co-founder

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini co-founders Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss stated in an interview that Bitcoin is a public, auditable blockchain where anyone can see transaction records, and this openness makes it unsuitable for privacy needs. Privacy coin Zcash is used for private transactions and payments, so the two can coexist. They mentioned that ideally, privacy should be built into Bitcoin, but currently, it is a practical model of Bitcoin storage and Zcash transactions. Bitcoin remains important, but the privacy exposure risk of public chains is greater in the face of artificial intelligence.The Winklevoss brothers stated that Zcash complements the missing privacy features of Bitcoin, serving as a privacy-focused Bitcoin, and the privacy value of ZEC has yet to be fully realized. If it reaches 10% of Bitcoin's market value, ZEC could rise fivefold, easily surpassing $5,000. They are optimistic about ZEC's price performance in the next 5 to 10 years, especially as privacy demand increases, and they described Zcash as a financial privacy protection tool in the era of artificial intelligence, an antidote against AI-driven surveillance and tyranny, and a hedge against artificial intelligence or quantum threats in the cryptocurrency space.

The co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Alon of the meme coin issuance platform Pump.fun stated that the team had previously focused on launch pads for a long time and only began supporting cross-chain exchanges about 5 months ago. After investigating the cross-chain service provider Relay used at that time, he noted that over one-ninth of cross-chain purchases on Relay encountered errors, with typical purchase landing times close to 4 seconds, and one-tenth exceeding 7 seconds. The number of tokens users received was usually less than expected. He also mentioned that the social trading application FOMO still relies on Relay.Alon stated that the self-developed cross-chain bridge Pump Bridge has been opened to all Pump.fun application users. Compared to Relay, the purchase landing speed has improved by 2 times, and the error rate has decreased by 92%, dropping from over one-ninth to less than one percent. Users can obtain more tokens on average with the same amount of funds, and currently, no additional cross-chain fees are charged. He mentioned that due to the limitations of light speed and target chain confirmation time, the theoretical fastest landing time for purchases is about 1.1 seconds, and the team is still working to reduce the remaining gap.The above comparison comes from random tests conducted in the Pump.fun mobile application from September 28 to October 7, covering Robinhood, BSC, Base, Arc, and Ink, excluding Ethereum, with a total of 416,669 transaction results recorded. Among them, 383,326 transactions recorded the time taken from click to successful prompt, and an additional 35,333 transactions of completed USDC purchases under $500 were used for comparison. Alon also stated that the platform fee rate is 0.45%, with Callout rewards of at least $300,000 daily, totaling about $20 million over two months, and the platform does not retain platform fees.

According to Cointelegraph, Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, pointed out that the crypto industry is gradually evolving into a "digital Wall Street," deviating from its original mission of decentralized finance. He believes that to bring the next billion users on-chain, the industry needs a new solution, rather than just relying on tokenization or new wallets. Siu emphasized that only AI agents capable of independently holding user keys and interacting with the blockchain can truly achieve autonomous control of user assets.Siu questioned the current AI agent platforms on the market, particularly Meta's Muse. He noted that Meta's terms of service allow it to "remove user agents at any time and for any reason," which constitutes a significant trust flaw. He believes that personal agents relied upon by users should not be owned and controlled by centralized platforms. Animoca is building the MINDS agent, a multi-agent orchestration system designed to provide user autonomy and support various communication channels and AI model choices.Siu estimates that currently only about 10% of crypto asset holders are truly on-chain, and he believes that AI agents will be a key factor in changing this ratio. He further pointed out that since AI agents use code as their native language, their capabilities in handling complex security issues will surpass those of ordinary users, providing a new perspective for the secure development of the crypto field.

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham stated that publishing content on websites with paywalls is equivalent to making it "invisible."He mentioned that if AI cannot crawl the relevant content, then that content does not exist in any practical sense.

