News

According to ChainCatcher, as reported by The Block, Grayscale Investments has announced four senior executive appointments and welcomed back founder Barry Silbert as Chairman of the Board following the submission of a confidential IPO application. The newly appointed executives are: Chief Operating Officer Diana Zhang, Chief Marketing Officer Ramona Boston, Chief Communications Officer Andrea Williams, and Chief Human Resources Officer Maxwell Rosenthal. All four will report to CEO Peter Mintzberg and come from leading traditional financial institutions, including Bridgewater Associates, Apollo Global Management, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel. Barry Silbert founded Grayscale in 2013 and stepped down as Chairman at the end of 2023. He will now succeed Mark Shifke as Chairman of the Board, while Shifke will remain on the board, bringing the total number of board members to five. The company stated it is considering adding independent directors. Barry Silbert commented, "I am honored to rejoin the board at such a pivotal moment for the company and the broader digital asset ecosystem. I have always believed in the company’s long-term positioning and the leadership team guiding it forward."

PANews, July 31—According to CoinDesk, Rice Robotics, the company behind the RICE AI platform, announced that it will begin selling its RICE token on August 5 via the TokenFi Launchpad. RICE will power a decentralized data marketplace for AI robots, as part of a broader initiative to tokenize robot-generated data and expand the DePIN ecosystem. The $750,000 presale represents 10% of the total token supply of 1 billion, valuing the project at $7.5 million. Launch partners include BNB Chain, DWF Labs, and Floki. The company’s indoor delivery robots have already been deployed at SoftBank’s Tokyo headquarters, Mitsui Fudosan properties, and 7-Eleven stores in Japan, and are integrated with the 7-Now delivery system. The RICE token will be used to incentivize data contributions, subscribe to AI models, and for platform governance, with a deflationary mechanism through fee-based buybacks. Earlier this year, the company raised $7 million in a Pre-A round from investors including the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund.