Weekly Picks丨AI slowdown controversy, ARC launch, CLARITY Act rejected, tokenized US stocks get 5-year exemption
Tapbit Wire
Tapbit news Editor's Note: Tapbit news has curated a week of quality content to help you fill in any gaps over the weekend. Click the headlines to read.
Products of the AI Craze
DeepSeek Core Engineer: I Had to Bury My Talent in Yesterday
A DeepSeek operator engineer describes being replaced by AI, expecting that within six months to a year, AI-written operators will match or even surpass his own, forcing him to change careers. A first-person account of the career anxiety of top talent amid an arms race.
Zhu Xiaohu's Peking University Speech: After AI Technology Is Democratized, How Do Startups Survive?
Key takeaways from GSR Ventures partner Zhu Xiaohu's Peking University speech: technology will not remain scarce forever; when progress outpaces diffusion, technology dominates, but when the reverse is true, the battle shifts to customer acquisition and business efficiency. He proposes a 3S value-capture model and warns that AI startups' real moats lie in the humanities and business.
Digging Into the 630 Companies YC Funded This Year: The 10 Directions It Favors Most
A data breakdown of YC's 630 projects this year: over 90% do not do To C, and more than half are building the plumbing for AI. Agent infrastructure and AI employees have become the most crowded tracks, with defense and space procurement buyers personally raising their demands.
AI Burning Too Much Cash? China's Richest Tech Giants Are Desperately Hunting for Money
A rundown of the computing-power arms race behind Alibaba's HK$80 billion share placement, Tencent's bond issuance, and ByteDance's US$29.6 billion unsecured syndicated loan. The giants still hunt for money despite trillions in cash on their books, because AI infrastructure waits for no one — what they are racing for is not just chips but time.
The Capital "Black Hand" Behind A-Company's "AI Doomsday" Exposed: Hyping Anxiety to Raise Money for an IPO!
Anthropic's co-founder calls for an AI slowdown, criticized as drumming up hype for a US$2 trillion IPO. Its affiliated AI safety organizations are largely funded by early investment networks, raising doubts about the independence of the "independent referee."
Macro Insights
Chatting About El Niño with a Meteorologist from a RMB 10 Billion Private Fund
NOAA expects the probability of El Niño in autumn and winter to exceed 90%. With war and extreme weather compounding, a global food crisis could erupt by 2027. A conversation with a Kaifeng Investment meteorology researcher analyzing the chain reactions and investment opportunities across agricultural products, crude oil, and supply chains.
US SEC Launches 5-Year Sandbox Experiment: Traditional Stocks Accelerate Onto the Chain Under an Innovation Exemption Framework
The SEC rolls out a 5-year innovation exemption sandbox, allowing tokenized NMS stocks to trade on permissioned-chain AMM venues. It sets four red lines: equal rights for equal shares, issuer objection rights, size limits, and real interests rather than synthetic products.
Hong Kong's New Digital Asset Blueprint: What Signals Do the Five-Year Plan and Policy Address Send?
Hong Kong releases a five-year plan and policy address detailing stablecoin regulation, tokenization rollout, Web3 and virtual asset licensing regimes, and clarifying a development path that combines digital assets with the real economy.
How Do Foreign Institutions View the Diesel Crisis in September? Crack Spreads, Cost Transmission, and Stagflation Risk
Diesel prices have soared to historic highs, breaking US$6 per gallon, with record crack spreads stoking inflation concerns. Damage to Russian and Middle Eastern refineries has caused global diesel exports to plunge 26%, and the supply crisis is hitting freight, agriculture, and mining costs. An in-depth analysis of institutional views and geopolitical hedging strategies.
Ideas from Institutions and Celebrities
Justin Sun in His Own Words: Why Did I Establish the "Justin Sun Prize"?
Justin Sun establishes a personal mathematics prize, with the prize pool made public on-chain and transparent rules: after machine verification of proofs, prizes are automatically distributed, following the problem rather than the person, and open to artificial intelligence.
a16z: The Clarity Act Hangs by a Thread — Only the Senate Can Prevent the Next FTX-Style Disaster
a16z's policy chief argues for the necessity of CLARITY based on FTX's bankruptcy: traditional finance's nearly century-old rules on customer segregation and qualified custody have never covered the digital asset spot market, and none of the three objections is sufficient to justify the status quo.
Trump Accepted "80% of the Conditions" — Why Did Democrats Still Reject the CLARITY Act?
A review of the CLARITY Act's 49-50 defeat: Republicans say they absorbed 126 amendments and accepted roughly 80% of the ethics proposals, but Democrats question whether the ban can truly be enforced against Trump — an insurmountable hurdle.
