Riz

Regulation by enforcement, destroyed US innovators. Regulatory capture failed to protect investors. "Confused Regrets" empowered their favorites and ignored their past overreach. Proof? Ripple, DEBT Box, Veritaseum, MMTLP, GME, AMC... If this hits home, drop a 🔥 below.

First, market participants should have a clear sense of how onchain trading systems can operate within the regulatory perimeter. To that end, while I anticipate that the Commission will consider a limited innovation pathway in the near future, I also think we should consider what a future-proofed framework may look like, which would take the form of notice and comment rulemaking and would address the “exchange” definition as applied to onchain trading systems.

Nvidia just figured out how to put an AI data center on the side of your house. And pay you to host it. Each XFRA node packs 16 Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs, and 3TB of RAM in a Dell PowerEdge rack mounted next to the AC condenser. The homeowner pays nothing for the hardware. They get discounted electricity and internet in exchange for letting Span tap unused capacity on their electrical panel. This sounds insane until you look at the actual constraint blocking AI infrastructure. Hyperscalers are not GPU-limited. Nvidia ships them on schedule. They are not capital-limited. They are sitting on hundreds of billions in capex. What they cannot get is grid interconnection. A 100MW data center requires a substation upgrade that takes 4 to 7 years in most US markets. US grid operators have over 2,600 gigawatts stuck in their interconnection queues per Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The wait, not the silicon, is the bottleneck. Span solved this by going behind the meter. A new Pulte home has 200A service. That's 48kW of capacity. The home uses 1 to 3kW most hours. The headroom never gets touched. Span's smart panel measures real-time consumption and dynamically routes whatever the home isn't using to the XFRA node. No substation upgrade. No queue. Just slack capacity sitting on the residential side of the meter, already cleared. Span claims it can deploy 8,000 nodes for one fifth the cost of a comparable 100MW centralized facility, six times faster. PulteGroup is the wedge. They delivered 29,000 homes in 2025. The XFRA unit goes in during construction next to the smart meter. No retrofit. Pulte gets a feature on the spec sheet and revenue share on the compute that flows through the wall. The grid was the bottleneck. Pulte just became the workaround.

Google Chrome is quietly downloading a roughly 4 GB AI model to many users’ computers without clear upfront consent. The file, called weights.bin, is part of Google’s Gemini Nano on-device language model and lands in the browser’s user data folder under OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It powers built-in AI tools such as “Help me write,” smarter tab suggestions, on-device scam detection, and page summarization. The download triggers automatically for devices meeting minimum hardware requirements, and Chrome often replaces the files if deleted. While the model processes data locally, installation happens in the background with minimal notification. The scale is noteworthy. Hundreds of millions or billions of installations add up to thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions globally from data transfer, even though each is a one-time event. To prevent or remove it, go to chrome://flags, disable the entries for the optimization guide on-device model and Prompt API, restart the browser, and manually delete the folder.

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future. Why now Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both. First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth. Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day. All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core. What this means To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice? - Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles. - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs. To those who are affected I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done. All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information. To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements. Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters. How we move forward To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together: Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it. The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission. Brian

Regulation by enforcement, destroyed US innovators. Regulatory capture failed to protect investors. "Confused Regrets" empowered their favorites and ignored their past overreach. Proof? Ripple, DEBT Box, Veritaseum, MMTLP, GME, AMC... If this hits home, drop a 🔥 below.

USD → BTC → NZD. That’s a cross-border transfer path using a digital unit of account instead of pre-funded Nostro/Vostro accounts. The mechanics have been publicly described for years. What’s changing is regulated, institutional deployment at scale. General market commentary only.