Conduit, a company specializing in stablecoin-focused cross-border payments, announced a partnership with Brazil’s Braza Group to facilitate real-time foreign exchange swaps between the Brazilian real and major foreign currencies using stablecoins....
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Ether (ETH) struggled to maintain momentum on Tuesday, falling 0.15% to $2,758 amid selling pressure during U.S. afternoon trading on June 11. The pullback came after a brief rally to $2,872.42,...
Read moreEther (ETH) struggled to maintain momentum on Tuesday, falling 0.15% to $2,758 amid selling pressure during U.S. afternoon trading on June 11. The pullback came after a brief rally to $2,872.42, which was not sustained as the price reversed sharply between 15:00 and 17:00 UTC. The late-session sell-off continued in early Asia hours, with a 1.29% dip from $2,772 to $2,736 before ether slightly rebounded to $2,758.
Despite the downturn, key metrics suggest increasing confidence among bulls. Glassnode reported that options skew turned sharply negative in the past 48 hours, indicating a higher demand for short-dated calls. Put-call ratios also show a preference for upside exposure, with open interest and volume ratios remaining near multi-week lows.
On-chain flows further supported the bullish sentiment, with analytics firm Sentora flagging the withdrawal of over 140,000 ETH worth approximately $393 million from exchanges on June 11 — the largest single-day outflow in over a month. Additionally, ETH-based ETFs saw another $240.3 million added, surpassing the day’s Bitcoin ETF totals. Analyst Anthony Sassano highlighted that Ethereum has not experienced a single net outflow day since mid-May, calling the trend “accelerating” and suggesting that the asset is undervalued structurally.
Although price action indicates short-term weakness, market positioning and capital flows suggest that traders might be buying the dip in anticipation of another upside attempt.
Technical Analysis Highlights:
– ETH traded within a range of $139 between $2,733 and $2,872 before closing at $2,758.
– Heavy selling was observed near $2,870–$2,880 during the late U.S. session on June 11.
– Support near $2,745–$2,755 was breached after multiple tests, leading to a quick decline.
– Volume spiked above 34,000 ETH during a rapid drop from $2,772 to $2,736 early on June 12.
– Despite a temporary bounce towards $2,752, a new support zone may be forming near $2,735.
Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, please refer to CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.
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XRP experienced a 3.7% drop in the last 24 hours, falling from a daily high of $2.288 to close near $2.260 after facing resistance at the $2.33 level. Despite showing signs...
Read moreXRP experienced a 3.7% drop in the last 24 hours, falling from a daily high of $2.288 to close near $2.260 after facing resistance at the $2.33 level. Despite showing signs of a short-term double bottom at $2.250, the lack of recovery volume indicates ongoing bearish pressure.
The recent pullback in XRP price comes after a period of high volatility driven by speculation surrounding a potential spot ETF decision by Franklin Templeton, set to be announced later this month. Despite positive regulatory developments such as Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin approval in Dubai, the market reaction to repeated rejections at $2.33 suggests that buyers may be losing momentum.
XRP remains a focal point in discussions about the role of cryptocurrency in global payments, with the company’s partnerships in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific potentially supporting long-term value through real-world asset tokenization. However, technical sentiment has shifted in the short term as recovery attempts see diminishing volume, leading traders to closely monitor whether support at $2.25 can withstand continued pressure.
Technical analysis highlights that XRP dropped from $2.288 to $2.260, marking a 3.7% decline with a peak-to-trough range of 5.8%. The failure to break through the $2.33-$2.34 resistance level resulted in a head-and-shoulders pattern formation, with the neckline at $2.285. Despite a double bottom forming at $2.250 in the final hour, triggering a partial recovery, selling peaked at 01:31-01:33 with over 7 million units traded. A rebound began at 01:53, forming higher lows, but volume decreased during the bounce. If $2.25 support fails, the next downside target is around $2.234.
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OneBalance, a cutting-edge developer platform created to streamline cross-chain UX friction, has successfully raised $20 million in a Series A round, as announced in a press release on Wednesday. Leading the...
