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Tokyo-listed Bitcoin treasury firm Metaplanet Inc. (TSE: 3350) announced on 11 September 2026 that its board of directors resolved to reduce the potential share pool under its 10th Series Stock Acquisition Rights by 41.1%, from 319,464,000 to 188,190,000 shares, following a range of feedback from shareholders and capital market participants. Chief executive Simon Gerovich signed the notice on behalf of the company.

The Board’s Resolution The amendment cuts the number of shares underlying each stock acquisition right from 696 to 410, lowering the total potential pool by 131,274,000 shares. After deducting the portion already exercised, the remaining potential shares fall by 55.5%, from 236,640,000 to 105,366,000. Unvested rights now carry a new exercise restriction, with three equal portions becoming exercisable on 18 August 2029, 2030 and 2031 respectively. The company also withdrew its plan to transfer up to 90,000 rights to a long-term officer and employee incentive vehicle and will instead design a new compensation plan with a global consultant. The lock-up through 17 August 2031 and the JPY 10 exercise price remain unchanged, and if all remaining rights are exercised the company would receive roughly JPY 1.05 billion.

The board said it reconsidered the reference date used to calculate the shares underlying the rights, shifting it from 30 June 2026 to 1 September 2025. Metaplanet argued this better aligns the options with the period when its equity financings were executed at the highest premiums to net asset value, whereas later offerings including the September 2025 international placement were completed at more modest premiums. The company has drawn scrutiny as its floating option pool expanded alongside its share count while it pursued a strategy of raising equity to accumulate Bitcoin.

Because the fully diluted share count falls in line with the rights reduction, Metaplanet said its fully diluted Bitcoin per share improves accordingly. The company holds 43,000 BTC and reported roughly 0.0286646 BTC per effective diluted share, up from 0.0263554 as of 30 June, with the current-quarter BTC Yield at 8.8%. The disclosure shows one director holds 276,000 units, equal to 113,160,000 underlying shares after the cut, with 49,128,000 still exercisable. As Metaplanet expands its treasury strategy, it expects the amendment’s impact on current-year results to be immaterial.

AUTHOR

Tokoni Uti is a Lagos-based writer with several years of experience. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Free Press and the San Diego Free press among others. She is a graduate of Bowen University.

Summary Strategy published a Bitcoin Investor Guide built for advisers, bankers and capital allocators. The document foregrounds volatility and drawdowns instead of aggressive price targets. Its digital capital architecture closely tracks Strategy’s own stack of listed securities. The release follows Strategy’s first-ever Bitcoin sales and a heavy loss earlier this year. Michael Saylor’s Strategy has released a 21-page Bitcoin Investor Guide that repositions the asset for a professional audience, using market data current to September 4 and a revision date of September 7. The framing is deliberately institutional. Rather than repeating the seven-figure price forecasts Saylor is known for on X, the guide walks bankers, advisers and treasurers through scarcity mechanics, custody governance, portfolio sizing and a long list of ways an investor can be right about Bitcoin and still lose money. It arrives at an awkward moment for its author, with Bitcoin trading back under $80,000 after spending much of the past ten months in a bear market.

Bitcoin is an open, global reserve asset with absolute scarcity. The Investor Guide explores Bitcoin’s monetary properties, investment case, market structure, portfolio role, custody and risks. $BTChttps://t.co/MAt57RCG8y

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) September 12, 2026

Saylor’s guide opens on an 83% crash, not a price target The tone is the story here. Strategy’s own dashboard, reproduced in the guide, shows Bitcoin down 28.3% over the trailing year and sitting 36.1% below its all-time high. The guide states plainly that Bitcoin has repeatedly fallen between 50% and 90% and can stay below prior peaks for years. It lists the deepest drawdown in the dataset at 93.1%, recorded back in 2011. This is not the messaging that built Strategy’s retail following, and the shift is intentional. The audience Strategy now wants to reach measures risk before it measures upside.

Strategy dashboard metric As of Sep 4, 2026 Bitcoin price $79,809 200-week moving average $64,715 Premium to 200-week average 23.3% 1-year return -28.3% 10-year annualized return 62.8% Market capitalization ~$1.60T Bitcoin dominance 66% ETF bitcoin held 1.27M BTC Network hashrate 935 EH/s Implied volatility 39.6% Source: Strategy Bitcoin Investor Guide, market data as of September 4, 2026.

The 200-week moving average deserves a plain reading, because Strategy leans on it. That line is simply the average price over the last 200 weeks, and Bitcoin currently trades about 23% above it. Investors treat it as a long-term trend marker, and the guide is careful to say it is a backward-looking reference that can be broken, not a floor under the price. On shorter timeframes the picture is softer. Bitcoin slipped below $80,000 in the second week of September and now sits roughly 8% above its 200-day exponential moving average near $72,823, a level traders watch as near-term support. Worth saying: an 8% cushion above the 200-day line is not much room in an asset that routinely moves that in a session, which is the discomfort Strategy’s long-horizon framing is built to talk investors through.

Share of Bitcoin holding periods that ended in profit, one to four years. Source: Strategy Bitcoin Investor Guide. The digital capital pyramid is Strategy’s own product menu The guide’s central original idea is a layered model it calls digital capital. Bitcoin sits at the base as a reserve asset, and on top of it Strategy stacks digital equity, digital credit, digital debt, derivatives and, eventually, digital money. Each layer repackages Bitcoin’s volatility for a different investor: equity holders take residual upside, preferred holders take a stiffer claim with less appreciation, note holders take contractual interest, and so on. The framing is elegant, and it is not neutral. That stack maps almost one for one onto the securities Strategy itself has issued, including its MSTR common shares and its STRF, STRK, STRC and STRD preferred instruments. What reads as a market taxonomy also functions as a rationale for the company’s entire capital structure.

Strategy discloses the conflict directly, noting that it holds a large amount of Bitcoin and issues securities whose value depends on it, giving it an economic interest in higher prices. That disclosure is worth taking at face value while also reading the guide for what it is: an educational document produced by the single most exposed corporate holder in the market.

Four years is the number that does the selling The behavioral core of the guide is a table of rolling holding-period returns stretching back to 2010. It is the part most likely to move an allocator, and it works by contrast. Over any one-year window in the data, the worst outcome was a loss of 83.6%. Extend the window to four years, roughly one halving cycle, and the worst completed outcome in the entire history was still a gain of 32.6%.

Holding period Median return Worst return 1 year +97.7% -83.6% 2 years +272.2% -68.3% 3 years +481.7% -34.7% 4 years +1,301.7% +32.6% Source: Strategy Bitcoin Investor Guide, rolling daily windows through September 4, 2026.

Strategy adds the caveats a careful reader would demand. The windows overlap, the early data is thin and fragmentary, the sample is short, and none of these figures are probabilities of what comes next. The guide even names the conditions under which it would expect an investor to sell, including a sustained loss of settlement reliability, erosion of the scarcity premise, or evidence that adoption has stalled below the assumed valuation. A promotional document that hands you its own exit criteria is doing something more unusual than cheerleading.

Bitcoin’s 2010-2026 price against its 200-week moving average. Source: Strategy Bitcoin Investor Guide. What the guide leaves out about Strategy’s own year The context Strategy does not dwell on is its own recent year. Saylor spent five years promising never to sell, then reversed that position in May, when the company executed its first Bitcoin liquidation. In the two weeks ending August 9 it sold 3,328 BTC for roughly $213 million, using the proceeds to help fund dividends on its preferred shares rather than to buy more Bitcoin. The stock has been punished for the strain, with MSTR down more than 50% over the past year, and Strategy reported a $12.5 billion loss in the first quarter alone. JPMorgan warned in July that the company’s concentrated buying could amplify volatility, and that any forced selling could hit Bitcoin’s price harder than its size alone would suggest.

Independent voices draw a sharper line between the company and the asset. Analysts at The Motley Fool argued this month that Strategy’s filings reveal a lot about Strategy and very little about Bitcoin, and that investors should not read the company’s trades as signals about the underlying coin. That distinction is the quiet tension running underneath the guide. The document asks readers to separate the wrapper from the reserve asset, which is precisely the discipline that Strategy’s own share price has been failing this year.

The slow money Strategy wants, and the dividends it must fund The guide reads as an opening bid to a slower, more conservative pool of capital than the one that carried Strategy through 2020 and 2021. It speaks the language of risk budgets, custody ceremonies and four-year funding horizons because that is what pension consultants, private banks and family-office gatekeepers require before they write a memo. Whether that audience buys direct Bitcoin, a spot ETP or one of Strategy’s own instruments matters enormously to the company, since its equity and credit layers only function if investors keep treating the stack as a legitimate way to hold the asset.

The nearer-term pressure is structural rather than rhetorical. Strategy’s preferred shares carry ongoing dividend obligations, and the company sold Bitcoin to help meet them earlier this year before resuming purchases in late August. Saylor has publicly reframed the mission around maximizing Bitcoin per share by 2033, which leaves room for tactical sales that the old never-sell doctrine forbade. The guide tells institutions to think in four-year blocks and to fund positions with capital that can sit untouched. Strategy’s own model, built on dividends and periodic issuance, does not have that luxury, and the next test of the distance between its advice and its practice will come with its Q3 results.

Revolut has disclosed customer identities and financial records, including Bitcoin transaction histories, after acting on a fraudulent request that appeared to come from a government agency.

Summary

Revolut said an unauthorized sender used an official government agency’s email domain. The disclosed records included identity documents, verification selfies, and full transaction histories. Bitcoin wallet reference numbers appeared in account statements listed in the customer notice. ZachXBT said the incident appeared limited and may have targeted high-net-worth users. According to a Revolut customer notice shared on Telegram by on-chain investigator ZachXBT, the request came from an unauthorized email account that used an official government agency’s domain. The message passed domain authentication checks, and Revolut said it believed the request was genuine when it provided the information.

Source: Telegram/zachxbt The notice does not name the agency or say how the unauthorized sender obtained access to its email domain. It also gives no date for the request or the disclosure. ZachXBT said multiple customers received an alert email on Friday, Sep. 11, but neither he nor the portion of the notice shown in his post gave a confirmed count of affected users.

How the fake request reached Revolut In its account of the incident, Revolut said the email appeared to be a legitimate government request because it carried valid domain authentication credentials. The request was sent directly from an unauthorized account using the agency’s official email domain, rather than from an address made to look similar to it.

“As the communication carried valid domain authentication credentials, it was fulfilled under the reasonable belief that it was an authentic government agency request,” the notice said.

The wording describes an unauthorized disclosure made in response to a deceptive request. The notice does not say that an intruder entered Revolut’s systems, accessed customer accounts or withdrew funds. It does not identify the person who sent the request or say whether the agency has investigated the use of its email account.

ZachXBT described the incident as likely limited in size and said it appeared to have targeted high-net-worth users. Revolut’s notice, as shown in the screenshot, does not confirm either the size of the affected group or how the customers were selected.

What Revolut says it disclosed Revolut listed customers’ full names, dates of birth, and occupations among the identity details provided. Contact information included postal addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers.

The request also resulted in the disclosure of copies of identity documents, such as passports or driver’s licences, along with the selfies customers supplied for identity checks. Revolut drew a distinction between those images and biometric facial telemetry data, which it said was not involved.

Account statements formed another part of the disclosed material. According to the notice, the statements included IBANs, account status, account-opening dates, and Bitcoin wallet reference numbers. Withdrawal records and full transaction histories, including Bitcoin transactions, were also provided.

The notice lists categories of information that may have been disclosed; it does not establish that every affected customer had every type of record on file. Nor does it say that wallet private keys, account passwords or full payment card details were included. Bitcoin transaction histories are particularly relevant to crypto users because the notice places them alongside names and other account records in the information sent to the unauthorized requester.

Revolut serves more than 80 million customers globally, according to an August company announcement. That customer figure describes the size of its business, not the number affected by this disclosure.

What the records could mean for affected customers The UK Information Commissioner’s Office says the possible consequences of a personal data breach include identity theft, fraud and financial loss. Its breach guidance calls for an assessment of the information involved and the likely harm to individuals; it does not establish that anyone has suffered those outcomes in the Revolut incident.

For a customer whose identity document and transaction records were both disclosed, the notice indicates that the recipient could have obtained a detailed account of that person’s finances. ZachXBT’s claim about wealthy users being targeted has not been confirmed by Revolut in the material shown, and no subsequent misuse of the records is documented there.

The regulator’s guidance also says organizations must report certain personal data breaches within 72 hours of becoming aware of them, where feasible, and notify individuals without undue delay when the risk to their rights and freedoms is high. The screenshot does not say whether Revolut has notified a regulator or when the company first learned of the unauthorized request.

In its U.S. security guidance, Revolut tells customers to use in-app support chat to check whether a suspicious contact is genuine. The company says it will not ask customers to share verification or security codes over the phone. The customer notice shown by ZachXBT does not report that such codes were disclosed.

Revolut’s U.S. and crypto operations The incident comes during Revolut’s expansion of its banking and digital-asset services. On Aug. 26, the company began offering its euro-backed EURR stablecoin to selected customers in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, with further European availability planned, as previously reported by crypto.news. The stablecoin rollout is separate from the customer-record disclosure.

Revolut’s U.S. plans provide context for American readers, although the notice does not identify any affected customer as being in the United States. On Sep. 3, the company received conditional approval for a U.S. bank from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Its proposed Stamford, Connecticut, bank would receive about $95 million in initial capital and could open in 2027 if it obtains the remaining approvals.

For now, Revolut provides U.S. customer banking services through Lead Bank, according to the earlier report. The proposed national bank still needs deposit insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve approval, and final OCC authorization before it can open.

