• 🏛 Pennsylvania wants to ban public officials from holding crypto (felony if they don’t sell).

• YZY launched, soared, and dumped—proving hype can’t save a broken tokenomics plan.

• 🏗 Hong Kong’s Ming Shing to buy 4,250 BTC ($483M), becoming the city’s top BTC treasury.

• 🚀 BitMine crosses 1M ETH milestone, aiming to hold 5% of total supply.

• 🤖 Vitalik warns against “too agentic” AI—humans should steer, not AI personalities.

• 🏦 BlackRock Buys $231M in Ethereum

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania just dropped House Bill 1812, which would ban public officials (and even their families) from owning Bitcoin, altcoins, NFTs, or stablecoins. 🚫
Non-compliance? That’s a felony, with jail time and fines up to $50K. Officials would get two months to sell off their bags and face a one-year ban even after leaving office.
It’s early days, but this move mirrors rising federal chatter around political profiteering from crypto—especially with Trump cozying up to Bitcoin circles.

Kanye West (Ye) launched YZY Money (YZY) on Solana, instantly rocketing to a $3B market cap before crashing over 61% within hours. Despite bold promises of Ye Pay and YZY Card, concerns over token distribution (70% held by Ye) and insider trading sparked fears of manipulation and a possible rug pull. Trading volume has since plunged 74%, leaving retail investors rekt. The hype boosted Solana briefly, but YZY now ranks #562 on CoinGecko. This celebrity-backed token shows both the power—and risks—of crypto hype cycles.

A construction firm buying Bitcoin? Yep. Hong Kong’s Ming Shing just announced plans to scoop up 4,250 BTC ($483M) using convertible notes and warrants—making it the city’s biggest Bitcoin treasury holder, leapfrogging Boyaa Interactive.
This comes after earlier buys of 500 BTC in Jan and 333 BTC in Feb & Mar. Clearly, they’re stacking hard.
Their stock pumped to $2.15 before cooling at $1.65, but the signal is loud: Hong Kong wants to be a global digital asset hub.

Biggest ETH headline of the week: BitMine (BMNR) officially crossed the 1M ETH milestone—now holding 1.2M ETH. That’s part of their bold goal to own 5% of Ethereum’s total supply.
Their latest flex? A single 317K ETH buy. Insane. 🤯
Meanwhile, competitor SharpLink Gaming added 79.6K ETH, but BitMine’s aggressive strategy is way ahead. Following the news, BMNR stock shot up to $64.35, its one-month high. Institutions are clearly locking ETH as a store of value, staking play, and a DeFi yield generator.

vitalik.eth

@VitalikButerin

Echoing something @karpathy recently said, it does frustrate me how a lot of AI development is trying to be as "agentic" as possible, when actually creating *more* paths for human input both creates a better output (now for quite a while going forward) and is better for safety.

1,970

10:42 AM • Aug 11, 2025

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin dropped some wisdom on AI. While everyone’s hyping “agentic AI” (models with personalities), Vitalik says that’s not it. Instead, he argues AI should focus on accuracy + human feedback, not gimmicky personalities.
He likens AI to an engine where humans are the steering wheel—steering output through collaboration, DAOs, and swarms of models.
Meanwhile, the AI agent token market rebounded to $6.45B, with Ethereum (27%) and Base (30%) leading the pack, ahead of Solana’s 19%.

BlackRock has purchased 53,893 ETH worth $231.2M, boosting its crypto footprint. This follows its iShares ETFs’ $1B Bitcoin & Ethereum buy during a recent dip. With its Ethereum ETF already at $10B AUM, BlackRock is cementing ETH as an institutional asset. The move comes after Ethereum’s 43% rally in May, driven by AI adoption and L2 growth. Analysts say ETH could push toward $5K pending SEC approvals on ETF structures and staking. BlackRock’s bold bet signals growing Wall Street confidence in Ethereum.

Alright, that’s a wrap for this week's edition of The Web3 Watch! 🚀
See you all next week!