Read moreOneBalance, a cutting-edge developer platform created to streamline cross-chain UX friction, has successfully raised $20 million in a Series A round, as announced in a press release on Wednesday. Leading the round were cyber•Fund and Blockchain Capital, with support from Bybit’s Mirana Ventures and L2IV.
Founded by key contributors to Flashbots, an Ethereum-focused research and development startup dedicated to mitigating the negative effects of maximal extractable value (MEV), as well as a former engineer from Coinbase (COIN), OneBalance offers developers seamless access to transfers, swaps, and yield across chains through their OneBalance Toolkit. The platform currently supports native Bitcoin-to-EVM swaps, with Solana integration on the horizon.
CEO and co-founder of OneBalance, Stephane Gosselin, shared in an interview, “There is significant growth in the stablecoin market, attracting many non-crypto users who expect one-click operations. Until now, there hasn’t been a solution to cater to their needs.” Early partners of OneBalance include DSX, Vooi, Spritz, and Nuvolari.
This recent fundraising round follows a $5 million angel round in 2024, which saw support from Consensys, Wintermute, Anagram, Cobie, and other investors.
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H100 Group, a health and longevity company based in Sweden, recently announced that they have successfully raised $10.5 million (SEK 101 million) from a group of cryptocurrency-focused investors. This includes prominent...
Read moreH100 Group, a health and longevity company based in Sweden, recently announced that they have successfully raised $10.5 million (SEK 101 million) from a group of cryptocurrency-focused investors. This includes prominent figures such as Blockstream CEO Adam Back, UTXO Management, and various family offices.
The fundraising initiative involved two share issues totaling SEK 69.65 million and convertible loans amounting to SEK 31.35 million. The share issues attracted a mix of crypto investors and Nordic family offices, while the convertible loans do not accrue interest and have a maturity period of five years. Investors have the option to convert these loans into equity at SEK 1.75 per share.
Following this development, H100 Group’s shares surged by 30% during the Wednesday session, marking an overall increase of nearly 400% since the company’s initial bitcoin purchase on May 22. This fundraising round is just the first step in a larger financial plan that H100 Group had previously announced, with the potential for further growth in subsequent rounds. The company aims to utilize this capital to strengthen its bitcoin treasury strategy.
Under the leadership of CEO Sander Andersen, H100 Group is part of a growing trend among publicly traded companies that are leveraging share and debt issuances to acquire cryptocurrencies for their balance sheets, following a strategy similar to Michael Saylor’s model with MicroStrategy (MSTR).
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Everstake, a leading cryptocurrency staking platform, has announced the appointment of David Kinitsky as its new CEO. Kinitsky, a veteran of Grayscale and Fidelity, will be taking over from Sergii Vasylchuk,...
Read moreEverstake, a leading cryptocurrency staking platform, has announced the appointment of David Kinitsky as its new CEO. Kinitsky, a veteran of Grayscale and Fidelity, will be taking over from Sergii Vasylchuk, the founder of Everstake who will now serve as the President of the company. This change in leadership signifies Everstake’s move towards catering to institutional and global markets.
Participating in proof-of-stake blockchains to earn yield on crypto assets has become increasingly popular in the industry. With a crypto-friendly administration now in place in the U.S., there is hope for further clarity on staking and its integration into the ETF marketplace.
Kinitsky expressed his vision for Everstake, stating, “As staking becomes central to institutional crypto strategy and an investable asset in its own right, now we’re taking Everstake to the next level.” With his background as the founding general manager of Grayscale Investments and experience at Fidelity Investments, Circle, and Kraken, Kinitsky brings a wealth of knowledge to Everstake.
Everstake has a strong track record, supporting over 85 blockchain networks, bringing in over 735,000 staking users, and securing $6.5 billion in delegated assets. The company is poised for continued growth and expansion in the cryptocurrency staking industry.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely regarded as one of the most transformative technologies of this century. Naturally, the prospect of decentralized AI systems powered by Web3 infrastructure holds significant conceptual appeal....