A single software bug in Blockstream’s Elements codebase allowed an attacker to conjure nearly 4,000 unbacked L-BTC out of thin air, peg them out for real Bitcoin, and drain roughly 95% of the Liquid Federation’s reserves in a matter of hours. SlowMist published its full analysis of the September 6 exploit on September 11, confirming what is now the largest publicly disclosed security incident involving a Bitcoin sidechain this year.

The damage: approximately 3,998.5 L-BTC minted and redeemed, worth roughly $320 million. The Liquid Federation’s reserve wallet went from holding over 4,200 BTC to about 197 BTC.

How a caching shortcut became a $320 million problem The root cause, according to SlowMist’s analysis, was a cache key collision vulnerability buried in the range-proof verification process. Range proofs are cryptographic checks that confirm transaction amounts fall within valid bounds without revealing exact values. They’re fundamental to Liquid’s confidential transaction model.

To speed up verification, Elements cached previously validated proofs so it wouldn’t have to recheck them. The problem was how those cache keys were constructed. Prior to version v23.3.4, the software generated cache keys without length prefixes. Two different inputs could produce identical cache keys, meaning the system would treat an invalid proof as already verified if its key happened to collide with a legitimate one.

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The attacker exploited this collision to bypass verification, minting L-BTC that had no corresponding Bitcoin backing in the federation’s peg wallet. Those freshly minted tokens were then rapidly pegged out, converting them into real BTC on the Bitcoin mainnet before anyone could intervene.

The aftermath: partial recovery and an on-chain negotiation Blockstream moved quickly after discovering the exploit. Peg operations were suspended, halting any further outflows. The network’s block production itself was paused and didn’t resume until September 10, after the team deployed Elements v23.3.4 with patched cache key management that includes proper length prefixes.

Blockstream confirmed that the incident was caused by a software bug, not a compromise of the federation’s signing keys.

The attacker communicated via Bitcoin OP_RETURN messages, a method of embedding short text strings directly into Bitcoin transactions. The messages identified the attacker as a white-hat researcher and included a demand for a 10% bounty.

Roughly 3,400 BTC were returned to the federation peg wallet following the patch. The attacker retained approximately 598.5 BTC, presumably their self-assessed finder’s fee. The math works out to about 15% of the total haul, not the 10% originally requested.

What this means for federated sidechains The vulnerability wasn’t in the federation’s governance or key management. It was in a performance optimization. Caching verified proofs is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The implementation just happened to contain a flaw that turned a speed improvement into a $320 million attack vector.

The network was offline for four days. Ninety-five percent of its reserves vanished before anyone noticed. And the recovery depended, in part, on the attacker’s willingness to return funds.

SlowMist’s analysis specifically flags the absence of length prefixes in cache key construction as the enabling factor, a detail that other projects using similar patterns should audit immediately.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Zcash mining activity has risen more than 2.5 times in 2026 as stronger ZEC prices have pushed estimated revenue per megawatt-hour to about four times the level generated by Bitcoin miners.

Summary

Zcash mining activity has increased more than 2.5 times since the start of 2026. ZEC miners earn about twice as much per machine as comparable Bitcoin miners. Revenue per megawatt-hour is roughly four times higher for Zcash, according to Grayscale. US investors can access ZEC through Grayscale’s ZCSH fund on NYSE Arca. Zcash mining returns have outpaced Bitcoin per machine Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl said Zcash miners currently generate about $2 million in total revenue each day, compared with approximately $35 million earned across the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin’s total remains far higher because its mining network contains much more computing power. On an individual-machine basis, however, Grayscale estimated that a Zcash miner earns about twice the daily revenue of a Bitcoin miner.

Power-based comparisons create an even larger gap. Pandl estimated that Zcash mining produces approximately four times as much revenue per megawatt-hour as Bitcoin mining. Under the assumptions used in Grayscale’s analysis, ZEC mining revenue per unit of electricity also exceeds the income offered by some artificial intelligence and high-performance computing cloud services.

Zcash uses a proof-of-work consensus system, so miners compete to process transactions and add blocks to the chain. Successful miners receive newly issued ZEC and transaction fees, making token prices, network difficulty, equipment efficiency and electricity costs central to their earnings.

Unlike Bitcoin miners, Zcash operators use equipment designed for the Equihash mining algorithm. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256 machines, which means operators cannot move the same hardware between the two networks simply because one becomes more profitable.

Grayscale’s estimates compare revenue rather than net profit. Actual earnings for any operator can vary after accounting for power rates, equipment prices, cooling, maintenance, facility costs, and mining-pool fees.

Zcash hash rate has grown more than 2.5 times Rising ZEC prices have encouraged miners to add computing power, pushing total Zcash mining activity to more than 2.5 times its level at the beginning of the year, according to Pandl.

Hash rate measures the computing power dedicated to mining and securing a proof-of-work chain. As more machines compete, the network gains additional resources for validating blocks, while individual miners face more competition for the same block rewards.

Pandl described the increase as a reinforcing cycle in which a higher ZEC price makes mining more attractive, fresh machines raise the network’s hash rate, and added computing power strengthens the cost of attacking the chain. Grayscale believes improved security can then support investor confidence in the asset, although the cycle depends partly on ZEC retaining enough value to cover miners’ operating expenses.

The economics can change as mining participation rises. Zcash adjusts its mining difficulty to match the computing power on the network, so adding machines eventually makes each unit of hash rate less productive unless ZEC prices or transaction-fee revenue rise at the same time.

Supply issuance also affects the calculation. Zcash follows a Bitcoin-like scarcity model with a maximum supply of 21 million coins and scheduled reductions in block rewards. Lower issuance reduces the number of new tokens available to miners, requiring price gains, fee growth, or more efficient machines to offset the decline.

ZEC’s price rally has changed the mining equation Improved mining revenue has followed a sharp rise in ZEC’s market value during 2026. On Sep. 4, the token climbed above $1,000 for the first time after gaining 20% in one session, while about $34.5 million in short positions were liquidated over 24 hours.

As crypto.news reported earlier, ZEC had advanced roughly 2,300% year over year from about $42 in September 2025. Trading volume reached $1.2 billion during the move above $1,000, while its market capitalization rose to approximately $16.8 billion.

Price gains directly affect miners because block rewards are paid in ZEC. A miner producing the same number of coins earns more in dollar terms when the token rises, even if its equipment and electricity use remain unchanged.

The rally has also made Zcash mining more sensitive to price reversals. CoinGecko data showed ZEC trading near $1,093 on Sep. 11 after falling close to 11% over 24 hours. Although the level remained far above its price a year earlier, the daily loss showed how quickly the dollar value of mining rewards can change.

Network growth may also reduce revenue per machine if additional hash rate raises mining difficulty faster than prices recover. Grayscale nonetheless considers Zcash mining attractive at its current valuation, according to Pandl, who said the new computing power continues to reinforce network security.

US investors gained ZEC access through ZCSH American investors received a new route to Zcash exposure on Aug. 25 when Grayscale converted its existing Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded product listed on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH.

The Zcash ETF launch allowed brokerage-account investors to track the value of ZEC without buying the cryptocurrency directly or operating mining equipment. Grayscale set the product’s annual sponsor fee at 2.5% and said fee revenue would support network development, marketing and other Zcash-related work.

ZCSH holds ZEC while its shares trade through the traditional securities market. Grayscale’s regulatory filings provide for authorized participants to create and redeem baskets of shares, a process intended to keep the fund’s market price close to the net asset value of its holdings.

Before the conversion, the product traded on OTCQX as the Grayscale Zcash Trust. The fund held more than $313.5 million in assets shortly before its exchange listing, while Grayscale’s earlier filings identified Coinbase Custody as custodian and BNY Mellon as administrator.

An August filing amendment also disclosed that DCG International Investments, a subsidiary of Grayscale parent Digital Currency Group, was considering an investment tied to approximately 200,000 ZEC. The discussions were nonbinding, and Grayscale said the subsidiary could purchase more shares, fewer shares or none.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission closed an investigation into the Zcash Foundation in January without recommending enforcement action. The inquiry began with an August 2023 subpoena concerning crypto asset offerings, according to the foundation.

@meshsdk has shipped a combined $ADA and $BTC wallet SDK, giving developers a unified interface for building across both the Cardano and Bitcoin networks. The release, funded through Cardano's community grant programme Project Catalyst, marks a meaningful step in cross-chain developer tooling from one of the ecosystem's most active open-source teams.

What the SDK Includes The new wallet extension builds on that foundation by adding Bitcoin support through a single developer interface. The package includes headless wallets, Bitcoin primitives for address and script handling that mirror those already familiar to Cardano developers, and full support for transaction and data signing across both chains. All code is released under the Apache 2.0 licence, with documentation published publicly.

On the Cardano side,

Catalyst Fund 14 Funding and Milestones The work sits under Mesh's Catalyst Fund 14 proposal, budgeted at 100,000 ADA. Four of the five milestones have received approved proof of achievement, with the fifth currently awaiting closeout. A total of 76,000 ADA has been released to date.

For developers already working with Mesh on Cardano, the Bitcoin extension lowers the cost of building multi-chain applications considerably, removing the need to maintain separate toolchains for each network.

Sources:
Mesh SDK: About
Project Catalyst: All Funds

In XRP ETF news today, U.S.-listed XRP ETFs recorded approximately $12.29 million in net inflows during the September 9 session, according to SoSoValue data. That marked XRP’s second consecutive day in positive territory, following a $1.55 million inflow on September 8 when XRP was the only major spot crypto ETF category, among five compared, to close in the green. Bitcoin ETFs, meanwhile, extended their losing streak, recording $120 million in outflows on September 9 after already losing roughly $46.65 million the day before.

The two-day lead is real, but it remains thin. XRP’s September 9 inflow was roughly 10 times smaller than Bitcoin’s same-day outflow.

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XRP’s Back-to-Back Inflows Came Against Broader BTC ETF Weakness 🚀 HUGE: $XRP WAS THE ONLY CRYPTO ETF TAKING MONEY ON TUESDAY:

XRP ETFs SAW A SIGNIFICANT INFLUX OF NEARLY $2 MILLION YESTERDAY! 📈 pic.twitter.com/ieIcAvVpZU

— 𝓐𝓶𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓮 (@_Crypto_Barbie) September 9, 2026

Bitcoin ETFs lost $120 million on September 9, snapping a run of three consecutive positive sessions that had itself followed the September 8 outflow. Ethereum ETFs recorded $34.75 million in inflows on September 9, and Solana products added $11.73 million: a reversal from September 8, when both Ethereum and Solana posted outflows of $24.29 million and $667,720 respectively, alongside a $12.96 million withdrawal from Hyperliquid-linked products.

Notably, the entire $12.29 million XRP figure on September 9 came through the Bitwise and Grayscale ETFs. That concentration is worth tracking, since recent multi-day inflow streaks across XRP, ETH and SOL ETFs had shown a more even distribution of demand just weeks earlier.

DISCOVER: Meme coin supercycle: Top performers this week

Why Two Green Days Still Don’t Change the Broader Picture The five spot XRP ETFs collectively manage approximately $1.51 billion in assets, with cumulative net inflows approaching $1.69 billion since launch. The combined $13.84 million added across September 8 and 9 represents less than 1% of that cumulative total.

Bitcoin ETFs, by contrast, have accumulated nearly $55.59 billion in net inflows: about 33 times the XRP total. The gap holds up weekly too: in the week ending September 4, Bitcoin ETFs collected $986.9 million while XRP funds added just under $19 million over the same stretch.

Across two sessions, XRP outranks the field. On cumulative and weekly flows, it isn’t close.

XRP News: Price Stalls Despite Two ETF Green Days Based on the latest XRP news, Ripple trades at $1.3684, down 4.7% in the last 24 hours, cooling off after a sharp early-September spike toward $1.65. Price has since pulled back toward the $1.26 support zone, reflecting fading momentum after the rally. The broader structure remains well below 2025’s highs near $3.60, keeping the recovery tentative.

XRP’s price action sits against its own technical backdrop, independent of whatever the ETF tape shows on any given day. Two sessions of inflows are not confirmation of a driver. Sustained demand would need several more consecutive positive days for XRP ETFs while Bitcoin and Ethereum funds remain under pressure, a bar this two-day stretch hasn’t yet cleared.

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Daniel Frances is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel leverages his background in on-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and deep-dive guides. He holds certifications from The Blockchain Council, and is dedicated to providing "information gain" that cuts through market hype to find real-world blockchain utility.

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced significant outflows on Wednesday, recording a net withdrawal of $120.2 million, according to data from Farside Investors. This brings the two-day total for the holiday-shortened week to $166.8 million in outflows.

Key ETF withdrawals and inflowsAmong the funds, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) saw the largest single-day withdrawal, losing $78 million. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) followed with $27.2 million in outflows, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) registered $19.5 million in net redemptions.

Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) stood out as the only spot Bitcoin ETF reporting inflows on Wednesday, adding $4.5 million.

Mini dictionary: Farside Investors, a financial analytics firm, tracks and reports on the net flows of cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds across major markets, providing data for institutional and retail investors.

The midweek outflows followed $46.6 million in net redemptions from Tuesday, marking the first consecutive days of outflows for US spot Bitcoin ETFs since a three-day streak ended on August 14. Over the two sessions, GBTC lost a total of $92.7 million, while ARKB posted $69.9 million in redemptions and IBIT reported $8.8 million in net withdrawals.

