Author: NBTC

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, subscribe “If you want to know the real secret of Walt’s success, it’s that he never tried to make money.” — Ward Kimball, Disney animator Andrew Keys is an Ethereum OG whose credentials include attending the first-ever Ethereum meetup in 2014 and making ETH worth more than a dollar. “The first time Ethereum crossed $1 was because I put a permissioned version of the Java client of Ethereum on top of Azure,” he said on the Empire podcast, “and we put out a 100-word press release in the…

Kite, a company developing infrastructure for the agentic web, has raised $18 million in a Series A round, bringing its total funding to $33 million. The round was led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from 8VC, Samsung Next, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Hashed, HashKey Capital, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures, Avalanche Foundation, GSR Markets, LayerZero, Animoca Brands, Essence VC, and Alchemy. Formerly known as Zettablock, Kite builds distributed systems designed for autonomous agents. The team has previously developed large-scale real-time data infrastructures for decentralized networks such as Sui, Polygon, Chainlink, and EigenLayer. Kite recently launched Kite…

A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into missing text messages from former chair Gary Gensler’s phone between October 2022 and September 2023 has concluded that “avoidable errors” led to their loss. The SEC Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigated how nearly a year’s worth of text messages from Gary Gensler were permanently lost between October 2022 and September 2023, during the height of the agency’s crypto enforcement action campaign. In a report released on Wednesday, the OIG revealed that the SEC’s IT department “implemented a poorly understood and automated policy that caused an enterprise wipe of Gensler’s government-issued mobile device,”…

San Francisco, 4 September 2025 – Portal to Bitcoin, a custody-less interoperability protocol for Bitcoin, has added Solana (SOL) as its first mainnet L1 integration for native BTC cross-chain swaps. The milestone enables trust-minimized, self-custodial SOL-to-BTC and BTC-to-SOL transactions while maintaining full user control from start to finish. Previously, Ethereum swaps were only supported on testnet, making Solana the protocol’s first fully live mainnet integration. In parallel with the Solana integration, Portal to Bitcoin has secured a new $50 million ecosystem fund round led by Paloma Investments, bringing its total funding raised to $92 million. The capital will be used…

The crypto community has been divided over Stripe’s decision to launch its own layer-1 blockchain, with many asking why the payment firm didn’t just build on top of an already existing blockchain network. It came after Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in an X post on Thursday that “existing blockchains are not optimized” to handle the growing use of stablecoins, and crypto more broadly, across the Stripe payment platform, while announcing the firm’s new layer-1 network, Tempo. NFT platform Courtyard’s head of engineering, Joe Petrich, said, “No one wants another chain.” “The problems you mention are already solved for people…

Bedrock DeFi, a multi-asset liquid restaking protocol, today entered into a strategic collaboration with Brevis, a ZK coprocessor and computing network. With this partnership, Bedrock integrated Brevis’ ZK coprocessor – a technology that will enable it to build an effective and trustless cross-chain restaking infrastructure. Bedrock is a liquidity restaking protocol that supports multiple assets, enabling restaking and yield production of multiple tokens like BTC, ETH, and many others. On the other hand, Brevis is a ZK Omni-chain data attestation platform that allows protocols and DApps to conduct cross-chain, safe data computations. By using ZK proof technology, it ensures trustless…

The price of Ethereum is stabilizing around $4,430 after a wild drop from the $4,950 range. The drop came after ETH was strongly rejected at a major supply block between $4,900 and $5,000, which stopped the recent rise. Even though it has pulled back, ETH is still trading above its rising trendline support, giving buyers a chance to regroup and make another push higher. What’s Happening With Ethereum’s Price? Ethereum has been on a long-term upward trend for most of August, rising from below $3,800 to almost $5,000. ETH is still in an upward trend on the 4-hour chart, with…

The Beige Book report published by the FED gave important signals about the economic outlook across the country. The report found that prices rose modestly in most regions, while employment levels remained generally stable. Business confidence varied across regions. Ten of the Fed’s 12 districts described price increases as “moderate” or “medium,” while two districts reported that input costs exceeded the increase in selling prices. Input prices have reportedly risen, particularly due to customs duties. Price increases are also reportedly continuing in insurance, energy, and technology services. While some businesses are passing these costs on to consumers, most regions have…

Now that the Senate is reconvening after the August recess, a remarkable consensus is emerging in Washington’s bitter crypto debate: two powerful camps that include Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee and the cryptocurrency industry both agree draft legislation for market structure in the Senate needs improvements. An initial draft of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act (RFIA) of 2025 was released in July by Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, along with Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Bernie Moreno (R-OH). In previous years, the RFIA was introduced on…

Crypto.com is expanding its services for big traders in the United States: its OTC (over-the-counter) trading desk is now open to VIP, high-net-worth clients across the country. The offering is built for people and teams who need to move large sums without upsetting the market, and who want several ways to do it. The new OTC suite is split into three practical pieces, so you can pick what fits your workflow: OTC Portal — a dashboard for instant, zero-fee quotes that you can customize to your liking. Private OTC Desk — a 24/7 RFQ (request-for-quote) line to talk to the…