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Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2, is set to activate its Cobalt hard fork on mainnet on September 30, according to Base’s upgrade documentation. The network upgrade, already live on the Base Sepolia testnet since September 23, improves the B20 token standard, adds conditional validity transactions, lays groundwork for onchain-scheduled node upgrades, and changes how trusted-execution-environment (TEE) provers register. It is the network’s third upgrade of 2026, following the Azul and Beryl forks, with a fourth, Denim, targeting October.

What Cobalt adds to the network Cobalt expands the B20 token standard with scheduled multiplier updates, a simplified transfer-blocking mechanism, and new Union and Intersect policy types. The Beryl fork made Base a first-class issuance platform for B20 tokens, and Cobalt widens that standard rather than replacing it. The upgrade also introduces validity transactions: signed transactions that Base includes only when onchain conditions such as balance, storage, block-number, and Flashblock-index predicates match. The mechanism enables conditional swaps, withdrawals, and other state-dependent actions.

Dynamic upgrades and a new prover registration flow The fork ships two infrastructure changes. Dynamic upgrades introduces an Ethereum smart contract that stores upgrade timestamps for Base nodes, so they can query the contract and apply changes live; on mainnet it is rolled out in metrics-only mode while Base collects data to validate that upgrades work smoothly. Cobalt also changes how new TEE prover signers register: AWS Nitro attestations are verified fully onchain using P-384 hints, replacing the RISC Zero and Boundless proving flow, so registration is faster and no longer depends on an external proving service. Enclave key generation, PCR0 image selection, and proof verification stay unchanged.

Cobalt builds on Base’s B20 rollout Base, built on the OP Stack, has grown into one of the most-used Ethereum Layer 2 networks, and Cobalt refines the B20 issuance platform introduced in the Beryl upgrade. The standard has already drawn exchange support, including Binance Wallet’s B20 token trading, while Base’s position as the largest Ethereum Layer 2 by total value locked makes each protocol upgrade a closely watched event for developers and traders. The fork continues a busy 2026 schedule: Azul strengthened security and decentralization in May, and Beryl added B20 tokens and reduced withdrawal delays in June. The next upgrade, Denim, is targeting October with native 200-millisecond blocks that replace Flashblocks with canonical block and RPC streams.

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Entrepreneur and freelance writer based in Nakuru, Kenya. I cover cryptocurrency, the Blockchain technology, and financial topics. It’s my joy to transform the simplest phrases in a way they reach a reader’s heart to help them discover how crypto is disrupting the world as we have known it. I believe in transforming the world, one word at a time.

Cardano Foundation and Brazilian state oil giant Petrobras are taking their partnership to the next level, announcing two new blockchain applications targeting sustainable aviation fuel and renewable Diesel R. What started as a corporate education program has evolved into something considerably more ambitious: putting fuel supply chains on-chain to fight greenwashing and improve traceability across Brazil’s energy sector.

From classroom to supply chain The Cardano-Petrobras relationship began in December 2023, when Cardano Academy launched a blockchain education initiative for Petrobras’ roughly 40,000 employees. The first 500 participants received evolving NFTs as credentials.

By 2025, Cardano Foundation had formalized a collaboration with PUC-Rio, one of Brazil’s leading research universities, to develop real blockchain applications for the renewable fuel space, with sustainable aviation fuel, known as SAF, as the primary focus.

Petrobras commenced its first commercial deliveries of domestically produced SAF in December 2025, starting with an initial batch of 3,000 cubic meters. The company has set a target of meeting 100% of Brazil’s domestic SAF demand through co-processing by 2027 to 2029.

SAF is jet fuel produced from non-petroleum sources like agricultural waste, used cooking oil, or other biomass.

What the applications actually do The first application focuses on tokenizing the SAF supply chain, creating verifiable, immutable records of where the fuel came from, how it was processed, and how it moved through the logistics network.

The second application is a decentralized app, or dApp, designed to reward airline passengers who fly on SAF-powered routes. As of November 2025, the project had advanced to the point of active development, with incentive mechanics being built to encourage consumer participation in sustainable fuel adoption.

