Hey there, PoI readers!

It's your favorite crypto connoisseur, Mochi, back with another serving of tantalizing tech and web3 news. From Melania's memecoin mess and the ECB's digital euro dream team to Anthropic's infrastructure power-up and the SEC's great crypto ETF silence, we've got a lot to unpack. So, buckle up and get ready for a wild ride through regulatory chaos, AI ambitions, and tokens that probably shouldn't exist!

INTEL BRIEF

🟧 Melania Trump returned to promote her MELANIA memecoin after 10 months of silence with an AI-generated video, while the token sits at a 98% loss and faces allegations of $10 million in unexplained team wallet sales.

🟧 The European Central Bank announced partnerships with seven tech companies to build components for a potential digital euro CBDC, eyeing a possible 2029 launch while EU officials remain cautious about stablecoin risks.

🟧 Anthropic hired former Stripe CTO Rahul Patil as its new Chief Technical Officer to oversee infrastructure and engineering, while co-founder Sam McCandlish transitions to Chief Architect amid intense AI infrastructure competition.

🟧 The SEC missed its decision deadline for Canary Capital's spot Litecoin ETF amid a government shutdown and new generic listing standards, leaving the crypto ETF approval process in uncertain limbo.

Melania Trump Returns to Promote Her Crashing Memecoin After 10 Months of Silence

After 10 months of radio silence, US First Lady Melania Trump made a grand reappearance to shill her MELANIA memecoin, and boy, did she bring the future with her... literally. In an AI-generated video posted to X (because nothing says "authentic" like synthetic content), she touted her Solana-based token as the gateway "into the future." Spoiler alert: that future is looking pretty bleak.

While Melania's digital doppelgänger was hyping up the token, blockchain sleuths weren't exactly throwing a welcome-back party. Bubblemaps, a blockchain data platform, immediately called out the elephant—or should we say, the $10 million—in the room. Back on April 7th, the MELANIA team allegedly moved $30 million worth of community funds that were "quietly sold" with zero explanation.

Leading up to April 28th, team wallets reportedly sold another $1.5 million in tokens, perfectly timed after a 21% price pump. Lookonchain identified this as dollar-cost averaging (DCA)—a strategy that's totally legit when you're doing it, but feels a bit sus when the team behind your investment is cashing out while you're holding bags.

Absolutely brutal. MELANIA is currently trading at $0.18—down 98% from its all-time high of $13.73 and over 90% from launch. One of the token's co-creators, Hayden Davis, has a track record that includes the Libra token disaster (where insiders allegedly cashed out $107 million) and a Wolf of Wall Street-themed memecoin that crashed 99% in two days. Pattern much?

Cointelegraph reached out for comment, but as of now, the Trump offices are believed to be maintaining their silence—probably waiting for another AI video to do the talking.

Melania Trump promoted her MELANIA memecoin after 10 months via an AI video, ignoring $10M+ in alleged team wallet sales

Token has crashed 98% from its $13.73 all-time high to $0.18, with no explanation for $30M in "community funds" sold

Co-creator Hayden Davis has a history of failed memecoins including Libra ($107M insider cashout) and other 99% crash projects

European Central Bank Picks Its Digital Euro Tech Partners for Potential 2029 Launch

The European Central Bank is getting serious about its digital euro plans, and they're not messing around. The ECB just announced it's locked down framework agreements with seven tech companies—plus at least one more mystery player—to build the infrastructure for Europe's potential central bank digital currency (CBDC). Think of it as the Avengers assembling, except instead of fighting Thanos, they're fighting... payment inefficiencies?

Among the chosen ones are Feedzai, an AI-powered fraud detection company (because let's be real, scammers gonna scam), and Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), a security tech heavyweight. These partners will be handling the heavy lifting: fraud and risk management, secure payment information exchange, and the software development backbone for the digital euro. G+D's CEO, Dr. Ralf Wintergerst, confirmed they'll be working with the ECB to finalize planning and timelines for the Digital Euro Service Platform.

The ECB has been flirting with this digital euro idea since 2021 and entered the "preparation phase" in late 2023. But before you start counting your digital coins, hold up—no official launch decision has been made yet. That won't happen until the Digital Euro Regulation gets adopted by EU legislators. That said, an ECB official reportedly hinted that 2029 could be the magic year.

"Alias lookup"—basically, you could send or receive digital euros without needing to know all the nitty-gritty details of someone's Payment Service Provider. And G+D is also building offline payment capabilities, so you can theoretically pay with digital euros even when your Wi-Fi decides to ghost you.

While the ECB is building its digital euro fortress, EU officials are side-eyeing stablecoins with serious suspicion. ECB President Christine Lagarde said back in September that EU lawmakers need to address risks from stablecoins issued jointly by MiCA-covered entities and non-EU companies. The European Systemic Risk Board even passed a non-binding recommendation to ban certain jointly issued stablecoins. This is a stark contrast to the US, where President Trump signed a stablecoin bill into law in July, embracing crypto with open arms.