Catching the Edge
Delphi Digital: After Payments, the Next Battlefield of the Agent Economy — the Task Market
Delphi analyzes the next stop for the Agent economy: buying inputs is different from buying outcomes. The task market sells "confirmed units of completion" rather than API calls. The key lies in order placement, escrow, acceptance, payment, and dispute mechanisms.
From Robinhood to Arc, Uniswap Catches a Flood of Traffic as v4 Accelerates Its Liquidity Grab
Uniswap catches the traffic from Arc and Robinhood Chain, with trading volume and protocol revenue climbing steadily and UNI rising against the trend. New chains boost V4's rapid growth, with Hooks gradually becoming an important growth driver — but hiding malicious risks.
Web3 Games Are Beginning to Embrace AI — Perhaps It's Not Just Chasing Trends or Swapping Narratives
For the blockchain gaming companies that remain, riding the AI wave may also be an opportunity to re-answer the question: "What problems should technology actually solve for games?"
Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle: Three Issuers, One Distribution Problem
Coinbase lists stock tokens, Robinhood builds its own chain, and Circle pushes Arc — the three giants are betting on issuance, but the real deciding factor is asset reach. Jumper routing data shows the new chain consumed nearly 8% of cross-chain traffic in 74 days, while LI.FI quietly collects tolls amid the issuers' melee.
Web3 Happenings
Meme Players Race to Arc's New "Trench" as Mainnet Tops One Million Transactions on Day One
Arc's mainnet topped one million transactions on its first day, with Meme players scrambling for early chips and even paying hefty premiums to position themselves in advance. Yet overall Meme capital sentiment is cooling — how long can this contrarian frenzy last?
ARC Livestream Flop: Why Are Crypto Investors So Afraid of Indians?
The appearance of South Asian faces on Arc's livestream triggered a Meme sell-off, with some tokens dropping 40%-75%. A rundown of billions in losses from India-linked scams such as BitConnect, calling it post-traumatic stress rather than pure prejudice.
Calling for a 70x Target Gain, Standard Chartered Gives ARB a New Valuation Logic
Standard Chartered initiates coverage on ARB with a near-70x target of US$10 by end-2030, reframing its valuation logic from an L2 to an infrastructure provider serving traditional finance on-chain — but Tapbit news points out an obvious optimistic bias in its AEP revenue estimates.
Up 2,496% in a Year! The Logic Behind Zcash's Surge and Its Hidden "Crash Risk"
A breakdown of the forces behind ZEC's 2,496% yearly gain: Grayscale's spot ETF, the end of the SEC investigation, shielded transactions rising to 59% of volume, short squeezes, and the 21 million hard cap — while also flagging crash risks such as excessive open interest and whale short-position liquidations.
Up Over 45% in Three Days! The "Confidential" Driver Behind NEAR's Surge and the Privacy Transaction Business
NEAR once surged over 26% to break US$3.45, with the NEAR@3.33 incentive program triggering the rally, confidential-mode locked value breaking US$70 million, and US$3.3 becoming a key redemption price.
Key News
ARB rose over 30% in the past 24 hours, now trading around US$0.22
Kevin O'Leary says the US Senate may resume review of the Clarity Act in Q1 next year
AMC CEO praises SEC's new tokenized stock rules and urges Robinhood's overseas business to follow the same standards
Arc launches AI coding agent Arc Studio, generating on-chain apps and smart contracts via prompts
Hacker uses Anthropic Claude to breach OpenAI's internal systems
Bank of Japan raises rates by 25 basis points as expected
Nostra has about US$3.5 million in assets borrowed out after NSTR oracle price manipulation
SoftBank increases Arm share-backed loan to US$25 billion to boost AI investment
Nvidia commits US$2 billion to Brookfield's global AI infrastructure fund
Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen releases Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, cutting video input costs by about 89% from the previous generation
Zhipu launches GLM-5.3-FlashX with top inference speed of 200 tokens/s
Anthropic: about 30,000 AI agents working simultaneously internally, 6% of AI R&D compute used for safety
OpenAI launches Sponsored Agents, with brand AI handling ChatGPT ad clicks
UN partners with Google to launch AI-ready data platform, supporting MCP for direct agent queries
CFTC relaxes "passive software" registration requirements, expanding crypto and prediction market trading access
ICE executive: Avalanche meets several NYSE on-chain ATS requirements, still under evaluation
Over 80% of Robinhood stock token volume completed on Uniswap, cumulatively reaching US$10 billion
Hong Kong to launch wholesale CBDC for settling tokenized government bonds before year-end
Several newly created addresses withdrew tens of millions of dollars in ZEC from exchanges over the past two days
ZachXBT accuses 7zarc of involvement in the flow of US$70 million in Raidparty exit-scam funds