Alongside these, the partnership has developed what it calls a Proof of Atenas system, an attendance and training verification tool using NFC cards and 3D-printed physical totems to record employee participation in immutable on-chain logs. A pilot ran in 2024, and expanded internal implementation has been under discussion through 2026.

Why this partnership is a landmark for Cardano in the region Cardano Foundation describes the Petrobras collaboration as its first governmental partnership in Latin America. Petrobras is majority state-owned, which means this is effectively a blockchain project with Brazilian government involvement.

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

Cover image via U.Today 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.

The Soroban SDK, a Rust-based software development kit used to write smart contracts for Stellar's smart contract platform, Soroban, has received a new upgrade.

According to the Build on Stellar X account, Soroban SDK v28 is now live. This release supports Protocol 28, which launched on September 16.

soroban-sdk v28 is now live 🛠

TL;DR: stored contract data is no longer locked into the shape you first wrote it in. For most contracts this is a rebuild and nothing else.

From Leigh McCulloch (@___leigh___) , Principal Software Engineer @ Stellar 👇 pic.twitter.com/8TMjiwmPZD

— Build on Stellar (@BuildOnStellar) September 30, 2026 Adapter (Protocol 28), an upgrade that brought faster consensus, atomic upgrades for fleets of contracts, and a safer, standard way to migrate contract data, launched on the mainnet on September 16.

In line with this, Version 28 of the Soroban Rust SDK has been released, which contains a variety of build system changes, new behavior to better support contract data migration, and new features.

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This includes Spec Shaking v2, contract data migration, sparsely published events, executable references, and native contracts that can be uploaded in tests.

Spec Shaking v2 changes the way that specs are included, using one of the same principles that compilers use to determine if code should be included in the final binary: dead code elimination. The SDK now emits an entry for everything, and the build system in stellar-cli strips the entries the contract does not use.

A struct is represented on the ledger as a map keyed by field names. Before v28, that map had to match the struct exactly—every field of the struct had to be present as a key, and no other key could be present.

Happy Birthday, StellarStellar is celebrating its 11th anniversary, having launched on September 30, 2015. Stellar has spent 11 years building a network focused on making money move faster and more freely. Stellar keeps bringing blockchain closer to the real world, ranging from cross-border payments to tokenized assets. Along these lines, in a recent milestone, Stellar just passed 22,000 RWA holders.

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Tomer Weller, Stellar Foundation head of product, shares a fun fact about Stellar's anniversary date. He noted that this is the anniversary of the "new" Stellar network. The "old" Stellar network launched a year before that in 2014 with the native currency "Stellars" and the ticker 'STR.'

Tokenized assets are rapidly scaling across public and private blockchains, but fragmented liquidity, disconnected financing venues, and costly bespoke integrations have severely limited institutional adoption and left many assets stranded on their native platforms rather than put to work across markets. 

The opportunity cost of idle assets is already evident in traditional markets; Citi estimates that approximately a quarter of institutional collateral sits idle due to settlement cutoffs and operational friction, resulting in roughly $346 million in forgone revenue annually for the average Tier 1 firm. To unlock institutional capital at scale, tokenized assets must be usable across markets without platform lock-in or bespoke integrations, giving institutions access to deeper liquidity, better financing terms, and more yield opportunities.

Today, we’re introducing Chainlink Fulcrum, a new end-to-end solution for institutional financing and collateral management across public and private blockchains.

Built for the needs of the world’s largest financial institutions, Chainlink Fulcrum is the first cross-chain repurchase agreement (repo) flow that separates the venue where a financing agreement is managed from the networks where cash and collateral settle. Through a single gateway, counterparties can choose eligible assets, set financing terms (e.g., prohibit collateral rehypothecation), and coordinate settlement across any supported chain, all without being locked into any one venue. It comes with 24/7 operational support, enabling institutions to identify changing exposures and respond in accordance with the agreement’s terms automatically, even when traditional markets are closed. This significantly enhances capital efficiency while reducing operational costs.

