Bootstrapping decentralized finance (DeFi) on any blockchain usually requires a mix of builders with big ideas and funders to back them. That much is as true for baselayers as it is for the financial protocols launching atop them.

Arch Labs, whose eponymous network is one of the many projects trying to bring DeFi to Bitcoin, had no trouble raising its $7 million launch capital from big-name venture firms last year. Now its shifting focus to help fund those smaller protocols that could make the whole network boom.

In that it’s found a willing partner. An entire venture company, DPI Capital is dedicating millions of dollars in resources toward backing early-stage DeFi projects that enter Arch’s first accelerator program, called Keystone.

«We’re really focused on the pillars right now, the things that are most important for growth,» said Brent Fisher, a general partner at Caymans Islands-registered DPI Capital. That means finding and funding compelling projects building borrow-and-lend protocols, decentralized exchanges, stablecoin platforms and real world asset (RWA) plays.

It’s not unheard of for venture firms to go big on a single protocol. Early Solana investor Multicoin Capital also backs many of the smaller ecosystem projects that drive activity on the blockchain. But even that giant diversifies beyond Solana. For example, it led last year’s investment in Arch.

DPI used to have a more diversified risk appetite as it chased deals across the Etheruem ecosystem. But not anymore. «I’m going all in on Arch,» Fisher said.

DPI’s yet-to-close fund will be a quasi-official venture wing for early stage projects on Arch alone. Such myopic focus carries a lot of risk. First, that the «pillar» protocols DPI picks as leaders prove the theory. Second, and more importantly, that Arch itself will catch on.

Fisher’s more focused on the counterpoint: that Arch is the winning bet, and no strategy’s better than betting on all its horses.

«This has huge potential, potentially even to knock out on Ethereum,» said Brent Fisher, general partner.

His Arch bull case stems from Bitcoin’s enduring status as the world’s most valuable crypto asset. The crypto is nearly one trillion dollars more valuable than Ethereum despite lacking a strong internal DeFi ecosystem, which has long been the runner-up’s claim to fame.

Plenty of family offices, investment companies and increasingly exchange-traded funds hold BTC and do so without much concern for their inability to deploy those coins into low risk yield plays on the Bitcoin Network, as they might with ETH on Ethereum Network.

«I think that that play is huge, because, as you see these ETFs with Black Rock and ARK and so forth, for them to even get a Delta neutral strategy of 10% is a game changer,» Fisher said.

Arch’s Bitcoin-powered programmability layer allows for such activity, Fisher said. They’re not the only network with this kind of vision, but Fisher says it’s the only one with a «true native self custody model» instead of some sort of bridging or wrapping mechanism. Keeping bitcoin on the network eliminates a level of risk, he said.

Arch’s Keystone accelerator is thus a natural pipeline for DPI to get a right-of-first refusal look at many of the teams angling to launch their BitcoinFi tech on the platform. DPI will write checks of up to $250,000 for the teams it likes and then help them find other investors and scale.

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee checked the next box in moving toward what Representative Bryan Steil referred to as the «second half» of President Donald Trump’s crypto agenda: a bill to set U.S. crypto market rules for a fully regulated domestic industry.

Steil, the Republican chairman of the panel’s crypto subcommittee, said that the first half of Trump’s goal is well underway — Congress’ stablecoin legislation that’s already advanced through committees in both the House and Senate — so a Wednesday hearing explored the other long-awaited digital assets bill to establish the structure of crypto markets. Such hearings represent a rung on such an effort’s climb through Congress.

Representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who runs the overall committee, indicated that those working on the bill are closer to releasing a successor to the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), the House legislation that passed last year but failed to progress through the Senate.

«The committee has engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, from government agencies to leaders in the ecosystem to identify ways market structure legislation can be further refined and strengthened,» he said during the hearing. «We’re actively working to release a legislative discussion draft that reflects that feedback from members and market participants.»