Read moreArtificial intelligence (AI) is widely regarded as one of the most transformative technologies of this century. Naturally, the prospect of decentralized AI systems powered by Web3 infrastructure holds significant conceptual appeal.
However, despite this seemingly compelling value proposition, Web3-AI has failed to achieve meaningful traction in the broader AI ecosystem. As frontier AI capabilities accelerate at unprecedented rates, the window of opportunity for Web3 to become a viable foundation for next-generation AI is rapidly closing.
This essay explores a controversial but critical thesis: Web3 is losing the AI race. There comes a point in every technological revolution when it becomes too late to mount a credible disruption. If Web3-AI doesn’t shift focus from superficial trends to foundational infrastructure, the rationale for building the next generation of AI systems on decentralized platforms may disappear entirely.
The Web3 AI Narrative Fallacy
In “The Black Swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the concept of the “narrative fallacy”: the tendency to construct coherent stories around unrelated or weakly connected events. The current state of Web3-AI is a textbook example. The community rewards highly performative but largely irrelevant trends in the context of the AI market—AI meme agents, speculative zk-AI prototypes—as if they mark substantial progress in the field. While some innovation exists, the widening gulf between Web3-AI and the broader AI ecosystem is becoming unsustainable.
The allure of narrative-driven innovation has encouraged the Web3 ecosystem to mistake experimentation for progress. As a result, capital and attention are often misallocated to novelty rather than foundational capability. The illusion of momentum is masking the fact that most of what is being built today in Web3-AI is orthogonal to the critical path of AI innovation.
AI and the Wave Theory of Tech Evolution
To understand Web3-AI’s fragile position, it’s helpful to look at how technology tends to evolve. First, breakthroughs tend to unfold in interdependent waves. For example, mobile computing was catalyzed by prior waves like cloud infrastructure, and AI chips emerged from innovations in gaming hardware. To remain relevant in a new wave, technologies must be grounded in previous ones.
Web3-AI lacks that continuity. It did not play a meaningful role in the trends that gave rise to the generative AI revolution. It missed the cycles of cloud computing, large-scale data engineering, and even early AI model development. As a result, Web3-AI suffers from a foundational vacuum—it is trying to ride a wave without a surfboard.
Second, infrastructure technology markets tend to consolidate. History shows that dominant infrastructure platforms almost always shrink to a few major players. Cloud computing converged around AWS, Azure, and GCP. Mobile development stabilized around iOS and Android. Big data coalesced around Snowflake and Databricks. AI infrastructure will likely follow a similar pattern. If Web3-AI doesn’t position itself as one of the top three viable platforms, it risks becoming irrelevant in a highly concentrated landscape.
Missing Fundamentals and Building Irrelevant Things
The modern AI stack is built on four fundamental pillars: data, compute, models, and research talent. Unfortunately, Web3 has historically ignored all four. It lacks deep AI talent. There are no large-scale AI datasets native to Web3. Compute infrastructure is still primitive. And, there are no widely adopted AI models running meaningfully on decentralized protocols.
This lack of fundamentals is compounded by a tendency to chase shiny objects. Projects in Web3-AI disproportionately gravitate toward speculative areas like meme agents or zkML without clear use cases. While these ideas are intellectually interesting, they are not core to enabling or scaling meaningful AI capabilities. In their current form, they offer little practical value for advancing AI infrastructure.
To make real progress, the Web3-AI ecosystem must confront this foundational deficit. That means investing in talent, building data pipelines, creating efficient compute layers, and developing models that offer tangible advantages when deployed on decentralized systems.
The AI Gap Between Web3 and Web2 is Increasing
AI innovation is compounding rapidly, and Web3 has been a passive observer. None of the major AI milestones—unsupervised pretraining, advanced fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation, reasoning engines, or agentic frameworks—have involved Web3 architectures in a meaningful way.
