Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

Today’s top news

• Crypto majors rebound 1%-3% as altcoins rally; BTC rises 2% to $79,500.
• Venice’s VVV token gains as much as 40% to $27 and reaches a new all-time high after an OpenAI dispute; ZEC and LIT rise 10% to new all-time highs.
• Strategy buys no Bitcoin and adds $176 million to STRC; STRC trades at $97.94.
• Pump.fun revenue rebounds as Solana tokens reclaim the market-share lead.
• The Stonkfun ecosystem rallies as Stonk rises 50% to a $200 million market capitalization.

A dispute over an AI math proof puts private inference in focus

VVV rose 34% on Tuesday to $24.77 on a sharp increase in trading volume. The immediate catalyst was a public dispute between an NYU mathematician and OpenAI over credit for proofs involving fluid dynamics.

The details remain contested. The mathematician has explicitly said that he is not accusing anyone of misusing his data, while OpenAI has denied accessing it. However, the question that spread across X and Hacker News was more straightforward than the underlying dispute: Could a researcher’s private conversations with a chatbot ultimately inform a competitor’s work? No one has demonstrated that this occurred. The significance, according to the newsletter, is that many people considered the possibility plausible.

That concern reflects the argument Venice has advanced since January 2025. The project was founded by Erik Voorhees, the ShapeShift founder, and presents itself as an AI platform designed to keep prompts on a user’s device rather than on a company’s servers. Venice uses open-source models, does not require an account, and has no content filtering. In practical terms, that model places privacy and access architecture at the center of the product rather than treating them as separate features.

VVV functions as an access key rather than a governance token. Users who stake VVV receive a proportional share of the platform’s daily API inference capacity. A second token, DIEM, is created by locking staked VVV and provides $1 per day in API credit in perpetuity.

Venice has repeatedly reduced emissions, from 14 million tokens per year at launch to 2.5 million as of September 1. Emissions are scheduled to fall to 2 million in October. A portion of the platform’s revenue is used to buy VVV on the open market and burn the tokens. Venice said in August that it had exceeded a $100 million annualized revenue run rate, up from $70 million one month earlier. The scheduled emissions reduction and the reported revenue and buyback activity are the clearest operating details to watch as Venice develops its stated token-access model.

The newsletter described privacy as a major theme in the current crypto market cycle. Zcash’s ZEC token recently broke out of a nine-year range and reached new all-time highs above $1,200. Many market participants are calling for ZEC to reach 0.1 BTC during the cycle. The newsletter linked that interest to increased demand for wealth privacy as politicians introduce measures such as billionaire taxes.

It also argued that the case for private AI inference is becoming stronger. Any indication that frontier AI labs are taking ideas from users and using them in their own discoveries could face pushback at the highest levels, the newsletter said. It presented crypto protocols as an alternative, noting that Venice already has a product supported by substantial revenue. In the newsletter’s view, the narrative could remain important ahead of the next bull cycle, and VVV may have established itself among the altcoins to watch over the next several years.

Macro, crypto and markets

Crypto majors were higher by 1%-5%. Bitcoin gained 2% to $79,500, Ethereum rose 2% to $2,510, Solana added 2% to $104, HYPE increased 5% to $86.70, and ZEC climbed 9% to $1,264.

The leading altcoin movers included VVV, up 38%, NEAR, up 14%, and LIT, up 6%. VVV and LIT both reached new all-time highs during the day.

Oil rose 1% to $95, while gold gained 0.2% to $4,450. U.S. stock futures declined as oil continued to rise, with the Dow futures down 0.6% and Nasdaq futures down 0.5%.

Visa is combining VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending tools to help fintech companies and stablecoin card programs borrow working capital. Visa’s own stablecoin settlement volume is now running at an annualized rate above $20 billion.

Cronos rolled back 10,961 blocks to reverse $111.2 million connected to the Tectonic exploit. The rollback erased one hour and 54 minutes of settled transactions, including activity unrelated to the attack. A reported $9.19 million remains missing.

Blockstream is negotiating with the Liquid hackers over the remaining 598.5 BTC, worth approximately $47 million, after the hackers returned 3,400 of the roughly 4,000 BTC drained from the sidechain.

The Ethereum Foundation set December 2029 as a deadline for making transactions, validators, and data storage resistant to quantum computing. Five hard forks are planned after next year’s Hegotá upgrade, with upgrades expected approximately every 7.2 months.

Corporate treasuries and ETFs

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $47 million in net outflows on Tuesday, while Ether ETFs saw $24 million in outflows.

Strategy bought no Bitcoin during the week ending September 7 and instead spent $176.3 million repurchasing STRC. The move came one week after the company ended a two-month pause in Bitcoin purchases. Strategy also doubled its authorization for credit-securities buybacks to $2 billion.

Bitmine bought 28,086 ETH last week, worth approximately $70 million, bringing its holdings to 5.93 million ETH, or about 4.9% of the total supply. Approximately 85% of those holdings are staked, with annualized staking revenue projected at $330 million.

Strive added 1,375 BTC for $109 million at an average price of $79,281, increasing its holdings to 24,531 BTC. About 70% of the capital Strive raised last week came through SATA preferred stock, which now has a notional value of $999 million.

Meme coin tracker

Meme coin leaders were mostly unchanged. DOGE rose 2%, SHIB was flat, PEPE gained 3%, and PENGU and TRUMP were unchanged. SPX declined 2%.

Leaders on the Robinhood chain were also mostly flat. Pons rose 7% to a $540 million market capitalization, AI fell 5% to $225 million, and Cashcat gained 3% to $185 million. ZZZ, up 300%, Orbio, up 110%, Ubik, up 33%, and astro, up 300x, were the top movers.

Solana recorded a strong day led by Stonk, up 50%, Useless, up 30%, and Cate, up 75%. Ansem fell 3% to a $175 million market capitalization.

Tokens in the Stonkfun ecosystem rallied after Stonk gained 50%. KNOTS and PURR ranked second and third behind ZCAT, while several tokens rose between twofold and fourfold.

Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

Hyperliquid reclaimed the fourth position in protocol revenue with $1.8 million for the day. Pump.fun ranked fifth with $1.6 million, while Robinhood Chain and Pons dropped to eighth and ninth, respectively.

Stonkfun generated $1.34 million in revenue the previous day, marking its third consecutive day above $1 million.

Circle agreed to acquire Tazapay for $400 million in stock. The deal is Circle’s largest acquisition since it bought Poloniex in 2018. Tazapay is a Singapore-based payments firm that processes $25 billion annually across 100 markets, with approximately 60% of its volume already conducted in stablecoins.

NFT market

NFT leaders were mostly unchanged. Punks held at 30 ETH, BAYC remained at 6.8 ETH, and Pudgy Penguins stayed at 3.7 ETH.

Quotrons, up 17%, and Templars, up 57%, were the leading movers.

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