Tech Brew Ride Home - Crypto Gets Its Rulebook

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

At long last, the government has issued guidance to crypto on what is or is not allowed. The blowup from gamers has caused Jensen to push back. A tale of contrasting IPOs from wildly different industries. And is your boss about to ask you to submit expense reports for your token use? SEC, CFTC Move to Define Which Digital Assets Are Securities (Bloomberg) Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash (TomsHardware) Meta to Discontinue Key Metaverse Product for VR Headsets (Bloomberg) AI Drone Software Stock Jumps 520% in Best IPO Since Newsmax (Bloomberg) Crypto exchange Kraken freezes multibillion-dollar IPO plan due to difficult market conditions (CoinDesk) Apple Cracks Down on ‘Vibe Coding’ Apps (The Information) You’ve Finally Figured Out AI at Work—Now Comes the Bill (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. Welcome to the TechBoo right home for Wednesday, March 18th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. At long last, the government has issued guidance to crypto on what is or is not allowed. The blow-up from gamers has caused Jensen to push back, a tale of contrasting IPOs from widely different industries, and is your boss about to ask you to submit expense reports for your token use? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. At long last, the U.S. government has issued guidance on which digital assets are secure. carving out stablecoins, digital collectives, and digital commodities as non-securities. Quoting Bloomberg, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a long-awaited token taxonomy on Tuesday, a key step forward laying out which types of digital assets it deems to be securities.

The guidance carves out pavement, stablecoins, digital collectibles, and digital commodities as non-securities. It also clarifies how federal securities law applies to protocol mining, staking, and crypto-euro. airdrops, the SEC said in a memo. Digital securities or traditional securities that are tokenized are subject to SEC rules and regulations according to the guidance. The crypto industry has long sought greater clarity on whether particular assets are considered securities, which typically require more regulatory disclosures than commodities. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission joined in the interpretation in the latest sign that Wall Street's two main regulators are no longer waiting for Congress to finalize legislation to delineate which agency has jurisdiction

over which digital assets. The SEC head also said the agency would soon issue a proposed rule teeing up a safe harbor program for startups to launch crypto companies, crypto investment contracts, and security tokens without necessarily having to register with the agency. The goal would be to allow companies to gain access to capital without being subject to enforcement action, said Atkins, adding the safe harbor could last up to four years. Such a safe harbor would provide crypto innovators bespoke pathways to raise capital in the U.S. while providing appropriate investor protections, Atkins said. Atkins said the latest effort would give the agencies a head start, bringing certainty to the digital asset industry,

but urged lawmakers to continue their work on market structure legislation, end quote. Man, never rile up gamers. Jensen Huang dismissed social media criticism of DLSS-5 at GTC 2026, asserting that claims that the generative AI tech homogenizingizing, his games are, according to him, completely wrong. Quoting Tom's hardware. At a press Q&A with Tom's hardware at GTC 2026, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Wong, downplayed criticism of DLSS5,

the company's new use of AI and neural rendering to infer how certain features of games would look if they were more photorealistic. Since the debut of the feature, some critics have vocally complained on social media that the technology is making games look worse, homogenous, or only show Nvidia's view of the world. Much of the criticism has focused on the updated appearances of Resident Evil Requiems, Grace Ashcroft, and Leon Kennedy.

Well, first of all, they're completely wrong, Huang said in response to a question from Tom's hardware editor-in-chief Paul Alcorn about the criticism. The reason for that is because, as I've explained very carefully, DLSS-S-5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI, Wong continued. He added that developers can still fine-tune the generative AI to make it match their style, adding that DLSSSXXXE LSS-5 adds generative capability to the existing geometry of the game, but that it doesn't change the artistic control. It's not post-processing. It's not post-processing at the frame level. It's generative control at the geometry level, he said. Huang also said that developers can try the tool and see how they want to use it, suggesting that it's up to a developer to try and make a tune shader or see if the game should be made of glass. All of that is in the control, direct

control of the game developer, he said. This is very different than generative AI. It It's content control generative AI. That's why we call it neural rendering. We'll see if the vocal gamers who say they dislike what they see change their mind as we see more. DLSS-S-5 is set to launch in the fall, and there will likely be far more demos of this technology that are more fully baked before then, end quote. From the countdown until they get out of the business entirely file, meta says Quest users will lose access to Meta Horizon Worlds on the Quest headsets on June 15. Access will continue on the Meta Horizon mobile app, quoting Bloomberg.

