Scenius Sync (Issue # 213)

Trump to discuss crypto bill with senators, US freezes $131M in Iran-linked crypto, Ostium hit by $18M oracle hack, US-UK launch digital asset roadmap, & Stripe eyes PayPal in $53B bid

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.

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Opinions & Alpha 📡 🧠

1. TradFi doesn’t want DeFi. It wants blockchain. -- a16z

   • “What this means is that institutions aren’t somehow merging with DeFi. Instead, they’re selectively using the parts of DeFi that fit within their operating constraints and discarding the parts that do not; they’re reconfiguring DeFi around institutional requirements. The result is unlikely to look like either traditional finance or today’s DeFi. Instead, we’re beginning to see the emergence of a new category built on blockchain rails but optimized for institutional constraints: programmable financial infrastructure.”

2. Inference Capital Markets -- Lucas Tcheyan, Galaxy

   • “Tokenized access (Venice) turns a claim on inference into a bearer asset a holder can keep, resell, lease, or hand to an agent, rather than a subscription tied to one account a provider can revoke. Useful proof of work (Pearl and Ambient) uses token emissions to subsidize inference below market cost and makes the output verifiable so a buyer can pay without trusting the provider not to swap in a cheaper model. Financing (USD.AI) turns illiquid GPU credit into a composable instrument anyone holding stablecoins can fund and exit, faster than the incumbent credit industry moves.”

3. Is there anything else left to build in crypto? -- Wintermute

   • “You are not just building in crypto anymore. You are building crypto + AI, crypto + robotics, crypto + autonomous science. Legacy financial rails were built around human accountability: identity you can verify, intent you can dispute, a person you can hold responsible when something goes wrong. Crypto rails were built differently, around code you can audit, on-chain records anyone can read, and rules the network enforces. When the actor on the other side is autonomous, that difference stops being a gap and starts being the point. As the volume of machine-led activity grows, the rails crypto built fit the shape of that demand better than the ones designed for people: open, programmable, permissionless, settled in seconds, identity that does not need an intermediary.”

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Essential News 🗞

1. President Trump expected to meet with senators to work on ethics concerns in crypto bill

   • President Donald Trump is expected to sit down with U.S. senators Thursday afternoon to try to work out the most difficult remaining piece of the bill to regulate U.S. crypto markets, according to people familiar with the plans. As the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act faces the final weeks of potential Senate floor time in which it can most realistically get passed this year, the major unfinished section is the legislation’s restriction on senior government officials’ personal business interests in the crypto sector. Democrats have demanded such limits, most significantly to address Trump’s own ties, but negotiators have been unable to fix on a compromise even as the clock winds down in the Senate calendar.

   • Relatedly, Senators to meet with Trump on crypto bill

2. US Treasury Freezes $131 Million in Iran-Linked Crypto Wallets

   • The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned multiple cryptocurrency wallets tied to Iran’s Central Bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday, with stablecoin issuer Tether freezing over $131 million across four addresses on the Tron blockchain. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the move in a post on X, vowing the U.S. would “aggressively follow the money and deny the Iranian regime access” to illicit funds. Separately, the Treasury sanctioned seven individuals linked to a global weapons procurement network for the Iranian armed forces, IRGC—including a Tehran-based drone parts supplier, a Nigerian intermediary, and Russian nationals tied to a Moscow aviation company.

   • See the X post here.

3. Another DeFi Exploit: Perp DEX Ostium Loses $18 Million in Oracle Attack

   • Ostium lost roughly $18 million on Wednesday after attackers compromised an oracle signer key and manipulated the decentralized perpetuals exchange’s price feed to generate fake trading profits, according to blockchain security firm Blockaid. In a post on X, Blockaid said the attacker used a registered PriceUpKeep forwarder and future-dated authorized oracle reports to create artificial trading profits, triggering the multi-million payout—in the form of the Circle-issued stablecoin USDC—from Ostium’s liquidity vault. “We are aware of the issue with the OLP vault,” Ostium wrote on X. “We have paused all trading. The team is investigating.”

4. Japan passes key bill recognizing crypto as financial product, lowering tax rate

   • Japan’s parliament passed and enacted key amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, formally classifying cryptocurrencies as financial products. The amendments were approved in the plenary session of the House of Councillors on Wednesday, completing their passage through both houses of the Diet, according to NHK. The bill redefines crypto assets as a distinct category of financial products that is similar to stocks and bonds. Previously, cryptocurrency was regulated under the Payment Services Act as a form of payment method.