Chainlink Fulcrum is a global financing layer for the entire financial ecosystem. Banks and dealers can source and deploy liquidity around the clock. Prime brokers can extend financing to hedge funds against a broader range of tokenized collateral, enabling hedge funds to raise liquidity without selling their positions. Agent lenders and custodians can put their clients' tokenized securities to work in secured lending programs. Funds and insurers can deploy tokenized cash into secured, yield-bearing transactions, using collateral and terms that align with their mandates. Asset managers and issuers of tokenized funds and stablecoins can make their products more useful by making them eligible as collateral across venues, while corporate treasuries can earn yield on idle cash.

Fulcrum is in the process of being integrated with leading TradFi environments that are launching soon, as well as many existing venues, so participants can compare financing terms across them and route transactions to the venue of their choice, where the agreement is executed and governed. Chainlink Fulcrum does not custody assets, act as a counterparty, or operate a trading venue; financing agreements are executed among participants and governed on the venues integrated with it. 

How It Works: A Single Workflow Extensible to Any TransactionRepurchase agreements are a cornerstone of short-term funding in global capital markets. In a repo, one counterparty provides securities as collateral in exchange for cash and agrees to repurchase them at a predetermined price, typically within days. Banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions rely on repo to finance positions, manage liquidity, and deploy excess cash into secured, yield-bearing transactions. Extending these agreements to tokenized assets requires coordinating cash, collateral, and agreement terms across the public and private blockchains where each resides.

Chainlink Fulcrum brings the infrastructure required for cross-chain financing into a reusable, end-to-end workflow. Any set of counterparties can use it to establish a collateralized transaction, such as a bilateral loan or repo, across any supported public and private blockchains according to their agreed parameters, including the principal, financing rate, eligible collateral, and applicable haircuts. Currently supported chains include EVM and non-EVM networks supported by Chainlink’s CRE and CCIP.

Chainlink Fulcrum combines multiple aspects of the Chainlink platform into a unified solution, including:

Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) orchestrates the workflow, coordinating the relevant data, systems, and contract calls across the transaction lifecycle. CRE connects agreement creation, collateral verification, and cash release into a single repeatable process.Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) connects the public and private blockchains involved, enabling the cross-chain communication and asset transfers required to execute the financing transaction.Chainlink Data Streams supply market data used to value collateral, along with supplemental market data needed to enable transactions, such as real-time, mutually agreed-upon haircuts that discount the recognized value to account for risk.Compliance, privacy, AI, and other functionalities of the Chainlink platform built into the solution in the future, based on user demand, to unlock more advanced use cases.Together, this allows a party’s cash release on one network to be conditional on collateral verification within an agreement managed on another network, effectively enabling cross-chain delivery-versus-delivery (DvD) across multiple blockchains.

The Next Evolution in Collateral Management: 24/7, Real-Time Settlement, Unified Golden RecordsToday, disconnected collateral systems delay transfers, require costly reconciliation, and force institutions to hold liquidity buffers. Connecting assets and financing agreements across networks using blockchains, smart contracts, and oracle networks enables institutions to mobilize collateral faster and put more capital to work.

The limitations of the collateral management industry today.‍For tokenized assets to reach their potential, institutions need practical and efficient ways to finance them. A tokenized stock becomes more useful when its holder can use it as collateral to raise liquidity while retaining economic exposure to the underlying security. In turn, lenders gain opportunities to deploy tokenized cash against eligible collateral under agreed risk parameters.

By separating financing venues from settlement networks, Chainlink Fulcrum makes it easier for these counterparties to connect. An institution’s choice of blockchain no longer needs to dictate its choice of financing venue. This flexibility supports several key outcomes for businesses:

More flexible funding: Faster collateral mobilization enables intraday repo and other financing, including on holidays and weekends. This unlocks higher trading limits for institutions, minimizes settlement delays, and reduces reliance on costly overdrafts or other wholesale funding sources.24/7 risk management: Automated valuation enables institutions to monitor collateral coverage as prices change throughout the day. This near real-time capability helps reduce counterparty risk and supports margin management beyond traditional end-of-day processes by enabling participants to automatically trigger margin calls or liquidations when collateral falls below user-defined target ratios.Enhanced capital efficiency: Assets held on one network can support financing agreements managed on another. This expands the pool of usable collateral and helps institutions free up balance sheet capacity.Reduced operational complexity: A common integration framework connects existing systems with workflows across public and private blockchains. This reduces manual coordination and reconciliation and eliminates the need for separate custom connections.Together, these capabilities provide a foundation for participants to manage financing positions across both traditional assets and digital assets. Available actions remain governed by each agreement, while the infrastructure supports ongoing coordination across networks and the establishment of unified golden records between counterparties.

