Digitized | Monthly (3/7/25)
crypto, curated by collab+currency
gm folks.
Welcome back to another edition of Digitized Monthly. We’ve done our best to separate the signal from the noise, providing you with the top news, product updates, and research across the crypto landscape.
Thanks for being here. Hope you enjoy the read.
Until next month,
SEC / Major Case Updates — The SEC is dropping lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken, and Cumberland DRW, while closing its Robinhood investigation with no action. This marks a major shift under new leadership, paving the way for a new U.S. crypto regulatory landscape — more + more + more + more
Telefónica México / Helium (🤝) Partnership — Movistar México and Helium are rolling out the Helium Network to over 2M subscribers, expanding decentralized wireless coverage across 300 sites. This partnership reduces infrastructure costs while enabling users to earn crypto by deploying Hotspots — more
Bank of America / Plans to Launch Stablecoin — Bank of America CEO says the bank will launch a stablecoin once legally allowed. The Bank Holding Company Act currently restricts such offerings, but potential regulatory changes could enable traditional banks to enter the stablecoin market — more
Mastercard / Tokenized Transactions — Mastercard reported that 30% of its 2024 transactions were tokenized. The company aims to expand blockchain initiatives to enhance security and interoperability in digital payments — more
Coinbase / Aston Martin Deal — Coinbase has partnered with Aston Martin Aramco as its exclusive crypto sponsor, with the deal fully paid in USDC. The Coinbase logo will appear on Aston Martin’s AMR25 and driver suits — more
Prime Intellect (🤝) / $15M Raised — Prime Intellect, a peer-to-peer protocol for compute and intelligence, raises round led by Founders Fund, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Andrej Karpathy (EurekaAI, Tesla, OpenAI), Clem Delangue (Hugging Face), Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Tri Dao (Together.AI), Balaji Srinivasan (Network School), and Emad Mostaque (Stability AI, Intelligent Internet), and others — more
FrodoBots / $8M Raised — FrodoBots, a robotics x crypto project on Solana, raises round led by Protocol VC, with participation from Big Brain, Fabric, ZeePrime, Tioga, Sfermion, and others — more
Blockaid / $50M Raised — Blockaid, a cybersecurity firm specializing in blockchain security, raises Series B led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from GV and existing investors including Variant and Cyberstarts — more
Acre / $4M Raised — Acre, a bitcoin staking platform that allows users to earn rewards in bitcoin, raises strategic round from Draper Dragon, Big Brain, Orange DAO, and others — more
Anthropic / $3.5B Raised — Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, raises $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and others — more
Across Protocol / $41M Raised — Across, intents-based interoperability protocol, raises token sale round led by Paradigm, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and others — more
Foundation Capital / $600M Raised — “Foundation Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm and an early investor in Solana Labs, has raised $600 million for its 11th fund, continuing its focus on startups at the earliest stages.” — more
August / $10M Raised — August, a crypto-focused prime brokerage firm, raises Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures, with participation from SCB Limited, 6th Man Ventures, and Foresight Ventures — more
DoubleZero / $28M Raised — DoubleZero, a global fiber network for high-performance distributed systems and blockchains, raises token round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Foundation Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, DBA, Borderless Capital, Superscrypt, Frictionless, and others — more
Validation Cloud / $15M Raised — Validation Cloud, a web3 infrastructure platform, raises Series A led by True Global Ventures, with participation from Cadenza, Blockchain Founders Fund, Bloccelerate, Blockwall, Side Door Ventures, Metamatic, and others — more
Seismic / $7M Raised — Seismic, an encrypted blockchain, led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Polychain, Alliance, 1kx, and others — more
Hyperliquid (🤝) Thesis: The Road to Financial Aggregation / Ryan Watkins — “We believe Hyperliquid possesses a unique revenue engine, fusing an exchange and smart contract platform, that positions it to become the highest fee-generating blockchain in the cryptoeconomy. Furthermore, its vertically integrated design, combining these two businesses through a unified interface, enables Hyperliquid to aggregate users more effectively than any peers to date, providing structural advantages in its ambition to house all global finance.” — more
Your Guide to Dynamic TAO (dTAO) / Teng Yan — “Bittensor's (🤝) historic upgrade in plain english and no math. And implications for the future.” — more
For the U.S. to maintain tech supremacy, it must embrace decentralization and open source AI / Jake Brukhman — “Ironically, America’s strength in AI and crypto lies in the very thing that policymakers have sought to dismantle in America’s dark decade: its decentralized ethos. As AI and blockchain technology continue to evolve, it’s become clear that open source and decentralization are more than an ideology– they are an economic necessity for our country.” — more
How Big Tech, ChatGPT And DeepSeek Could Lose To Decentralized AI / Tor Constantino — “Needless to say, hundreds of billions are pouring into Big Tech’s centralized, closed-source AI models. But might those billions be needlessly wasted in light of a truly revolutionary approach to artificial intelligence–namely, Decentralized AI?” — more
Cryptorails: Superconductors for Payments / Dmitriy Berenzon — “An extraordinary opportunity exists today to build a new generation of payment companies that harness the power of "cryptorails" to achieve dramatically better unit economics than traditional systems burdened by multiple rent-seeking intermediaries and antiquated infrastructure.” — more
Defining decentralization: It comes down to control / Miles Jennings x a16z crypto — “Decentralization must be incentivized, not ignored. So I argue in this piece that we must start with a better definition of decentralization — one that moves us beyond the ambiguities that have caused unintended consequences, and that could simplify things for both policymakers and builders.” — more
