Today we're talking about the passage of the GENIUS Act. The "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act" — which provides clear rules of the road for stablecoins in the U.S. We cover the law's implications, the recent high-stakes vote in the House of Representatives, and the bipartisan efforts to pass this groundbreaking bill. We also touch on the CLARITY Act — a major new “market structure” bill that would establish a clear regulatory framework for digital asset markets — which the House also passed with bipartisan support and which is now headed to the Senate. Here to separate the signal from the noise are members of the a16z crypto team who had a front-row seat to the action. We've got @milesjennings, a16z crypto's General Counsel and Head of Policy, plus a16z Government Affairs Partners @BenNapier and Michael Reed, who are responsible for liaising with House Republicans and House Democrats, respectively. They share the inside scoop. Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (1:01) Understanding the GENIUS Act (3:56) News Summary: What Happened in the House (5:45) Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Contention (7:01) House Vote Drama: Republicans (9:31) House Vote Drama: Democrats (14:28) Winners and Losers (16:01) Decentralized Stablecoins and SEC Involvement (17:49) CLARITY Act and Future Legislation (21:47) Looking Ahead w/ our host @rhhackett 🎙️

Today we're talking about the passage of the GENIUS Act. The "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act" — which provides clear rules of the road for stablecoins in the U.S. We cover the law's implications, the recent high-stakes vote in the House of Representatives, and the bipartisan efforts to pass this groundbreaking bill. We also touch on the CLARITY Act — a major new “market structure” bill that would establish a clear regulatory framework for digital asset markets — which the House also passed with bipartisan support and which is now headed to the Senate. Here to separate the signal from the noise are members of the a16z crypto team who had a front-row seat to the action. We've got @milesjennings, a16z crypto's General Counsel and Head of Policy, plus a16z Government Affairs Partners @BenNapier and Michael Reed, who are responsible for liaising with House Republicans and House Democrats, respectively. They share the inside scoop. Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (1:01) Understanding the GENIUS Act (3:56) News Summary: What Happened in the House (5:45) Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Contention (7:01) House Vote Drama: Republicans (9:31) House Vote Drama: Democrats (14:28) Winners and Losers (16:01) Decentralized Stablecoins and SEC Involvement (17:49) CLARITY Act and Future Legislation (21:47) Looking Ahead w/ our host @rhhackett 🎙️

Excited to announce we’re leading a $15M seed round in Poseidon, which was incubated by @StoryProtocol and is building a decentralized data layer to coordinate supply and demand for AI training data. The first generation of AI foundation models were trained on data that seemed to be an effectively unlimited resource. Today, the most accessible resources such as books and websites have mostly been exhausted, and data has become a limiting factor in AI progress. Much of the data that remains now is either lower quality or off-limits due to IP protections. For some of the most promising AI applications — across robotics, autonomous vehicles, and spatial intelligence — the data doesn’t even exist yet. Now these systems need entirely new types of information: multi-sensory, rich in edge cases, captured in the wild. Where will all this physical-world data come from? The challenge isn't just technical — it’s a problem of coordination. Thousands of contributors must work together in a distributed way to source, label, and maintain the physical data that next-gen AI needs. We believe no centralized approach can efficiently orchestrate the data creation and curation that’s needed at the required level of scale and diversity. A decentralized approach can solve this. @psdnai allows suppliers to collect the data AI companies need, while ensuring IP safety via Story’s programmable IP license. This seeks to establish a new economic foundation for the internet, where data creators get fairly compensated for helping AI companies power the next generation of intelligent systems. Poseidon’s team, led by Chief Scientist and Cofounder @SPChinchali, brings deep expertise in AI infrastructure. Sandeep is a professor at UT Austin specializing in AI, robotics, and distributed systems, with a PhD from Stanford in AI and distributed systems. Head of Product and Cofounder @sarickshah spent a decade as a machine learning engineer, scaling AI products for large enterprises across financial services, telecom, and healthcare. We are excited to support Poseidon in its work to solve one of the most critical bottlenecks in AI development.

With the GENIUS Act celebration done, builders already want to know what's next. The answer is CLARITY – crypto market structure legislation – which also got overwhelming bipartisan support in the House last week. Here's everything you need to get caught up on CLARITY:

Five AIxCrypto applications in under 15 minutes: 1⃣ 💼 portable chatbot context 2⃣ 🪪 forwards-compatible digital identity 3⃣ 🧑‍💻 future-proofing vibe-coded software 4⃣ 🔖 programmable IP provenance registries 5⃣ 🤖 marketplace guardrails for AI agents Fun conversation with @rhhackett on the @a16zcrypto podcast; based on work with @jay_drainjr, @SamBroner, @poe_platform, @StoryProtocol, @HallidayHQ, and more; QED! 🔲