As each new release compounds on the last, the barriers to catching up become steeper. All critical tooling, platforms, and infrastructure for building frontier models are currently centralized. Without urgent, coordinated efforts to change this trajectory, Web3-AI will be left decades behind in a field that advances in months.
The Risk of Irrelevance
AI is, by its very nature, a centralizing force. Training frontier models requires vast datasets, enormous compute, and specialized talent—all of which trend toward concentration. Decentralized alternatives face deep technical and economic challenges.
This does not mean decentralized AI is doomed. But the margin for error is vanishing. Unless Web3-AI accelerates dramatically, the centralized ecosystem will reach such dominance that decentralization becomes an afterthought. The risk is not missing out on the next AI trend; it is becoming fundamentally irrelevant in the AI future.
A Wake-Up Call
Resilience and optimism are embedded in Web3’s DNA, and recent efforts by more technically serious teams are encouraging such as Nous Research (distributed training), Prime Intellect (distributed training), LayerLens (benchmarking and evals), Pluralis (distributed training), Sahara (AI apps), and a handful of others. Some are starting to tackle core problems—privacy-preserving ML, distributed training, verifiable inference.
But these efforts remain exceptions rather than the norm. The Web3-AI movement is still short on talent, data, compute, infrastructure, and capital. It must abandon distractions and orient toward foundational capability. Facing this reality with clarity offers a chance to change course. Ignoring it means missing out on the most consequential technological revolution in history.
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Tags:AIAmericabitcoinBlackrockbtcChinaCoinbaseCryptoETHEUgoldsolanaStrategyTelegramTradingTrumpTrump MediaUS
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise) Bitcoin treasury-holding companies are an essential factor driving momentum as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap hovers just below the $110,000...
Read moreBy James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin treasury-holding companies are an essential factor driving momentum as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap hovers just below the $110,000 mark, showing a 2% increase in the past 24 hours and standing just 2% away from its previous record high set last month.
Despite this, Bitcoin is lagging behind the broader market, as indicated by the CoinDesk 20 Index, which has grown by 3.4%, and Ethereum (ETH), which has surged by over 6%, according to CoinDesk data.
As per BitcoinTreasuries.net, the number of publicly listed companies holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset has climbed to 126, marking a growth of 22 within a month. Together, these companies possess approximately 819,000 BTC, representing a 3.25% increase during the same timeframe.
Insights from Matthew Sigel, who serves as the head of digital assets research at VanEck, emphasize the escalating institutional interest in Bitcoin. He highlights that companies such as Strategy (MSTR), Cantor Equity Partners (CEP), Asset Entities (ASST), Semler Scientific (SMLR), Kindly (NAKA), and Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) have a combined capital-raising potential of $76 billion. This sum accounts for 56% of the assets under management of all Bitcoin ETFs and 169% of the total net inflows into these ETFs over the past 16 months.
Further displaying institutional support, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has achieved a significant milestone by becoming the fastest fund to exceed $70 billion in assets under management, achieving this feat in just 341 days. This surpasses the previous record held by SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) which took 1,691 days. IBIT experienced $2.7 billion in trading volume on Monday alone, positioning it as the sixth highest in daily volume among all ETFs.
However, institutional influence is not the only factor impacting Bitcoin. A recent Telegram note from QCP Capital pointed out one-year lows in implied volatility and a trend of subdued price action, highlighting that Bitcoin has been “stuck in a tight range” as the middle of the year approaches. The note mentions that a decisive break below $100,000 or above $110,000 is necessary to reignite broader market interest.
Looking ahead, U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data set to release on Wednesday and any updates from the U.S.-China trade discussions in London may provide clearer market direction. It’s advised to stay vigilant!
In the realm of cryptocurrency, some key events to watch include:
– June 10: U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing for Markup of Various Measures, including the crypto market structure bill, the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act.
– June 11: Stratis (STRAX) activates a mainnet hard fork at block 2,587,200 to enable the Masternode Staking protocol.
– June 12: Coinbase’s State of Crypto Summit 2025 (New York). Livestream link available.
– June 16: 21Shares executes a 3-for-1 share split for ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), with ticker and NAV remaining unchanged.