The Productive Cryptoeconomy - A Thesis for Adoption / Ryan Watkins — “For the cryptoeconomy to fulfill its ambition to democratize wealth for billions of people, it must onboard more productive assets into its financial system. This is the only way for the cryptoeconomy to transition from its installation period, where infrastructure is being built, to its deployment period, where blockchains are being adopted across society.” — more
Where Are All The Robots? / Shayon Sengupta — “As AI models become more powerful, their ability to reason about and interact with the physical environment will expand dramatically. This shift will unlock new classes of autonomous systems—from self-driving cars and humanoid robots to drones and industrial automation—that operate with unprecedented intelligence and autonomy. For these robots to function, they need to answer a fundamental question: Where am I?” — more
AI as the engine, humans as the steering wheel / Vitalik — “The goal of this post will be to explore a paradigm that could perhaps use AI to get us the benefits of democratic structures without the downsides.” — more
The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps / a16z — “We turned to the data to answer: Which AI apps are people actively using? What’s actually making money, beyond being popular? And which tools are moving beyond curiosity-driven dabbling to become daily staples?” — more
Defining tokens / a16z crypto — “To help organize the conversation, we present definitions, examples, and a framework for understanding the seven categories of tokens we see entrepreneurs building with most often: network tokens, security tokens, company-backed tokens, arcade tokens, collectible tokens, asset-backed tokens, and memecoins.” — more
Prime Intellect (🤝) / Introducing New Protocol & Testnet — Prime Intellect launched its protocol and testnet. The protocol integrates prior innovations like Prime Intellect’s Compute Exchange, PRIME, GENESYS, and TOPLOC, creating new funding mechanisms and economic incentives for decentralized AI at scale — more
Introducing Unit / Asset Tokenization on Hyperliquid (🤝) — Unit launches as a decentralized asset tokenization layer on Hyperliquid, enabling seamless deposits, withdrawals, and trading. The first integration allows native BTC transfers, with ETH and SOL coming soon, with the aim of unifying spot and derivatives trading within a single platform — more
BOTTO (🤝) / Recapping Algorithmic Evolution — “After a remarkable year of training, learning, creating and iterating, Botto’s p5 practice culminated in the exhibition and release of Geometric Fluidity—a 1/1/1000 series generated from algorithm #128 of Botto’s first training round—and the final 22 algorithms selected from over 6,500. The combined sales over the last two weeks brought 270 new Verse users, 494 collectors, and $850,000 in sales so far.” — more
9dcc (🤝) / Mastercard Partnership — 9dcc has partnered with Mastercard to launch the Pass to Priceless: Bay Hill Capsule, available at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational. The collection features nine premium items, with proceeds benefiting The Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation — more
Audius (🤝) / Airdrop for Artists — Audius celebrated 250 million on-chain music streams with a 30 million AUDIO token airdrop, starting with 2 million tokens for 1,174 artists. Built on Solana, the platform plans weekly rewards for both artists and listeners, marking its second major airdrop — more
Hyperliquid (🤝) / HyperEVM Goes Live — The HyperEVM is live, adding general-purpose programmability to Hyperliquid’s financial system. The mainnet launch includes L1-integrated blocks, native HYPE transfers, and a WHYPE system contract for DeFi — more
Recall Network / Testnet Now Live — Recall introduces a foundational intelligence layer that enables AI agents to prove, monetize, and exchange knowledge. As AI shifts to a collaborative, multiplayer model, Recall provides a trustless system to identify high-performing agents, ensuring reliable decision-making at scale — more
Meebits / Newly Acquired — Yuga Labs has sold the Meebits NFT collection and its IP to Meebit Company (MeebCo), which plans to expand the brand, engage the community, and launch new merchandise. MeebCo, backed by 1confirmation, has also introduced Bits, a rewards program for Meebits traders on OpenSea — more
Ethereum Foundation / Introducing The Open Intents Framework — The Ethereum Foundation has launched the Open Intents Framework, a modular system to improve cross-chain interoperability. Supported by 30+ teams, it streamlines intent-based asset transfers across Ethereum chains, improving UX and reducing frictions — more
Zora / Announces Token Plans — Zora will launch a "for fun only" memecoin on the Optimism-based Base network, with an airdrop set for spring 2025. The token has a 10 billion supply, with allocations for contributors, incentives, and retroactive airdrops, but no governance claims for holders — more
Jeff Davis / Art Blocks (🤝): PROGRESSION — “Progression explores the visual effects of traveling through sequences of colors. Arranged in vertical or horizontal segments of varying sizes, the project reveals how neighboring colors activate each other, creating vibrations and perceptual shifts across the composition. Each color's presence reverberates throughout the entire piece, generating chromatic echoes and harmonies.” Minting March 11th — more
Yoshi Sodeoka / Verse: Synthetic Unity — “The Swarm: 1.618 is a series of 18 uniquely-crafted videos by Yoshi Sodeoka which builds on his research into the behaviour and movement found in bird flocks as well as other flighted animals such as bats and butterflies.” March 17th — more
David Sacks / In Pursuit of a Long-Term BTC Strategy
Tensorplex Labs (🤝) / YZi Labs Investment
Botto (🤝) / Mints Out in Ten Minutes
Transient Labs (🤝) / Ensemble (🤝) Acquisition
Messari / Metaplex (🤝) Usage
Gavin Baker / Grok-3 Data
REKTECH (🤝) / Dream Pass Mint Goes Live
Luke Saunders / AI Accelerator
Digitized / Spotlight x MegaETH
Pump Fun / Launches AMM
Aaron Wright / Introducing ADIN
Figure / Meet Helix
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Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
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