Google vs. Amazon Crypto Showdown, Anthropic Tightens Grip On Finance & More

Welcome back!

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

• Google vs. Amazon: The battle for AI agents goes onchain.

• Finance Agents: Anthropic pushes further into TradFi & crypto.

• Cognition Markets: The compute economy is being financialised.

The DRAM ETF has surged as investors race to gain exposure to the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence. It has also become one of the hottest onchain trades, with growing activity flowing through platforms such as Phantom.

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

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Cognition Markets

Larry Fink recently suggested that the global demand for computing power will inevitably give rise to a dedicated futures market.

He's right.

The global economy is being rewired around data centres, GPUs, and electricity contracts. Every company that matters in 2030 will be, in some meaningful way, a compute company.

Yet compute pricing largely remains opaque, volatile, and unhedgeable. That’s remarkable. We have a deeper price discovery mechanism for pork bellies than for the substrate of modern civilisation.

Airlines hedge jet fuel. Farmers hedge wheat. Bakeries hedge flour. The defining industry of our lifetime cannot be left to spot markets and prayer. A standardised futures contract takes compute, today an unpredictable expense, and turns it into something a CFO can actually plan around. That alone unlocks billions in capex currently sitting in a holding pattern, waiting for someone to build the plumbing.

But hedgers alone don't make a market. Hedgers make a utility. You need speculators to make a market, and that's where perpetual futures come in. 

A perpetual future never expires and a funding rate keeps it tethered to spot. The format is unbeatable for expressing a view. More importantly, the perpetual futures price for compute could become the live, global thermometer for the cost of intelligence. A reference rate upon which loans, valuations, and corporate strategy decisions are ultimately anchored.

Following the success of oil perpetual futures, compute perpetual futures appear to be the natural next frontier. The window to define the contract, the oracle, and the venue is currently wide open. It will not stay open long, though, and the platform that wins this category wins the decade.

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Private Liquidity: State Street and Galaxy have launched the State Street Galaxy Onchain Liquidity Sweep Fund (SWEEP) on Solana, a tokenised private liquidity vehicle aimed at round-the-clock onchain cash management through stablecoins. 

Stablecoin Reserves: JPMorgan Asset Management and Anchorage Digital are preparing a tokenised instrument intended to underpin cashless stablecoin reserves on Solana. Both firms are positioning the product for institutional treasury operations.

Finance Agents: Anthropic has released ten ready-to-run agent templates targeting labour-intensive workflows in financial services. The company is simultaneously broadening its partner ecosystem with additional connectors. Among the new integrations is Financial Modeling Prep, which supplies real-time quotes, fundamentals, statements, filings, and transcripts across equities, ETFs, crypto, foreign exchange, and commodities.

AI Acceleration: The Solana Foundation, in collaboration with Google Cloud, has unveiled Pay.sh. The platform addresses a structural gap whereby leading APIs still require human-managed accounts, credentials, KYC checks, and billing relationships. Pay.sh is pitched as a bridge enabling AI agents to access paid services directly via a pay-as-you-go system.

Agentic Economy: Following the same pattern, Amazon Web Services has partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to enable AI agents to settle transactions in stablecoins via its Bedrock AgentCore Payments product.

Prediction Markets: Elastics has raised $2mn in pre-seed funding to develop AI agents for prediction markets. The platform enables users to build and deploy AI agents that continuously scan, analyse, and trade across venues. 

Crypto Trading: Morgan Stanley has rolled out an active pilot for spot cryptocurrency trading on its E*TRADE platform, charging a flat transaction fee of 50 basis points that undercuts rates at competing exchanges. The initial rollout covers Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. The bank intends to extend the service to all 8.6mn E*TRADE clients later this year.

Government Bonds: Japan's financial sector is preparing to introduce a blockchain-based system for round-the-clock trading of Japanese government bonds as early as 2026. The initiative is being led by major banks and securities firms. Backers say the system will lower transaction costs, accelerate settlement, and improve capital efficiency in the JGB market.

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.}