Also: North Korea’s 6-month plot with Drift, Solana Foundation’s new ad and Alchemy AI.
SOLANA FOUNDATION NEW AD ‘DONT WASTE TIME ON CRYPTO’: The Solana Foundation is taking a deliberately contrarian approach to crypto marketing in San Francisco, rolling out a billboard campaign that reads: “Don’t waste time with crypto.” At first glance, the message may seem a bit confusing as a crypto foundation is saying not to waste time with crypto. But according to the Solana Foundation, it is a bullish bet on the future of crypto that intersects with agentic AI. Essentially, what this means is that rather than wasting your time executing transactions with crypto, which might be cumbersome and time-consuming, let your AI agents do the hard work. The ad directs passersby to the x402 account on X, a nod to a growing push within the Solana ecosystem to position blockchain not as a consumer-facing product, but as invisible infrastructure for the next phase of the internet.
Polymarket removed a betting market tied to the rescue of U.S. service members in Iran, after intense backlash and criticism from lawmakers this weekend. The market allowed users to wager on when the U.S. would confirm the rescue of two airmen after an F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran. The crew members have since been rescued. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, criticized the listing in a post on X, calling it “disgusting” and arguing it reduced a military rescue effort to a financial trade. Moulton has taken a hard line on prediction markets, recently banning his staff from using platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi over concerns that financial incentives could influence policy decisions. A Polymarket spokesperson said the listing did not meet its integrity standards and the contract was removed shortly after it appeared. The company added that it is reviewing how the market passed internal safeguards.
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. formally proposed its approach to stablecoin issuers as one of the federal financial regulators required to write and oversee rules under last year's Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The FDIC's proposal —meant to align closely with what its sister banking agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, proposed in February — will be open for a 60-day public comment period on the lengthy list of 144 questions posed Tuesday by the agency. The FDIC's job is to police U.S. depository institutions, and under the GENIUS Act, its role is to regulate such institutions issuing stablecoins from their subsidiaries. To that end, it posed capital, liquidity and custody standards for those firms, though the details won't be set in stone until the rule is finalized — not likely to occur until the agency spends further months reviewing input and writing the final language. This is the second GENIUS Act proposal from the banking agency after its December pitch on the issuer application process. As expected under the law, stablecoins won't enjoy the deposit insurance that the banks maintain on traditional banking accounts, according to the proposal.