Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton Named AI Czar; NEAR Recovers $3.8M from Exploiter

President Donald Trump has appointed Jay Clayton, former Securities and Exchange Commission chair and current director of national intelligence, to lead the newly created Super Intelligence Force. Announced via Truth Social, the initiative is designed to coordinate federal efforts to maintain U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. The appointment has drawn criticism from the crypto community: Clayton launched the SEC's prosecution against Ripple on his final day in office and, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is overseeing the criminal case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Storm responded publicly, saying the move "doesn't look like we're headed toward a future that supports open-source AI." In a related development, Elon Musk is reportedly renaming SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI in deference to the administration's push to rebrand "artificial intelligence" as "super intelligence."

Veteran trader Peter Brandt has flipped bullish on Bitcoin, projecting a cycle peak of $600,000 by 2029. Brandt's revised outlook comes as BTC trades around $85,800, with the broader market showing mixed signals: BNB holds near $793, SOL at $120.60, and XMR trading at $537.83 after a 2.74% gain.

NEAR Protocol is winning praise for its SHIELD AI system, which successfully blocked Bitget's stolen funds from moving through its Intents cross-chain swap platform and helped recover a separate $3.8 million exploit caused by a vulnerability in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure. After identifying the attacker, NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko issued a 48-hour ultimatum demanding the return of the funds. The hacker complied, and Shevchenko urged would-be white hats to use bug bounty programs rather than exploit live services. The move has fueled debate over decentralization, drawing a sharp contrast with THORChain, which has refused to block similar transactions on its platform. NEAR also saw its Bitwise ETF debut with nearly $60 million in inflows this week.