U.S. President Donald Trump is set to personally greet Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Sept. 23, an unusual move that has drawn extra attention to the upcoming White House summit. The meeting comes with the clock ticking on a trade truce the two sides reached in Busan last year, which is due to expire on Nov. 10 unless both governments agree to extend it. Ahead of the formal talks, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are expected to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng to shape the agenda. Several difficult issues are on the table at once. They include China’s rare earth and critical minerals supply, U.S. export restrictions tied to AI chips and materials, and the risk that Taiwan arms sales could disrupt the summit itself. The report also says the two sides are expected to discuss China-Iran economic ties and detained foreign nationals. According to CNBC, Ashton Intelligence founder Anna Ashton said some deliverables may emerge because of the leader-level summit, but she does not see the two countries as being close to a breakthrough. Her base case is that both sides will settle for preserving the status quo.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said AI development will not be paused, according to a post on X by David Sacks. Schmidt made the remarks while responding to debate over whether AI work should be halted. He argued that a pause runs against the incentives of all participants involved, making such a move unrealistic in practice. He also said enforcement would be difficult to verify, leaving no reliable way to confirm whether a pause was actually being followed. Schmidt added that competition inside the industry, together with those incentive structures, makes the idea of stopping development impractical. The comments were relayed by David Sacks and referenced by Techub News.

The CLARITY bill, a key crypto market structure proposal in Washington, failed to clear the 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate last Tuesday, leaving it unable to advance to floor debate and narrowing its path this year as the calendar tightens ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. In a note published Wednesday, Saxo Bank strategist Ruben Dalfovo said Coinbase faces the greatest exposure because its exchange business is tied most directly to U.S. market structure rules, including registration thresholds, eligible assets and participant requirements. Circle and Strategy, he said, face different risk profiles tied to USDC adoption, reserve interest, bitcoin holdings and financing access. Markets reacted quickly, with shares of Coinbase, Circle and Strategy falling 5% to 10% after the vote and weakening again the next day. Elsewhere, Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick said Arbitrum could outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum by 2030 and projected ARB could rise from about $0.14 to $10, after already gaining 86% over the past month. Bitmine said more than 5.06 million of its 5.95 million ETH holdings are staked, implying annual staking income of $334 million at current rates. Phemex co-founder Federico Variola, speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, called AI a net negative for crypto, while others in the security sector offered a more mixed view.

A commentary published by Foresight revisits Changpeng Zhao’s earlier remark that 「IPOs will move on chain」 and argues that the idea may point to something much larger than partial tokenized stock offerings. The piece says that, at first glance, putting part of an IPO process on-chain looks similar to existing stock token trading: an offline business mapped onto blockchain rails while the core market structure stays intact. After the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced an exemption rule last week, however, the author says that view now looks too narrow. The article argues that if regulatory room opens for stock trading on decentralized exchanges, for market makers to provide liquidity, and for actual equities to trade fully on-chain, then RWA should no longer be seen as just an extra venue for assets that already trade efficiently offline. Instead, the author compares the shift to the historical move from paper stock certificates to electronic trading systems. In that framing, blockchain could become the next infrastructure layer for equities. The commentary says two conditions are required: regulatory approval and technical maturity. It argues Ethereum already has the capacity to support such activity and is still scaling, making regulation the key variable. The piece concludes that if full on-chain stock trading becomes reality, RWA could reshape how trading itself works.

Meta’s AI personal agent app Muse has posted a faster early ramp in downloads and daily active users than ChatGPT did over a comparable launch window, according to data cited from Apptopia and Sensor Tower. The app reached 730,000 downloads in about five days, crossed 2.5 million to 2.8 million cumulative downloads within roughly two weeks, and climbed to No. 1 on the U.S. iOS free app chart last Friday, ahead of ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Grok from SpaceX AI. Meta shares rose more than 11% on Monday, and Wells Fargo lifted its price target to $796. Meta positions Muse as an AI personal agent for mainstream consumers, with features such as filling out online forms and organizing email inboxes. The app offers a free tier and $20 and $100 monthly subscription plans. Its growth is also being shaped by Meta’s broader platform ecosystem, with Apptopia saying more than 95% of Muse users also use Facebook and 63% use Instagram. At the same time, the app is already facing resistance and support from different corners of e-commerce: Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its shopping site, while Shopify said it will work with Muse on agentic checkout.

Bitcoin exchange-traded fund holders are back in profit, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart. In a post on X on Monday, Seyffart said the rally in New York trading early Monday pushed the average ETF investor’s cost basis, roughly $81,700, back into profitable territory for the first time since January. Bitcoin climbed above $86,000 despite setbacks for the Clarity Act, a key crypto bill, and a Federal Reserve rate hike last week. The token reached an intraday high of $86,800 and was last trading around the same level, though it remains more than 30% below the record high of $126,000 set last year. On fund flows, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and Morgan Stanley posted net inflows of more than $6 million last week. Nearly $593 million of that came on Thursday and Friday alone. Coinglass data shows the ETFs now hold $98.8 billion in assets under management. Bitcoin’s rally began in August after the U.S. Treasury said it would at least double the scale of long-term bond buybacks, and the asset later hit a record high in October before pulling back after more than $19 billion in positions were liquidated in what was described as the largest liquidation event in crypto history.

Bitcoin ETF holders in the U.S. have moved back into profit after Bitcoin climbed above $86,000 in Monday trading, according to a market update cited by Bitcoin Magazine. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said on X that the New York morning rally pushed the average investor back above the estimated ETF cost basis for the first time since January, with that level listed in the report as 81,72. Bitcoin later traded near $86,772 after reaching as high as $86,837 earlier in the day, while a Bitcoin Magazine post on X pointed to the $87,000 level. The move came even after the Clarity Act was blocked last week and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. The report also said U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted more than $6 million in net positive flows last week. Data from Farside Investors showed nearly $593 million entered the products on Thursday and Friday alone. According to Coinglass, the funds now oversee $98.8 billion in assets. The article also traced Bitcoin’s recent path from an August rally tied to Treasury bond buybacks, to an October record high of $126,080, and then a pullback that followed a $19 billion liquidation event and continued pressure from higher-rate expectations and strong interest in AI stocks.

Venice AI’s native token, VVV, reached a fresh all-time high of $34.51 on Sunday, extending a rally that has pushed it up roughly 17% over the past 24 hours and about 3,000% from its $0.92 low last December. The token’s market capitalization now stands near $1.6 billion, making it the third-largest AI-focused cryptocurrency behind Near and Tao. VVV is tied directly to the Venice AI platform founded by ShapeShift founder Erik Voorhees. Rather than charging users per prompt, Venice lets users stake VVV in a smart contract to claim a daily share of the platform’s inference capacity. The platform also uses a second token, DIEM: users who lock staked VVV receive DIEM, which provides $1 worth of API credit per day on a perpetual basis. Venice also says part of its revenue is used to buy VVV on the open market and burn it. The company has framed privacy as its core product, saying it keeps no logs, requires no account, and does not apply the content filters common on other platforms. At the same time, the token carries concentration risk. Market data cited in the report shows the 100 largest VVV wallets control roughly 98% of supply. Venice said in August that its annualized revenue run rate had crossed $100 million, up from $70 million a month earlier, and it raised $65 million in a Series A led by Dragonfly in July at a $1 billion valuation.