Today, our CEO @_jikim joins @amandatums, @codycarbonedc, @summermersinger & @nikhileshde for the panel: The Clarity Vote - What Happened and What Comes Next at the @avax Summit 2026.

With the Senate’s scheduled Clarity vote approaching, @SummerMersinger will take the stage at @SolanaInstitute’s Summit DC on Sept. 14 alongside @crypto_council’s @_jikim and @BGOV's @kackleyZ to discuss what’s at stake and what comes next for market structure.

🚨NEW: The meeting of tech leaders is set to kick off at the White House today at 2:30PM ET where President Trump is expected to make remarks alongside @SECPaulSAtkins and @ChairmanSelig. Other crypto/TradFi executives expected to attend: 📌@brian_armstrong, Coinbase 📌@bgarlinghouse, Ripple 📌@arjunsethi, Payward/Kraken 📌@cameron & @tyler, Gemini 📌@SergeyNazarov, Chainlink 📌 @cdixon, a16z 📌 @alanapalmedo, Paradigm 📌 @OneMorePeter, 📌 @mikebelshe, BitGo 📌 @CodyCarboneDC, Digital Chamber 📌 @SummerMersinger, Blockchain Association 📌 @_jikim, Crypto Council for Innovation 📌 Jeff Sprecher, ICE (NYSE) 📌 @adenatfriedman, NASDAQ White House Crypto Council Executive Director @patrickjwitt will also be there.

Everyone in America remembers this. Someone running behind your bike, holding the back of the seat. "I've got you. I've got you. Keep pedaling." And at some moment you never noticed, they let go. This summer, a Japanese grandfather, 78, learned what that feels like. His name is Tadao. He's the father of my old college friend Shimizu, who married a woman from North Carolina and lives outside Raleigh now. Tadao grew up poor in Japan in the 1950s. His father died young. A bicycle cost more than his mother made in a month. Every kid on his street learned to ride. Tadao walked next to them and said he liked walking. He never learned. He grew up, worked at a factory for 45 years, and bought his son a bicycle at seven. But he worked six days a week. A neighbor taught Shimizu to ride. Tadao heard about it at dinner. He never told anyone he couldn't ride. Not his wife. Not his son. Seventy-eight years. Then, this July, the first time he ever left Japan, his eight-year-old grandson, Leo, wheeled two bikes into the driveway. "Jiji! Ride with me!" Tadao tried to make an excuse. Leo is eight. Excuses don't work on eight. So Tadao told him the truth. In the driveway. In front of everyone. Leo considered this very seriously, for about one second. "That's okay," he said. "I'll teach you. It's easy. You just need somebody to hold the back." So, on a cul-de-sac in North Carolina, a 78-year-old man in slacks climbed onto a little boy's mother's bike, and a 4-foot-tall kid grabbed the back of the seat. "I've got you, Jiji. I've got you." The neighbors came out. Of course they did. A dad holding a coffee mug. A teenager who stopped shooting hoops. An old woman who yelled "PEDAL, HONEY!" every eight seconds, whether he was pedaling or not. He fell twice. Leo picked up the bike both times, all by himself, and said exactly what his father had said to him the year before. "That's okay. Again." On the third try, Tadao was wobbling down the street, and Leo was running behind him, red-faced, holding on with both hands. And then Leo let go. He stood in the road, jumping up and down, and screamed: "I'M NOT HOLDING YOU! JIJI! YOU'RE DOING IT!" Tadao looked back. Saw nobody there. Panicked. Kept pedaling anyway. The whole cul-de-sac was cheering. The teenager was filming. The old woman was crying and still yelling "PEDAL!" He made it all the way around the circle. He came back. He put his feet down. Then he sat down right there on the curb, a 78-year-old man in slacks, and pressed both palms against his eyes. Shimizu lowered himself onto the curb beside him. His father said something very quietly, in Japanese. "Nobody ever held the back of my bicycle." Shimizu didn't answer right away. Then he reached over and laid a hand on his father's back. "A neighbor held mine, Dad," he said. "I always wished it was you. So I made sure I held his." Tadao went home to Japan in August. The first thing he did was buy a bicycle. He rides it to the store every morning. He wears Leo's old helmet. It has shark stickers on it. It does not fit. He refuses to buy his own. He says this is the one that knows how.