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[ethcc’26 recap] for flare/v, conference cycles are for the execution. this time, we:

— co-organized our private VIP dinner for mercuryo.io, alongside with optimism.io
— established partnership for tangem.com
— run 360° production for portfolio projects
— managed global PR and communications
— produced Tier-1 interviews

grateful to the teams and partners involved!
next stop — Paris.

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[announcement] european tech hub is welcoming us as Official Sponsors for the Blockchain Week.

on April 15–16, flare/v will be in Paris, delivering a keynote speech (by the f. Slava M.) and a global brand-coverage for our portfolio projects. we’re open to connect with bold ideas aiming for a strong public influence, or in need of funding and growth support.

reach out for the tickets at a discount.
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the flare/v team is heading to Paris Blockchain Week as an Official Sponsor.

we are open to connecting with bold ideas that are seeking investment, organic media reach, strategic event activations, ambassador programs with tier-1 partners, access to high-value accelerators, or visibility among the industry’s most influential players.

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[keynote speech] our founder Slava Malchenko is taking the stage at Paris Blockchain Week tomorrow.

April 16th | 5:40 PM | Mona Lisa Stage

the talk is called: «Narrative Arbitrage: How the Same People Sold You P2E, GambleFi, and Now AI» -- on how capital follows narratives in Web3, and why most of what gets funded never becomes a real business.

if you're at the conference, come find us.
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flare/v was an official sponsor of Paris Blockchain Week 2026 -- alongside Ripple, Circle, Bybit, Binance, and Cardano. one of Europe’s largest gatherings in digital assets: 10,000+ attendees, 450+ recognized journalists, 320+ speakers. this year’s edition brought institutional weight to match: J.P. Morgan, BlackRock, and Deutsche Bank were among the keynote participants.

thank you to the team for another well-run edition and to everyone who took the time to connect with us in Paris. see you.

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last week Arbitrum froze $71M in ETH linked to the Kelp DAO exploit. twelve elected DAO members reached a quorum of nine votes. the funds were moved to a frozen intermediary wallet -- their fate now rests with a governance vote. by most accounts, the right call.

and yet something worth sitting with: a «decentralized» network just demonstrated that assets inside it can be moved without the owner's consent -- under the right circumstances, by the right people.

this isn't a flaw specific to Arbitrum.
in 2016, Ethereum forked its chain to recover funds from The DAO hack.
USDC can freeze any address at Circle's discretion.
most dApps route through two or three RPC providers.

each of these systems made the same choice: when security and openness conflict, security wins. that choice is reasonable. it is also, quietly, a political one, because it means someone gets to decide what counts as an emergency.

the mechanism does not care about the moral quality of the next target. the precedent is set. the key exists. the next emergency will require less justification than this one, because this one normalized the intervention.

freedom always comes with risk. security always comes with someone's decision.
the more liberties we enjoy, the more constrains inevitably arise.

***

T. Hobbes described this dynamic in 1651 as the foundation of modernity: people rationally trade freedom for security, and each trade feels justified in the moment. C. Schmitt sharpened it: sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception. in the case of Arbitrum, that sovereign turned out to be a committee of twelve.

the dominant narrative of web3 mass adoption inevitably leads to the question of regulation and of governance councils coordinating with law enforcement. we are watching, in real time, the substitution of the original ideas. the paradox of freedom manifests itself within a Polizeistaat.

«We have corrected thy great work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts.»

«...they will have no secrets from us...»

— Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

freedom becomes a «terrible gift» -- that is the dialectic. the Inquisitor is not a villain. he is an administrator of human weakness; and his logic is flawless, if you accept that people prefer order to uncertainty, comfort to freedom.

DYOR, key resources:
Hobbes — Leviathan (1651)
Dostoyevsky — The Grand Inquisitor, Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Carl Schmitt — Political Theology (1922)
Foucault — Discipline and Punish (1975)
Agamben — Homo Sacer (1995)
Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)
Buterin — "The Meaning of Decentralization" (Medium, 2017)

the quiet emergence of a private monetary sovereign: recap on Tether in 2026

#

ISSUANCE

Jan 9 — First mint of 2026: $1B USDT on Tron
Apr 23, 30 / May 4 — Three consecutive $1B mints
Apr (30-day window) — $4B total; single $3B batch directed 96% to one recipient (Abraxas Capital)
May 1 — USDT hits ATH above $188B. April alone: $5B+ in fresh issuance

#FREEZES

Jan 11 — $182M frozen across five Tron wallets, single coordinated action
Apr 23 — $344M frozen in coordination with OFAC, linked to Iran's Central Bank and IRGC
Cumulative 2026 — $4.4B frozen, 7,000+ wallets blacklisted, 2,300+ cases across 65 countries

#RESERVES AS FOR Q1

— $141B in U.S. Treasuries (17th largest holder globally, ahead of Taiwan, Israel, UAE)
— 132 tons of physical gold ($20B) — largest non-bank, non-state holder on earth
— $1.04B net profit, $8.23B reserve buffer (ATH). 300 employees.

#

POLITICAL

_

CAPTURE

Jan 27 — Tether launches USAT, GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoin, issued via Anchorage Digital Bank under OCC supervision, led by Bo Hines (ex-White House Crypto Council)
Mar 27 — Tether hires KPMG for first-ever full audit of $185B in USDT reserves. Circle stock drops 7%+
Apr 30 — Senators Warren and Wyden open their 4th investigation: Tether loaned an undisclosed amount to "Dynasty Trust A," benefiting Commerce Secretary Lutnick's children. Cantor Fitzgerald — now run by Lutnick's sons — custodies ~99% of Tether's Treasury holdings

#EXPANSION

— Tether launches MDK (open-source Bitcoin mining framework) + partners with Canaan to build modular mining hardware
— Tether proposes merger of Twenty-One Capital (XXI) with Strike and Elektron Energy: Bitcoin treasury + mining + lending + capital markets under one roof

main take: Tether has ceased to function merely as a stablecoin issuer. it operates as a private supranational financial infrastructure -- with monopoly issuance of the digital dollar, extrajudicial authority to freeze and destroy assets, sovereign-scale reserves in U.S. government debt, and direct lobbying in Washington.

[partnership] 1,000+ custom hardware wallets — produced for one of our portfolio projects, flare/v got them distributed across flagship conferences in the Maldives, Europe, and Asia.

this is what mass adoption looks like up close.
thank you, Tangem.

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