Blockchain data firm Nansen today launched a chatbot trained on its database of top traders across more than two dozen public blockchains.

Why it matters: It's a new way to sort out profitable trades with a tool that sifts through an enormous trove of crypto data.

How it works: Nansen will eventually let users turn their money over to bots to let the AI trade for them. It's already testing trading agents internally.

• A trader could give a bot orders to trade on the volatility of a token, telling it to buy, for example, ether (ETH) every time it drops 2%. And then sell when it's up 4%. Then repeat.
• The agent could do this 24/7, and the owner would never even need to look.
• The company aims to release the product by the end of the year but is still testing it for safety, such as making sure bots stick to guidelines and don't trade on hallucinated facts.

Fun fact: Nansen is dropping its prices as this offering goes live. The lowest monthly price is going from $99 to $69 starting today.

• "It's quite the shift," Logan Brinkley, the head of product UX and design at Nansen AI, tells Axios in an exclusive interview. "Basically trying to make everything more accessible."

Catch up quick: Since it launched in 2020, Nansen has tracked the smartest money and the biggest wallets, allowing other traders to use the moves of the best informed investors to inform their own trades.

• "To some degree, you have to be very knowledgeable in the space itself already" to make sense of all that information, Brinkley says.
• The chatbot acts as an expert that can discuss trading ideas and explain its reasoning. "It's a research team in your pocket," Brinkley says.

We tried the system, which the company is calling Nansen AI, live on a call with Brinkley, who told it he had some solana (SOL) and we wanted to grow those holdings of the token over the next six months.

• The chatbot suggested devoting 50% to simply staking SOL, which essentially generates a guaranteed return in the asset of around 6%.
• Then it suggested setting aside 30% for trading the highest volume tokens (with some suggestions) and then 20% for buying new tokens, which the chatbot can help identify over time.
• Finally, it suggested risk management strategies, such as closing out trades at 5% to 10% in losses and taking profits between 20% to 30% in gains.

What they're saying: "In a few years, this agentic experience will feel as natural as mobile banking is today," Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik said in a statement.

Go deeper

"The Howey test is very vague. It's 'you know it when you see it' is kind of the problem. Hopefully, if Congress can provide some guidance there, that would be very helpful,"

— SEC Chair Paul Atkins in Punchbowl News yesterday

Why it matters: The Howey test comes from an old Supreme Court case that determines when a financial instrument falls under SEC authority.

• Law firms catering to crypto clients have made bajillions off the topic ever since the initial coin offering era of 2017, but there's still no real clarity.

State of play: Market structure legislation aims to neaten the issue up.

Oh, Atkins also told Punchbowl News he isn't looking to add running the CFTC to his current set of duties.

Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, is in early talks to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in new funding at a possible $500 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg.

Why it matters: Tether would join OpenAI as the most valuable VC-backed companies in the world.

What they're saying: Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted an acknowledgment of the fundraising effort without commenting directly on price. He previously told Axios Pro that the company "would entertain" outside funding.

For context: Circle, a rival stablecoin issuer which can't love Tether's expected return to the U.S. market, has around a $33 billion market cap.

The bottom line: "Tether has made a fortune by parking the reserves that back its token in cash-like assets including U.S. Treasuries, and earning interest. It booked $4.9 billion in profit during the second quarter, according to a company blog post in July. Ardoino recently claimed Tether has a 99% profit margin. The figures Tether cites are not subject to the same reporting standards as those disclosed by publicly traded companies," Ryan Weeks and Todd Gillespie write in Bloomberg.

🔦 The White House is reportedly looking for a new nominee to take over at the CFTC. (Semafor)

💣 A ransomware group seeks $3.4 million in bitcoin for stolen Maryland Department of Transportation data. (Decrypt)

🌎 South American stablecoin micro lender Divine raised $6.6 million. (Axios Pro)

☁️ Cloudflare is launching NET, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin meant for the "agentic web" — a future where AI agents make business decisions and execute online tasks. (Cloudflare)