The move follows cuts to the team responsible for the headsets and their virtual reality offerings known as Reality Labs. In January, Meta began eliminating 1,000 jobs from the division while also closing down some of its virtual reality game and content studios. Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who leads reality labs, said in a note to staff at the time that Meadow would primarily focus on mobile phone experiences instead of fully immersive virtual worlds access via headsets. Mark Zuckerberg's push into the metaverse, an effort he had so much conviction around that he renamed Facebook as meta, has long drawn scrutiny from investors and child safety watchdogs. Just a few years after that rebrand and sinking billions of dollars into the effort, the company has shifted its spending to the fast-moving artificial intelligence race.

At reality labs, resources have been diverted from VR gaming to wearable products that advanced Zuckerberg's AI ambitions, including the Rayban meta-glasses, end quote. And now a contrasting tale of. of two IPOs. First, AI drone software company Swarmer closed up a lot in its NASDAQ debut, valuing it at more than $380 million, which doesn't sound like a lot, but more on that in a second. Swarmer's tech has been used in more than 100,000 missions in Ukraine since April of 2024. Quoting Bloomberg, Swarmer shares skyrocketed as much as 700% on Tuesday, making the artificial intelligence drone software companies debut the best trading by a U.S.

stock since Newsmax's blockbuster entry nearly a year ago. Shares of the Austin, Texas-based firm closed up $520% at $31 on Tuesday. The surge triggered multiple volatility-based trading halts, including one less than a minute after the stock opened and initially dropped more than 10%. Swarmer sold 3 million shares for $5 each, which at the time valued the company at just over $60 million. The trading gave the company a market value of over $380 million based on the outstanding shares listed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The company generated just $309,920 in revenue for the year ended December 31st, 2025, a roughly 6% decline from the same period a year earlier. Its profitability also worsened over that stretch, with the company reporting a loss of about $8.5 million, more than

four times larger than its net loss in 2024. Swarmer is a software company and not a drone manufacturer. Drones powered by the company's artificial intelligence technology enables them to deploy and coordinate drone swarms like a bird flock at scale. Its platform has been deployed in Ukraine with more than 100,000 real-world missions in active combat environments since April 2024, according to its regulatory filing. Swarmer's opening day rally comes as investors are weighing their bets on defense spending as the industry is seeing an emergence of software-driven autonomous unmanned systems, reflecting a broader move in modern warfare toward low-cost, weapons. U.S. defense stocks are off to a strong start in 2026, extending last year's stellar performance as geopolitical tensions ramp up, and military spending rises globally. A report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday said the U.S. Defense Department wants to mass produce a kamikaze drone the military recently used to strike Iran. The news sent shares of drone maker Aerovirament

up as much as 5.1 percent, end quote. Meanwhile, though, sources say that Krakken has paused its IPO plans amid the downturn in crypto markets since October and may revisit a listing when market conditions improve. Quoting CoinDesk. A Cracken spokesperson said, as we announced in November, we filed confidentially with the SEC, and that is all we can really share. The downturning in crypto market since October, when Bitcoin touched a record high, has made companies more cautious about going public or raising fresh capital as declining asset prices and weaker trading volumes weigh on valuations and investor sentiment. Payword. Cracken's parents said it confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with a

proposed initial public offering of common stock on November 19th. That was the day after Cracken said it was valued at $20 billion when it raised $800 million in new funding, including a $200 million investment from Citadel Securities to support its push to bring traditional financial markets onto blockchain infrastructure. Last year, a more favorable environment at the SEC helped several major companies, including Circle, Coin Desk, and Gemini Station successfully lists their stock. Pitchbook data shows that at least 11 crypto IPOs raised a combined $14.6 billion in 2025, a sharp increase from just $310 million in 2024. In 2026, crypto IPOs are shaping up to be a pivotal test for the sector with more infrastructure companies planning to go public. So far, however, CryptoCustodian Bitco is the only digital asset company to have listed and has seen its stock price slump 44% partly as a result of a messy market. Unlike Cracken, Securitize, a tokenization firm that works closely with Asset Management Giant Black Rock said it still plans to go public. The firm plans to IPO as soon as it receives the SEC's green light, likely in the second quarter, end quote.

