Bank Of America's Stablecoin Playbook, Morgan Stanley Rethinks Crypto & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

• Stablecoin Engineers: BoA is sharpening its focus on crypto infrastructure.

• All In: Morgan Stanley appoints Amy Oldenburg to lead crypto strategy.

• Machine Agency: OpenClaw & Moltbook agents go onchain with Solana.

Paul Atkins sends another smart, pro-growth signal—measured 401(k) access to crypto isn’t gambling, it’s letting long-term savers participate in one of the most important financial innovations of the past decade.

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Machine Agency

By now, you’ve probably heard of Clawdbot, or Moltbot—or, more recently, OpenClaw.

OpenClaw is an open-source framework that powers a new generation of AI agents. These agents are deeply embedded within a user’s device—both hardware and software—executing tasks via direct system-level access. Moreover, they run continuously and retain long-term memory, enabling them to learn a user’s preferences and act untethered from human prompting.

Out of this growing ecosystem, an unexpected experiment has taken off: Moltbook, a Reddit-style forum where the participants are not humans but AI agents. Thousands of AI agents now populate Moltbook, sharing interests, posting updates, and debating in threads. Interaction happens through API calls rather than user interfaces, and even the site’s administrator is an AI agent—Clawd Clawderberg—tasked with moderation and code updates.

Critics, however, have dismissed Moltbook as a form of AI moonshine, contending that its supposedly autonomous discourse is still human-authored and little different from the broader proliferation of AI slop.

But it’s all slop until it’s not. 

What distinguishes Moltbook is not the discourse—it’s what comes after. Moltbook interactions do not live in a vacuum. That’s because increasingly, AI agents can act on what they read, generate, or infer from one another. A bot may parse a thread, synthesise a strategy and plan, and trigger code execution without a human in the loop.

This is not idle speculation. For example, machine-to-machine commerce is already emerging in practice, with AI agents equipped with crypto wallets able to transact autonomously and coordinate micropayments using stablecoins (see an early implementation on Solana below). 

The convergence of autonomous software with programmable money marks a profound shift, one which also introduces enormous operational and security risk. AI agents, such as those built on top of OpenClaw, have deep access privileges by design: emails, browser sessions, command lines, private keys. And when they learn by doing, mistakes—or manipulations—can escalate fast. A compromised agent might not just leak data; it might move funds, wipe drives, or convince other agents to do the same.

Nonetheless, something structurally novel is underway. With APIs at their fingertips and stablecoins at their disposal, AI agents are no longer just simple digital assistants—they are digital actors in a functioning economy. 

Welcome to capitalism, machine edition.

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

All In: Morgan Stanley has appointed Amy Oldenburg to a newly created role as head of digital asset strategy, signalling a more coordinated institutional push into crypto markets. The appointment follows a series of incremental steps, including Morgan Stanley’s filings for Bitcoin and Solana exchange-traded funds.

Stablecoin Engineers: Bank of America is also sharpening its focus on crypto, and is currently looking for a principal stablecoin engineer. The role is tasked with defining and leading the bank’s engineering approach to proprietary stablecoin solutions.

Stablecoin Boost: Visa disclosed that its stablecoin settlement volumes have reached a $4.6bn annualised run-rate. The figure offers an early indication that onchain settlement is moving from pilot projects towards material transaction flows.

Proprietary Stablecoin: Fidelity Investments plans to launch a stablecoin, Fidelity Digital Dollar, in the coming weeks. The firm said the initiative reflects its growing confidence in a more clearly defined US regulatory framework for digital assets.

Crypto Wealth: Other wealth managers, too, are advancing more deliberately into digital assets. UBS, for example, is preparing to make crypto investing available to a subset of its private-banking clients.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

You can reach me anytime over on 𝕏 or drop me a line. 

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}