deal

   • Ink, a Kraken-incubated Ethereum Layer 2 built on the OP Stack, is upgrading to Optimism’s OP Enterprise Fully Managed under a multi-year deal, the projects said Wednesday. Under the deal, Optimism will operate Ink’s production infrastructure while the Ink Foundation focuses on ecosystem growth and new financial products. In a statement shared exclusively with The Block, Optimism said the arrangement is one of the first instances of a major Layer 2 delegating infrastructure operations to a managed provider. Launched in December 2024, Ink said it processed more than 1 million transactions in the first 24 hours after its mainnet went live, and applications built on the network now generate close to $40 million in annual revenue.

3. MoonPay expands into back-office financial operations with AI accounting startup Entendre acquisition

   • MoonPay, which built a reputation as a crypto-to-fiat and vice versa gateway, has continued its acquisition streak with Entendre, a back-office AI accounting startup, according to an announcement on Monday. The acquisition will help expand “MoonPay’s infrastructure into the financial operations layer.” Entendre builds AI accounting agents that automate finance operation workflows, like reconciliations, treasury management, month-end close, journal entries, and related tasks for high-volume crypto and fintech businesses. “If businesses are going to adopt stablecoins at scale, their finance operations need the same speed, context, and automation as the payments themselves. Entendre takes us deeper into the agentic finance layer so businesses can operate in this new paradigm,” MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said.

4. SBI Holdings agrees to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank in $288.6 million deal

   • SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen ($288.6 million). The transaction will be carried out through SBI’s wholly owned subsidiary, SBICAH LLC, and would leave Bitbank as an indirectly held, wholly owned subsidiary with a 100% voting rights ownership ratio upon completion, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The deal remains subject to merger clearance from the Japan Fair Trade Commission and other closing conditions, and is expected to close in October, the financial conglomerate added. According to the statement, SBI plans to combine the customer base, service development capabilities, security and compliance systems, and management resources of Bitbank and its existing crypto operations to expand trading services and develop new financial products tied to stablecoins and other digital assets.

5. Tether-backed Oobit brings USDT to nearly 170 million users of Brazil’s PIX payment network

   • Tether-backed Oobit has integrated Brazil’s PIX payment system, potentially making it easier for Brazilians to gain dollar exposure while continuing to make everyday payments in reais. Oobit, a tap-to-pay smartphone app, on Tuesday introduced the feature that will allow nearly 170 million users of Brazil’s popular PIX payment network to deposit their local currency and swap for USDT. USDT, issued by Tether, is the world’s most popular USD-pegged stablecoin. Oobit said in a social media post that users can deposit reais (BRL) into its app, and then choose to hold their funds in USDT. Users can then spend the USDT via PIX.