Digitized | Monthly (2/12/25)

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,

@_cutbank

President Trump / Executive Orders — President Trump signed an executive order to establish a U.S. digital asset stockpile and create the Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets. The order also bans federal agencies from promoting CBDCs — more

Trivago / Hotel Bookings Using Crypto — Travala has partnered with Trivago to enable crypto payments for booking 2.2M hotels, supporting BTC, ETH, and 100+ tokens. Users will earn BTC and Travala’s Ava (AVA) loyalty tokens — more

Bitgo / 2025 IPO Plans — BitGo is considering an IPO in late 2025 and is in talks with investment banks, though no final decision has been made. The crypto custodian, known for managing wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), joins other major firms like Circle and Kraken exploring public listings amid a pro-crypto U.S. administration — more

CFTC / Announces Digital Assets Pilot — The CFTC is launching a CEO Forum to discuss its digital asset markets pilot, focusing on tokenized non-cash collateral like stablecoins. Industry leaders, including Circle and Coinbase, will participate, with the initiative aimed at driving regulatory clarity and U.S. leadership in crypto — more

Fintech Giant Klarna / Embraces Crypto — Klarna CEO announced plans to "embrace crypto" as the company prepares for a U.S. IPO. Despite past skepticism, he is now seeking input on digital asset integration, following competitors like PayPal and Revolut, which already offer crypto services — more

Fidelity Digital Assets / BTC Adoption Predictions — Fidelity Digital Assets predicts more nation-states, central banks, and sovereign funds will buy Bitcoin in 2025 to hedge against inflation and fiscal deficits. While Trump and Senator Lummis have discussed a U.S. Bitcoin reserve, it remains uncertain if the plan will materialize — more

Coinbase / Acquires Spindl — Coinbase is acquiring Spindl to improve on-chain ads and attribution, helping builders gain distribution. The integration aims to simplify user acquisition on Coinbase and across the on-chain economy — more

OpenAI / Introducing Deep Research + Operator — ChatGPT launched Deep Research — an AI agent that independently finds, analyzes, and synthesizes to create comprehensive reports in minutes. Separately, Operator is a research preview AI that browses the web, interacts with pages, and executes tasks autonomously — more + more

Akedo Games (🤝) / Seed Round — Akedo Games, a multi-agent AI framework for gamers, raises seed round led by Karatage, with participation from Collab+Currency, Sfermion, TON Ventures, Seed Club Ventures (🤝), and others — more

Taproot Wizards / Raising $30M — Taproot Wizards, a Bitcoin Ordinals project, is raising a post-seed round. Standard Crypto is leading, with participation from Cyberfund, Collider Ventures, and others — more

TVM Ventures / $100M Raised — Steve Yun, former president and current board member of TON Foundation, has launched TVM Ventures, a new venture capital firm focused on funding DeFi and PayFi projects building in the TON ecosystem — more

Humanity Protocol / $20M Raised — Humanity Protocol, a decentralized identity platform, raises round led by Pantera Capital and Jump Crypto — more

Olas / $13.8M Raised — Olas, a platform for autonomous AI agents in crypto, raises round led by 1kx with contributions from Tioga Capital, Sigil Fund, Zee Prime Capital, Borderless, Keyrock, and others — more

Beamable / $13.5M Raised — Beamable, a decentralized gaming infrastructure platform, raises Series A led by Bitkraft, with participation from Arca, Advancit Capital, 2Punks, P2 Ventures, Solana Foundation, and others — more

Varrock / $30M Raised — Richard Chen announced Varrock VC — a $30M fund investing $600k-$900k in pre-seed and seed crypto founders — more

Phantom / $150M Raised — Phantom, a crypto wallet provider, raises Series C round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm at a $3B valuation, with participation from existing investors including a16z crypto and Variant — more

Legend / $15M Raised — Legend, a DeFi “super app,” raises round from a16z and Coinabse Ventures. It is being developed by Jayson Hobby and two executives who previously helped build the crypto lending platform Compound — more

0G Foundation / $88.8M Raised — The 0G governance foundation has launched an $88M fund to support the development of AI applications within its decentralized AI ecosystem — more

Reservoir / $14M Raised — Reservoir, a token trading infrastructure startup, raises round led by Union Square Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Archetype, and 1kx — more

Scaling Through Decentralization / Ronan — “This piece explores the motivations behind scaling model performance in a decentralized setting … Can decentralized AI compete against centralized AI, offering a new vector of scale? What are the considerations for training and inference in a decentralized setting? Why do we want, or need, to create and serve AI decentralized?” — more

7 Lessons: Testament of a Futarchy Trader / Arad — “A little more than one year has passed since the first Futarchy based organization came into being. It is time to pen down the preliminary lessons, directly from the frontlines.” — more

Thesis: Ronin ($RON) (🤝) / pet3rpan — “Today, Ronin is the home to the bleeding edge of token innovation and virtual economy design, and we believe it is strongly positioned to not only become the winning chain for cryptonative games but one of the fastest growing consumer blockchain ecosystems over the next year.” — more

DeepSeek: Links and Memes (So Many Memes) / Trung Phan — “How a Chinese AI lab spun out of a hedge fund shook up the entire tech industry.” — more

