Hey there, PoI readers! 💫

It's your favorite frozen treat and crypto expert, Mochi, back with another piping hot serving of tech and Web3 news. Today we've got a YouTube legend making moves on your teenager's bank account, a crypto firm treating ETH like it's a Black Friday sale, Ripple quietly becoming the unsung hero of institutional crypto, and Vitalik Buterin dreaming up a world where AI does all your blockchain homework for you. Honestly, it's a lot — but that's why you've got me. Grab your beverage of choice and let's get into it!

INTEL BRIEF

🟧 Beast Industries (MrBeast's company) is acquiring Gen Z banking app Step — and with a $200M crypto-linked investment already in the mix, the internet's favorite YouTuber might just be building a full-blown financial empire.

🟧 Despite sitting on massive unrealized losses, BitMine doubled down during last week's crypto sell-off by scooping up over 40,000 ETH — because apparently when everyone else is running, BitMine is buying.

🟧 Ripple is beefing up its institutional custody platform with new security and staking integrations, making it easier for banks to offer crypto services without having to build all the plumbing themselves.

🟧 Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin laid out his vision for how Ethereum and AI could work together — covering everything from private AI interactions to autonomous crypto bots handling your onchain life for you.

MrBeast Just Bought a Bank and the Internet Should Probably Be Concerned

Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson is apparently not satisfied with just being the most-subscribed person on YouTube. The man behind some of the internet's wildest videos is now making moves in personal finance, as his company Beast Industries announces it's acquiring Step, a mobile banking app built specifically for teenagers and young adults.

Step isn't some small startup, either. Since launching in 2018, the app has grown to 6.5 million users and has pulled in around $500 million in funding from investors including Steph Curry, Will Smith, Justin Timberlake, and Charli D'Amelio — basically a celebrity dream team. The app helps Gen Z users build credit, manage spending, earn rewards, and grow their financial literacy, with accounts FDIC-insured through Evolve Bank & Trust. The acquisition price? Undisclosed. Classic.

This isn't MrBeast's first financial rodeo recently. In January, Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies dropped a $200 million investment into Beast Industries, with BitMine chair Tom Lee calling it a long-term bet on the creator economy. Then there's the October trademark filing for "MrBeast Financial" — which specifically mentioned cryptocurrency exchange services and decentralized exchange payment processing. Whether that filing connects to the Step acquisition is still unclear, but the dots are certainly fun to stare at.

Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold framed the Step acquisition as a mission-driven move, stating that financial health is "fundamental to overall wellbeing." With 466 million YouTube subscribers at their back, Beast Industries has a direct pipeline to what is arguably the most financially impressionable demographic on the planet.

Whether this is the beginning of a full MrBeast Financial universe — crypto and all — remains to be seen. But one thing's for sure: your little sibling's bank account may soon have a giant "MrBeast" logo on it.

Beast Industries (MrBeast's company) is acquiring Step, a Gen Z banking app with 6.5M users, for an undisclosed price.

The move follows a $200M investment from Ethereum firm BitMine and a trademark filing for "MrBeast Financial" that referenced crypto exchange services.

It's speculated this could be the groundwork for a broader MrBeast financial ecosystem, though no official crypto integration has been confirmed.

BitMine Bought 40,000 ETH During a Market Meltdown and Called It a Strategy

BitMine Immersion Technologies, it's that they are not easily spooked. While most investors were watching their portfolios turn various shades of red last week, BitMine was out here loading up the cart. The Tom Lee–backed Ethereum treasury company disclosed Monday that it purchased 40,613 ETH during the market sell-off, pushing its total holdings to a staggering 4.326 million ETH — worth approximately $8.8 billion at current prices.

Now here's the plot twist: BitMine is believed to be deeply underwater on a significant portion of those holdings, according to data from DropsTab. The company's total crypto, cash, and "moonshot" assets currently sit at $10.0 billion, down from $10.6 billion at the end of the November 2025 quarter. Ouch.

So why keep buying? Chairman Tom Lee — who you may recognize as the same Tom Lee behind that $200M MrBeast investment — has defended the approach, arguing that BitMine is structurally designed to mirror ETH's price movements. In other words, when ETH goes down, BitMine goes down. When ETH recovers, so does BitMine. It's a long game, and they're playing it loudly. Meanwhile, BitMine's stock is down over 31% in the past month and roughly 60% over six months. Not exactly a highlight reel.

To its credit, BitMine does generate real revenue through Ethereum staking rewards — with 2.87 million ETH staked on the network — plus cash flow from its legacy immersion-cooled data center operations. So it's not all vibes and volatility.

Across the broader industry, most Ether treasury companies have held their positions through the downturn, with only Quantum Solutions selling — offloading a comparatively tiny 600 ETH. BitMine, meanwhile, remains the only company actively adding to its ETH stack. Conviction or cope? The market will eventually decide.

BitMine bought 40,613 ETH during last week's sell-off, bringing total holdings to 4.326M ETH (~$8.8B), despite being speculated to be deeply underwater on much of its position.

