Issue 01: Blockchain face-offs: privacy, COGE, DePIN, the Big Apple vs. BTC

Happy 4th 🇺🇸 🎆 🗽 Sparkle on!

Welcome to the first-ever edition of BabsNYC.news. Forevermore, you can say you knew us before we went Tribeca. Which is true, considering most of this issue comes to you from Wall Street, Midtown, and City Hall environs.

BabsNYC is the only newsletter with cross-sector coverage of blockchain in NYC. Here’s what we've seen around town the last few weeks:

On tap (click to jump to section):

FINANCE: Blockchain adapts to privacy and permissioned chains for institutions.

BITCOIN: Tamed for good or just a midlife crisis?

CIVIC BLOCKCHAIN: NYC Mayor’s office holds COGE hearings on government efficiency; people want what blockchain offers, even if they don’t realize it.

DEPIN: Signs of life? + the trouble with tokenomics.

REGULATION: Don’t hold your breath; here’s why Clarity (Act) is not coming soon.

TOUCH GRASS: Step away from the keyboard- these are IRL events worth your 3D time.

BABS ANNOUNCEMENTS: Updates from the community.

Thanks for reading 🫶

Kala Philo
Founder and Senior Editor

Given blockchain’s original purpose (a shared ledger for financial transactions without a bank), it's not surprising that conventional blockchain design is too public for traditional financial firms. 

This is a hot topic in NYC digital asset / institutional finance circles. Firms want the benefits of crypto rails (e.g., lower counterparty risk, faster settlement), but they can't operate on a ledger where every position is visible to competitors. 

That’s why the "institutional privacy tech stack" has entered the chat, infrastructure that lets firms prove they've met compliance and other requirements without exposing the underlying trade data on-chain. 

In practice, the differences between permissioned institutional chains revolve around:

Some chains provide privacy by segmenting data and controlling which institutions see and validate each slice of the ledger. Canton, a front-runner, wraps privacy in an open-access, permissioned, institution‑run network and reports processing trillions of dollars in tokenized assets across its domains. It was built by Digital Asset, backed by several funding rounds from a who's-who of 🏦 Wall Street banks, trading firms, and market-infrastructure players.

Other privacy tech chains, such as ZKsync’s Prividium, lean on more conventional crypto (who would have thought we’d ever use those two words together) networks, with Ethereum and other public chains as their base. These models rely on zero‑knowledge proofs (ZKPs) where the validity of transactions and other specific details can be publicly verified when needed, while underlying information (e.g., user identities, amounts, and other sensitive fields) can remain private.

The belief that blockchain should accommodate privacy-enhancing mutations built on permissioned networks gives some blockchain purists heartburn 💔, wondering whether this is a setback or progress as a foot in the door for broader real-world adoption. 

A May 2026 S&P Global Market Intelligence report says bitcoin has “gone from an independent asset guided by tech adoption, mining, and crypto‑native factors, to one that lined up closer to stock indices and the broader traditional markets,” with higher correlation to the Nasdaq‑100. 

For context, a late 2025 Bloomberg piece (when BTC was flailing in the $80k-$90k range) noted that bitcoin’s latest downturn “exposed a fundamental shift” as the wild swings of the past have softened, reflecting Wall Street’s growing influence on the market’s plumbing. According to Bloomberg’s view, the more BTC gets routed through ETFs, futures, and desk risk limits in New York, the more it starts to behave like other high‑beta macro assets, still jumpy, but less crazed.

So, how you doin’? Still HODLing? 😅

No, the Clarity Act will not pass this year.

So say prediction markets and the consensus at the June 3 NYC Women in Digital Assets forum. The panelists from the “What’s next for regulatory action?” talk were not optimistic about the passage of the Clarity Act. Below is a summary of some reasons why, based on their comments: 

On May 29, Jamie Dimon told Fox Business that the bill was unfair to banks, weak on anti-money laundering (AML), and that Coinbase's Brian Armstrong was "full of sh*t."

On June 4, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPM, Citi, and BofA confirmed they're building a shared tokenized deposit network, targeting a 2027 launch — additional reporting on the project describes it as a coordinated response to stablecoins, designed to keep deposit money inside regulated banks rather than migrating to crypto rails.

By June 13, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took his turn at bat on Fox Business, accusing Dimon of "intentional misrepresentation" and arguing that the AML objection is a cover for protecting a payments business that nets JPMorgan roughly $20 billion a year.

Bottom line is, it's gonna be a while - Even if Clarity were to pass, it would require extensive separate rulemakings, a massive administrative task that will likely stretch into the next administration.

“What’s DePIN?” asked an otherwise crypto-savvy friend. It stands for decentralized physical infrastructure and refers to networks that pay everyday people to be “nodes” providing real-world utility infrastructure, such as wireless coverage or computing power. It’s literally a Power to the People killer app. ✊

Or could be. Like all things crypto, it's had a rocky rollout, with the business model underperforming relative to its potential impact.