ETFNet Flow (Wednesday)2-Day Net FlowARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB)-$78 million-$69.9 millionGrayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC)-$27.2 million-$92.7 millionBlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)-$19.5 million-$8.8 millionMorgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT)+$4.5 millionN/AImpact on cumulative fund flowsThe two-day decline erased around 4.4% of the $3.8 billion net inflow accumulated during the ETFs’ strongest three-week period of 2026. While total cumulative net inflows for Bitcoin ETFs now stand at approximately $55 billion since launch, aggregate net flows for 2026 show an outflow of about $1.07 billion.

Ether and Solana ETF activityIn contrast to the Bitcoin ETF pullback, US spot Ether ETFs rebounded with $34.7 million in net inflows on Wednesday, offsetting Tuesday’s $24.3 million in outflows and resulting in $10.4 million in weekly net inflows. BlackRock’s ETHB led the pack, attracting $22.9 million, with its ETHA fund following at $9.7 million. The 21Shares TETH fund added $2.1 million, and other Ether ETFs recorded no notable flows.

Spot Solana ETFs also reversed course, bouncing back from a $700,000 outflow on Tuesday to post $11.2 million in inflows on Wednesday. This pushed their two-day net inflow to $10.5 million, entirely led by Bitwise’s BSOL fund.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid ETFs logged their second consecutive day of withdrawals, losing $5.3 million Wednesday after a $13 million outflow on Tuesday, for a total net outflow of $18.3 million for the week.

Cryptocurrency price trendsAs ETF flow trends fluctuated, Bitcoin traded near $78,000 on Thursday, down from about $79,700 when the previous three-week net inflow data was reported. Ether was priced around $2,470, while Solana traded close to $101, according to CoinGecko figures.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $120.2 million in outflows on Wednesday, with ARK 21Shares, Grayscale, and BlackRock funds all experiencing significant withdrawals. Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust remained the only ETF to attract new investments during the session.

Ripple’s stablecoin has grown 1,278% this year while XRP shed more than a quarter of its value. The network is busier than ever, but the token capturing that activity has a dollar sign and a peg.

Summary

RLUSD market cap hit $2.32 billion with cumulative volume surpassing $9 billion, a 1,278% increase year to date, while XRP dropped 27% over the same period to trade near $1.39. The XRP Ledger processes 2.4 million daily transactions, up 21% year over year, and DEX volume surged 79%, yet active accounts fell 40%, pointing to fewer but larger participants. Seven spot XRP ETFs approved in March 2026 have pulled in $1.68 billion in cumulative inflows, with August alone contributing $153 million to $159 million, the best month since launch. RLUSD supply on the XRP Ledger jumped from 18.4% of total issuance at the start of 2026 to 58.9% today, with $963 million now sitting on XRPL and $1.1 billion on Ethereum. Institutional integrations, including JPMorgan, Mastercard, Convera, and Interactive Brokers, have overwhelmingly adopted RLUSD for settlement, not XRP, raising the question of whether the token is becoming a sidecar to its own ecosystem. The numbers tell two contradictory stories about the same network. XRP started 2026 near $1.90, slid to a July low of $1.06, bounced to $1.55 in August, and then drifted back to $1.36. Down 27% on the year. That is the kind of chart that makes retail traders close their apps and check back in six months.

But the infrastructure underneath that falling price is having its best year. The XRP Ledger is settling more transactions than at any point since the 2021 bull run. RLUSD, barely seven months old, already ranks among the ten largest stablecoins by market capitalization. Ripple signed deals with payment processors that move $190 billion per year. The Bank for International Settlements published a working paper using the XRP Ledger for cryptographic proof of integrity.

None of this lifted the token price. And that contradiction is the story worth unpacking, because it reveals something about XRP that the community has been reluctant to confront: the network’s success and the token’s performance may no longer be the same story.

The stablecoin that ate the narrative RLUSD launched in late 2025 as a compliance-first stablecoin designed to slot into existing banking infrastructure. Ripple positioned it as the settlement layer for cross-border payments, the exact use case that XRP was supposed to own. The company argued the two assets were complementary. Seven months of market data suggest otherwise.

The growth curve speaks for itself. RLUSD crossed $1 billion in market cap in the spring, then $2 billion on August 25, and sits at $2.32 billion today. Cumulative trading volume has passed $9 billion. The growth rate, 1,278% year to date, is the kind of number that would dominate crypto headlines if it belonged to a token people could speculate on. But a stablecoin pegged to one dollar does not generate the same excitement, even when it is quietly absorbing the utility that once justified XRP’s existence.

The listing trajectory tells its own story. Binance added RLUSD in January 2026. OKX followed on April 29. Gate.io on June 15. All four Korean Big 4 exchanges, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit, now carry it. That is not a niche product limited to Ripple’s partner network. That is distribution at scale, across every major trading region, in under a year.

More revealing is where the supply lives. At the start of 2026, only 18.4% of RLUSD existed on the XRP Ledger, with the rest on Ethereum. Today that figure has flipped to 58.9%, with $963 million on XRPL and $1.1 billion on Ethereum. The stablecoin is migrating to XRP’s home chain at an accelerating pace, which means the ledger’s growing transaction volume is increasingly denominated in dollars, not in XRP. Every mint on the XRPL is a vote of confidence in the chain and a vote of indifference toward the token.

The institutional playbook that skipped XRP When JPMorgan ran its treasury settlement using Ripple infrastructure, it chose RLUSD for the cash leg. Not XRP. That single decision captures the entire institutional logic in one sentence.

The pattern repeated across every major deal Ripple closed in 2026. Convera, the payment company processing $190 billion per year in cross-border volume, integrated RLUSD for its corridor settlements. LMAX Digital signed a $150 million deal to bring RLUSD into its institutional trading infrastructure. Mastercard connected through Ripple’s payment APIs. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund interacted with the Ripple ecosystem through RLUSD rails. Flutterwave, fresh off a $3.2 billion Series E, partnered for African payment corridors where dollar-denominated settlement reduces friction for remittance senders. Interactive Brokers and B2C2 added RLUSD support for their institutional client bases.

Count the names. JPMorgan. Mastercard. BlackRock. Convera. These are not speculative crypto plays. These are the largest financial institutions on earth, and every single one chose the stablecoin over the token. The reasoning is not complicated. A bank treasury desk managing overnight positions in multiple currencies does not want to hold an asset that dropped 27% in eight months. A dollar-pegged token eliminates the volatility risk entirely. The parade of institutional names signing with Ripple is real, but the parade is marching toward RLUSD, and XRP is watching from the sidewalk.

This is not a conspiracy or a failure of strategy. It is the predictable result of building a stablecoin that does the same job as XRP but without the price risk. Ripple created a better product for the exact customer it spent a decade courting. The irony is thick enough to cut.

Consider the pitch Ripple made to banks from 2015 to 2023: use XRP as a bridge asset, settle in three seconds, save 40% to 70% on corridor costs compared to SWIFT. Banks listened politely and mostly declined. The volatility objection was consistent across every boardroom. Now Ripple walks into the same boardrooms with RLUSD, which offers the same three-second settlement on the same ledger with the same cost savings, minus the volatility. Banks are signing. The product-market fit that eluded XRP for a decade arrived the moment Ripple removed the token from the equation.

Fewer, larger hands Here is the number that nobody is talking about. Active accounts on the XRP Ledger dropped 40% year over year. At the same time, daily transactions rose 21% to 2.4 million, and DEX volume surged 79%.

Read those three data points together. Fewer wallets. More transactions. Much higher volume per wallet. The network is concentrating into a smaller number of participants who each move significantly more money.

This is the “fewer, larger hands” paradox, and it reframes the entire XRP story. Retail traders, the ones who drove the 2017 rally and the 2021 echo, are leaving. The 40% drop in active accounts is not a rounding error or a seasonal blip. It is a structural shift that has persisted across multiple months. The people who bought XRP hoping it would hit $10 are gone, or at least dormant, their wallets sitting idle while the network they once championed rewires itself around institutional flows.

Who replaced them? Institutional players routing payments through RLUSD on high-throughput corridors. Market makers filling order books with larger individual trades that generate the same volume from a fraction of the accounts. Treasury operations that do not need thousands of wallets because they consolidate flows into a handful of accounts with API-driven execution and batch settlement. The ledger did not get quieter. It got more efficient, which is the polite way of saying it got more institutional and less retail.

This matters because XRP’s price has always been a retail phenomenon. Institutions did not buy XRP to hold. They used it as a bridge asset, in and out in seconds, which created transaction volume but not sustained buy pressure. The token’s market cap was built on the belief that retail holders and institutional utility would eventually converge, that the network effect would grow large enough to lift the price floor permanently.

Instead, institutions found a way to use the network without the token, and retail left when the price stopped cooperating. The convergence thesis collapsed not because it was theoretically wrong, but because RLUSD offered institutions a better path that did not require XRP exposure at all. The bridge asset became optional the moment the bridge itself could carry dollars natively.

No competitor has published this analysis. The bullish XRP content focuses on ETF inflows and partnership announcements. The bearish content points to price decline and escrow dilution. Neither side has connected the account data to the RLUSD migration to explain what is actually happening on the ledger at a structural level.

The ETF paradox Against all of this, spot XRP ETFs are having a quietly strong year. Seven funds launched after SEC approval in March 2026, and they have pulled in $1.68 billion in cumulative inflows. August was the best month yet, with $153 million to $159 million in net new capital.

That is real money entering real custody wallets, managed by real fund managers with real fiduciary obligations. It validates XRP as an investable asset class in the eyes of traditional finance. It is also a fraction of what Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs attracted in their first six months, which suggests the institutional appetite for XRP exposure has a ceiling that the community has not fully acknowledged. More critically, it creates its own paradox. ETF buyers are accumulating XRP in a wrapper that removes it from active circulation. They are not sending XRP across borders. They are not providing liquidity on the DEX. They are not participating in the network’s growing transaction volume. They are buying exposure to a price chart that has moved against them all year, warehousing tokens in cold storage vaults while the chain underneath operates on a different asset.

The ETF inflows have not translated into sustained price appreciation because the buy pressure from funds is offset by the sell pressure from escrow unlocks and the broader market’s indifference to XRP’s fundamental story. On September 1, Ripple unlocked three escrow tranches totaling 1 billion XRP: 100 million, 400 million, and 500 million tokens. The remaining escrow holds 32.6 billion XRP, with 1 billion tokens released every month. That is a monthly supply expansion that institutional ETF buyers cannot absorb at current flow rates, especially when the use case those institutions care about now runs on RLUSD.

The structural imbalance between inflows and outflows is the ETF story that the headline numbers obscure. One billion XRP at $1.39 equals roughly $1.39 billion in potential monthly sell pressure. August ETF inflows of $159 million represent 11.4% of that figure. Even assuming Ripple relocks most of each monthly unlock, the escrow mechanism creates a persistent overhang that works against price appreciation.

The ETFs prove that financial products can exist around XRP. They do not prove that XRP needs to appreciate for the Ripple ecosystem to succeed. That distinction is the quiet earthquake at the center of this story.

Regulatory clarity arrived and the price did not care The SEC case is resolved. Japan’s FSA approved RLUSD on June 25. The EU granted MiCA preliminary authorization in Luxembourg on June 23. The BIS published a working paper using the XRP Ledger for cryptographic proof of integrity.

Two years ago, any one of these headlines would have sent XRP up 30% in a day. All four happened in 2026, and XRP is down 27% on the year.

The obvious explanation is that regulatory clarity was already priced in. Markets anticipated the SEC resolution for over a year. The less obvious explanation is more important: regulatory clarity benefited RLUSD more than XRP. A stablecoin needs regulatory approval to function as a payment instrument in a given jurisdiction. A speculative token needs regulatory approval to avoid being delisted. The same event has different implications for different assets, and the market figured that out faster than the community did.

Japan’s FSA approval opened RLUSD to the third-largest economy by GDP, a market where dollar-denominated stablecoin settlement can replace costly yen conversion in cross-border flows. MiCA authorization covers the entire European Economic Area, granting RLUSD legal standing as an electronic money token across 30 countries. These are not theoretical markets. They are jurisdictions where RLUSD can now legally serve as a settlement currency for banks and payment processors.

XRP already traded in these markets before any of these approvals landed. Japanese retail investors have been among the largest XRP holders since 2017. European exchanges listed XRP years ago. The approvals changed nothing about XRP’s accessibility but changed everything about RLUSD’s commercial viability as a regulated payment instrument. Every regulatory win expanded the addressable market for the stablecoin while doing little more than confirming the status quo for the token. The community celebrated each headline as an XRP catalyst. The market priced each one as an RLUSD catalyst. The price chart settled the argument.

The cannibalization thesis Put it plainly. RLUSD is cannibalizing XRP’s primary use case, and Ripple is the one doing it.

This is not accidental. Ripple spent years arguing that XRP’s volatility was a feature, that a three-second settlement window meant the price swing during transit was negligible. That argument worked when the competition was SWIFT, which took days and charged 3% to 7% in corridor fees. It does not work when the competition is RLUSD, which settles on the same ledger in the same three seconds with zero price risk and lower integration complexity.

A payment processor choosing between a bridge asset that lost 27% this year and a stablecoin pegged to one dollar will choose the stablecoin every time. Not because XRP is broken, but because the stablecoin removes a category of risk that no amount of speed can compensate for. The conditions for XRP recovery exist, but they require something beyond Ripple’s core payment business to drive demand.

The bull case for XRP now rests on three pillars that have nothing to do with cross-border payments. First, speculative demand driven by ETF flows and retail re-entry during the next broad market rally. Second, DEX activity on the XRP Ledger creating organic demand for XRP as a base trading pair, a function that grows with on-chain DeFi development. Third, burn mechanics and escrow reductions gradually tightening supply over a multi-year horizon, eventually making the monthly unlocks negligible relative to circulating supply.

