Scenius Sync (Issue # 214)

White House reaches CLARITY Act ethics deal, Grayscale files WLD ETF, Payward partners with GTN to expand xStocks globally, Augustus raises $180M, & TRON joins S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index

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. What Coinbase is Doing to Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography -- Jeff Lunglhofer, Coinbase

   • “There is high confidence that a fault-tolerant quantum computer will eventually be built, and the cryptography that secures virtually every major blockchain is vulnerable when it arrives. The threat is not imminent, but the timeline is genuinely uncertain. Post-quantum cryptographic solutions exist and are being standardized, but the harder challenges are operational: migrating millions of users, coordinating decentralized protocol upgrades, and doing all of this without weakening the security posture we have today.”

2. Kimi K3 may be an important inflection point for AI. Potentially negative for Anthropic and OpenAI while being net positive for essentially every other company in the world. -- Gavin Baker, Atreides

   • “A world where there are only 2-3 dominant frontier labs with 90% inference margins is net negative for every other layer while being awesome for those 2-3 labs. Those labs would become monopsonies for power, data centers, semiconductors and hyperscalers and would obviously vertically integrate over time into all those layers while also completely subsuming the application/software layers. Anything that lowers margins and increases competition at the model layer is good for every other AI layer: power, semiconductors, hyperscalers, neoclouds and yes even software.”

3. Agentic AI—The Killer Use Case for Blockchain and Crypto -- Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton

   • “Stripe and Visa have rolled out the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP). Open-source solutions are also gaining traction. In the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web’s architects wrote the rules for how browsers and servers communicated, they set aside a response code numbered “402” and labeled it “payment required”. Coinbase created an “x402” protocol to enable agents to initiate and fulfill such instructions and then transferred their IP to the Linux Foundation, making it an open industry standard. Every major credit card network, Web2 leaders like Stripe, Shopify, Google, and Amazon Web Services, and a growing set of Web3 providers have signed on to this payment standard so that “software can pay software” without human involvement.”

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Essential News 🗞

1. Trump White House Agrees To Clarity Act Ethics Deal: Is A Senate Vote Finally Coming?

   • The White House agreed on an ethics package for the Crypto Clarity Act and sent the language to certain Senate Republicans Monday afternoon, raising hopes that updated bill text releases soon. As of Monday morning, sources familiar with the negotiations told the Crypto In America newsletter that the White House had still not signaled where it stood, leaving Republicans unable to release updated bill text. The White House reached the agreement after President Donald Trump met Thursday in the Oval Office with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH). The group did not invite Democrats to the meeting.

   • See related news here: Clarity Act Latest Draft Bars Trump From Crypto Ventures—But Only Until 2029

   • And here: Trump-backed crypto ethics rule puts DOJ in charge of enforcement, prohibits federal officials from issuing cryptocurrencies: sources

2. Grayscale could take Worldcoin to Wall Street after ETF filing with the SEC

   • The first exchange-traded fund tied to Worldcoin could soon be headed to U.S. markets. On Monday, Grayscale filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a registration statement for the Grayscale Worldcoin ETF. The fund would hold WLD, the native crypto of the World Network, the firm said in the filing. “As a passive investment vehicle, the Trust’s investment objective is for the value of the Shares (based on WLD per Share) to reflect the value of WLD held by the Trust, determined by reference to the Index Price, less the Trust’s expenses and other liabilities,” Grayscale said in the filing. If launched, the ETF would trade on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC under its generic listing standards.

   • Relatedly, Worldcoin’s WLD Jumps 8% on Grayscale ETF Filing

3. SEC reaches settlement with Coinbase over records requests from Gensler era

   • The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reached a settlement with Coinbase on Wednesday, ending a years-long legal dispute over the agency’s handling of records requests tied to the prior administration. On Wednesday, in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said former SEC Chair Gary Gensler waged a “litigation campaign against the industry.” During Gensler’s tenure, the SEC sued Coinbase and several other crypto firms, alleging they failed to comply with federal securities registration requirements. In 2024, Coinbase filed two lawsuits — one against the SEC and another against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — for not complying with Freedom of Information requests. In the complaints, Coinbase, through consultant firm History Associates, Inc., accused the regulators of trying to cut off the crypto industry from the banking sector.