– June 16: Brazil’s B3 exchange launches USD-settled ether (0.25 ETH) and solana (5 SOL) futures contracts, approved by Brazil’s securities regulator.
Stay informed and watch out for these upcoming events in the crypto space.
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Tags:AIAmazonAmericabitcoinbtcCEOChinaCircleCoinbaseCryptoETHEUFinancegoldIncomeJapanlibraMicrostrategymileiS&P 500StocksStrategyTelegramTradingTrumpTrump MediaUS
Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets: Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and...
Read moreGood Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Bitcoin is trading below $110,000, changing hands at $109.7K, as Asia continues its trading week.
The move challenges a prevailing market narrative of summer stagnation, coming on the heels of a note from QCP Capital that emphasized suppressed volatility and a lack of immediate catalysts.
A recent Telegram note from QCP pointed to one-year lows in implied volatility and a pattern of subdued price action, noting that BTC had been “stuck in a tight range” as summer approaches.
A clean break below $100K or above $110K, they wrote, would be needed to “reawaken broader market interest.”
Even so, QCP warned that recent macro developments had failed to spark directional conviction.
“Even as US equities rallied and gold sold off in the wake of Friday’s stronger-than-expected jobs report, BTC remained conspicuously unmoved, caught in the cross-currents without a clear macro anchor,” the note said. “Without a compelling narrative to spark the next leg higher, signs of fatigue are emerging. Perpetual open interest is softening, and spot BTC ETF inflows have started to taper.”
That context makes the current move all the more surprising.
Over the weekend, Bitcoin surged 3.26% from $105,393 to $108,801, with hourly volume spiking to 2.5x the 24-hour average, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis model. BTC broke decisively above $106,500, establishing new support at $107,600, and continued upward into Monday’s session, reaching $110,169.
The breakout coincides with a tense macro backdrop: US-China trade talks in London and a $22 billion U.S. Treasury bond auction later this week have injected uncertainty into global markets. While these events could drive fresh volatility, QCP cautioned that recent headlines have mostly led to “knee-jerk reactions” that quickly fade.
The question now is whether BTC’s move above $110K has true staying power, or whether the rally is running ahead of the fundamentals.
A ‘Massive Shift’ in Institutional Staking May Drive ETH’s Next Rally
Ethereum’s critics have long highlighted centralization risks, but that narrative is fading as institutional adoption accelerates, infrastructure matures, and recent protocol upgrades directly address past limitations.
“Market participants will pay for decentralization because it’s in their economic interest from a security and principal protection standpoint,” Mara Schmiedt, CEO of institutional Ethereum staking platform Alluvial, told CoinDesk. “If you look at [decentralization metrics] all of these things have massively improved over the last couple of years.”
There’s currently $492 million worth of ETH staked by Liquid Collective – a protocol co-founded by Alluvial to facilitate institutional staking
While this figure may appear modest compared to Ethereum’s total staked volume of around $93 billion, what’s interesting is that it originates predominantly from institutional investors.
“We’re really on the cusp of a truly massive shift for Ethereum, driven by regulatory momentum and the ability to unlock the advantages of secure staking,” she noted.
Central to Ethereum’s institutional readiness is the recent Pectra upgrade, a significant development Schmiedt describes as both “massive” and “underappreciated.”
“I think Pectra has been a massive upgrade. I actually think it’s been underappreciated, just in terms of the tremendous amount of change it introduces into the staking mechanics,” Schmiedt said.
Additionally, Execution Layer triggerable withdrawals—a key component of Pectra—provide institutional participants, including ETF issuers, a crucial compatibility upgrade.
This feature enables partial validator exits directly from Ethereum’s execution layer, aligning with institutional operational requirements such as T+1 redemption timelines.
“EL triggerable withdrawals create a much more effective path to exit for large-scale market participants,” Schmiedt added.
Ultimately, Schmiedt said, “I think we’ll see that a lot more [ETH] in institutional portfolios going forward.”
