Today in crypto, CoreWeave’s latest financing highlights Wall Street’s shift away from volatile, hardware-backed crypto lending toward cash-flow-driven AI infrastructure, Dubai’s regulator issued new guidance placing token launches into three buckets, tightening disclosure and governance standards for stablecoins, RWAs and other digital assets, Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and a pair of artists accused of copying Yuga’s NFT imagery for their own project have agreed to settle their lawsuit.
CoreWeave’s $8.5B loan shows how AI is replacing crypto mining finance
CoreWeave’s recent $8.5 billion AI-backed loan highlights a major transition in how Wall Street finances digital infrastructure, marking a shift from “MinerFi” to “ComputeFi,” according to TheEnergyMag.
In its latest Miner Weekly newsletter, TheEnergyMag examined CoreWeave’s multibillion-dollar raise from a group of banks and investors, backed by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms. As Bloomberg reported, the financing underscores how companies are finding new ways to fund data center construction and expand GPU capacity.
Although CoreWeave has pivoted away from the digital asset sector toward AI-focused data center compute, the move offers a broader lesson on the shortcomings of Bitcoin (BTC) mining finance.
Historically, lenders funded Bitcoin mining operations using application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, as collateral. However, these models proved fragile due to crypto price volatility and rapid hardware depreciation. When markets declined, both revenues and collateral values fell sharply.
Dubai clarifies token issuance rules for RWAs and stablecoins
Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) published detailed guidance on Thursday that clarifies how token issuers should structure, disclose and distribute virtual assets in the emirate, sharpening rules for stablecoins and real-world asset (RWA) tokens.
The document, which interprets VARA’s existing Virtual Asset Issuance Rulebook rather than creating new law, sets out three distinct issuance pathways and spells out who is responsible for what in each.
Rather than treating all tokens as if they pose the same risks, the framework draws clear lines between Category 1 issuances (including fiat-referenced virtual assets and asset-referenced virtual assets), Category 2 issuances that must be distributed via a VARA-licensed intermediary, and exempt virtual assets with limited functionality.
VARA positions the regime as a purpose-built issuance framework calibrated to virtual assets, contrasting it with approaches that apply general securities or payments law to token launches, including fiat-referenced tokens (stablecoins) and asset-referenced tokens (RWA-style structures). The guidance also clarifies the role of licensed distributors in Category 2 issuances, making them responsible for due diligence and ongoing validation of compliance.
The clarification adds to Dubai’s push to build a bespoke crypto rulebook rather than forcing token launches into generic securities or payments law, and it comes just over a week after VARA expanded its exchange rulebook to cover exchange-traded crypto derivatives.
Yuga Labs settles lawsuit against artists accused of counterfeiting its NFTs
Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and a pair of artists, who are accused of copying and profiting off lookalike NFTs, have agreed to settle their long-running lawsuit.
According to documents filed in the District Court for the Central District of California on Tuesday, Yuga Labs and artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen told the court they had reached a settlement agreement.
As part of the settlement, Ripps and Cahen are permanently banned from using Yuga Lab’s imagery and trademarks and will transfer control of the smart contracts, domains and any remaining NFTs associated with their RR/BAYC project to Yuga Labs within the next 10 days.
The court has also ordered the pair not to “transfer, assign, conceal, or otherwise dispose of any NFTs, domains, accounts, or other assets referenced in this Injunction, or cause any of the foregoing, for the purpose of avoiding or frustrating compliance.”
