Anthropic executives sat down with Commerce Department officials today, continuing high-level negotiations that have intensified since the government ordered the company to cut off foreign access to its most powerful AI models earlier this month.

The meeting comes just days after the Commerce Department issued an export control directive on June 12, requiring Anthropic to suspend access to its advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all foreign nationals.

What happened and why it matters

The export control directive landed amid national security concerns and reports of jailbreak incidents involving Anthropic’s Mythos model.

Anthropic halted access globally in response to the directive. The company has pushed back, arguing that the restrictions may stem from misunderstandings of its technologies.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been among the officials engaged in discussions with Anthropic’s leadership. The negotiations represent a critical juncture for the company, which has previously navigated other legal challenges related to federal usage of its technology under the Trump administration.

Decentralized AI tokens catch a bid

Venice’s VVV token surged approximately 14% to around $16.37 following the directive. Morpheus’s MOR token climbed about 21% to roughly $2.28 in the days after the export controls were announced.

Trading volume for VVV surged nearly 200% around the same period.

The bigger picture for crypto investors

The sharp moves in VVV and MOR are notable, but context matters. These are still relatively small-cap tokens compared to the broader crypto market. A 14% or 21% move on elevated volume is significant for these assets, but it doesn’t yet represent a fundamental shift in market structure.

What to watch: the outcome of Anthropic’s negotiations with Commerce. Any resolution that lifts the export controls would likely cool the decentralized AI trade. A prolonged standoff or escalation, particularly if other AI companies face similar restrictions, would do the opposite. Traders positioned in VVV, MOR, and similar tokens are essentially making a bet on how this meeting goes, and how many more meetings follow it.