Venice’s VVV token jumped after a public clash involving OpenAI and an NYU mathematician pushed a privacy question into wider view. Decrypt’s Morning Minute listed VVV up 40% to $27 and at a new all-time high, while the body of the newsletter said the token rose 34% on Tuesday to $24.77 on a sharp increase in volume.
According to Decrypt, the immediate trigger was a public dispute between an NYU mathematician and OpenAI over credit for fluid dynamics proofs. The newsletter said the details are messy and contested. It also noted that the mathematician explicitly said he is not accusing anyone of misusing his data, while OpenAI denied accessing it.
What spread across X and Hacker News was a narrower question: could a researcher’s private conversations with a chatbot eventually inform a competitor’s work? Decrypt said nobody has shown that happened. The point, in the newsletter’s telling, is that many people saw the idea as plausible.
Venice’s pitch centers on private inference
Decrypt said that is the same case Venice has been making since January 2025. The project is tied to ShapeShift founder Erik Voorhees and presents itself as an AI platform where prompts remain on the user’s device instead of sitting on a company server. It relies on open-source models, applies no content filtering, and does not require an account.
The VVV token is described as an access key rather than a governance token. Users who stake VVV receive a proportional share of daily API inference capacity. A second token, DIEM, is minted by locking staked VVV and provides $1 per day of API credit in perpetuity.
Decrypt also detailed the project’s emissions schedule. Venice launched at 14 million tokens per year, then stepped that down several times. As of September 1, emissions were at 2.5 million annually, with 2 million scheduled for October. Part of protocol revenue is used to buy VVV on the open market and burn it. Venice said in August that its annualized revenue run rate had passed $100 million, up from $70 million a month earlier.
Decrypt ties the move to the privacy theme
The Tyler Warner newsletter argued that privacy is a major theme in this market cycle. It pointed to Zcash’s ZEC, which it said had broken out of a nine-year range and reached new all-time highs above $1,200. The piece added that many are calling for a move to 0.1 BTC this cycle. It linked that view to growing demand for wealth privacy as politicians introduce measures such as billionaire taxes.
From there, the article said the case for private AI inference is getting stronger. Any suggestion that frontier labs are taking ideas from users and using them for their own discoveries would draw resistance at high levels, the author wrote. In that framing, a crypto protocol offers an alternative, and one with a product that already has substantial revenue behind it. The newsletter said VVV likely cemented its place on the list of top altcoins to watch over the next few years.
Macro, crypto, and market prices
Decrypt’s market roundup showed major crypto assets in the green by 1% to 5%:
- BTC +2% at $79.5k
- ETH +2% at $2,510
- SOL +2% at $104
- HYPE +5% at $86.70
- ZEC +9% at $1,264
Among large alt movers, the newsletter highlighted VVV (+38%), NEAR (+14%), and LIT (+6%). It said both VVV and LIT hit new all-time highs during the day.
In broader markets, oil rose 1% to $95 and gold added 0.2% to $4,450. Stock futures were lower as oil continued to climb, with the Dow down 0.6% and the Nasdaq off 0.5%.
Payments, infrastructure, and protocol updates
Visa is pairing VisaNet settlement data with on-chain lending tools to help fintech firms and stablecoin card programs borrow working capital, Decrypt reported. The company’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 tied to the Tectonic exploit. Decrypt said that erased 1 hour and 54 minutes of settled transactions, including activity unrelated to the attack, while $9.19 million remains missing.
Blockstream is negotiating with the Liquid hackers over the remaining 598.5 BTC, worth about $47 million at the stated value. The newsletter said the attackers had already returned 3,400 of the roughly 4,000 BTC drained from the sidechain.
The Ethereum Foundation set a December 2029 deadline to make transactions, validators, and data storage quantum-resistant. Decrypt said five hard forks are planned after next year’s Hegotá upgrade, at roughly one every 7.2 months.
Corporate treasuries and ETF flows
Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $47 million in net outflows on Tuesday, while spot Ethereum ETFs saw $24 million in outflows, according to the newsletter.
Strategy bought no Bitcoin in the week through September 7 and instead spent $176.3 million repurchasing STRC. Decrypt said that came one week after the company ended a two-month drought. It also doubled its credit securities buyback authorization to $2 billion.
Bitmine bought 28,086 ETH last week, worth about $70 million, bringing total holdings to 5.93 million ETH, or about 4.9% of supply. The report said 85% of that position is staked and projected annualized staking revenue is $330 million.
Strive added 1,375 BTC for $109 million at an average price of $79,281. That lifted its holdings to 24,531 BTC. Decrypt added that 70% of the capital it raised last week came through SATA preferred stock, now at $999 million in notional value.
The section also separately noted that Tom Lee’s Bitmine added $70 million in Ethereum, bringing holdings to 5.93 million ETH.
Meme coin and Solana activity
Meme coin leaders were mostly unchanged. Decrypt listed DOGE up 2%, SHIB flat, PEPE up 3%, PENGU flat, TRUMP flat, and SPX down 2%.
On Robinhood Chain, leaders were also mostly flat. Pons rose 7% to $540 million, AI fell 5% to $225 million, and Cashcat gained 3% to $185 million. The biggest movers included ZZZ (+300%), Orbio (+110%), Ubik (+33%), and astro (+300x).
Solana had a strong session led by Stonk (+50%), Useless (+30%), and Cate (+75%). Ansem slipped 3% to $175 million.
Decrypt said the Stonkfun ecosystem surged as Stonk jumped 50%, with KNOTS and PURR taking the No. 2 and No. 3 spots behind ZCAT. Several tokens in that group were up 2x to 4x.
Revenue tracker, M&A, and NFTs
In Decrypt’s token, airdrop, and protocol tracker, Hyperliquid reclaimed the No. 4 position in protocol revenue with $1.8 million on the day. Pump.fun ranked No. 5 with $1.6 million, while Robinhood Chain and Pons fell to No. 8 and No. 9.
Stonkfun generated $1.34 million in revenue yesterday, marking its third straight day above $1 million.
Circle agreed to acquire Tazapay in a $400 million all-stock deal. Decrypt said it is Circle’s largest acquisition since buying Poloniex in 2018. Tazapay is a Singapore payments firm that moves $25 billion a year across 100 markets, with roughly 60% of its volume already in stablecoins.
NFT market was mostly flat
NFT leaders were largely unchanged. Punks held at 30 ETH, BAYC at 6.8 ETH, and Pudgy at 3.7 ETH.
Quotrons (+17%) and Templars (+57%) led the day’s top movers.
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. Decrypt noted at the top that the analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the publication.