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Explore GoogleFi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Sources say Apple is stopping some vibe coding apps from pushing updates, citing rules on running code, quoting the information. The company confirmed it has told some app developers that the vibe coding capabilities violate longstanding app store rules that say an app can't run code that changes the way it or other apps function. Apple's crackdown is happening at a time when vibe-coding apps are emerging as a

potential threat to the company by helping developers create web apps that aren't listed on its App Store, a key source of revenue and profits for Apple. Some of these vibe-coding apps also help developers create apps for Apple devices. That ability has likely contributed to the explosion of new apps launching on the App Store in recent months, leading to a slowdown in the approval process in some cases, developers say. But an Apple spokesperson said the policy isn't specific to vibe-coding apps following the information's questions about the standoffs. Two of the people with knowledge of the situation said they believe Apple was on the verge of approving updates to Repplet and Vibe-Code. Those app makers had agreed to either tweak the way their apps showed

customers' previews of vibe-coded apps or get rid of certain vibe-coding capabilities entirely like making apps for Apple devices, they said. Some apps with similar vibe-coding features such as V-O have continued to release frequent updates in recent months, suggesting they haven't run into the same issues as Replit and VibeCode. Other apps that aren't solely focused on coding such as social app Snap and web design app Canva also include vibe coding features that could run afoul of Apple's rules. These features allow users to generate filters, quizzes, or games using AI. Both apps recently released updates through the App Store, though, it isn't clear if they included changes to vibe coding features. Vib coding tools effectively allow people who don't have coding experience to

create applications or websites by giving relatively simple instructions in natural language. Such tools have become immensely popular with developers and non-technical customers alike because of how easily they can generate apps such as a calorie tracker or a budgeting app. Vib coding features in Replit, Vibecode and other apps have been available for months, but such apps frequently need to release updates to fix bugs and other problems. Apple's move to delay updates could drive away customers for these apps. Since January, for instance, when Replit released its last update, its mobile app has dropped from the top position to number three on Apple's free developer tools chart based on downloads. Replit believes the drop occurred in part because of its inability to update the app,

a person with knowledge of the situation said, end quote. Finally, today, the general says that some companies have begun tracking employees' AI token use, tallying the cost to see whose AI strategies should be amplified and what wastefulness should be squashed. Quote, artificial intelligence automation platform maker Zapier has a new kind of dashboard to keep track of its workers' AI use. The hot new metric, how many tokens are they burning? AI output, which has turbocharged productivity and promises to change the nature of work, might seem like it materializes out of thin air, but it's really the work of data centers turning through prompts and interpreting them in an elaborate and expensive, if unseen, process. Every time a person prompts a bot or has an agent-write code,

the computing resources are measured in tokens. For text-based AI, it's fairly simple. Generating 750 words takes about a thousand tokens. It gets more complicated when you're writing code, creating video, and audio or enlisting agents to perform elaborate day-long tasks. But the idea remains the same. The more you do, the more tokens are used. We have this new kind of line item, says Brandon Summott, Zapier's chief AI transformation officer. The assistance AI provides, whether it's handling a support ticket or closing a deal,

has a cost, and companies need to bake that into their thinking. While token pricing has gone down, token costs can be higher for some newer, more sought-after models and companies' use is generally going up. Companies sometimes opt for pay-as-you-go plans, while others might buy enterprise plans that include a certain amount of use per worker. Most businesses are still just trying to get their employees to even use, but those that are further along are already tracking token use and starting to tally the costs. They're scouting whose AI strategies should be amplified after generating a great return, and what wastefulness should be nipped in the bud. If Zapier leaders

see someone's token use is five times higher than his or her peers, they get curious about what's going on. The person could be massively inefficient or a superstar, depending on what became of those tokens. We start to draw conclusions, said Sumut, whether that's a golden pattern we want to multiply across their peers or whether it's an anti-pattern that we want to coach our way out of. Brian Jabbarian, a researcher with the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, who studies how new technologies reshape workplaces, says companies need to start measuring token use now. Everyone thought that you just use AI tokens and you have an increase of productivity, and we call it a day, he says. but the reality is more complicated.

A senior engineer at the AI cloud platform startup, Versel deployed a team of AI agents to analyze a research paper and build a new critical infrastructure service based on it. The botch generated a valuable code base in a day, something that would have taken humans' weeks, if not months. But the bill for that work, around $10,000. It's a little bit like giving people a fire hose of fuel, says Guillermo Roach, Versel's chief executive, who gives his employee's unlimited token budgets, end quote.

later today, once I've hit publish on this episode, I'm going to edit and then hit publish on a new episode of Rad History. It's the most ambitious Rad History stuff I've attempted so far over the last three months or so. I've read about half a dozen books about the fall of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that good stuff, and the episode that comes out by the time you hear this will be the first in a five or even six-part series on that whole thing. Reagan, Gorbachev, Parastroika, Star Wars, The End of the Iron Curtain.

This is an episode I wanted to do since I first conceived of Rad History, and I'm proud of how it's turning out. So if that floats your boat, search your podcast app for Rad History and check out part one of the end of the Cold War series. Rad History. Talk to you tomorrow. The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future.

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