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TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025 Kicks Off With Robinhood, GEMtrust DAO, and High-Profile Sessions

by admin October 3, 2025

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Singapore’s TOKEN2049 opened with a clear message: the next chapter of crypto is being written at the crossroads of institutional infrastructure, real-world asset tokenization, and sensible regulation.

The two-day flagship event at Marina Bay Sands drew over 25,000 attendees, including founders, investors, policymakers, and Web3 developers, all eager to see where the industry is heading.

On Day 1 alone, a series of major announcements were made, from 24/7 tokenized equities and enterprise-level privacy layers to bold predictions about Bitcoin’s next phase, that set the stage for a new era of adoption.

Institutional Rails & Tokenization Take the Stage in TOKEN2049

Alpaca launched its Instant Tokenization Network (ITN), an open, token-agnostic platform that mints and redeems U.S. stocks into tokenized versions 24/7. Supported by Ondo Finance, Dinari, and DRW, with Solana as the settlement layer, ITN aims to capitalize on a projected multi-trillion-dollar wave of tokenization by 2030.

On Bitcoin, Citrea previewed its upcoming mainnet, designed to unlock deep BTC liquidity and increase miner revenue streams.

Meanwhile, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev called tokenization a “freight train,” unveiling tokenized stocks in Europe and hinting at real estate tokenization next, arguing that the U.S. must catch up to European digital-asset frameworks.

Capital Flows, DeFi–TradFi Convergence & Enterprise Privacy

Capital deployment accelerated as Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes) launched Maelstrom Equity, a private equity arm targeting control and minority stakes in crypto and related firms. MEXC Ventures increased its ENA (Ethena) stake to $30M, raising total Ethena ecosystem exposure to $66M (including USDe).

On the product side, Hypersurface introduced HyperEVM, offering fully on-chain covered calls with transparent strikes and upfront stablecoin premiums, bridging a strategy long dominated by OTC desks in TradFi.

Celo reached two milestones: XAUt0 (omnichain Tether Gold) for 150+ countries and Nightfall, EY’s zero-knowledge privacy layer, as Layer 3 for auditable, private B2B payments, opening a wedge into the $180T cross-border market.

Security and access also improved: Digital Shield Pro launched with CC EAL6+ secure element and air-gapped QR signing; KuCoin rebranded to “Trust First. Trade Next” and introduced KuMining for verifiable cloud hashrate.

HYPE’s price trends to the upside on the daily chart. Source: HYPEUSD on Tradingview

Real-World Assets, Market Structure & Marquee Moments

GEMtrust DAO introduced GEM DiCom, a gemstone-backed ERC-20 token where each unit is linked to lab-certified assets stored in Swiss vaults. Its goal is to make high-value stones more accessible through gemNFTs and on-chain minting, only backed by fully collateralized treasury holdings.

From a regulatory perspective, Indonesia’s CFX highlighted its “Three-Pillar” model, comprising an exchange, clearing house, and custodian under OJK oversight, which has helped grow the platform to 16.5 million registered investors and provides a model for tokenized RWAs and stablecoin development.

The program’s prominence matched its substance: Donald Trump Jr. and Michael Ho drew large crowds discussing policy and institutional adoption, while Sheeraz Hasan’s AI-infused fame session emphasized crypto’s cultural influence.

Cover image from ChatGPT, HYPEUSD chart from Tradingview

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October 3, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers

by admin August 27, 2025

“I’ve spent most of my career researching right-wing media and sounding the alarms about the collapse of our old information environment,” Ellie Langford, the director of programming at Chorus, said on a Zoom call with dozens of creators in June. “Our political systems haven’t been able to figure out a real solution, and I’ve been really excited to see you all treading the path forward. I deeply, deeply believe that the work you all are doing is what’s going to make the difference in supporting and frankly resuscitating our democracy.”

Already, creators in the program are creating content together. In a new weekly series titled “Good News in Politics,” six creators in the program shared a collaborative video running through political wins. “Follow these creators bringing you hope instead of doomscrolling: @sander_jennings, @eorlins, @jesscraven101, @tono.latino, @gemma_talks, @thezactivist,” they posted.