Democrats on the committee returned repeatedly to the crypto business activity of Trump and his family, questioning industry lawyers about whether it represents a conflict of interest. Representative Maxine Waters, the committee’s ranking Democrat, accused the panel of trying to make Trump «the king of crypto by passing legislation that lets him corner the market on stablecoins, kick George Washington off the dollar and make his own stablecoin.»

The witnesses mostly declined to engage on Trump, though a consumer advocate testifying on Wednesday, Alexandra Thornton, a senior director at the Center for American Progress, noted «there have been a number of things that the Trump administration has done that have favored crypto, and they include many that you mentioned, but also letting go of many enforcement staff, dropping many cases against crypto.»

The lawmakers also drilled down on the proper roles of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in future crypto oversight, and how Congress should define which regulatory buckets should handle the different digital assets. In recent years, the SEC’s interpretation of how to use securities law to identify which crypto tokens are securities left the industry in legal confusion and mired in enforcement disputes, despite some early guidance from the agency on how to negotiate legal standards.

«Market participants have still found it challenging to apply,» said Tiffany Smith, who works with crypto clients at law firm WilmerHale. She added that the definitions become even more complicated when the bulk of crypto transactions happen on secondary markets, such as on crypto exchanges. «Regulatory clarity is needed,» she said.

Read More: U.S. House Stablecoin Bill Poised to Go Public, Lawmaker Atop Crypto Panel Says

Virgil Griffith, a former Ethereum developer jailed for attending a crypto conference in North Korea in 2019, was released from prison and is on his way to a halfway house, according to his lawyer, Alexander Urbelis.

Urbelis, general counsel of the Ethereum Name Service who has also been serving as Griffith’s outside counsel, posted a photo of the newly released Griffith and his parents on X on Wednesday, standing in front of FCI Milan, the low-security Michigan prison where Griffith served a portion of his 56-month sentence.

“I am so pleased to report that VIRGIL IS OUT!” Urbelis wrote. “Happy day indeed.”

Griffith was arrested in November 2019, seven months after returning from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where he had attended a crypto conference. While at the conference, Griffith gave a presentation on Ethereum and explained how cryptocurrency could be used to evade sanctions against the country. Though he initially fought the charge, Griffith pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate international sanctions in 2021.

The New York judge overseeing the case sentenced him to a $100,000 fine and 63 months, or a little over five years, imprisonment — a fraction of the possible 20 year sentence he faced if he went to trial and lost. Last year, Griffith’s lawyers were successfully able to get his sentence reduced to 56 months, citing his status as a first-time offender.

Griffith has been imprisoned since mid-2021. Though he was initially released on bail following his arrest, a judge sent him back to jail in New York to await trial after he violated his bail conditions by attempting to access one of his cryptocurrency accounts in order to pay his lawyers.

Urbelis told CoinDesk that Griffith’s legal team has hopes he will soon be moved from his halfway house in Baltimore to home confinement.

“But the long-term consequences persist: Virgil will have to endure burdensome probation for several years, the conditions of which are not yet known,» Urbelis said. «And on top of that, the Department of Commerce placed severe export restrictions on Virgil that will extend until 2032 and which would make his life very difficult.”

The Department of Commerce’s restrictions prohibit Griffith from participating either directly or indirectly in any transaction involving software or technology that will be exported from the U.S., Urbelis said, making a return to working in the crypto industry difficult, if not impossible.

Griffith is seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump’s administration, which Urbelis said was an “ongoing process” they had made “great progress” on.

“We are seeking a pardon to bring justice to a prosecution that we believe was wrongheaded and fundamentally un-American from the outset, to better Virgil’s life, and to make sure that Virgil has [the] ability to contribute to a world that so desperately needs thinkers and doers like him,” Urbelis said.

Trump has pardoned a number of people convicted on crypto-related criminal charges, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes and three people convicted of violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Still more convicted crypto criminals, including former FTX CEO and fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, are hopeful for pardons of their own.