5. US Senate Unanimously Opposes Sam Bankman-Fried Pardon

   • The U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Sam Bankman-Fried should never win clemency, passing a resolution on Wednesday that says the convicted FTX founder should “under no circumstances” receive a pardon or commutation of his 25-year sentence. The measure, S. Res. 772, passed by unanimous consent—a procedure that clears a resolution as long as not a single senator objects. Alongside its stance on Bankman-Fried, it affirmed the Senate’s commitment to “the rule of law and integrity of the United States financial system.”

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. US-UK transatlantic taskforce unveils digital asset roadmap promoting stablecoin innovation

   • The United States and the United Kingdom are deepening cooperation on digital assets, saying regulated stablecoins have the potential to make financial systems more efficient and competitive. On Tuesday, the U.S Department of the Treasury and HM Treasury released a joint statement and recommendations as part of the Transatlantic Taskforce for the Markets of the Future. That group was created last year as a joint initiative to deepen cooperation and reduce market fragmentation between the two countries.

     “The United States and the UK should leverage their positions as leading global financial centers to actively shape the development of digital asset markets and next-generation financial infrastructure,” the two governments said on Tuesday.

2. BlackRock, Goldman, and JP Morgan Will Give Tokenized Stocks a Try

   • The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the clearinghouse that processes U.S. securities transactions, on Wednesday launched a pilot to test tokenized stocks and U.S. Treasuries with nearly 40 financial institutions.

     The initiative, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, includes JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Vanguard, and the New York Stock Exchange. “Today is the beginning of a long journey where we will demonstrate that the old and the new can live together, [and] that the technology enables a lot of opportunities for our participants worldwide,” Nadine Chakar, global head of DTCC Digital Assets, said in a statement. “We’re going to prove the value of tokenization and hopefully build the foundation that would lead to a scalable launch come October.”

3. Stripe mounts blockbuster $53 billion bid to buy PayPal

   • Payments giant Stripe offered to buy PayPal (PYPL) in a deal worth $53 billion, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. San Francisco-based Stripe made the $60.50-a-share offer in tandem with private equity firm Advent International, according to the report, which cited two people familiar with the matter. The bid represents a premium of about 28% over PayPal’s Tuesday closing price of $47.37. The New York-listed payments provider’s shares have surged by more than 18% to $56.10 in pre-market trading. The bid follows an earlier expression of interest, though PayPal has been reluctant to engage with the offer thus far, the FT said. Neither PayPal, Stripe, nor Advent immediately responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

   • Relatedly, Stripe-PayPal deal could accelerate shift to blockchain-based money, Polygon exec says

4. CleanSpark signs $6.6 billion, 20-year data center lease with unnamed global tech firm

   • CleanSpark signed a 20-year lease with an unnamed high-investment-grade global technology company for its data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia, worth about $6.6 billion in contracted revenue. The bitcoin miner disclosed the triple-net agreement Tuesday, along with two five-year extension options that would lift the total to as much as $11.6 billion if exercised. The tenant will deploy 175 MW of critical IT load at Sandersville, with deliveries expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027, according to CleanSpark’s announcement. A triple-net agreement is a commercial real estate lease where tenants agree to cover the rent, insurance and any typical ongoing operating expenses for a property.

5. Galaxy blends Aave, Morpho and other DeFi rates in new GOFR crypto borrowing product

   • Galaxy Digital has unveiled a new fully managed crypto lending program targeting institutions, high-net-worth individuals, and accredited investors who want to borrow from major DeFi protocols but prefer to keep Galaxy as an intermediary. The so-called Galaxy Onchain Financing Rate (GOFR) will offer borrowers a “single continuously rebalanced rate” by tapping onchain lending protocols like Aave, Morpho, Spark, Kamino, and others, according to the announcement on Tuesday. It will then blend those protocols’ variable borrowing rates into an “optimized rate.” Users are only borrowing from Galaxy as their sole counterparty, the announcement notes. “Institutions have been clear: the opportunity in onchain credit is real, but the infrastructure required to access it directly isn’t something they want to build or own,” Galaxy head of lending Max Bareiss said in a statement.