While some creators have been eager to work with Chorus, others distrust the organization. This spring, Chorus faced a wave of backlash from prominent content creators whose images were included in the firm’s fundraising decks without permission. “I was included on some [of Chorus’] decks like, ‘We have access to V,’ when you do not,” said V Spehar, a liberal content creator with over 3.5 million followers on TikTok.

The faces of several well-known influencers were featured prominently on the Chorus website beneath a giant DONATE button. However, users who clicked the button were taken to a fundraising page for Chorus instead of anywhere their dollars would go directly to the creators featured.

Progressive YouTuber and former Media Matters staffer Kat Abughazaleh, who’s running for Congress in Illinois, was pictured on Chorus’ website and included in fundraising decks without her consent. She asked that her image and name be removed and no longer used for fundraising purposes.

Spehar and other content creators have accused Chorus of attempting to establish themselves as a gatekeeper to Democratic political leaders. “What we need is for people to invest in independent media, and that doesn’t necessarily mean investing in a consulting group that is going to become a middleman for independent media,” says Spehar.

Several influencers who doggedly defended Chorus throughout that controversy, including Elizabeth Booker Houston, a Democratic comedian and content creator on Instagram, and Allie O’Brien, a progressive creator with more than 600,000 followers on TikTok, were involved in membership talks for the highest-paid tier in Chorus’ new creator incubator program. (Houston did not respond to requests for comment; O’Brien declined to comment.)

Still, some creators heard about The Sixteen Thirty Fund and Chorus funding initiative and applied to join.

One creator named Chesko, who goes by @thespeechprof online, applied to join the program because he viewed it as an “opportunity to get access to people that have funding or backing and actual research that I could use,” he says.

Ultimately, he wasn’t accepted and received an email on June 26 rejecting his application. “We are planning to bring more creators into the Incubator program in the near future,” Chorus wrote.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors

by admin August 26, 2025

Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic to avoid what may have been a financially devastating outcome in court.

The settlement agreement is expected to be finalized September 3, with more details to follow, according to a legal filing published on Tuesday. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.

In 2024, three book writers, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, sued Anthropic, alleging the startup illegally used their work to train its artificial intelligence models. In June, California district court judge William Alsup issued a summary judgement in Bartz v. Anthropic largely siding with Anthropic, finding that the company’s usage of the books was “fair use,” and thus legal.

But the judge ruled that the manner in which Anthropic had acquired some of the works, by downloading them through so-called “shadow libraries,” including a notorious site called LibGen, constituted piracy. Alsup ruled that the book authors could still take Anthropic to trial in a class action suit for pirating their works; the legal showdown was slated to begin this December.

Statutory damages for this kind of piracy start at $750 per infringed work, according to US copyright law. Because the library of books amassed by Anthropic was thought to contain approximately seven million works, the AI company was potentially facing court-imposed penalties amounting to billions, or even over $1 trillion dollars.

“It’s a stunning turn of events, given how Anthropic was fighting tooth and nail in two courts in this case. And the company recently hired a new trial team,” says Edward Lee, a law professor at Santa Clara University who closely follows AI copyright litigation. “But they had few defenses at trial, given how Judge Alsup ruled. So Anthropic was starting at the risk of statutory damages in ‘doomsday’ amounts.”

Most authors who may have been part of the class action lawsuit were just starting to receive notice that they qualified to participate. The Authors Guild, a trade group representing professional writers, sent out a notice alerting authors that they might be eligible earlier this month, and lawyers for the plaintiffs were scheduled to submit a “list of affected works” to the court on September 1. This means that many of these writers were not privy to the negotiations that took place.

“The big question is whether there is a significant revolt from within the author class after the settlement terms are unveiled,” says James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University. “That will be a very important barometer of where copyright owner sentiment stands.”

Anthropic is still facing a number of other copyright-related legal challenges. One of the most high-profile disputes involves a group of major record labels, including Universal Music Group, which allege that the company illegally trained its AI programs on copyrighted lyrics. The plaintiffs recently filed to amend their case to allege that Anthropic had used the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent to download songs illegally.

Settlements don’t set legal precedent, but the details of this case will likely still be watched closely as dozens of other high-profile AI copyright cases continue to wind through the courts.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments