Dragonfly

I’m very proud to have submitted a Comment Letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on behalf of Dragonfly on the proposed rule on impersonations. This rule could impact anyone who creates tools and services that are used downstream in impersonation scams—yes, that includes any AI software company and developer! Both AI and crypto are transformative technologies that face similar challenges, such as regulatory uncertainty and accountability. Despite these issues, these technologies provide significant mutual benefits: 1. Blockchain technology enhances AI transparency and mitigates deepfake risks. 2. Blockchain also democratizes access to AI development resources. Given the continued convergence of these technologies and the likely expansion within our investment portfolio, we felt compelled to write this letter to support the development of a nascent industry, its creators, and our current and future portfolio companies. After all, imposing broad liability on software companies for issues like unlawful deepfakes is a slippery slope, as software code is safeguarded as free speech under the First Amendment. Just like Gutenberg's printing press, software developers are neutral parties who equip others with the tools to innovate freely. Restricting these tools could stifle innovation, free expression, and technological progress, potentially missing revolutionary ideas and breakthroughs. We hope the FTC will consider our recommendations, focusing enforcement on those who misuse this zeitgeist technology for harmful ends. A big thank you to all the AI folks who spoke to me and voiced their opinions on regulation. Your insights have been invaluable, and I hope this letter helps the furtherance of dialogue between regulators and industry. Full Letter: https://lnkd.in/gGN6hUC7

🤖 Confused by all the legalities of AI?  In this LawVerse blog post, co-authored with Anahita Arora, we explore the multifaceted legal challenges emerging in the rapidly evolving AI sector. From regulation and intellectual property to privacy and competition law, we've outlined a robust framework to help legal professionals navigate this complex landscape. Whether you're an AI developer, a legal practitioner, product manager or just fascinated by the intersection of tech and law, this article offers a 360 perspective on a nascent industry. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/gS_gCsRX #ArtificialIntelligence #LegalTech #AIRegulation #IntellectualProperty #DataPrivacy #AI

Back from TOKEN2049 in Dubai (and surviving some of the worst flooding in UAE recorded history), a few topics really stood out in my conversations 👇 : 1/ RWA is top of mind for everyone in the region. Stablecoins clearly have the best PMF in crypto, which are essentially tokenized digital dollars backed by treasuries, but the region is VERY focused on a much longer tail of asset classes. Everyone from the regulators to the financiers and the entrepreneurs are focused on how to provide broader access and more liquid markets to commodities, forex and compute. 2/ AI (and AIxCrypto) is still top of mind for everyone, but there is more distrust of the topic today than there has been several quarters. Most projects and businesses talking about AI are simply nonsense and people are starting to catch on. The market is about to very saturated with a lot of hyped up but mostly non-working tokens for projects doing some variation of on-chain inference, ML, distributed compute, data provenance, etc. 3/ BTC ecosystem is THE main focus in much of Asia - they just don't care that much about ETH / EVM ecosystem the same way we do in the west. And many of the largest BTC holders in the world are the either currently or formerly based BTC miners in and around China. 4/ There is A LOT of excitement for alternative L1s Monad Labs, Berachain, and TON Foundation - expect to see a lot of these names 5/ SocialFI is coming and investors and builders alike want it to work. Being able to combine social networks and coordination with fun experiences and add financial incentives has the potential to upend traditional social. Businesses like Fantasy Top, FriendTech and Farcaster are top of mind. 6/ Gaming continues to be top of mind for many builders, but it's clear investors interest is waning 7/ Regulation - it's clear to everyone that there is global regulatory arbitrage happening and geographies like the UAE want to capitalize on that. They will continue to court the biggest crypto companies with a clearer regulatory framework and better tax / employment incentives. Eastern Europe trying to do the same to some extent vis a vis the US, and now you see it in HK with the ETH ETFs The US is falling behind, and it risks permanently driving innovation offshore.

If you’re in Dubai next Thursday, come see me try to get to the bottom of how Nick van Eck, Paolo A., Guy Young, and Martin Carrica plan on adapting to the evolving the stablecoin space.

A partnership between the City of Newark, Andrena, and Newark Fiber will result in internet expansion into 14 residential buildings managed by the Newark Housing Authority, a development that will provide low-cost access to over 1,600 families in the city.

Big day for Nick van Eck, Drake Evans and the whole Agora team. Extremely excited to be able to back them on this journey to disrupt the stablecoin market. Stablecoins have proven to be the killer use case of crypto, with over $150bn of stables outstanding and with over $2bn in monthly volumes. In fact, if you annualized March volumes, stablecoins are doing a higher dollar amount of transactions than Visa did in all of 2023. Recently we've seen announcements from Grab, PayPal, Visa and many others that are working to incorporate stablecoins into every day life - but the current market is filled with participants making undesirable tradeoffs to serve different end users. We believe Agora can solve those complex problems and bring a better solution to market. Omar Kanji, CFA and I wrote more about the future of stablecoins and Agora here: https://lnkd.in/gFem3WmW https://lnkd.in/gc5awazD

Beyond excited to back a best in class team (Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and @JosephMcGrady) as they redefine the infrastructure for the global transmission of value on trustless systems. Thrilled as they come out of stealth to re-align incentives and put economics back in the pockets of the ecosystem participants that shape the network effects at play across the $150 billion stablecoin industry. With support from some of the largest financial institutions on the planet, this is only the beginning. The team and I at Dragonfly can't wait for everything ahead, and we eagerly look forward to the brighter future that Agora is building. https://lnkd.in/gM99drkt

Unsurprisingly busy past week in London at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, with one of the most diverse crowds they've ever hosted, including tradfi execs, crypto native entrepreneurs, investors, traders and everyone in between. I came away with a few major takeaways 👇 : 1/ Tokenization is THE major focus for many of large institutions, but it's still unclear where the demand is going to come from. There is not enough on-chain demand to sustain these products, especially in lower interest rate environments, so companies are betting on the market getting MUCH bigger (which the employees of these places are dubious about) or the back office expense savings being large enough that you don't need on-chain demand but instead just closed looped existing systems 2/ Stablecoins are crypto's killer real-world use case, but the tradfi institutions feel hamstrung by the US/EU governments and are at a loss for how to bootstrap their offerings (See PYUSD still sub $200mm and doing a lot of DeFi native BD) 3/ Interop and better UX is needed for mass adoption (no surprise) 4/ Derivatives both on and off chain are going to continue to have outsized growth relative to the market. As the space institutionalizes there is more demand for leverage and complex hedging products - options stands to be a large gainer here 5/ Memecoins and speculation continue to perplex people, but it's still on the top of everyone's mind. Almost every main stage panel talked about memecoins and as long as there are lottery winners in these offerings, they will proliferate