4. Arbitrum protocol AFX Trade hit by $24 million bridge exploit: Blockaid

   • AFX Trade, a protocol on Arbitrum, has suffered an exploit with roughly $24.15 million in USDC drained, according to blockchain security firm Blockaid. Blockaid flagged the security incident on Wednesday, noting that the exploit was “specific to a bridge that AFX operates.” The security firm added that it is working with the Arbitrum team to respond to the incident and coordinate with the affected protocol. According to PeckShield, the attacker bridged the stolen funds from Arbitrum to Ethereum and swapped them for 12,467 ETH, worth roughly $24 million at current prices. Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Offchain Labs, the team behind the Ethereum Layer 2 network Arbitrum, said on X that the Arbitrum team is investigating the exploit.

   • In another exploit news, New Verus-Ethereum bridge attack drains $7.5 million through flaw used in May: Blockaid

5. BitMEX to shut down permanently 11 years after Arthur Hayes co-founded crypto exchange

   • BitMEX will permanently shut down its exchange on Sept. 23, ending an 11-year run for the platform that introduced the 100x leverage perpetual swap.

     The exchange had been looking for a buyer since February 2025, when it retained Broadhaven Capital Partners to run a sale process. The board of HDR Global Trading Limited, the exchange’s owner and operator, reached the decision after a strategic review of the business and the wider crypto industry, according to a Thursday announcement. New account registrations stopped immediately. Arthur Hayes co-founded BitMEX in 2014 with a stated mission of opening professional-grade crypto derivatives to retail traders. The perpetual swap the exchange built has since become the most traded product in crypto, adopted across thousands of venues.

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Kraken parent Payward partners with GTN to scale xStocks internationally, beyond US equities

   • Kraken parent company Payward has partnered with fintech infrastructure provider GTN to expand its xStock tokenization offering across the globe, according to an announcement on Wednesday. The collaboration will begin by tokenizing equities from Hong Kong and then expand to the UK, Europe, South Korea, and other international markets, while also opening the door to tokenizing additional asset classes over time. In other words, xStocks is attempting to make good on one of the core promises of tokenization, making it easier to offer stocks abroad and widening the range of assets traders have access to.

2. Augustus raises $180 million to build a clearing bank for the AI and stablecoin era

   • Augustus, a startup building a federally chartered clearing bank for fintechs and financial institutions, said it raised $180 million to expand its dollar payment infrastructure as stablecoins reshape global finance. The fundraising valued the company at $1 billion, with Tiger Global leading the round and investors such as Hummingbird, QED and the founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle and Deel participating, the company said in a Tuesday press release. The investment comes as banks, fintechs and crypto firms are racing to modernize the infrastructure behind cross-border payments. While much of the attention has centered on stablecoin issuers, Augustus is targeting a less visible but crucial part of the financial system: correspondent banking.

3. TRON Included in S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index as Institutional Benchmarking Expands to Blockchain Networks

   • TRON DAO, the community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet through blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps), today welcomes the launch of the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index and the inclusion of the TRON blockchain among the top protocols represented in the benchmark. Developed by S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital, the index applies a methodology centered on protocol utility, onchain liquidity, and network activity. The launch marks one of the clearest signs to date that established financial market frameworks are being extended to digital assets, applying benchmark methodologies traditionally used across equities and other asset classes to blockchain networks. TRON’s inclusion comes as the network continues to expand its scale and role within the digital asset ecosystem.

4. Circle partners with Kakao, Toss Bank to explore stablecoin payment rails in South Korea

   • Circle announced two separate partnerships with Kakao Group and Toss Bank on Thursday, as the stablecoin issuer continues to drive its expansion in South Korea. In a post on X, Circle said that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Kakao Group to “explore blockchain-based payment infrastructure” in the country. Kakao, a major South Korean super app, operates a wide range of services, including KakaoTalk, Kakao Pay and KakaoBank. Circle also said it is working with Toss Bank to assess opportunities for stablecoin-based payments. The internet-only bank has been expanding its presence in the crypto sector and last month announced a partnership with the Solana Foundation to develop blockchain-based financial infrastructure for global users.

5. Pavel Durov Wants to Give a Billion Telegram Users a Crypto Wallet

   • Pavel Durov has a big promise to keep before summer ends. Telegram’s founder announced on Tuesday that the messaging app—think WhatsApp but larger, with over 1 billion monthly active users—will roll out a native non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet across every version of the app, offering instant, zero-fee crypto transactions to all of them. The crypto wallet is being built to support Telegram’s native crypto, Gram—formerly known as Toncoin. A non-custodial wallet means users hold the keys to their own funds. Think of it like carrying cash instead of using a bank account: nobody can freeze it, seize it, or block a transaction without your permission.