None of those pillars requires RLUSD to fail. They coexist. But they also mean that XRP’s investment thesis has quietly shifted from “utility token for global payments” to “speculative asset on a chain that settles stablecoin payments.” That is a meaningful downgrade in narrative, even if the price eventually recovers. It is the difference between owning a toll bridge and owning a house near a toll bridge. The traffic still passes by. The economics are entirely different.

What Ripple gains and what XRP holders lose Ripple the company is having an exceptional year by every metric that matters to a private enterprise. RLUSD generates revenue through minting and redemption fees. Institutional partnerships create recurring payment volume that compounds over time. Regulatory approvals open new markets with each jurisdiction. The Ripple ecosystem, measured by transaction throughput, partner count, and stablecoin adoption, has never been stronger.

XRP holders do not automatically benefit from any of that. Ripple holds billions of XRP in escrow, and the company’s success does not create a direct mechanism for that XRP to appreciate. There is no revenue share. There is no buyback program. There is no on-chain fee distribution. The link between Ripple’s business performance and XRP’s market price was always assumed by the community and never formally codified. In 2026, the data suggests that link is weaker than the community believed.

This is the uncomfortable truth that the “fewer, larger hands” data illuminates. The XRP Ledger is becoming an institutional payment rail denominated in RLUSD. The token that gave the ledger its name is becoming less relevant to the ledger’s primary function with each integration that chooses the stablecoin over the token. The network can thrive while the token stagnates, and 2026 is the first year where both of those things are happening simultaneously and measurably.

That does not mean XRP goes to zero. Plenty of tokens trade on narratives decoupled from their network’s primary utility, and some of them do very well over multi-year cycles. But it means the token needs a catalyst that is independent of Ripple’s payment business. Smart contract functionality expanding on the ledger could attract DeFi protocols that require XRP for gas fees and collateral. A DeFi ecosystem built on XRPL could generate organic trading demand that puts sustained buy pressure on the token through AMM pools and lending markets. Or a supply shock driven by sustained ETF accumulation combined with escrow reduction could tighten the float enough to move the price even without a fundamental use case shift.

Something has to create demand for XRP specifically, not for the XRP Ledger generally. Until that distinction narrows, the great disconnect will persist. And every month that RLUSD grows while XRP stagnates makes the distinction harder to close, because it proves to the next institutional prospect that the ledger works perfectly well without the token.

What to watch RLUSD monthly mint rate versus XRP escrow unlocks. If new RLUSD issuance consistently outpaces the dollar value of monthly escrow releases, the stablecoin is growing faster than the token supply. That ratio tells you which asset the market is choosing in real time. Active account trend reversal. The 40% drop in active accounts is the clearest signal of retail departure. A sustained increase over two consecutive months would indicate fresh participants entering the network, not just existing institutions adding wallets. XRP ETF flow acceleration. August’s $153 million to $159 million was strong but not sufficient to offset escrow sell pressure at current prices. Monthly inflows above $250 million would begin to matter for price. DEX volume composition. The 79% surge in DEX volume is bullish for network activity, but tracking how much of that volume is XRP-denominated versus RLUSD-denominated will reveal whether the token or the stablecoin is driving on-chain trading growth. Institutional settlement currency disclosure. When the next major bank or payment processor announces a Ripple integration, watch whether the press release names RLUSD, XRP, or both. That language is the clearest forward indicator of which asset institutions are choosing to build on. What is the current price of XRP? XRP trades near $1.39 as of early September 2026, down approximately 27% from its January high near $1.90. The token hit a year-to-date low of $1.06 in July before rallying to $1.55 in August, then pulling back again.

What is RLUSD and how big has it gotten? RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin launched in late 2025. It has grown to a $2.32 billion market cap with cumulative trading volume exceeding $9 billion, representing 1,278% growth year to date. It is listed on Binance, OKX, Gate.io, and all four major Korean exchanges.

Why is XRP falling while the network grows? The XRP Ledger’s growing activity is increasingly driven by RLUSD settlement and institutional payment flows that use the stablecoin instead of XRP as the value transfer layer. Network utility and token price have decoupled because the utility does not require the token.

How many spot XRP ETFs exist? Seven spot XRP ETFs launched following SEC approval in March 2026. They have attracted $1.68 billion in cumulative inflows, with August generating $153 million to $159 million, the strongest single month since launch.

Is RLUSD replacing XRP for payments? Institutional integrations in 2026, including JPMorgan, Convera, Mastercard, and Interactive Brokers, have adopted RLUSD for settlement. Banks and payment processors prefer a dollar-pegged asset over a token carrying a 27% annual drawdown for the same three-second settlement speed.

How much XRP remains in escrow? Ripple holds 32.6 billion XRP in escrow with monthly unlocks of 1 billion tokens. On September 1, three tranches of 100 million, 400 million, and 500 million XRP were released. The escrow creates persistent monthly sell pressure.

Why did regulatory wins not boost XRP price? The SEC resolution, Japan FSA approval of RLUSD, and EU MiCA authorization were largely priced into XRP before they occurred. More significantly, these events disproportionately benefited RLUSD by opening new jurisdictions for regulated stablecoin use while changing little for XRP’s existing market access.

Should I buy XRP based on this analysis? This article examines the structural relationship between XRP price action and RLUSD adoption. Individual investment decisions depend on personal risk tolerance, time horizon, and financial situation. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrency markets carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions. Published September 9, 2026.

Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

Among the biggest cryptocurrency assets, XRP has had the best daily ETF flow result. It is now the only significant spot cryptocurrency ETF category to draw in new investment, while Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid products all saw withdrawals.

XRP reaches breakthrough thresholdAccording to the most recent spot ETF data from September 8, the net inflows for XRP products were about $1.55 million. Although the amount is modest in absolute terms, it is noteworthy when compared to rival assets.

Source: Sosovalue HOT Stories

Bitcoin ETFs ended a three-day inflow streak with net outflows of $46.65 million. Ethereum followed with $24.29 million in outflows from spot products, while Hyperliquid ETFs experienced withdrawals of $12.96 million. A smaller $667,720 outflow was reported by Solana. As a result, XRP was the only asset among these five that had positive daily flows.

Additionally, the overall view is still positive. Five U.S. spot XRP ETFs have net assets of about $1.51 billion and cumulative net inflows of about $1.69 billion. In just the past 30 days, XRP products have brought in about $173 million.

Is XRP in pre-breakout territory?When compared to the underlying market, the divergence becomes especially intriguing. Following its significant August breakout, XRP is currently trading between $1.39 and $1.40 and is still above the long-term moving average at $1.35. Buyers have so far avoided a total reversal toward pre-breakout territory, even though the initial rally has cooled.

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Though its ETF flows have gone negative for the day, Bitcoin is likewise consolidating around $79,000 following its swift recovery. Despite its ETF outflow, HYPE is still near its recent highs of $86, while SOL is holding around $104 following its surge toward $110.

However, a single successful session should not be taken as proof that institutional capital is firmly shifting to XRP. At about $55.59 billion, Bitcoin's total ETF inflows are still much higher.  

The current divergence may be a sign of relatively higher institutional demand if inflows continue while BTC, SOL, and HYPE products find it difficult to draw in capital. As of right now, XRP has emerged victorious in the daily ETF flow comparison; however, confirming a significant trend will require a few more positive sessions.

Fintech veteran Wojciech Kaszycki has identified three tests for real bank adoption of Bitcoin: client custody balances, credit-funded spot trades and its use as loan collateral, following Standard Chartered’s launch of deliverable BTC and ETH trading for eligible UAE institutions.

Summary

Standard Chartered now offers institutional BTC/USD and ETH/USD trading through its existing electronic channels. Kaszycki said bank credit lines, custody, and back-office integration matter more than a familiar trading screen. Bitcoin-backed loans with published collateral haircuts would show that banks can price and manage the asset’s risk. Crypto-native venues may retain their advantage in weekend liquidity, derivatives, and trading outside banking hours. Standard Chartered has put Bitcoin trading on existing bank rails Standard Chartered said on Sept. 3 that eligible institutions can trade deliverable Bitcoin and Ether through its Dubai International Financial Centre branch, making it the first global systemically important bank to offer institutional digital asset spot trading in the UAE.

The service supports BTC/USD and ETH/USD trades through the bank’s existing electronic channels, including interfaces already used for foreign exchange. Clients can choose where their assets settle, either using Standard Chartered’s UAE custody platform or another custodian.

As crypto.news previously reported, the bank introduced the UAE service more than a year after launching the same trading model through its UK branch in July 2025. Standard Chartered had already begun offering regulated digital asset custody in the UAE in September 2024, initially supporting Bitcoin and Ether with Brevan Howard Digital as its first client.

Wojciech Kaszycki, founder and chairman of Mobilum and a strategy advisor to Warsaw-listed BTCS S.A., told crypto.news that placing digital assets on a bank’s foreign exchange interface only removes one small obstacle for institutions.

According to Kaszycki, treasury teams care more about the identity of their counterparty, internal risk approval, custody standards, auditor acceptance, and the way each trade enters the company’s accounting system.

“Nobody on a treasury team ever says: ‘I’d buy bitcoin if only it looked like my EUR/USD ticket.”

A meaningful system, in his view, would connect Bitcoin trades to the credit lines, limits, confirmations, and back-office processes that institutions already use for currencies. Such integration would let a treasury department treat crypto as a regular balance-sheet item instead of running it as a separate project.

“If it’s just a new ticker in the GUI and everything behind it is manual, it’s a demo,” Kaszycki said.

Drawing on his work with a listed Bitcoin treasury company and a Dubai family office, he added that trading against a bank credit line without sending funds to a venue in advance would make it easier to secure board approval.

Bitcoin collateral would offer a clearer adoption test Spot volume provides a poor measure of institutional adoption because trading activity can rise without showing whether companies or funds intend to hold digital assets, according to Kaszycki.

He instead pointed to custody balances held at banks for clients outside the crypto industry. Such balances would show that conventional companies, funds, and other institutions have chosen to hold Bitcoin through regulated banking relationships rather than merely trade it.

His second indicator is bank credit for spot purchases. Removing the need to prefund a trade would indicate that a bank’s risk department has assessed the asset, set exposure limits, and approved it within the institution’s credit framework.

Bitcoin entering bank lending books would provide the strongest signal, he said, especially if lenders disclose the haircuts applied to the collateral. A haircut reduces the value that a bank assigns to pledged property when calculating how much it will lend.

“When a bank has to price it, custody it, and liquidate it if needed, that’s adoption. Everything else is marketing,” Kaszycki said.

Banks in the United States have already started moving in this direction. An August report on JPMorgan collateral cited Bitcoin haircuts of 30% to 50%, meaning $1 million in pledged BTC could support between $500,000 and $700,000 in loan proceeds, depending on the borrower and loan terms.

According to the report, accepting Bitcoin as collateral also creates liquidation risk because a steep price decline could trigger margin calls and forced sales. Lenders therefore need rules for valuation, custody, collateral monitoring and liquidation before placing BTC alongside assets such as bonds, equities or gold.

Kaszycki also pointed to listed companies whose auditors approve Bitcoin holdings on their balance sheets. BTCS holds Bitcoin as a treasury asset on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and he said the audit process requires more work than completing the trade itself.

Separate custody leaves a settlement problem Allowing clients to use their preferred custodian offers flexibility, but Kaszycki said splitting execution and custody creates a familiar settlement risk. One party may need to transfer first, prefund the transaction, or use an escrow provider trusted by both sides.

Deliverable spot trading requires the buyer to receive the underlying Bitcoin or Ether rather than a cash-settled contract linked to its price. When the digital asset and cash travel through separate systems, completion of one leg can occur before the other.

Kaszycki compared the setup with foreign exchange settlement in 2005. In his assessment, Bitcoin can reach final settlement in under an hour at any time, while the dollar transfer may remain tied to SWIFT processing, bank opening hours, and payment cutoffs.

“The slow leg is fiat,” he said.

Tokenized bank deposits or regulated stablecoins could place the cash and asset legs on compatible systems, allowing payment-versus-payment settlement in which both transfers complete together, according to Kaszycki. Custodians would also need conditional release functions instead of waiting to confirm receipt of a wire before releasing the crypto.

For transactions between several banks, he said a netting network modeled on CLS could reduce the gross amounts that counterparties exchange bilaterally. Without such a system, banks must rely on credit lines, approved wallet lists, settlement windows, and staff monitoring blockchain explorers.

Standard Chartered has already tested ways to separate exchange activity from asset storage. Under a collateral-mirroring arrangement introduced by OKX in April 2025, institutions can keep eligible assets with the bank while their value appears in an exchange trading account. The framework later added BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized U.S. Treasury fund as eligible collateral in April 2026.

Banks could win regulated flows while exchanges retain liquidity Large banks can capture more institutional crypto trading because corporate treasuries, investment funds, insurers and Gulf sovereign institutions often prefer counterparties that already support their compliance and credit requirements, Kaszycki said.

Clients may accept a higher spread in return for access to a bank’s balance sheet, documentation, and established relationship. Kaszycki expects banks to source prices from crypto-native markets before adding a spread for institutional customers.

Crypto exchanges would retain several advantages under such a structure. Their markets operate continuously, including weekends, while banks remain organized around business hours and existing staffing models. Native venues also offer more assets and deeper derivatives markets, where much of crypto price discovery still occurs.

