That's a wrap on Digital Asset Conference in São Paulo 🇧🇷 Thank you @MercadoBitcoin for one of the strongest institutional gatherings in Brazil this year. Real decision-makers on the floor across banking, asset management, and marketplaces, both crypto-native and TradFi. And thank you @FireblocksHQ, @solana, @21shares, & our guests for a great evening. A packed room and great conversations to close out the week.

>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save lives >numbers look good >feel powerful >couple years later >someone asks an innocent question >why only count people alive today >huh >future people matter too >obviously >my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet >reasonable.jpg >keep following logic >what about their grandchildren >also yes >what about people in 500 years >sure >5000 years >why not >500 million years >starting to get weird but morality is morality >open calculator >humanity could survive for an astronomically long time >could colonize galaxy >could have trillions upon trillions of descendants >maybe digital people too >maybe simulated civilizations >maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds >calculator starts smoking >realize currently living humans are rounding error >8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta >future contains potentially 10^something people >can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets >new moral priority unlocked >protect the long-term future >stop thinking in units of "people helped" >start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved" >malaria? >terrible >but only kills existing humans >AI extinction could delete the entire light cone >nuclear war could permanently derail civilization >bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years >someone invents wrong constitution in 2140 >quadrillions suffer >better fund governance workshop now >friend says maybe we should improve hospitals >explain opportunity cost >friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people >explain scope sensitivity >friend stops inviting me to dinner >need to decide what to fund >easy >expected value >suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction >sounds tiny >but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives >multiply >mother of god >$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies >charity evaluation complete >someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from >expert judgement >which expert >us >how calibrated >extremely thoughtfully >reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative >still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude >epistemic robustness achieved >someone says maybe project doesn't work >assign 20% chance >still astronomical >maybe project makes problem worse >assign 5% chance >still astronomical >why 5 >because 30 felt pessimistic >publish 46-page report >contains seventeen sensitivity analyses >every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign >critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities >yes >that's literally why it's important >critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical >make probability smaller >critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong >make probability smaller again >critic begins rubbing temples >discover AI safety >perfect longtermist cause >AI might kill everyone >or create utopia >or seize galaxy >or tile universe with paperclips >or create billions of conscious software minds >finally a problem with numbers big enough for me >start AI safety nonprofit >mission: prevent dangerous AI >hire smartest people available >smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI >interesting >we must understand capabilities to understand safety >we must scale models to study alignment >we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first >we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong >we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous >outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies >complicated field >company releases stronger model >very concerned >company begins training even stronger model >extremely concerned >company raises $14 billion >concern reaches unprecedented levels >need to influence government >future is at stake >normal democratic process too slow >politicians don't understand exponential curves >public doesn't understand x-risk >experts must guide them >who counts as expert >people who understand x-risk >who understands x-risk >our friends >someone objects that this seems politically convenient >explain we're representing future generations >future generations unavailable for comment >develop concept of value lock-in >terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever >therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in >whose values >let's circle back >begin with impartial morality >end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want >beautiful arc >meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things >voting wrong >having parochial attachments >loving family more than strangers >caring about local community >getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible >evolutionary biases everywhere >explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted >except intuition that future digital people count >and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad >and intuition that our probability estimates are sane >and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future >those intuitions survived peer review >someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter >inefficient >could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher >think of all the simulated people you just killed >okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly >PR team says "future generations deserve a voice" >much better >journalist asks what longtermism means >say "future people matter" >everyone agrees >great >journalist asks what follows from that >well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures >journalist raises eyebrow >return to "future people matter" >motte has entered the chat >critic: of course future people matter >me: glad we agree >critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them >me: why do you hate our grandchildren >eventually notice uncomfortable implication >if future value dominates everything >then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future >education matters because future institutions >health matters because future productivity >democracy matters because future trajectory >human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy >see starving child >feel compassion >check spreadsheet >child's direct welfare contribution negligible >but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality >compassion restored >tell myself this is impartial altruism >one day assistant asks obvious question >"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?" >silence >open spreadsheet >increase column width >add confidence interval >assistant asks again >"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?" >stare into cosmic light cone >10^50 people staring back >none of them exist >none of them can tell me >none of them can falsify my assumptions >realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me

The best founders in the world like @elonmusk or @tobi “go ultra-hardcore on deletion and simplification.” Luca Ferrari says Bending Spoons employs this idea of “Relentless Simplification” across their businesses: “Humans have a tendency to add complexity and do things that destroy value.” “If you leave an organization, almost any environment unattended, and you don't provide guidance in this regard, it will tend to become more complicated. People will add parts. It could be expanding a team or adding a step to a process, or adding an entire new process. If it's a product, adding a feature to the product. New rules. It applies to almost any human endeavor.” “People tend to add pieces, they very rarely remove pieces.” “If you don't make a conscious effort to achieve simplicity, and avoid this increasing value-destroying complexity, that's how we got to our modern society with all the bureaucracy and complicated regulation.” “We have this principle whereby we ask everyone who works here, every time someone is suggesting that we should be adding complexity, the burden of proof is on those making that suggestion. The people who support the thesis that we shouldn't be adding complexity don't need to prove it. They just have to raise a flag and say, ‘I don't think we should.’ The burden of proof is on those who want to add complexity.” “The other part of relentless simplification is that we want people to be on the lookout for existing complexity and suggest that we should remove it.”