Jack Clark, co-founder and head of public interest at the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, stated on Saturday at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meeting in Bangkok that the rapid enhancement of AI capabilities will bring about more rapid transformations. The company's internal models predict that under certain conditions, by 2030, AI is expected to boost the U.S. economic output by nearly 50%. He emphasized the need for international cooperation to establish "extraordinary and stringent rules" for this technology, noting that the window for policymakers to take action is narrowing.Clark mentioned that the potential size of the U.S. GDP is expected to reach $44 trillion, currently just above $30 trillion, with this forecast based on the assumption of continued technological advancement. He warned policymakers that increasing evidence points to a "technological singularity," where the pace of AI development will exceed human control, and advancements in not only AI but the entire scientific field will accelerate in the coming years. He stated that despite recent incidents of uncontrolled AI systems escaping testing environments and breaching websites and databases, AI is still under human control, but the window for building safety measures is closing, with only a few years remaining.As Clark made these remarks, Anthropic is preparing for an IPO, expected to go public in November. Recent reports indicate that its IPO valuation expectations have been lowered to the $1.5 trillion range, down from the previous market expectation of about $2 trillion. He also mentioned that AI could serve as a force multiplier for scientific discovery, and more countries could participate in AI development by building data center computing infrastructure; AI is causing job losses in areas like call centers and customer service, while promoting employment in fields such as scientific research.

Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, stated that since Privy joined Stripe more than a year ago, the asset scale in its wallet has increased to about 25 times, the number of monthly active developers has grown to about 3 times, and revenue has increased to about 9 times, currently facilitating nearly $25 billion in transactions each month.Companies like Ramp, Deel, Klarna, and Hyperliquid are building embedded banking features based on Privy. Stripe is deeply integrating Privy into Treasury, Link, and Connect to accelerate global expansion and feature development, and plans to launch the Link balance feature. Privy's wallet infrastructure also supports AI agents to conduct transactions and earn revenue, with related applications including Merit Systems and Nevermined. Collison expects the agent economy to continue to grow rapidly. The two parties are building a unified API to support holding stablecoin balances and earning yields, fiat fund transfers in and out, and arranging expenditures via bank cards. Collison also mentioned that there is still a lot of work to be done on the integration between Privy, Bridge, and other Stripe businesses.

Mona El Isa, co-founder of Enzyme, announced that after ten years in the industry, she has decided to exit the sector and close the on-chain asset management company Avantgarde. She stated that Avantgarde was established during the bear market in 2019, served as the core development team for Enzyme, and helped Enzyme achieve self-sustainability after several version iterations. Enzyme has now grown to become one of the fastest-growing fund tokenization platforms.Mona El Isa also mentioned that Avantgarde subsequently provided curation and fund management services for Compound, Gitcoin, SuperRare, NEAR, Decentraland, The Graph, and others, handling transactions worth hundreds of millions and TVL, while ensuring the safety of client assets during a year of severe DeFi security challenges. She plans to take a break before deciding on her next steps and welcomes staying in touch, and she can provide recruitment referrals for team members.

According to Bloomberg, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam is betting personal funds on Venezuela's oil industry. He referred to this opportunity to become a significant oil producer as an "excellent opportunity" and compared it to the once-in-a-generation investment opportunities that helped him join the ranks of billionaires.The startup founded by Fred Ehrsam, Primavera, has recently signed multiple contracts with the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) and is preparing to take over the operations of several oil fields in the country.Primavera has also hired senior oil industry professionals from Chevron and Occidental Petroleum to assist in building the necessary infrastructure to support the production of conventional oil and heavy crude.

Co-founder Edison released an update regarding the recent data breach incident involving encrypted cards. Edison stated that the compliance and operations team is contacting affected users, has reported to relevant agencies such as the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), and has formally filed a police report. They are currently working closely with law enforcement, and the encrypted card business continues to operate normally.