“At BTCS, we already do most of our size OTC with market makers rather than on order books, exactly for settlement flexibility,” he said. “Banks are just the next step in that same logic.”

U.S. rules now give national banks room to participate in several parts of the process. A December 2025 report on OCC guidance explained that national banks may conduct matched crypto transactions as riskless principals, provided they offset the exposure and comply with trading, anti-money laundering and third-party risk controls.

Earlier OCC guidance also confirmed that national banks can provide crypto custody and execution or outsource those functions to qualified providers. Banks remain responsible for managing the risks created by sub-custodians and other outside firms.

An August review of the U.S. custody market found that BNY, State Street, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, and Citi had launched or were preparing direct digital asset custody services. The report linked increased bank participation to the SEC’s January 2025 withdrawal of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 and OCC letters confirming banks’ custody authority.

Kaszycki said banks extending spot credit would show that their risk teams had built formal models for Bitcoin, while disclosed collateral haircuts would reveal how lenders value its volatility. On the corporate side, he would count listed companies whose auditors approve Bitcoin holdings, a process BTCS has already completed for its Warsaw-listed treasury.

As countries around the world continue to regulate cryptocurrencies, taxation stands out as one of the most important issues.

The latest notable regulatory effort on this issue comes from Germany.

A New Era in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Earnings! Germany, one of Europe’s largest countries, is preparing comprehensive regulations to tax gains from cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

According to BlockBeats, a draft prepared by the German Ministry of Finance plans to subject cryptocurrency gains to a flat tax of 25 percent, similar to stocks and other capital investments.

The draft legislation is not yet enacted and will be submitted to parliament for approval after a review process within the government.

One Year of Tax Exemption is Ending! Under the current system, gains made by individual investors from selling cryptocurrencies held for more than a year are exempt from tax. However, the ministry wants to abolish this exemption, and the new regulation proposes removing this exemption and classifying cryptocurrencies as capital gains.

At this point, the new system is planned to be applied to cryptocurrencies acquired on or after January 1, 2027.

The draft also envisages preserving some important advantages for investors. The current annual tax exemption limit of €1,000 ($1,170) is expected to remain in effect. Furthermore, according to the report, the draft text also includes a provision allowing crypto investment gains and losses to be offset against gains and losses from other securities such as stocks.

*This is not investment advice.

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Iran has reportedly changed its foreign-exchange framework to give companies more options for bringing export income back into the country, with the new arrangements permitting digital assets in international payments amid tighter US sanctions.

According to a Wednesday report from the Financial Times, Iranian businesses can now use Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether’s USDt (USDT) to pay overseas counterparties, with transactions processed through domestic crypto exchanges.

Exporters have also gained more control over money they earn outside Iran. Rather than sending those proceeds through the state-run exchange system and converting them at government-set rates, companies can put the funds directly toward their own import costs.

US Targets Iranian Crypto Assets and Exchanges Washington has meanwhile targeted Iranian activity in the crypto sector through measures covering both trading platforms and digital assets. In early June, the Treasury sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges under its “Economic Fury” campaign.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said shortly before those sanctions were unveiled that the United States had gained control of Iranian digital assets valued at approximately $1 billion.

Bessent announced another action on July 14, saying US authorities had directed the freezing of crypto worth more than $130 million in wallets connected to Iran’s central bank.

Separate blockchain research has also revealed the extent of crypto activity involving sanctioned Iranian parties. TRM Labs said in June that transactions linking CoinEx to sanctioned Iranian entities totaled more than $3.8 billion over more than seven years.

CoinEx disputed suggestions that it maintained business ties with the Iranian state or crypto trading platforms based in the country. The exchange also said it had not helped sanctioned entities obtain financing.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

CoinCorner has launched a Bitcoin custody service for UK customers that charges a 1.5% annual fee and uses keys held separately by CoinCorner and AnchorWatch.

Summary

CoinCorner and AnchorWatch each control a key, preventing either company from moving customers’ Bitcoin alone. Lloyd’s of London underwriters cover key loss and unauthorized access involving Bitcoin held in Vault. Customers can add or remove funds without a long-term commitment and set custom identity checks. CoinCorner’s crypto services remain outside FCA regulation and are not protected by the UK’s FSCS. CoinCorner said its new Vault uses multi-signature technology to divide control of customers’ Bitcoin between two companies operating in different jurisdictions. CoinCorner holds one key, while insurance and custody provider AnchorWatch holds the other.

Neither company can independently approve a transfer from the Vault, according to CoinCorner’s support documents. Requiring multiple keys removes the single point of control found in a conventional custodial wallet, where one company can authorize transactions on its own.

Bitcoin held through the service is insured under a policy underwritten through the Lloyd’s of London market. CoinCorner said the cover applies to losses caused by lost keys and unauthorized access, although specific policy conditions and exclusions have not been published on the product page.

Customers can also set their own identity checks, which must be completed before a transaction can proceed. The available controls allow account holders to add verification steps that match their security needs, with CoinCorner’s support team handling the setup.

CoinCorner Vault charges a 1.5% annual fee Vault costs 1.5% per year, with CoinCorner calculating and billing the fee monthly. The company charges customers on the first day of each month based on the amount of Bitcoin recorded in their Vault at that time.

No long-term commitment is required, and users can move Bitcoin into or out of the product. Withdrawals return funds to a customer’s standard CoinCorner Bitcoin balance, which the company describes as an instant process.

Deposits follow a different monthly schedule. According to CoinCorner’s Vault guidance, Bitcoin added after the first day of a calendar month does not enter the recorded Vault balance until the following month. The company says any Bitcoin remaining within Vault after a withdrawal continues to be insured.

CoinCorner also says it does not lend out or otherwise use Bitcoin placed in the service. The product therefore differs from interest-bearing crypto accounts, where a platform may deploy customer assets through loans or other transactions in return for yield.

Vault does not advertise a return on deposited Bitcoin. Customers instead pay for the custody structure, transaction controls, and insurance attached to assets held within the product.

Multi-signature custody splits control between two firms Multi-signature wallets require more than one private key to approve a Bitcoin transaction. Under CoinCorner’s setup, the relevant keys are held by independent entities rather than stored by a single platform.

AnchorWatch provides the second part of that arrangement through Trident, its Bitcoin custody infrastructure. The AnchorWatch platform uses Bitcoin scripts and time locks to apply security, recovery, and governance rules at the protocol level.

Time locks can make an alternative method of moving funds available after a specified period when a key is lost or a participant becomes unavailable. AnchorWatch says the design allows recovery conditions to be built into a vault without giving one party immediate control over the Bitcoin.

The US company is also a Lloyd’s coverholder, which allows it to arrange policies backed by underwriting capacity in the Lloyd’s market. AnchorWatch says its other custody products can obtain as much as $100 million of cover per vault, while institutional customers may seek limits of up to $500 million. CoinCorner has not disclosed the limit attached to its UK Vault product, so figures advertised for AnchorWatch’s other services should not be treated as the coverage available to every CoinCorner customer.

AnchorWatch separately offers a three-institution custody configuration involving AnchorWatch, BitGo, and CoinCorner. Its website describes that product as a two-of-three wallet, meaning two institutions must sign a transaction. CoinCorner’s UK-facing documents describe Vault as a two-entity service in which CoinCorner holds one key and AnchorWatch holds the other.

Insurance does not provide FSCS protection The private insurance attached to Vault is separate from the protection provided through the UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

CoinCorner states in its legal notice that investments in cryptoassets through its platform are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Customers also cannot take complaints about the crypto service to the Financial Ombudsman Service, while their Bitcoin is not eligible for FSCS protection.

The distinction matters because private policies cover named events under agreed terms and exclusions. CoinCorner identifies lost keys and unauthorized access as covered events, but its public Vault material does not say that the policy protects customers from a fall in Bitcoin’s price, insolvency, or every possible operational loss.

CoinCorner Ltd is based in the Isle of Man and is registered with the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority under the Designated Business Act 2015. The company is also registered with the Isle of Man Office of Fair Trading as a moneylender.

Its electronic money and payment services have a separate structure. CoinCorner acts as a distributor for Mercury Foreign Exchange Limited, an FCA-authorized electronic money company, but the authorization attached to those payment services does not extend FCA protection to CoinCorner’s cryptoasset products.

Founded in 2014, CoinCorner says it serves more than 350,000 users across 15 markets. The company previously entered the UAE market through a 2022 partnership with Dubai-based Seed Group covering Bitcoin trading, storage and payment services.

UK crypto custody faces new FCA rules in 2027 CoinCorner has introduced Vault as the UK prepares to place crypto custody under a full authorization system.

As crypto.news reported in June, the FCA’s new cryptoasset regime is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 25, 2027. The rules will cover custodians, trading platforms, stablecoin issuers, staking providers and other intermediaries.

Firms seeking to conduct regulated crypto activities will have an application window running from Sept. 30, 2026, through Feb. 28, 2027. Existing registrations under the UK’s anti-money laundering rules will not automatically become authorizations under the new Financial Services and Markets Act framework.

The regulator plans to apply requirements covering custody, capital, operational resilience, disclosures, market conduct and consumer protection. Companies may also need to show that they can withstand market stress and maintain financial resources against risks carried on their balance sheets.

In August, US trading platform Robinhood secured FCA registration under the existing anti-money laundering system before the new framework takes effect. More than 50 companies were listed on the FCA’s cryptoasset register at the time, including Kraken, Ripple, BlackRock and BNY.

For American customers, AnchorWatch advertises a separate multi-institution service using a two-of-three arrangement with CoinCorner and US custodian BitGo. Its website says insurance for that configuration is optional for US users, with indicative pricing beginning at $4,000 for every $1 million of coverage and final premiums subject to underwriting review.

HashKey Cloud said on Sept. 7 that it had joined Stacks as a launch partner for self-custodial Bitcoin staking.

Summary

HashKey Cloud joined Stacks as a Genesis Bond participant and an sBTC signer operator officially. The institutional Genesis Bond is scheduled to launch around September 10, according to Stacks developers. Bonded Bitcoin remains timelocked on Bitcoin while participants pair it with locked STX tokens separately. HashKey Cloud says its staking infrastructure spans more than 40 different blockchain networks globally today. sBTC signers coordinate Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals using a threshold-based approval system collectively onchain today. The agreement gives the infrastructure provider two roles: participating in the inaugural Genesis Bond and joining the signer network securing sBTC.

HashKey Cloud operates under HashKey Holding Limited. Stacks founder Muneeb Ali presented the collaboration during the HashKey Cloud and Cactus Custody “Yield on Trust” event in Hong Kong.

The company says its node and staking infrastructure covers more than 40 blockchain networks. Stacks reported that HashKey Cloud manages about HK$29 billion in staked assets. These figures come from the companies and were not independently audited for the partnership announcement.

HashKey Cloud will participate in the first Genesis Bond HashKey Cloud will join the first institutional cohort using Stacks’ new Protocol Bond system. Stacks said in an official announcement that the Genesis Bond was expected to begin around Sept. 10.

The launch date remains an estimate. Stacks has not announced an exact activation time, final capacity or participant allocations. Technical or operational conditions could also alter the schedule.

The first cohort includes institutional participants such as digital asset manager 21Shares and UTXO Management, a subsidiary of Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto Inc. The Genesis Bond is intended to demonstrate how institutions can earn BTC-denominated rewards without transferring their Bitcoin to a centralized custodian.

Bitcoin committed to the product remains visible on its base blockchain. The arrangement should allow observers to inspect the relevant timelock transactions without relying exclusively on reports from Stacks or participating institutions.

The phrase “Bitcoin staking” requires context. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work and does not support staking through its native consensus system. The Genesis Bond does not change Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

Stacks instead uses Proof of Transfer, commonly called PoX. Stacks miners commit BTC while competing to produce blocks. The protocol distributes part of that Bitcoin to qualifying participants as rewards.

Bitcoin remains under the holder’s keys Stacks’ PoX-5 design introduces a Protocol Bond that connects two separate commitments. The participant timelocks BTC on Bitcoin’s base layer and locks a corresponding amount of STX on Stacks.

According to the project’s technical documentation, a bond lasts 12 Stacks reward cycles, or approximately six months. The Bitcoin remains in a wallet controlled by the holder’s keys rather than moving to a centralized custodian or wrapped asset.

The participant must also lock STX through a signer-manager contract. The two positions are cryptographically associated and operate together for the bond term.

PoX-5 permits only one active staking position for each Stacks principal. A participant cannot use the same principal for an STX-only position and a Protocol Bond simultaneously. The protocol also prevents one principal from holding two concurrent bonds.

The documentation allows early withdrawal. However, participants leaving before the scheduled end of a term forfeit their remaining rewards for that cycle. Recovering the BTC principal still requires the holder’s signature.

Rewards initially accrue as sBTC. A participant may request native BTC by supplying a Bitcoin payout address, provided the selected signer manager supports base-layer withdrawals.

Native BTC settlement is not available under every configuration. If the withdrawal cannot be processed within the participant’s maximum transaction-fee setting, the payment falls back to sBTC.

As crypto.news reported, Stacks is targeting an annualized Bitcoin yield near 3% during the initial phase. The rate is a protocol target, not a guaranteed return. Actual rewards may vary with miner commitments, available capacity and network conditions.

HashKey Cloud will help secure sBTC transfers HashKey Cloud will also operate as a signer for sBTC, the Bitcoin-backed asset used within the Stacks ecosystem. Stacks previously confirmed that HashKey Cloud, Ankr and The Tie had joined the signer set.

sBTC is designed to represent BTC on Stacks at a one-to-one ratio. Users can deploy it within Stacks applications while the underlying Bitcoin remains governed by the network’s signer system.