Does Andrew Yang's (CEO, Noble Mobile) acquisition of Helium Mobile, a controversial first-wave DePIN project, signal some signs of life for DePIN?

Part of the learning from DePIN’s early days is a growing awareness that tokens are not always crypto’s innovative silver bullet; they can be part of the problem. At a 2025 DePIN event in NYC, one VC said, “Almost every single form of token economics is just bad.”

He referred to tokenomics in general, not only DePIN, as “just terrible” for crypto projects because it distorts startup feedback loops, confuses pricing, and invites manipulation.

Blockworks suggests that, unlike stablecoins, tokens in DePIN could be like a gateway to wider crypto adoption because they are tied to familiar services like energy or compute that people understand more readily than stablecoins.

The problem with that idea is that it ignores historical evidence that consumers don’t like pricing friction that serves the provider and does nothing for the buyer other than get in the way.

When used for pricing in the consumer experience, tokens introduce a “metering” element that customers have hated since early mobile phone plans charged per text and dial-up ISPs charged per minute or hour.

The AI industry is currently replaying the “metered” scenario, introducing confusing pricing tiers based on “tokens”, and guess what - consumers still hate it. 👎 💩

NYC’s tech infra is showing signs of strain. Glacial permitting timelines, unpaid invoices, and a backlog snafu that caused a cascade of incorrect Section 8 evictions. Recent headlines about deed fraud are making waves, despite the city’s blockchain proof of concept in 2021 to address - guess what - deed fraud.

Mayor Mamdani’s Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE) is hosting public hearings to gather testimony on ways to improve NYC government services.

I was curious whether people were identifying problems where blockchain could be a fit for improving government efficiency.

Using NotebookLM and Claude, I ran an experimental* analysis of transcripts from the YouTube videos of the first three hearings (Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn).

Of the 101 total testimonies, 45% involve problems where decentralized tech would be a moderate to strong fit as an improvement or solution.

The challenge is that there is a probable knowledge gap between the problem identification and people’s realization that blockchain is a possible solution. 71% of the people offering testimony about problems blockchain could help solve did not use words like “decentralized” or “blockchain” in their testimony; they just described the problem.

It’s possible they may not even know what blockchain is, or, if they do, they may not realize it has a use case beyond bitcoin or crypto, which many don’t trust. At all.

This confirms what I’m seeing in personal conversations and online discourse. It’s one of the reasons I started the babsNYC newsletter - to broaden the discussion about blockchain infra in NYC beyond the current myopic focus on digital assets.

BabsNYC and friends are setting up an informal “summer salon” - small group conversations about this topic and others.
Follow us on Luma for updates.

*Note about methodology: This was a pilot experiment, not a rigorous analysis. NotebookLM categorized each testimony's described problem; Claude matched it against an estimated decentralized-tech fit (none/weak/moderate/strong); I spot-verified against the sources. I’m not a data analyst, but if you are and would like to collab on a more rigorous study, feel free to reach out. - Kala

A short list of IRL things to do in the most amazing city on the planet. Not sponsored unless otherwise noted. Send us your picks here.

Bathhouse NYC
Grab a soak 🛀 and support your local miners. Bathhouse mines BTC BTS (behind the scenes), using heat generated from BTC mining to heat its pools.

Blockchain as Art at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI)
To Be Perceived, Against Evil
May 14 — Aug 2, 2026
Collaborative work by Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers, part of the partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and the Tezos Foundation.

BabsNYC summer salon - blockchain beyond digital assets - topics being considered are civic blockchain (COGE), DePIN, real estate, or, submit your idea here.
Follow us on Luma for updates

In the late 1800s, local municipalities set their own time based on the town’s communal clock, often located in a church steeple or a jeweler’s window. This was obviously no way to run a railroad, so in 1888 the U.S. and Canadian railroad leaders met to standardize time zones to create consistent railroad timetables. It wasn’t until 30 years later, in 1918, that U.S. law established the Standard Time Act, including daylight savings time, which many now feel is now an outdated seasonal wrinkle in time.

Launch party!
Our June 1 launch party during TechWeekNYC at St. Mark’s Comedy Club in East Village was 🔥. See why here.

BabsNYC Ambassadors
Are you the friend always talking about blockchain? 🗣️ 🤓 🤖 Join the club 😄
Apply to become a volunteer BabsNYC Ambassador for NYC or Mexico City.

BabsNYC summer salon
Blockchain beyond digital assets. Possible convos: civic blockchain (COGE), DePIN, real estate. Have an idea or want to collab? Let us know here.
Follow us on Luma for updates

Guest posts 🤝
Interested in guest posting? Reach out here.