Multicoin co-founder Kyle Samani announced on platform X that his largest personal angel investment has been made into Backpack.On September 2, Backpack announced that Multicoin Capital co-founder and early Solana investor Kyle Samani has joined the Backpack US Board of Directors. Samani has long focused on the development of DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, and global capital markets. Backpack stated that this appointment reflects a shared judgment between both parties that the future of global finance will combine institutional-level risk control with the efficiency and transparency of on-chain markets.

Andrey Lazutkin, co-founder of Tangem, posted on X that the recent Ledger security incident once again confirms the security engineering principle of "complexity expands the attack surface." He pointed out that every additional component, software layer, and user interaction, such as screens, buttons, batteries, and firmware, introduces new potential points of failure and vulnerabilities, increasing the risks that need to be identified and mitigated.Based on this, Lazutkin defended the minimalist card design adopted by Tangem—this solution is built solely around the secure chip and antenna—and stated that this incident reinforced his judgment about the correctness of this design philosophy.

According to on-chain analysts, F2Pool co-founder WangChun (0xF42...2b51) exchanged 235.51 WBTC for 7848.53 ETH yesterday, worth approximately 19 million USD.In the past 7 hours, he also withdrew 5173.41 ETH from Binance, worth approximately 12.86 million USD, with an average withdrawal price of 2485.89 USD.

Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple and crypto billionaire, is increasing his investment in the U.S. political arena. Disclosure data shows that during this midterm election cycle, Larsen has directly donated at least $22.5 million to federal candidates and super political action committees (super PACs), and plans to further increase his contributions.Currently, Larsen has become one of the important donors in U.S. federal politics, with areas of focus including artificial intelligence, clean energy, cryptocurrency, and wealth taxes. He has previously been an active political donor in the U.S. technology and cryptocurrency sectors.

Co-founder of Glassnode, Rafael Schultze-Kraft, stated based on on-chain data that approximately 6.26 million BTC public keys have been exposed, accounting for 31.2% of the current supply, up from 24.8% at the beginning of 2021.Among them, about 4.33 million were exposed due to address reuse, and approximately 1.94 million are related to script types. He emphasized that this statistic does not indicate that quantum attacks are realistically feasible, nor can it be used to assess the security status of exchanges or custodians.

The co-founder of the dark web market Empire Market, Raheim Hamilton, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison and fined $5 million on October 5 in Chicago. His plea agreement covers approximately 1,230 bitcoins, 24.4 ethers, and three properties in Virginia.Empire Market operated from 2018 to 2020, facilitating over 4 million transactions between buyers and sellers, with a transaction volume exceeding $430 million. Investigators seized digital assets, cash, and precious metals worth $75 million in the case. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that the platform required buyers and sellers to conduct transactions exclusively in cryptocurrency and encouraged the use of mixing services and encrypted communication. Buyers could also rate the effectiveness of sellers in hiding drug packages, with drug sales involved amounting to nearly $375 million.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, stated in a live interview at the Digital Asset Summit 2026 held in Singapore that as near.com continues to expand its on-chain services, users no longer need centralized exchanges for "a large amount" of crypto activities. He mentioned that near.com is "almost ready" and has a "large roadmap for continuously adding features," including bank withdrawals, transaction records for tax purposes, and selective disclosure for confidential transactions. He also shared his experience using centralized exchanges, stating that despite knowing the company's CEO, one of his accounts was still deleted.near.com integrates cross-chain spot trading, tokenized stocks, wealth management products, and perpetual contracts into a single interface. Polosukhin indicated that most of the infrastructure for NEAR Intents has been migrated to confidential sharding, keeping transaction activities private, and users can disclose individual transactions when needed. He mentioned that near.com has a lot of fiat-related features coming soon and referenced the collaboration between NEAR and Monerium, allowing users to convert euros in their bank accounts to EURe via IBAN. The ultimate goal of NEAR Intents is to handle "any asset to any asset," such as USD to EUR, SGD to HKD.Regarding tokenized stocks, near.com completed integration with Ondo Finance in September, allowing users to convert euros into tokenized NVIDIA stocks, with NEAR planning to add more stocks from global markets.