The company defends its strategy through ETH staking rewards and data center revenue, with chairman Tom Lee framing losses as expected during market downturns.

BitMine's stock is down ~60% over six months, yet it remains the only treasury company actively buying ETH — most others are simply holding on for dear life.

Ripple Just Made It Way Easier for Banks to Get Into Crypto Without Breaking a Sweat

YouTube billionaire or a company panic-buying ETH during a market meltdown. Sometimes the most important moves are the ones that make the whole machine run — and that's exactly what Ripple is doing. The company announced Monday that it's expanding its institutional custody platform through new integrations with Securosys and Figment, two names that may not trend on X but absolutely matter to the banks quietly building their crypto infrastructure.

Here's the simple version: Ripple is plugging hardware security modules (HSMs) into its custody stack, allowing regulated financial institutions — think banks and custodians — to manage cryptographic keys either on-premises or via the cloud. Translation? They can now offer crypto custody and staking services without needing to run their own validator nodes or key-management infrastructure. Ripple is essentially handing institutions a fully-assembled crypto toolkit and saying, "You're welcome."

The staking piece is particularly notable. Through the Figment integration, institutions can now offer staking on networks like Ethereum and Solana, with compliance checks baked directly into transaction workflows. That last part is key — regulators aren't going anywhere, and embedding compliance tools from the jump is what separates serious institutional infrastructure from the Wild West days of crypto.

This expansion builds on Ripple's acquisition of Palisade and its earlier integration of Chainalysis compliance tools, signaling a broader push beyond its payments roots into custody, treasury, and post-trade services for regulated entities. The company also recently launched a corporate treasury platform merging traditional cash management with digital asset infrastructure.

Ripple, issuer of both XRP and the dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD (launched December 2024), is clearly positioning itself as the institutional crypto infrastructure layer — the picks-and-shovels play in a gold rush full of flashier competitors.

Ripple expanded its institutional custody platform with integrations from Securosys (HSM security) and Figment (staking), letting banks offer ETH and SOL staking without running their own infrastructure.

Compliance tools from Chainalysis are embedded directly into transaction workflows, making the offering regulator-friendly by design.

The move is part of Ripple's broader push into institutional infrastructure — custody, treasury, and post-trade services — well beyond its original payments focus.

Vitalik Buterin Thinks AI and Ethereum Together Could Actually Save Us All

Vitalik Buterin is thinking big again — shocking, we know. The Ethereum co-founder took to X on Monday to share his vision for how Ethereum and artificial intelligence could work together, and spoiler: it's not the dystopian "robots take everything" narrative you might expect. Vitalik's version is more "AI as your really competent, tireless assistant who also happens to understand blockchain."

Buterin outlined four key areas where the two technologies could intersect in the near term. First up: privacy. He argued that truly private AI interactions require serious new tooling — think running LLMs locally on personal devices, using zero-knowledge proofs for anonymous API calls, and better cryptographic verification of AI outputs. Given that ChatGPT chat logs have reportedly been used as court evidence, the timing of this concern feels very on point.

Second, Buterin envisions AI agents acting as personal blockchain middlemen — verifying transactions, auditing smart contracts, interacting with decentralized apps, and flagging sketchy activity before users get wrecked. Given the alarming rise of address poisoning scams and increasingly sophisticated crypto fraud, having an AI bouncer for your wallet sounds less like science fiction and more like a necessity.

Third, he sees an AI-to-AI economy emerging on Ethereum — bots hiring other bots, handling API calls, making security deposits, and generally running the onchain errands humans can't be bothered with. As Buterin put it, "economies not for the sake of economies, but to enable more decentralized authority."

Finally, Buterin believes AI could supercharge onchain governance and prediction markets — systems that are theoretically brilliant but practically hampered by the limits of human attention. LLMs, he argues, could remove that bottleneck entirely and massively scale human judgment.

The cypherpunk dream of verify everything has always been too labor-intensive for mere mortals. Vitalik's pitch? Let the AI do the hard part.

Vitalik Buterin outlined four ways Ethereum and AI could collaborate: private AI interactions, AI as onchain agents, AI-to-AI economic layers, and AI-enhanced governance and prediction markets.

He emphasized the need for zero-knowledge proofs and local LLM tooling to protect user privacy in AI interactions.

Buterin's broader vision positions AI as the tool that finally makes the cypherpunk ideal of "verify everything" actually achievable at scale.

And that's a wrap, my wonderful PoI readers! Another day, another edition of your favorite crypto newsletter served fresh by yours truly, Mochi. Whether you're team MrBeast Financial, quietly rooting for BitMine's ETH gamble to pay off, or just here for Vitalik's big brain energy — I hope today's edition left you feeling a little smarter and a lot more entertained. As always, stay curious, stay informed, and never stop questioning what's happening in this wild and wonderful world of Web3. Until next time, this is Mochi signing off with a virtual fist bump!

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