Signers collectively authorize deposits and withdrawals between Bitcoin and Stacks. No individual signer can independently move the BTC backing sBTC.

Stacks said the system maintained a 70% approval threshold throughout the latest signer rotation. Operations such as withdrawals require approval representing at least 70% of participating signer weight.

Adding HashKey Cloud brings an Asia-based infrastructure provider into the signer group. Stacks described the expansion as improving institutional access and distributing operating responsibility across additional companies and regions.

Those benefits remain Stacks’ assessment. A larger signer set does not remove every technical or governance risk associated with sBTC.

Users still depend on enough signers remaining available and following the protocol correctly. Software failures, signer outages or coordination problems could delay deposits and withdrawals. Smart-contract faults could also affect services built around sBTC.

Self-custody reduces exposure to a single custodian, but it does not eliminate risks arising from Stacks contracts, wallet software, signer managers or the sBTC system.

Genesis Bond access will remain limited initially Stacks plans to introduce Protocol Bonds in stages. Initial Genesis Bond access focuses on institutions and professional market participants rather than unrestricted retail participation.

The project’s staking guidance says bond capacity will be allocated to approved partners during the bootstrap phase. Some capacity may become available through selected pooling providers.

Wallet compatibility is another requirement. Leather and Xverse support PoX-5 functions, while Ledger users need Stacks application version 0.26.15 or later for transactions carrying the new spending conditions.

Participants must also consider the prepare phase at the end of each reward cycle. During the final 100 Bitcoin blocks, the protocol rejects new staking transactions, position updates and withdrawal requests.

HashKey Cloud has not disclosed how much BTC or STX it plans to commit. The company also has not published participation fees, customer eligibility requirements or a list of supported jurisdictions.

Its announcement cautioned that Bitcoin staking services may be unavailable in some regions because of local laws. HashKey Cloud did not guarantee any investment return.

The Genesis Bond’s expected launch is the next event to watch. Confirmation of the activation time, committed Bitcoin, participating institutions and available capacity would provide the first measurable evidence of demand for the product.

Bitcoin has become one of the world’s largest pools of digital capital, yet only a small fraction participates in onchain financial activity.

Summary

Stacks plans to use self-custodial Bitcoin Staking as an entry point for BTC holders, targeting roughly 3% annualized rewards paid in Bitcoin. Its roadmap moves from attracting Bitcoin capital to scaling network infrastructure and expanding into lending, trading, perpetual markets and programmable BTC. StackingDAO, Bitflow, Zest Protocol and Hermetica are developing liquid staking, trading, credit and yield products that could give staked and Bitcoin-linked capital more uses across the ecosystem. Other crypto ecosystems built large economies around staking, lending and decentralized trading. Bitcoin, by comparison, still lacks a universally accepted home where holders can put BTC to work without taking on custody, bridge or foreign-chain risks.

That is the problem Bitcoin-native finance is trying to solve.

The term describes a financial system built around Bitcoin as the productive asset, with services such as staking, lending, borrowing and trading anchored to Bitcoin rather than requiring holders to move their wealth into another blockchain economy. Stacks is pursuing that model through a 2026 roadmap built around three connected stages: attract Bitcoin capital with self-custodial yield, scale the infrastructure needed to support greater activity, then expand the financial applications available to that capital.

The official roadmap is currently presented as a 2026 plan rather than a formal roadmap extending through 2030. Its direction, however, describes a longer-term effort to build lending, trading, programmable capital and other financial services around Bitcoin. The central question for the coming years is whether Stacks can turn that roadmap into the ecosystem where BTC holders move from passive ownership to active financial use.

Bitcoin Staking could become the entry point for idle BTC Many Bitcoin projects have tried to make BTC productive, but each approach introduces different trade-offs.

Core already offers self-custodial Bitcoin staking using Bitcoin’s CheckLockTimeVerify timelocks, but rewards are paid in CORE. Babylon also keeps staked BTC native to Bitcoin, but its security model includes slashing, meaning delegated BTC can face penalties if protocol security conditions are violated.

Stacks is proposing a different combination. Under its Bitcoin Staking design, participants create a protocol bond by locking BTC on Bitcoin Layer 1 and pairing it with STX worth approximately 5% of the BTC position. The BTC remains under the participant’s keys, while the paired STX secures access to staking capacity. The current target yield is approximately 3% annualized and paid in Bitcoin.

The source of that yield is Proof of Transfer, or PoX, the consensus mechanism Stacks has operated since January 2021. Stacks miners commit BTC as they compete to produce blocks and receive STX rewards. The BTC committed by miners then flows to eligible participants. Stacks says the mechanism has distributed more than 4,200 BTC since launch.

That gives the planned product an economic structure different from staking systems funded entirely through new token issuance. The reward pool comes from BTC spent by miners as part of Stacks block production rather than from creating a new reward token or lending participants’ Bitcoin to borrowers.

The product is not yet established at scale. As of July 16, 2026, PoX-5 was operating on a private testnet with integration partners testing bonding, reward distribution and exits ahead of a public testnet and potential mainnet activation. Mainnet still depends on the Stacks governance process and successful testing.

That distinction matters. Bitcoin Staking could become the top of the Stacks capital funnel, but the thesis remains dependent on execution.

The roadmap moves from capital to infrastructure and finance Attracting BTC is only the first step. A Bitcoin-native financial system also needs enough performance, liquidity and application depth to give holders reasons to keep using their capital after earning an initial yield.

The Stacks roadmap organizes that process into three phases. Bitcoin Staking anchors capital. Infrastructure improvements prepare the network for greater DeFi and automated activity. The final phase expands Bitcoin-native finance across lending, trading and programmable capital. The workstreams are progressing concurrently rather than waiting for each previous phase to finish.

On performance, Stacks core developers are targeting a 100-fold improvement in throughput through efforts including Clarity Wasm. The roadmap also calls for continued core improvements and optimization of the sBTC bridge. Stacks has separately set a goal of supporting up to 10,000 active AI agents as programmable financial activity grows.

The longer-term financial layer includes self-custodial Bitcoin lending, trading, perpetual markets and programmable BTC that software agents can use. The roadmap also explores allowing sBTC to pay transaction fees, which could reduce the need for users or automated agents to acquire a separate gas asset before interacting with applications.

For institutions and large Bitcoin holders, that combination matters because yield alone may not justify moving substantial capital into a new financial environment.

StackingDAO, Bitflow, Zest and Hermetica build the next layer The wider Stacks ecosystem is already assembling several of the financial primitives needed to move BTC beyond a single staking product.

StackingDAO provides the liquid staking layer. It currently operates liquid Stacking products for STX and has outlined plans for a Bitcoin liquid staking token as Bitcoin Staking develops. A BTC liquid staking token, or BTC LST, would represent an underlying yield-producing Bitcoin position while remaining usable elsewhere in DeFi.

The role is comparable in structure to the function liquid staking tokens serve in Ethereum’s DeFi economy. Without a liquid representation, staked capital remains harder to use elsewhere. With one, the same economic position can potentially provide liquidity, serve as collateral or participate in additional financial strategies.

Bitflow supplies another necessary piece: markets where Bitcoin-linked assets can trade and find liquidity.

The protocol operates a decentralized exchange and aggregator on Stacks and has introduced HODLMM, a concentrated-liquidity engine designed for more capital-efficient markets. A future BTC LST would need liquid trading venues to maintain an effective market and provide holders with practical entry and exit routes.

Zest Protocol adds credit markets. Its existing Stacks market allows users to lend Bitcoin-linked assets and borrow against collateral, while its planned Bitcoin Collateral Vaults aim to let users borrow stablecoins against BTC without moving their Bitcoin off Layer 1. Zest says those vaults are scheduled to launch in 2026 and are designed around self-custodial Bitcoin collateral rather than a conventional wrapped-BTC structure.

Hermetica provides yield products and a Bitcoin-linked monetary layer through hBTC and USDh. The hBTC vault deploys BTC exposure into onchain strategies including lending, staking and basis strategies, with realized profits accounted for in Bitcoin terms. Hermetica describes the product as redeemable for native BTC, while its current documentation shows that withdrawals remain subject to protocol cooldowns and Bitcoin settlement times.

Its USDh product provides a Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar that can serve as a stable asset within the same financial environment. Hermetica’s hBTC documentation describes a strategy that can use BTC-linked collateral in lending markets and deploy borrowed stablecoins into additional yield opportunities, connecting Bitcoin collateral, credit and stable liquidity within one system.

Together, these protocols illustrate what comes after Bitcoin Staking.

From Bitcoin yield to a Bitcoin-native financial economy Ethereum and Solana showed how staking can become more than a standalone yield product. Once users begin earning on an asset, demand can develop for liquid staking, collateral markets, decentralized exchanges and structured strategies that make the staked capital more useful.

Stacks is attempting to build a similar progression around Bitcoin without simply copying another chain’s security and custody model.

Its strategy starts with a product designed to keep BTC on Bitcoin L1 while generating BTC-denominated rewards. The roadmap then connects that capital to faster infrastructure and an ecosystem spanning liquid staking, trading, credit and yield products.

Bitcoin-native finance will not be defined by one staking product. It will be defined by whether Bitcoin can function as productive capital across staking, lending, liquidity and programmable applications without forcing holders to abandon the properties that made them choose Bitcoin in the first place.

Stacks is building toward that outcome. Bitcoin Staking is intended to open the door. The ecosystem developing behind it will determine how far the capital travels once it enters.

FAQ How is Stacks Bitcoin Staking different from other self-custodial options? Stacks’ proposed design combines three features: rewards denominated in BTC, no protocol-level slashing of Bitcoin principal and an early exit mechanism that returns BTC while forfeiting remaining rewards. Core also offers self-custodial staking but pays rewards in CORE, while Babylon’s security model includes BTC slashing. Stacks Bitcoin Staking remains in testing and has not yet established a mainnet operating record.

What is Bitcoin-native finance? Bitcoin-native finance is a financial ecosystem where Bitcoin serves as the productive asset across activities such as staking, lending, borrowing, trading and structured strategies, with infrastructure anchored to Bitcoin rather than requiring holders to move entirely into another blockchain economy.

How does Bitcoin Staking on Stacks work? The current design requires participants to lock BTC on Bitcoin L1 and pair it with STX worth approximately 5% of the BTC position. The two assets form a protocol bond. BTC committed by Stacks miners through Proof of Transfer funds Bitcoin-denominated rewards, with a current target of approximately 3% annualized yield during the planned bootstrap phase.

What is a Bitcoin liquid staking token? A Bitcoin liquid staking token represents an underlying staked or yield-producing BTC position while remaining transferable and potentially usable in DeFi. It can allow holders to maintain exposure to staking rewards while using the liquid token for trading, liquidity or collateral. StackingDAO has outlined plans to develop a BTC LST as Bitcoin Staking on Stacks develops.

Tether isn’t just printing digital dollars anymore. CEO Paolo Ardoino has laid out a vision that positions the stablecoin giant as something closer to a sovereign wealth fund, one that distributes dollars globally while quietly amassing enormous reserves of Bitcoin and physical gold.

Tether has been buying between 1 and 2 tons of gold every single week. Let that accumulate over months, and you get approximately 140 tons of gold valued at roughly $23-24B.

Ardoino has indicated the company targets gold at approximately 10-15% of its investment portfolio. The purchases are funded not by minting more USDT, but by profits from Tether’s core operations. Tether earned an estimated $10-13.7B across 2024 and 2025, with expectations for 2026 running even higher. When your stablecoin has $186B in market circulation and you’re earning yield on the reserves backing it, the cash flow becomes almost absurdly large.

The company has also reportedly been hiring ex-HSBC traders and expanding into gold trading operations.

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Tether has been allocating up to 15% of its realized operating profits to Bitcoin since May 2023, building a position that now sits somewhere in the range of 83,000 to 100,000 BTC. At current prices, that Bitcoin treasury is worth north of $8B. Ardoino has described Bitcoin as a “digital inflation hedge” and, in more colorful terms, a crucial defense against what he called an “apocalyptic future.”

The Bitcoin allocation targets roughly 10% of the overall investment portfolio, mirroring the gold strategy. Together, these two hard-asset positions represent about 20-25% of Tether’s total reserves, with US Treasuries and cash equivalents making up the bulk of the company’s backing.

With approximately $186B in circulation, Tether’s stablecoin dwarfs every competitor and serves as the de facto digital dollar for emerging markets worldwide. In parts of Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, USDT functions as a savings vehicle and payments rail in ways that traditional banking simply doesn’t reach.

Tether earns yield on the Treasury bonds and other instruments backing USDT, while users get the dollar exposure they want. USDT holders don’t earn interest, making the spread between what Tether earns on reserves and what it pays out the core business model.

The company has also launched Tether Gold (XAUT), a tokenized gold product that has been gaining traction. If Tether’s physical gold holdings continue to grow at the current pace, XAUT could allow the company to monetize its gold reserves twice: once through appreciation and once through tokenization fees.

Tether’s Bitcoin purchases represent a steady, programmatic source of buying pressure. A company allocating 15% of multi-billion-dollar annual profits to BTC on an ongoing basis creates a persistent bid in the market. Hiring traders from major banks and building physical commodity positions gives Tether credibility with institutional players who might otherwise dismiss a stablecoin company as a purely crypto phenomenon.

