Weekend Reading: Drift was stolen for $285 million; Paradigm’s move into prediction markets

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This Week’s Focus

“Regulation Is Becoming Clearer: Paradigm Wants to Make Prediction Markets ‘Pro’”

If you ask what the most important narratives will be in the first quarter of 2026—and even over the whole year—prediction markets are bound to have a seat at the table. And with major Wall Street players like JPMorgan Chase entering one after another, and regulatory rules becoming increasingly clear, there’s one player that wants to do something different.

“Jack Dorsey: Leaving Traditional Company Hierarchies Behind, Moving Toward an Agentic Architecture with AI”

At Sequoia, we’ve found that speed is the best predictor of startup success. Most companies see AI as a productivity-boosting tool. But few people focus on AI’s potential to change the way we collaborate. What Block is showing is a fundamental redesign of organizational structure—ultimately using AI to improve speed and turning it into a compounding competitive advantage.

“Facing the ‘Compute and Hardware Imbalance’ Predicament, Is the ‘US Mining Bill’ the First Step for the US to Reshape the Crypto Mining Industry?”

Similar to the CLARITY Act, the introduction of the US Mining Bill is also another key milestone in the United States’ digital sovereignty strategy. For the first time, it tightly links crypto mining companies, the hardware supply chain, and the national strategic reserves—aiming, through legislative intent, to break the structural dependency dilemma of “compute power in hand, hardware out of reach,” and to drive a transformation in which the US moves from passively absorbing global mining-rig flows to proactively building an independent industrial ecosystem.

“Drift Stolen $285 Million: Did the Hacker Give Bear-Market DeFi a Fatal Shot?”

Right now, Drift is working with multiple security companies to investigate the root cause of the incident. At the same time, it is also cooperating with cross-chain bridges, exchanges, and law enforcement agencies to track and freeze stolen assets. Drift says that in the coming days it will release a more detailed post-incident analysis report, and welcomes any information leads related to the investigation to help.

“Oracle Cuts 20k Jobs, All In on AI: Has the AI Race Turned Into a Money-Burning Contest—Do Smaller Players Still Have a Chance?”

What’s especially intriguing is that in a report published by TD Cowen’s analysts earlier this year, they estimated that if Oracle cuts 20k to 30k jobs, it could generate an additional $8 billion to $10 billion in free cash flow.——That means Oracle, from the start, has treated layoffs as one component of its AI infrastructure funding plan.

Curated Recommendations

“How Is US RWA Solving the Hard Problems in Real Estate, Fixed Income, and Supply-Chain Finance?”

Compared with the mainland China and Hong Kong markets, although the RWA technical framework and compliance design in the US have already made some progress, China and Hong Kong—both international financial centers—also have different advantages. China’s flexibility in financial technology and innovative regulatory approaches means it can explore RWA paths that are better suited to local markets by strengthening the integration of blockchain and traditional finance.

“When the ‘Quantum Doomsday’ Clock Ticks: How Will Web3 Respond to Potential Attacks?”

In summary, these anti-quantum algorithms are secure because they are based on mathematical problems that today’s known quantum computers cannot efficiently solve (the factoring problem or the hash problem), rather than the traditional large-number factorization problems that can be broken by Shor’s algorithm with relative ease.

“From ‘Guessing Games’ to ‘Temporary Rules’: A Ten-Year Absurd Play of Crypto Regulation”

Someone needs to pick up the pen to formally put this into place. Everything depends on what the Senate does over the next six weeks. Will these rules last long enough for all of this to become meaningful?

“What AI Services Do Crypto Companies Offer?”

Nowadays, the gap is widening further. In the AI industry, infrastructure such as MCP (which allows agents to call external tools directly) and OpenClaw (which supports building no-code agents) has already made the age of agents a reality. And crypto companies are only just beginning to take action.

“After Bitcoin Is Cut in Half, Pantera Founder Says: This Is the Entry Moment You Should Least Miss”

In this interview, Wilfred Frost and Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead held a second deep conversation. They discussed the cycle positioning after Bitcoin retreats 50% from its peak; how fiat-currency depreciation creates intergenerational wealth conflicts; and why this round of “smart money” is actually the last time to enter.

Ten News Stories You Can’t Miss This Week

Tether is making a final push to raise funds, targeting a valuation of $500 billion

Insiders: Crypto firms and banks will review proposed stablecoin yield revisions in the coming days

Coinbase receives conditional approval from the US OCC to establish a national trust institution

Drift Protocol: Not a contract vulnerability—attackers obtain permissions via “Durable Nonce”

Stablecoin firm OpenFX completes a $94 million funding round, led by Accel and others

CoinShares to merge via SPAC and list on Nasdaq

HKMA responds to the postponement of the first batch of compliant stablecoin licenses: is pushing forward with all effort

Bank of Cuba first approves 10 local firms to use crypto for cross-border payments

Aave V4 goes live on the Ethereum mainnet, introducing a “Hub and Spoke” architecture

Insiders: The US Senate Banking Committee will at the earliest hold Kevin Ware’s confirmation hearing during the week of April 13