Institutions moving real assets onto @CantonNetwork are learning fast: the network doesn't hold a backup copy of your validator's ledger the way public chains do. Figment builds full disaster recovery testing into how we run Canton validators, not just uptime monitoring. Read more below 👇 figment.io/insights/why-disa…

Arc Mainnet is live. Arc launches as the Economic OS for the internet: an open platform for global markets, real-time value movement, tokenized assets, and agentic economic activity. Arc is more than a blockchain. It launches as a full-stack financial platform with assets, applications, interoperability, developer infrastructure, and Circle platform services live from day one. Arc delivers USDC as native gas, deterministic sub-second finality, EVM compatibility, and institutional validators. It integrates with Arc Studio, App Kits, Arc Portal, Circle Agent Stack, CCTP, Gateway, CPN, and StableFX. A complete economic platform at genesis. Arc launches with infrastructure for: → Agentic economic workflows → Lending and borrowing → Trading and liquidity → Onchain FX → Payments and settlement → Tokenized assets → Exchanges, wallets, custody, compliance, data, and developer tooling 190+ institutional and ecosystem builders are building across Arc.

Arc’s public mainnet launch is live. Figment has run as a testnet validator since March and is a validator on @arc mainnet, now offering Managed Validator Services for institutions. More: businesswire.com/news/home/2…

Today, @BlockchainAssn joins @Crypto_Council and @DigitalChamber in respectfully urging every Senator to vote YES on Clarity. Our joint statement follows:

Stablecoin Staking Yield on OpenTrade now supports USDT alongside USDC, a strategy built on @Solana staking rewards, designed to limit direct exposure to SOL's price. Built by @OpenTrade_io, powered by @Figment_io, learn more below 👇

Josh Faier, Director of Staking Risk & Reporting Products at @figment_io, is joining us at Solana Summit Canada. @FaierPlay is making staking more transparent, measurable, and ready for institutions. Sept 23–24, Toronto, St. Lawrence Market North.

Nick Yushkevich, Head of Solana at @Figment_io, is joining us at Solana Summit Canada. Nick is shaping how staking evolves on Solana, from validator performance to staking economics and infrastructure. Sept 23–24, Toronto, St. Lawrence Market North.

Figment is heading to European Blockchain Convention 🇪🇸 Click the link below to book a meeting 👇 🔗 figment.io/meet-with-us-at-e…

On-chain finance is moving from experiment to infrastructure. 📺🧵⬇️ At the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, leaders from @Figment_io, @Ondo, @centrifuge, @DiamondLakeMinI & @AshurstPerkins discussed the rapid growth of tokenized RWAs, institutional adoption, programmable assets, tokenized equities and what comes next. Speakers: @lorientree, @JohnHoffman2038, @itsbhaji and @brianjesposito Moderator: @SHodyEsq

Figment has been selected as the staking provider for @bitbank_inc, one of Japan's longest-running digital asset exchanges. 🇯🇵 Read more: figment.io/insights/figment-…

Figment is a genesis validator on @arc, @circle's new Layer 1 built for institutional settlement in USDC. Arc launches in Proof-of-Authority and is designed to transition to Proof-of-Stake in a later phase, with validator rewards evolving from transaction fees to staking rewards. We break down what this means for institutions evaluating Arc 👇 figment.io/insights/arc/?utm…

Solana approved a change that puts priority fee sharing onchain, protocol-enforced, instead of an offchain agreement between validators and delegators. @DavidRJLiang1 breaks down what SIMD-123 will mean for institutional @solana stakers, learn more 👇 figment.io/insights/simd-123…

“No way you wrote a 5 page essay without AI” Buddy, we wrote them without even reading the book.

1/ We’re excited to announce the close of @ethereuminsti's initial ecosystem funding round and supporter coalition, with broad participation and support from individuals and entities focused on driving institutional adoption of @ethereum. Our ecosystem funding round is anchored by @BitMNR, @Sharplink, Ethereum co‑founders @ethereumJoseph , and @MihaiAlisie, alongside a larger group of individuals and crypto‑native institutions.

Institutional demand for staking was never the question. The wrapper was. @MorganStanley selected Figment as a staking provider for both the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and Solana Trust (MSOL) — staking live from day one on NYSE Arca. Read more: businesswire.com/news/home/2…

For the second year in a row, @CNBC has named Figment one of the World's Top Fintech Companies. From staking platform to critical financial infrastructure, we build the validator operations for stablecoins, tokenized assets, and Proof-of-Stake networks at scale — including intelligence and oversight reporting and reconciliation products. Proud to be the leader in this space. Read more: cnbc.com/worlds-top-fintech-…

Staking has moved from a crypto-native validator activity to a mainstream product generating real revenue. @UpholdInc, @eToro, @FireblocksHQ, and Figment broke down what running it at scale actually looks like. Read more: figment.io/insights/how-lead…