Fed’s December Meeting: Potential Rate Cut Raises Questions

The post Kalshi debuts ecosystem hub with Solana and Base appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. Kalshi, the US-regulated prediction market exchange, rolled out a new program on Wednesday called KalshiEco Hub. The initiative, developed in partnership with Solana and Coinbase-backed Base, is designed to attract builders, traders, and content creators to a growing ecosystem around prediction markets. By combining its regulatory footing with crypto-native infrastructure, Kalshi said it is aiming to become a bridge between traditional finance and onchain innovation. The hub offers grants, technical assistance, and marketing support to selected projects. Kalshi also announced that it will support native deposits of Solana’s SOL token and USDC stablecoin, making it easier for users already active in crypto to participate directly. Early collaborators include Kalshinomics, a dashboard for market analytics, and Verso, which is building professional-grade tools for market discovery and execution. Other partners, such as Caddy, are exploring ways to expand retail-facing trading experiences. Kalshi’s move to embrace blockchain partnerships comes at a time when prediction markets are drawing fresh attention for their ability to capture sentiment around elections, economic policy, and cultural events. Competitor Polymarket recently acquired QCEX — a derivatives exchange with a CFTC license — to pave its way back into US operations under regulatory compliance. At the same time, platforms like PredictIt continue to push for a clearer regulatory footing. The legal terrain remains complex, with some states issuing cease-and-desist orders over whether these event contracts count as gambling, not finance. This is a developing story. This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor Jeffrey Albus before publication. Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters: Source: https://blockworks.co/news/kalshi-ecosystem-hub-solana-base

The post U.S. AI leaders form foundation to compete with China appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. A group of leading U.S. artificial intelligence firms has formed a new foundation to establish open standards for “agentic” AI. The founding members, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block, have pooled their proprietary agent- and AI-related technologies into a new open-source project called the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. This development follows tensions in the global race for dominance in artificial intelligence, leading U.S. AI firms and policymakers to unite around a new push to preserve American primacy. Open standards like MCP drive innovation and cross-platform collaboration Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht noted that open standards and protocols, such as MCP, are critical for establishing an evolving developer ecosystem for building agents. He added, “They ensure anyone can build agents across platforms without the fear of vendor lock-in.” American companies face a dilemma because they are seeking continuous income from closed APIs, even as they are falling behind in fundamental AI development, risking long-term irrelevance to China. And that means American companies must standardize their approach for MCP and agentic AI, allowing them to focus on building better models rather than being locked into an ecosystem. The foundation establishes both a practical partnership and a milestone for community open-sourcing, with adversaries uniting around a single goal of standardization rather than fragmentation. It also makes open-source development easier and more accessible for users worldwide, including those in China. Anthropic donated its Model Context Protocol (MCP), a library that allows AIs to utilize tools creatively outside API calls, to the Linux Foundation. Since its introduction a year ago, MCP has gained traction, with over 10,000 active servers, best-in-class support from platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and VS Code, as well as 97 million monthly SDK downloads. “Open-source software is key to creating a world with secure and innovative AI tools for…