News Roundup
Trump Media May Be the Cheapest Bitcoin Play Among Public Stocks, NYDIG Says
Trump Media (DJT) may be one of the cheapest ways to get bitcoin exposure in public markets, according to a new report from NYDIG, CoinDesk recently reported.
As a growing number of companies adopt MicroStrategy’s strategy of stacking BTC on their balance sheets, analysts are rethinking how to value these so-called bitcoin treasury firms.
While the commonly used modified net asset value (mNAV) metric suggests that investors are paying a premium for BTC exposure, NYDIG’s Greg Cipolaro argues mNAV alone is “woefully deficient.” Instead, he points to the equity premium to NAV, which factors in debt, cash, and enterprise value, as a more accurate gauge.
By that measure, Trump Media and Semler Scientific (SMLR) rank as the most undervalued of eight companies analyzed, trading at equity premiums of -16% and -10% respectively, despite both showing mNAVs above 1.1. In other words, their shares are worth less than the value of the bitcoin they hold.
That’s in stark contrast to MicroStrategy (MSTR), which rose nearly 5% Monday as bitcoin crossed $110,000, while DJT and SMLR remained mostly flat—making them potentially overlooked vehicles for BTC exposure.
Circle Stock Nearly Quadruples Post-IPO as Bitwise and ProShares File Competing ETFs
Two major ETF issuers, Bitwise and ProShares, filed proposals on June 6 to launch exchange-traded funds tied to Circle (CRCL), whose stock has nearly quadrupled since its IPO late last week, CoinDesk previously reported.
ProShares is aiming for a leveraged product that delivers 2x the daily performance of CRCL. At the same time, Bitwise plans a covered call fund that generates income by selling options against held shares, two very different ways to capitalize on the stock’s explosive rise.
CRCL surged another 9% Monday in volatile trading, continuing to draw interest from both traditional finance and crypto investors. The proposed ETFs have an effective date of August 20, pending SEC approval. If approved, they would further blur the lines between crypto and conventional finance, giving investors new tools to play one of the hottest post-IPO names of the year.
Market Movements:
- BTC: Bitcoin is trading at $109,795 after a 3.26% breakout fueled by institutional buying, elevated volume, and macro uncertainty from US-China trade talks and an upcoming $22B Treasury auction.
- ETH: Ethereum rebounded 4.46% from a low of $2,480 to close at $2,581, with strong buying volume confirming support at $2,580 and setting up a potential breakout above $2,590.
- Gold: Gold is trading at $3,314.45, edging up 0.08% as investors watch US-China trade talks in London and a subdued dollar keeps prices attractive.
- Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets rose Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 up 0.51%, as investors awaited updates from ongoing U.S.-China trade talks.
- S&P 500: The S&P 500 closed slightly higher Monday, boosted by Amazon and Alphabet, as investors monitored U.S.-China trade talks.
Elsewhere in Crypto
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OpenLedger, a blockchain protocol, has announced a commitment of $25 million to support developers in the AI and Web3 space. This funding will be made available through OpenCircle, a newly launched...
Read moreOpenLedger, a blockchain protocol, has announced a commitment of $25 million to support developers in the AI and Web3 space. This funding will be made available through OpenCircle, a newly launched platform aimed at helping developers create AI-focused protocols. The move comes at a time when there is a growing synergy between the blockchain and AI industries.
In a recent development, Telegram revealed a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI to integrate the Grok AI chatbot into its messaging app, with the added feature of accepting the TON token for cryptocurrency payments.
Ram, a core contributor at OpenLedger, highlighted the importance of changing the current model of the AI industry, stating that “OpenCircle turns that model inside out. We’re building a system where anyone who contributes, whether through code, data, or compute, owns a piece of the value they help create.”
OpenLedger had previously secured $8 million in a seed funding round in 2024 with the goal of establishing itself as the “sovereign data blockchain for AI technology.” Additionally, the company partnered with Ether.fi, a restaking protocol with $6.5 billion in total value locked (TVL), to further advance AI model development and security.
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