A company holding $186B in stablecoin liabilities, 140 tons of gold, and nearly 100,000 Bitcoin has become systemically relevant. Any shock to Tether’s operations, whether regulatory, operational, or reputational, would now send ripples through multiple asset classes simultaneously.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

The oldest trick in the con artist’s handbook, updated for the crypto age: call someone pretending to be from a trusted institution, create enough panic, and walk away with their life savings. In this case, the life savings happened to be more than 4,100 Bitcoin, worth over $240 million at the time of the theft.

Malone Lam, a 22-year-old Singaporean national, is scheduled to appear in a U.S. federal court on September 9, 2026, to enter a guilty plea linked to one of the largest Bitcoin thefts ever prosecuted on American soil.

How the scheme worked Lam and his associates allegedly impersonated representatives from both Google and the Gemini crypto exchange, contacting a wealthy investor based in Washington, D.C.

The goal was straightforward, even if the execution was elaborate: convince the target that his accounts were compromised, then talk him into handing over security codes and access credentials. Once inside, the group transferred his Bitcoin holdings out of his control entirely.

The theft occurred in August 2024, though the broader criminal operation had been running since approximately October 2023. By the time authorities dismantled it, the group had been linked to thefts totaling more than $263 million across multiple incidents stretching through March 2025.

The FBI arrested Lam in September 2024 at a mansion in Miami, a detail that says everything about how the stolen funds were being spent. Prosecutors allege the group converted Bitcoin into cash and then burned through it: dozens of sports cars, private jets, and a single nightclub visit in Los Angeles that reportedly ran to over $569,000.

A landmark prosecution This case carries legal significance that extends well beyond the dollar amount. It marks the first time a Bitcoin-related prosecution has been brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO, a statute historically associated with organized crime syndicates rather than crypto theft rings.

Eighteen people have been indicted in connection with the scheme. Ten have already pleaded guilty ahead of Lam’s scheduled hearing, suggesting prosecutors have built a durable case from the inside out. Lam himself faces a minimum sentencing guideline of 14 years in prison if the plea proceeds as expected.

The operation also had a physical dimension that investigators found notable. The group reportedly conducted home burglaries specifically to steal hardware wallets, the small USB-like devices that store crypto private keys offline.

What this means for crypto security Exchanges invest heavily in technical infrastructure, multi-factor authentication, and blockchain-level security. None of that matters if an attacker can simply call your customer and impersonate your support team.

Gemini’s brand was used as a prop in this scheme, though the exchange itself was not compromised at the infrastructure level.

For individual holders of significant crypto assets, the case reinforces several uncomfortable realities. Legitimate exchanges and platforms do not initiate unsolicited calls asking for security codes. Any unexpected contact claiming to be from a financial institution or exchange, requesting credentials or urgent account action, should be treated as a red flag regardless of how official it sounds.

Ten guilty pleas already secured, a lead defendant scheduled to follow, and a case that federal prosecutors are framing as organized crime rather than opportunistic fraud.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

@PancakeSwap has crossed the 200 million user mark, a milestone that underscores its standing as the dominant decentralized liquidity venue heading into the second half of 2026.

A Platform Built on Sustained Growth The milestone did not arrive suddenly. That foundation has since expanded:

While the multi-chain footprint has broadened its reach, BNB Chain remains the engine of the platform, accounting for the deepest liquidity and the highest transaction counts.

On the tokenomics side,

Expanding Into Tokenized Assets Beyond spot trading in $BTC and memecoins, PancakeSwap has moved aggressively into tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

The tokenized asset push was largely triggered by a partnership with Ondo Finance. The appeal is practical:

With 200 million users now on board and a growing suite of products spanning crypto-native tokens, memecoins, and tokenized equities, @PancakeSwap appears well-positioned to remain the primary decentralized exchange for retail participants through the current market cycle.

Sources:
PancakeSwap: 5 Years of PancakeSwap (Official Blog)
Crypto Briefing: PancakeSwap hits $1B in tokenized asset volume
Crypto Briefing: PancakeSwap v3 hosts $3B in spot DEX volume for tokenized stocks

Altcoins

7 September 2026 | 11:13 U.S. inflation is the main market-wide risk this week, while policy decisions, security updates, network upgrades and migration deadlines could move several individual tokens.

Date Catalyst Main exposure September 10–11 U.S. PPI and CPI Bitcoin, altcoins, yields and the dollar September 10 ECB policy decision European markets and global risk appetite No fixed date Liquid incident resolution L-BTC, Liquid services and bridge confidence September 10–11 MultiversX and XRPL upgrades EGLD, XRP and network applications September 10 Harmony migration deadline ONE holders, applications and liquidity providers 1. U.S. inflation could move the entire crypto market The Bureau of Labor Statistics calendar places the August Producer Price Index release on September 10 and the Consumer Price Index on September 11. Both reports are scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET.

PPI measures prices received by domestic producers, while CPI tracks prices paid by consumers. CPI normally has the stronger immediate influence on Federal Reserve expectations, but an unexpected PPI result could begin changing market positioning one day earlier.

The releases arrive shortly before the Federal Reserve’s September 15-16 meeting. Because the figures could alter expectations for that decision, Bitcoin’s historical reactions to Federal Reserve rate increases provide useful context for the connection between monetary policy and crypto prices.

Hotter inflation could push Treasury yields and the dollar higher if traders reduce expectations for monetary easing. Higher yields increase the return available from lower-risk assets, while a stronger dollar can tighten financial conditions for assets priced in the U.S. currency. Both developments can pressure Bitcoin and altcoins.

Softer inflation could lower yields and weaken the dollar, creating a more favorable environment for risk assets. The initial move may still prove temporary if the data do not materially change the expected path of interest rates.

That happened after the May 2024 CPI report was released on June 12. Bitcoin initially surged above $69,000 after inflation came in below expectations, but part of the advance faded as traders considered the Federal Reserve’s cautious outlook.

After this week’s releases, traders can distinguish a broader macro move by checking whether Bitcoin, two-year Treasury yields and the dollar move in consistent directions. Softer inflation accompanied by falling yields, a weaker dollar and gains across altcoins would provide stronger confirmation than an isolated Bitcoin spike.

2. The ECB decision could send conflicting signals The European Central Bank’s monetary-policy meeting concludes on September 10. The decision is due at 12:15 UTC, or 2:15 p.m. in Frankfurt, followed by a press conference.

The ECB does not usually influence crypto as directly as the Federal Reserve, but its decisions can move European bond yields, the euro and expectations for global liquidity.

A restrictive decision or unexpectedly hawkish guidance could lift regional yields and weigh on risk appetite. A dovish decision could support European assets through lower borrowing costs, but it could also weaken the euro and strengthen the dollar. Those opposing effects make the market’s response more informative than the rate decision alone.

The ECB raised its three key rates by 25 basis points in June, confirming that renewed inflation pressure can still produce a restrictive policy surprise. That decision provides policy context rather than proof that Bitcoin will respond in a particular direction this week.

Traders should compare the ECB statement with movements in EUR/USD, European yields and the dollar index. A Bitcoin move that occurs without corresponding changes in those markets would be more likely to have a crypto-specific cause.

3. Liquid’s repayment now requires on-chain proof The Liquid Network incident has no scheduled resolution, but a return of funds, publication of a technical postmortem or restoration of normal network activity could become a significant development during the week.

Liquid said approximately 4,000 BTC, valued near $320 million at the time, left its federation wallet. It also said the SideSwap Peg-Out Authorization Key and the federation’s other keys had not been compromised.

SideSwap said the L-BTC submitted through its service had been created through an Elements software vulnerability before the related peg-outs were processed. No complete public postmortem had independently established the full mechanism at the time of writing.

The unidentified parties controlling the Bitcoin claimed in on-chain messages to be white hats. They said they would return most of the funds after the vulnerability was patched, but that promise had not been completed or independently verified.

The distinction between a stolen key and a software failure matters. A compromised private key would mean an attacker obtained direct control over protected funds. A validation failure could allow an unauthorized state change even when the relevant keys continue functioning as designed.

A detailed examination of how 4,000 BTC left Liquid without a reported key compromise explains the known transaction sequence and the questions that remain unanswered.

The broader Bitcoin market would face greater risk if the funds began moving toward exchanges or services commonly used for liquidation. Without such movement, the immediate consequences remain more concentrated in L-BTC, Liquid-based services and confidence in federated bridges.

The 2022 Ronin bridge exploit provides a relevant comparison. RON fell about 20% after the breach was disclosed, while the most direct disruption remained within Ronin and its connected applications. Security incidents generally become market-wide risks only when losses, forced selling or technical concerns spread beyond the affected system.

For Liquid, the useful evidence would be confirmed repayment transactions, a reconciled reserve balance, publication of the vulnerability fix and the restoration of network and exchange services.

4. MultiversX and XRP Ledger face execution tests Two protocol changes are expected during the week, placing the immediate focus on whether both networks complete their upgrades without disruption.

MultiversX has scheduled its Supernova mainnet activation for September 10 at epoch 2233. The upgrade is designed to reduce block times from approximately six seconds to 600 milliseconds by separating consensus from execution.

If the activation succeeds, faster confirmation could make the network more suitable for applications requiring frequent or time-sensitive transactions. Its longer-term value to EGLD will depend on whether developers and users take advantage of that additional capacity.

The XRP Ledger could activate its fixCleanup3_3_0 amendment around September 11. The projected date remains conditional on validator support staying above the required threshold.

Under the XRPL amendment process, a proposal must retain supermajority support for two weeks before activation. The current voting position and projected date can be followed through the XRPScan amendment tracker.

The bundled fixes affect features including vaults, lending, automated market makers, permissioned trading infrastructure, checks and pseudo-accounts. It is primarily a maintenance amendment rather than a new source of XRP demand.

Ethereum’s 2022 Merge shows why technical execution and price performance must be judged separately. The network completed its transition to proof of stake, but ETH initially rose by around 2% before falling about 6% below its price at the time of the upgrade, according to Coinbase Institutional. Wider market conditions and existing trader positioning outweighed the successful deployment.

For both MultiversX and XRPL, activation is the first test. A lasting token-price effect would require the technical changes to produce greater usage, liquidity, transaction activity or fee generation.

5. Harmony users face an asset-access deadline Harmony has proposed retiring its mainnet and migrating ONE to Ethereum while redirecting the project toward AI-powered video infrastructure.

The proposals are nonbinding and may be revised. Their immediate importance comes from Harmony’s instruction for users to exit smart contracts before September 10 because multisignature wallets, liquidity pools and on-chain applications cannot be transferred automatically.

The proposal says its final-state calculation would cover wallet balances, staking delegations, validator rewards and ONE reported by centralized exchanges. Users should nevertheless verify how their wallet, exchange or application plans to handle the migration rather than assume every balance will receive identical treatment.

Liquidity providers may need to unwind positions, while application teams must determine whether balances and services can be moved safely. These actions could reduce on-chain liquidity or produce selling pressure even before the proposal reaches its final form.

Validators may stop operating from 7 a.m. Pacific Time on September 10 under the published plan. Declining validator participation could therefore become relevant before the network’s final block is established.

BNB Beacon Chain’s retirement shows why migration deadlines can matter long after a blockchain stops operating normally. BNB Chain provided a formal migration process, but users who missed the primary window later needed a dedicated recovery tool to move eligible assets.

For Harmony, the most useful indicators are validator participation, bridge availability, decentralized-exchange liquidity and updated instructions for assets remaining in smart contracts after September 10. ONE’s market price will show only part of the migration’s impact.

Inflation has the widest market reach U.S. inflation has the greatest potential reach because it can reprice interest-rate expectations across crypto, bonds, currencies and equities. The ECB decision is the secondary macro event, while Liquid carries the largest unresolved security risk.

Liquid, the two network upgrades and Harmony’s migration proposal have narrower exposure. Their effects should be assessed through fund movements, network performance and user access – not automatically treated as signals for the wider crypto market.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Author

Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.

Someone pulled $319 million in Bitcoin (BTC) out of Blockstream’s Liquid network on Sunday. It cost 21 cents in fees. Then they left a note on the blockchain saying they were the good guys.

While the internet calls it a heist, the chain says something stranger. Liquid’s remaining coins are still fully covered, down to the fourth decimal place.

We are aware of a security incident on @Liquid_BTC. Purported white-hat hackers have withdrawn ~4,000 BTC (~$320 million) from the Liquid Federation wallet. The @Blockstream team is working on contacting them on-chain with a signed message.

What we know so far is that the funds…

— Liquid Network 🌊 (@Liquid_BTC) September 6, 2026
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens 

$320M Crypto Reserve Moves, But the Wallet Left a Strange MessageThe first move cleared at 14:06 UTC, releasing 3,996 coins to an address nobody had ever used before. That was 95% of everything the network held.

Four hours later the money moved again. The sender paid 269 satoshis, about 21 cents, and attached a message anyone can read.

Actors left a message “we are whitehats. contact us on chain”. Source: memepoolThen they sent 0.00001 back to Liquid’s own address. The other 3,998.49 coins have not moved since.

“It looks like ~4,000 BTC just moved from the Liquid Network bridge all at once with an OP Return saying, “we are whitehats. contact us on chain”,” one user noted.

The Part Everyone MissedLiquid runs on one rule: To take coins out, you destroy the matching tokens inside the network first. So when the reserve shrank, the tokens it backs shrank with it. Both landed in nearly the same spot.

Liquid got got?

Liquid Pegout tx 4000/4200 BTC
8db751a650ae2f12006b7e8c69a75e4df360e8afd6b9e05ae0b9fa6458a7b140

Hacker message: "we are whitehats. contact us on chain"
c103de95817b43f2df635ec6f35ff126ca26a7c6d20570c4b01866b2b3e69a19

— ∴FreeSamourai∴ (@ErgoBTC) September 6, 2026
The peg holds, with 0.22 coins to spare. Nobody still holding L-BTC is short a satoshi. That kills the insolvency story. However, it leaves a worse one. Add what left to what remains, and the network held about 4,193 coins on Saturday. Nearly all of them were burned to make this move work.

