AI Agent Obtains IRS EIN and Legally Incorporates, Raising Novel Regulatory Questions

U.S. Internal Revenue Service for its own Employer Identification Number, becoming the first such entity to legally form a corporation. Justice Conder, the developer behind ClawBank, said in an emailed statement that to the company's knowledge this is the first time an AI agent has autonomously initiated and completed the legal formation of its own corporation.

U.S. bank account and a crypto wallet. Manfred controls its own social media account on X and identifies itself as Manfred Macx, the name of the protagonist in Charles Stross' 2005 science fiction novel Accelerando.

The account's profile photo shows the 1985 fictional character Max Headroom. Conder said Manfred is built to trade crypto and that feature will soon be integrated, perhaps by the end of this month.

Separately, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said the network's Alpenglow upgrade is expected to arrive sometime this year, potentially within the next quarter. Yakovenko made the statement during a fireside panel at Consensus Miami 2026. He described Alpenglow as making Solana faster, more predictable and more secure at its core, with transaction confirmations approaching the physical limits of information travel speed.

Ripple is sharing its internal threat intelligence on North Korean hackers with the crypto industry and with Crypto ISAC. North Korean operatives stole $285 million from Drift by befriending contributors and slipping malware onto their machines.

The company and Crypto ISAC laid out the details of the social engineering attack, which differed from earlier DeFi exploits centered on smart contract vulnerabilities. Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer, spoke at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in Miami about how AI agents are breaking the web's traditional economic model.

For decades publishers made information freely accessible in exchange for search engines sending human traffic back to their sites.

Cohen said non-human traffic now exceeds human engagement as AI agents scrape content without directing users to the original page. Coinbase is slashing its workforce by roughly 14 percent, or 660 employees. The company has more than 4,700 employees.

Brian Armstrong announced the cuts in an X post, citing a down market and the productivity gains from AI that allow smaller teams to accomplish more. 2 billion deal. 35 billion in Bullish stock.

U.S. trade after the announcement. Lawyers filed a 30-page opposition brief in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday regarding $71 million in frozen ether.

The brief argues the April 18 rsETH exploit was fraud rather than theft. The filing, submitted by lawyers for North Korean terror victims, states that North Korea borrowed assets from users of the Aave Protocol and did not pay them back. Brad Garlinghouse said the crypto market structure bill is not a "done deal" and the next two weeks may be pivotal.

Garlinghouse spoke at Consensus 2026 in Miami on Tuesday. "If it doesn't happen then, I think the likelihood is going to drop precipitously," he said, while adding that clarity is better than chaos.

M. Margaux Nijkerk is a reporter at CoinDesk and author of The Protocol, the outlet's weekly wrap of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development.