ECB partners with 7+ tech companies (including Feedzai and Giesecke+Devrient) to build digital euro infrastructure, potentially launching in 2029

Features include AI fraud detection, offline payments, and "alias lookup" for easier transactions without sharing full payment details

EU officials remain skeptical of stablecoins, with recommendations to ban certain types—contrasting sharply with the US's pro-stablecoin regulatory framework

Anthropic Hires Former Stripe CTO as AI Infrastructure Competition Reaches Fever Pitch

Anthropic just went all-in on experience. The company behind Claude announced this week that Rahul Patil, former CTO of Stripe, is stepping into the Chief Technical Officer role. Meanwhile, co-founder Sam McCandlish is shifting gears to become Chief Architect.

Anthropic is restructuring its entire technical group, bringing product-engineering teams into tighter coordination with infrastructure and inference teams. They're getting serious about making sure Claude doesn't crash when everyone's trying to use it at once. As CTO, Patil will be the infrastructure maestro, overseeing compute, infrastructure, inference, and a laundry list of other engineering challenges. Both Patil and McCandlish will report to Anthropic president Daniela Amodei.

Well, the AI infrastructure arms race is getting absolutely bonkers. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg casually announced plans to drop $600 billion on U.S. infrastructure through 2028. OpenAI is matching that energy with massive contracts through Oracle and the Stargate project. Anthropic's infrastructure spending numbers? Less clear, but the pressure to optimize for speed and power consumption is very, very real.

The company's products have been so popular that infrastructure strain became a legit problem. Back in July, Anthropic had to introduce rate limits on Claude Code because power users were apparently running it 24/7 like it was a cryptocurrency mining rig. Now, users are capped at 240-480 hours of Sonnet usage per week and 24-40 hours of Opus 4, depending on how stressed the servers are feeling that day.

Enter Patil, who brings over 20 years of engineering chops to the table. He spent five years at Stripe in technical roles, served as a senior VP for cloud infrastructure at Oracle, and held engineering positions at Amazon and Microsoft.

Daniela Amodei praised Patil's track record in building "dependable infrastructure that businesses need"—corporate speak for "please don't let Claude go down during a demo." Patil, for his part, called joining Anthropic "the most important work I could be doing right now," adding that it feels like "a greater calling and responsibility." No pressure, Rahul. Just the future of enterprise AI on your shoulders!

Rahul Patil (ex-Stripe CTO) joins Anthropic as new CTO to oversee infrastructure, with co-founder Sam McCandlish moving to Chief Architect role

Infrastructure competition is fierce: Meta plans $600B spending through 2028, OpenAI matching via Oracle/Stargate, putting pressure on Anthropic to optimize

Claude's popularity strained infrastructure, leading to July rate limits (240-480 hrs/week Sonnet, 24-40 hrs/week Opus 4) for power users

SEC Goes Radio Silent on Litecoin ETF While Government Shutdown Chaos Ensues

You get the current mess surrounding Canary Capital's spot Litecoin ETF, which was supposed to get a thumbs up or thumbs down from the SEC on Thursday. Spoiler: the SEC said absolutely nothing. Crickets. Radio silence.

The crypto community is understandably scratching its head. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart and FOX News reporter Eleanor Terrett pointed out that the old 19b-4 deadlines—which traditionally dictated when the SEC had to make decisions—might be completely irrelevant now. Why? Because the SEC has been asking applicants to withdraw their 19b-4 filings, leaving just the S-1 registration statements in play. Canary actually withdrew its 19b-4 last week (on September 25th) at the SEC's request, which may have contributed to Thursday's non-decision. Or maybe not.

The federal government shutdown that kicked off Wednesday is throwing another wrench into the gears. Back in August, the SEC released an "Operation Plan" for shutdowns, which straight-up said the agency would "not review and approve applications for registration" during such periods. That includes new financial products, self-regulatory organization rule changes, and registration statement reviews. So is the SEC ignoring Litecoin because of the shutdown, the new listing standards, or both? Your guess is as good as ours.

Despite the shutdown, the SEC claims it's still open—just with a "very limited" number of staff. The EDGAR database (where all the fun regulatory filings live) is still operational, but don't expect much else.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said earlier this week that the SEC's new listing standards have bumped the approval odds for some spot crypto ETFs to 100%. Yes, you read that right—100%. The new standards, operating under Rule 6c-11, are expected to significantly reduce approval timelines from the typical 240 days to something way faster. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has stated that these standards will reduce barriers and give investors more choice in digital asset products.

The stakes are high. The market is already eyeing potential approvals for spot ETFs covering Solana, XRP, Avalanche, Cardano, Chainlink, and Dogecoin—basically the greatest hits album of crypto. If approved, these would join the existing US spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, which have pulled in a jaw-dropping $61.3 billion and $13.4 billion in inflows, respectively, since launching last year.

SEC missed Canary's Litecoin ETF decision deadline amid government shutdown and confusion over new generic listing standards that may render old 19b-4 deadlines irrelevant

Government shutdown limits SEC operations to "very limited" staff, with the agency stating it won't review or approve new registration applications during shutdowns

New listing standards boost approval odds to 100% according to Bloomberg analyst, potentially fast-tracking multiple crypto ETFs (LTC, SOL, XRP, AVAX, ADA, LINK, DOGE)

And that's a wrap, my lovely PoI readers! 🎬 I hope this edition left you feeling informed, entertained, and maybe even a little bit relieved you didn't buy MELANIA at the top (we've all been there... right?). Remember to stay curious, stay informed, and keep your critical thinking caps on tight in this wild world of tech and crypto. Until next time, this is Mochi, signing off with a virtual high-five!

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