Blockstream is clear about who can do that. Only a federation member can burn the tokens. Fifteen companies hold the keys, and 11 must sign before coins leave.

Its documentation calls the destination list a safeguard.

Whitelisted addresses are used as a failsafe to ensure that the federation always remains in full control of the BTC held by the Liquid Network,” the team said in its documentation.

The coins went to a brand new address. Blockstream has not explained that, or said anything at all.

Traders have seen this before, particularly with Ronin bridge attackers who gave back $10 million and took a bounty in 2024.

The money sits still, in daylight. Whoever holds it asked to be contacted. Nobody has answered.

The IMF stated that the recent Bitcoin accumulation came from private donations, not public funds

El Salvador has significantly reduced public participation in its Chivo e-wallet as part of changes to the government’s involvement in Bitcoin, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF said efforts are also underway to improve transparency around the country’s BTC holdings across its different wallets.

No Public Funds Bought Bitcoin Majority ownership and operational control of Chivo have been transferred to a private operator, while the government has kept a minority stake and responsibility for holding customer assets. On Bitcoin accumulation, El Salvador provided documentation showing that the BTC acquired since the first review of its IMF program came from private donations, and no public funds were used for the purchases.

The IMF staff and the Salvadoran authorities have reached a staff-level agreement that also includes measures to strengthen the governance and risk management of crypto assets held by the public sector, along with plans to update the country’s digital-asset legal, regulatory and supervisory framework.

The IMF said no additional Bitcoin accumulation beyond the documented donations is expected. The developments come as El Salvador continues implementing reforms under its Extended Fund Facility arrangement with the international financial organization.

Zooming out, the IMF Mission Chief for El Salvador, Mr. Torres, stated that the country’s economy grew more than expected in 2025, and real GDP growth is expected to reach 4.5% this year. The outlook is being supported by investment and consumer spending, as well as remittances, tourism, and capital inflows. The IMF also pointed to improved security and higher investor confidence as factors supporting the economy. It said the government’s economic policies have helped strengthen fiscal and external buffers.

El Salvador Bitcoin’s Stash El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, but its use and accumulation have faced continued opposition from the International Monetary Fund. As part of negotiations for its $1.4 billion IMF program, the country agreed to limit public-sector involvement in BTC, make private-sector acceptance voluntary, and scale back parts of its crypto framework.

You may also like: Bitcoin’s 4-Year Cycle Could Be Changing: Willy Woo Reveals What Could Replace It Crypto Holders Turn to Loans as Markets Cool in 2026: CQ Bitcoin Holders Just Cashed Out 110,000 BTC in Profits: Is a Bigger Price Drop Coming? The National Bitcoin Office’s reserve tracker currently lists around 7,764 BTC. At the current price of $81,150, the holdings are worth roughly $630 million.

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8h05 ▪ 6 min read ▪ by Eddy S.

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Kalshi has just reached a milestone. The predictive markets platform recorded 15.4 million visits from the United States in July 2026, compared to barely 1 million a year earlier. That’s an increase of 1,520%, according to Similarweb data consulted by Cointelegraph on Friday. Trading volume is rising at an even faster pace. Approximately 40 billion dollars in notional monthly volume in August, compared to 874 million a year before. But the information that really changes the game is elsewhere. Kalshi has just launched crypto perpetual contracts, including BTC, ETH, BNB and 14 other assets, with up to 6x leverage. A pivot that complicates an already heavy regulatory file.

In brief Kalshi now captures most of the growth in the predictive markets sector, driven by sports contracts. The platform is playing its regulatory survival before the Supreme Court on the exact nature of its contracts. In the midst of a legal battle, Kalshi chooses to open a second front by launching leveraged crypto perpetuals. Kalshi: Vertigo-Inducing Traffic and Volumes The numbers speak for themselves. US traffic represented nearly 80% of Kalshi’s total in July, compared to 72.8% a year earlier. Growth remains massively concentrated on the American market. Sports contracts, meanwhile, account for 83% of July’s trading volume, reported Barron’s on Thursday. In terms of volume, the entire predictive markets industry has grown from 2 to 50.7 billion dollars monthly over the period, with Kalshi capturing nearly 79% of the total alone. So Kalshi hasn’t just grown, it has absorbed the entire market.

The notable fact here is that traffic is also increasing from jurisdictions where Kalshi is not allowed to operate directly:

Canada increased from 50,000 to 450,000 visits; The United Kingdom from 31,000 to 296,000, while the platform’s user agreement still prohibits direct access from these two countries.  Kalshi circumvented the issue in June through a partnership with Wealthsimple, which gives access to about 4,000 eligible contracts via a separate app. Clever, but it doesn’t erase the fundamental question. Who accesses what, and under what authorization?

A Court Case that Has Reached the Supreme Court While traffic explodes, the courts are active. New Jersey has brought before the US Supreme Court the question of whether Kalshi’s sports contracts fall under federal supervision (thus the CFTC) or state gambling laws specific to each state. Michigan is pursuing its own efforts to block the platform. The issue is not cosmetic because if sports contracts are reclassified as bets under state jurisdiction, a significant part of Kalshi’s model, 83% of the volume, becomes fragile in its main markets.

Kalshi is playing a double-edged sword here. On the one hand, it claims federal status as an event contract market, regulated by the CFTC for years. On the other hand, the bigger the platform grows, the more it attracts state regulators’ attention, who see in this success proof that Kalshi is effectively disguised sports betting.

The Crypto Shift that Incorporates a Regulator And now Kalshi adds another layer. On September 4, the Kalshi Crypto account announced on X the launch of perpetuals on BNB, complementing an offering that already covers BTC, ETH, LINK and 14 other cryptos, with leverage up to 6x for eligible American traders. An extension confirmed the same day by a post relaying the announcement on the network. The platform is also pushing, according to the same publications, towards tokenized stocks and gold.

To say it frankly, the timing is bold because Kalshi is already fighting before the Supreme Court to prove that it is not a disguised bookmaker. And it chooses this precise moment to launch 6x leverage on cryptos, a territory that clearly falls under the CFTC’s eye for classical derivatives. Instead of simplifying its regulatory file, Kalshi has opened a second front. This time on leveraged crypto derivatives, while the first, sports contracts vs. gambling, is not even resolved yet.

Three Things About Kalshi to Keep in Mind US traffic up +1,520% in one year, 15.4 million visits in July, compared to less than 1 million in August 2025 Kalshi is about 40 billion dollars, driven to 83% by sports contracts, while litigation over their status rises to the Supreme Court New regulatory front opened at the beginning of September: launch of crypto perpetuals (BTC, ETH, BNB, LINK + 14 assets) up to 6x leverage Kalshi is therefore growing faster than its regulatory base can keep up. Between the Supreme Court and the CFTC, two fronts are opening at the same time: sports and crypto. The question is no longer whether a regulator will decide, but which one will tackle it first.

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Eddy S.

The world is evolving and adaptation is the best weapon to survive in this undulating universe. Originally a crypto community manager, I am interested in anything that is directly or indirectly related to blockchain and its derivatives. To share my experience and promote a field that I am passionate about, nothing is better than writing informative and relaxed articles.

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

The service operates through its DFSA-regulated DIFC arm and complements the bank’s existing digital asset custody and stablecoin services.

Standard Chartered extended its deliverable Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) spot trading to institutional clients in the United Arab Emirates on September 3, becoming the first Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) to offer the service in the country.

The offering runs through Standard Chartered DIFC, the bank’s arm in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), which said it is the only global bank currently providing institutional digital asset spot trading in the region.

Built on the UK Launch The launch adds trade execution to a custody service the bank already runs in the UAE. The trades are deliverable, so clients take possession of the underlying Bitcoin and Ether at settlement, and they can settle through a custodian of their choice, including Standard Chartered’s own digital asset custody solution that went live in September 2024.

Trades run through the bank’s electronic channels and sit inside its existing platforms, letting clients access the two assets through the same FX interfaces they already use. Standard Chartered DIFC is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).

“The UAE has developed a clear digital assets regulatory framework that supports institutional participation and innovation,” said Rola Abu Manneh, Chief Executive Officer for the UAE, Middle East and Pakistan at Standard Chartered. She said pairing execution with custody, governance, and the bank’s global connectivity gives clients a more integrated way to participate in digital asset markets.

Standard Chartered first introduced institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading through its UK branch in July 2025, the first G-SIB to offer deliverable spot crypto trading to institutional clients.

“DIFC provides an established platform for international financial institutions to deploy global capabilities across markets,” said Christopher Parsons, Senior Executive Officer at Standard Chartered DIFC. He said the arrangement combines the bank’s global markets network with a regulated base for serving clients across the region.

You may also like: Bitcoin Holders Just Cashed Out 110,000 BTC in Profits: Is a Bigger Price Drop Coming? Ripple CTO Emeritus: BIP-110 Vote Loss Doesn’t Justify New Chain Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, and Cardano Tell Four Very Different Stories Through Active Addresses A Wider UAE Digital Asset Push The trading service sits inside a broader digital asset strategy that spans custody, trading and tokenization through Standard Chartered’s Corporate and Investment Bank, with its ventures ecosystem reaching into Zodia Markets and Libeara.

The bank already lets institutional clients mint and redeem USDC directly through its DIFC platform, a service it built with Circle. SC Ventures, its innovation arm, has backed a $100 million digital asset joint venture in the UAE with Japan’s SBI Holdings that targets market infrastructure, compliance tools, DeFi and tokenization.

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13h05 ▪ 5 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

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Over the past three weeks, Bitcoin ETFs have captured approximately 3.8 billion dollars. This is their best performance since the beginning of this year. In the last week, they attracted an additional 986.9 million dollars despite a withdrawal. This recovery thus confirms the return of institutional demand, although it has not yet offset all the outflows recorded since January.

In Brief Bitcoin ETFs attract nearly 3.8 billion dollars in three weeks. BlackRock and Fidelity concentrate the inflows recorded on Friday. Flows remain positive despite Bitcoin falling below 80,000 dollars. Funds are redirected towards Bitcoin, while Ethereum and XRP ETFs slow down. Three Weeks Erase a Large Part of 2026 Outflows In the week that ended on September 4, Bitcoin ETFs recorded inflows of 986.9 million dollars. This result exceeds the inflows of the previous week by nearly 7%.

The total thus amounts to approximately 3.8 billion dollars over three weeks. However, ETFs still display nearly one billion dollars of outflows since the start of the year. The current recovery has therefore significantly reduced the deficit without completely erasing it according to SoSoValue data.

The key statistics reveal the importance of capital inflows :

Inflows reached 986.9 million dollars in the last week ; The total for the past three weeks is nearly 3.8 billion ; Net inflows since launch are around 55.6 billion ; Net assets held by funds amount to 101.3 billion ; The 2026 balance remains negative by about one billion dollars. About 1.92 billion was collected in the first week of this streak. Nearly 924 million dollars were added in the following weekly period, and then 986.9 million during the last. This consistency distinguishes the current sequence from a simple exceptional day.

BlackRock Captures Two Thirds of Friday’s Inflows On September 4, ETFs captured 174.6 million dollars. This amount remains significantly lower than the 730.8 million attracted the previous day, yet it allows the category to close the week with a second consecutive positive session.

BlackRock’s IBIT ETF received 117.4 million dollars, or nearly 67% of the daily total. Fidelity’s FBTC reported 57.2 million dollars. As for other funds, they recorded no net inflows or outflows during the session, according to the Farside Investors table.

This dominance by BlackRock is also visible in cumulative data. IBIT has totaled over 64 billion dollars in inflows since its launch. Fidelity is just behind with nearly 10.3 billion dollars.

This concentration means that a significant share of demand still depends on two large funds. On Friday, IBIT and FBTC provided all the category’s positive flows.

Inflows Increase Despite Bitcoin Falling Below 80,000 Dollars Bitcoin dropped from nearly 81,200 dollars to less than 79,000 dollars during Friday’s session. Afterwards, it moved around 79,700 dollars. However, it maintained a weekly gain close to 2.6%.

ETFs therefore continued to attract capital despite the price drop. This divergence may indicate that some investors use the decline to consolidate their exposure. However, it does not guarantee an immediate price recovery.

This distinction is illustrated by the total valuation of assets held by ETFs. From Thursday to Friday, it fell from 103.3 billion to 101.3 billion dollars, even as funds collected 174.6 million dollars. Bitcoin’s drop reduced asset valuations faster than new capital increased them.

Thus, net flows measure subscriptions and redemptions of shares. Assets also account for Bitcoin price changes. An increase in inflows does not immediately trigger a corresponding rise in assets under management.

Funds Move Away from Ethereum and XRP ETFs For Bitcoin ETFs, demand has consolidated, however it has fundamentally slowed down for other crypto products. Ethereum ETFs recorded only 218.4 million dollars in the week, compared to 824.4 million the previous week. This drop is close to 74%.

Inflows in XRP ETFs fell from 110.5 to 19 million dollars, or a drop of nearly 83%. Despite this slowdown, both categories remain positive since January. Ethereum products have accumulated nearly 863 million dollars of inflows this year, compared to 515 million for those dedicated to XRP.

The current movement thus signals a rotation of capital towards Bitcoin. For confirmation of a durable trend, Bitcoin ETFs need to maintain positive inflows and erase the one billion dollar outflow still accumulated since the start of this year.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.