DeAI News Journal

Grayscale and BlackRock both published reports pointing to the same conclusion: blockchain and AI are converging, and compute is becoming a tradable asset. Episode 3 of the DeAI News Journal follows the money.

January Jones and Brad Keoun start with the three meanings of "token" in this space: crypto coins, AI text tokens, and tokenized assets. Then they hear from investors, builders, and market watchers about how decentralized AI is being funded, priced, and traded.

In this episode

• Gil Rosen and Steven Willinger, Blockchain Builders Fund. Recorded at Stanford. Why the token launch era burned founders, and why investors now want revenue and distribution before a token.
• Greg Osuri, founder and CEO of Overclock Labs (Akash Network). The spot market for GPUs is nearly gone. Compute futures are arriving. Your home gaming rig can run your own AI and sell its spare capacity. Greg also compares today's AI giants to the Gilded Age railroads.
• Ivo Entchev, legal and product lead at Tilt. What the Grayscale and BlackRock reports signal, why AI agents will need machine money, and how compute could follow Bitcoin's path from spot trading to ETFs.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome and this week's theme
02:11 The Grayscale and BlackRock reports
03:00 Three kinds of tokens
06:30 How token pumping broke crypto startups
08:00 Stephen Willinger: what's working for founders now
09:35 Gil Rosen: fundraising after the token boom
12:17 Greg Osuri and Akash Network
13:05 Access matters more than cost
16:38 Compute futures and physical settlement
19:07 Defining decentralized AI: the railroad parallel
27:32 Your home as a token factory
32:00 Compute as a load balancer for energy
39:01 A knowledge problem, not a capital problem
41:20 News roundup with Ivo Entchev of Tilt
45:08 Agents need machine money
48:00 How compute becomes an asset class

Read the stories and catch new episodes at http://deainews.com.

A Distro Media Production

Produced, edited and designed by January Jones

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 7IIILTUES54J7TXP

Brad Keoun and January Jones dig into decentralized AI infrastructure with a news roundup with Evin McMullen from Billions Network on agent payments and identity, then two field interviews from Stanford: Michael Heinrich (0G Labs) on verifiable, privacy-preserving AI, and Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol) on staking for AI inference and NEAR's new agent marketplace.

The news roundup with Evin McMullen covers two DeAI News stories: a new Shoal Research report on why USDC's dominance of agent-to-agent payments on x402 is more fragile than it looks (Coinbase controls the clearing layer, Stripe and Tether are building alternatives), and Cloudflare's launch of stablecoin wallets and identities for AI agents. Evin connects both back to the same problem — agent payments only work at scale with an interoperable identity layer — and brings in the Air Canada chatbot ruling and a conversation with SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce on agent accountability.

From Stanford: Michael Heinrich explains 0G's case for open-source AI on safety grounds, how trusted execution environments make AI computation verifiable on-chain, and 0G's $350M raised to date. Illia Polosukhin walks through NEAR's new staking-for-inference product, confidential AI via secure enclaves, and why NEAR just joined the x402 Foundation.

Guests
Evin McMullen, Co-Founder & CEO, Billions Network — billions.network · @provenauthority · @billions_ntwk
Michael Heinrich, Co-Founder & CEO, 0G Labs — @michaelh_0g · @0G_labs
Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol — @ilblackdragon · @NEARProtocol

Timestamps
0:00 – Cold open
1:17 – Welcome to DeAI News Journal
9:50 – Today's lineup
10:20 – News Roundup with Evin McMullen (Billions Network)
10:44 – Story: USDC's lead in agent payments faces new competition
17:53 – Story: Cloudflare launches stablecoin wallets and identities for AI agents
35:53 – Feature interviews from Stanford
37:39 – Michael Heinrich, CEO, 0G Labs
56:12 – Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol
1:14:06 – What's next + sign-off

More from DeAI News:
DeAI News covers the infrastructure, cryptography, and protocols defining sovereign AI — decentralized compute, agent networks, and crypto payments for the machine economy.

Read the stories and catch new episodes at deainews.com.
A Distro Media Production
Produced, edited and designed by January Jones
Music licensed through Soundstripe.
Code: 7IIILTUES54J7TXP

This premiere episode introduces the DeAI Journal and explains why decentralized AI matters now. Co-hosts January Jones and Brad Keoun frame the show around the intersection of blockchain, AI, media, and open source infrastructure. They discuss why AI can make blockchain easier to use, why blockchain can help solve AI’s verification and privacy problems, and how DeAI is being defined in practice right now. They will cover recent deainews.com stories with Clara Tsao, founding officer at Filecoin Foundation and talk about Anthropic Watermarking, the used GPU market and hackers.  Wrapping up the show, a feature interview with Shaw Walters the founder of Eliza Labs, who recounts his personal tale of "overwhelm" following a token launch that rocketed to a market value of $2.7 billion in a couple of months, only to crash just as quickly, and how his AI agent project aims to make it easier for people (including busy mothers!) to manage their lives.

www.deainews.com/journal

A Distro Media Production

Produced, edited and designed by January Jones

Music licensed through Soundstripe.

Code: 7IIILTUES54J7TXP

Evin McMullen, Co-founder and CEO of Billions Network, joins January Jones and Brad Keoun on the DEAI News Roundup to discuss the critical infrastructure needed as AI agents begin transacting with "machine money" across the internet.

From USDC’s dominance in agent-to-agent payments and Cloudflare’s new AI agent wallets to legal liability precedents (like the Air Canada chatbot ruling), we break down why verifiable zero-knowledge identity and data minimization are crucial to stopping unaccountable bots and scaling agentic commerce.

Find the stories we cover and more at https://deainews.com

• Report details threats to USDC's early lead in agentic payments
• Cloudflare gives AI agents stablecoin wallets and identities
• Cornell cryptography expert worries about agents going rogue on-chain

🔗 Resources & Connect:
• DEAI News: https://deainews.com
• Billions Network on X: @billions_ntwk

Produced and edited by January Jones

A production of Distro Media and The January Strategy

Filecoin Founding Officer Clara Tsao joins DeAI News Founder Brad Keoun to break down why content integrity and decentralization are becoming the backbone of the next AI economy.

From Anthropic's controversial code watermarking and North Korean AI-enabled phishing schemes to Cloudflare’s "toll booth" for AI agents and the booming secondary market for GPUs, we unpack the week's biggest stories at the intersection of AI, cryptography, and decentralized infrastructure.

Find the stories we cover and more at https://deainews.com

• Anthropic's 'diabolical' watermarking plan hinges on closed AI models
• Used GPU prices supported by decentralized AI networks, Aethir argues
• Cloudflare gives AI agents stablecoin wallets and identities
• North Korean hacker group uses AI to fake documents, improve phishing
  
  Produced and edited by January Jones

  A production of Distro Media and The January Strategy

  
  🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned:
  • Filecoin Ecosystem: https://filecoin.io
  • Aethir Network: https://aethir.com