From Challenges to Opportunities: How DeSci Reimagines Science / Binance Research — “To sum it up, decentralised science is already mature enough to impact the way scientific research is being conducted today. While there are some gaps and challenges in the current landscape, tackling the “Valley of Death” in research is already a huge step forward.” — more

An investing revolution is coming. The U.S. isn't ready for it. / Vlad Tenev — “Crypto technology can democratize access to opportunities offered by early-stage private companies.” — more

Frontier Ideas For 2025 / Multicoin — “Staying true to our tradition, we’re sharing the ideas and opportunities that excite us most for the year ahead.” — more

DePin Case Studies / Paul Veradittakit — “During the last crypto cycle, many projects rode the DePin hype by identifying problems that had large market opportunities but turned to crypto tokenomics when the core product failed to gain traction, in either demand and supply.” — more

When Capital No Longer Needs Labor, How Does Labor Gain Capital? / Emad Mostaque — “As machines increasingly replicate or exceed human capabilities, critical questions arise: how can individuals retain economic agency, and how can humanity ensure equitable wealth distribution in a production landscape dominated by intelligent systems?” — more

Three Observations / Sam Altman — “In a decade, perhaps everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person can today. We continue to see rapid progress with AI development. Here are three observations about the economics of AI…” — more

The DeepSeek-R1 Effect and Web3-AI / Jesus Rodriguez — “Unlike most advancements in generative AI, the release of DeepSeek-R1 carries real implications and intriguing opportunities for Web3-AI.” — more

Volatility Is Back On The Menu / 0xsmac — “We are back with another year-end macro larping piece and it’s once again a bit rough-around-the-edges, so bear with me. This is year 3 of publicly sharing how I’m thinking about markets heading into a new year” — more

Prime Intellect (🤝) / Introducing TOPLOC + INTELLECT-MATH + METAGENE-1 — Prime Inellect announced several new releases. TOPLOC introduces a trustless locality-sensitive hashing scheme for verifiable inference with 100% accuracy. INTELLECT-MATH, a 7B parameter model, accelerates mathematical reasoning training by 10x, alongside the release of a 5M-trace verified dataset. METAGENE-1, an open-source 7B metagenomic model, enhances pathogen detection and pandemic prevention — more + more + more

Fountain (🤝) / Launches FountainGO — FountainGO launches as a free, trustless peer-to-peer platform for NFT transactions, improving security and accessibility in digital art trading — more

B3 (🤝) / $B3 Token Economy Goes Live — B3, Base’s Open Gaming Ecosystem, launched its B3 token, designed to grow, scale, and transform gaming by empowering players, game developers & holders. The token is now listed on Coinbase, Bybit, and DEXs — more

Squads (🤝) / Third Party Payouts — Squads launches third-party payouts via Bridge, enabling USDC payments to bank accounts in USD or EUR for eligible businesses. Users complete Bridge KYB verification, choose from multiple transaction methods, and streamline payroll and invoices onchain — more

Dria (🤝) / Introducing Dria-Agent-α — Dria-Agent-α is a 3B parameter LLM optimized for Pythonic function calling, matching GPT-4o in BFCL. It supports parallel multi-function calls, surpasses JSON's constraints, and was trained using synthetic data from 2,000 edge devices — more

Textile (🤝) x 3Box Labs (🤝) / Merger — Crypto data storage firms Textile and 3Box Labs have merged in an all-stock deal, operating under the Textile brand. The combined company will retain its staff and product lines, with Textile CEO Andrew Hill leading the organization — more

Coinbase / BTC Backed Loans — Coinbase is rolling out Bitcoin-backed USDC loans, allowing customers to borrow instantly with flexible repayment terms. Powered by Morpho on Base, the service starts in the U.S. with plans to expand and add more collateral assets — more

Botto (🤝) / Verse: ALGORITHMIC EVOLUTION — “In early 2024, Botto embraced the creative potential of p5.js—an open-source JavaScript framework integral to generative art. Over the past year, Botto has subsequently pushed the boundaries of AI artistry, blending code, community feedback, and artistic intuition.” Opening Event Feb. 18th — more

encapsuled / Art Blocks (🤝): Linea — “Linea is the second chapter of Ricerc(a)semica, a journey into form and meaning of language. The algorithm explores how lines are formed and react to the passing of time and the accumulation of experiences, evolving or claiming their own identity by rejecting the changes.” Minting Feb. 17th — more

Ronan / Distributed Training x Nous Research (🤝) x Prime Intellect (🤝)

Roam / MetaBlox (🤝) x ROAM Launch

Brian Armstrong / Bitcoin’s Relationship to Gold

Hyperliquid (🤝) / Heading into 2025

Opentensor Foundation / Dynamic TAO (🤝) Live on Testnet

Kalos / Wayfinder (🤝) x DeepSeek

Digitized / Featured x Fountain (🤝)

Digitized / Spotlight x Clanker

Swan (🤝) / Mainnet Live on Base

Vitalik / EF Leadership Structures

SuperRare (🤝) Bot / Botto (🤝) 100 ETH Sale

Lido (🤝) / V3 Coming Soon

🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company

Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank

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