CoinDesk

The dispute over tokenized stocks has escalated. AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron called Robinhood's approach to tokenized equities

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is urging the Senate to move forward on the CLARITY Act when lawmakers return from the August recess, warning that inaction would signal America is "unwilling to lead on the future of digital assets."

The push adds high-level administration pressure behind the market-structure bill ahead of an expected Senate vote, which SEC Chair Paul Atkins previously said could come as soon as September 15. It follows calls from Senator Cynthia Lummis and doubts from Chainlink's legal chief over the bill's path given a shortened September legislative calendar.

A CoinDesk daily briefing rounded up three cyber, AI and policy developments. An Anthropic researcher who worked on pretraining at OpenAI and Anthropic resigned, warning both labs are "racing straight to self-improving super-intelligence" and betting on systems many builders fear could end human civilization this decade.

• U.S. security agencies accused six Chinese AI firms, including Moonshot (maker of Kimi), of systematically extracting capabilities from American models rather than building them independently.
• Iran eased currency controls to let exporters move earnings home in crypto, using overseas revenue to fund imports directly and bypass official FX channels under U.S. sanctions.

Tether is expanding into private credit, backing a new fund with $400 million alongside Fasanara Capital. The fund aims to raise up to $3 billion from institutional investors, with USDT used to move capital to lenders across more than 60 countries, extending Tether beyond stablecoins into lending and financing.

• Tether will help source lending opportunities and provide stablecoin payment infrastructure for Fasanara's private credit network.
• The fund targets institutional deployment of USDT across a global lender network.
• No further details on the fund's structure or deployment timeline were disclosed.

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language platform accused of operating on crypto transactions while offering services to other criminal networks. The action targets a widespread cyber-scam hub that Treasury says facilitated fraudulent activity through digital assets. No further details on the platform's operations or the scope of the sanctions were disclosed.

CoinDesk is returning as the official media partner of Avalanche Summit, scheduled for Sept. 16-17. The publication will stream live and interview builders in the Avalanche ecosystem, which markets its blockchain as infrastructure built for business use.

PayPal has launched PYUSDx, a developer platform that lets businesses create their own custom stablecoins backed by PayPal USD (PYUSD), built with help from M0 and MoonPay. The platform extends PayPal's stablecoin infrastructure beyond its own PYUSD token, allowing third parties to issue branded stablecoins on PayPal's rails.

• Lets developers issue custom stablecoins collateralized by PYUSD.
• Built in partnership with M0 and MoonPay.
• No launch timeline or initial issuers were disclosed.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are converging on a 2029 timeline for quantum resistance, while the U.S. government backs a $300 million hardware push toward fault-tolerant quantum machines. The threat is not here yet, but the two networks' migration plans and the arrival of capable hardware are starting to line up on the same window. The convergence highlights a race between crypto networks hardening their cryptography and the development of machines that could break it.

Consensys Software Inc. is rebranding as MetaMask, spinning the wallet into its own standalone company under Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, who will serve as chairman and CEO. The move separates MetaMask from Consensys' broader development and infrastructure work, giving the wallet its own corporate identity. Consensys did not comment on any IPO plans.

World (World_xyz) has launched its fully on-chain prediction market platform on Solana, with more than 1 million users on its waitlist. Chainlink powers market resolution, while contracts settle in Phantom's $CASH stablecoin.

The launch adds another major entrant to the prediction-market space, which is seeing growing competition among crypto-native and regulated venues as the CFTC works on new rules for event contracts.