Chainlink Fulcrum Demonstrates Cross-Chain Institutional Financing With DTCC at Sibos 2026At @Sibos 2026, DTCC’s Dan Doney and Sergey Nazarov present how @The_DTCC is collaborating with Chainlink to advance 24/7 collateral management.

DTCC’s Collateral AppChain, a shared infrastructure platform for collateral, will leverage the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) and… pic.twitter.com/JXxapfxe0t

— Chainlink (@chainlink) September 28, 2026 Powering the Financing Markets for a Tokenized WorldTokenization scales when institutions can put assets to work across financing markets. Chainlink Fulcrum provides reusable infrastructure for that expansion, with each additional venue and network added broadening financing opportunities available to institutional capital.

If your organization is interested in using Chainlink Fulcrum, talk to an expert to get started today.

—

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and contains statements about the future, including anticipated product features, development, and timelines for the rollout of these features. These statements are only predictions and reflect current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events; they are based on assumptions and are subject to risk, uncertainties, and changes at any time. There can be no assurance that actual results will not differ materially from those expressed in these statements, although we believe them to be based on reasonable assumptions. All statements are valid only as of the date first posted. These statements may not reflect future developments due to user feedback or later events, and we may not update this post in response. Please review the Chainlink Terms of Service, which provides important information and disclosures.

Grayscale’s spot Zcash ETF, launched on August 25, 2026, has quickly become a significant market player as trading volumes and investment inflows surged in the fund’s opening weeks. Total investment inflows into Grayscale’s Zcash ETF have reached approximately $306 million, while assets under management were estimated at $996 million on September 25, according to SoSoValue data. Notably, new investments represent less than one-third of the fund’s asset base, reflecting the complex factors influencing the fund’s overall value.

Fund Structure and Asset GrowthThe rapid growth of Grayscale’s Zcash ETF, operating under the ticker ZCSH, highlights expanding demand for regulated ZEC exposure. By early September, the fund’s assets had already surpassed $500 million, a significant milestone shortly after its introduction. Grayscale’s approach combines direct investment inflows with substantial pre-existing ZEC holdings, which were already under management before launching the ETF.

One key contributor to the ETF’s holdings is DCG International Investments, which added approximately $100 million in ZEC to the fund. These contributions, along with market-driven value appreciation, play an essential role in the ETF’s asset composition. Consequently, the nearly $1 billion value attributed to the ETF reflects not only investor inflows but also the impact of ZEC’s price movements and other strategic asset allocations.

DCG International Investments’ allocation of about $100 million worth of ZEC has strengthened the ETF’s overall position, demonstrating how factors beyond direct inflows can impact reported assets.

Recent Flows and Market DynamicsDespite robust early demand, recent data indicate a slowdown in net inflows. On September 23, 24, and 25, the Spot Zcash ETFs recorded no new net investments, following a strong initial week. Subsequently, the ETF saw its largest single-day outflow to date on September 28, amounting to $8.12 million.

In total, Zcash ETFs are estimated to hold roughly 3.75% of ZEC’s circulating supply, highlighting their growing share within the broader Zcash ecosystem. This evolution underlines the strengthening link between the ETF’s performance and market movements in ZEC’s price. The difference between total inflows and the asset base primarily reflects price appreciation rather than ongoing capital additions, as the ETF is physically backed by ZEC holdings.

In the context of physically settled ETFs like Grayscale’s, changes in ZEC’s market price directly affect the value of assets held by the fund, even in periods without significant new capital inflow. As a result, approximately $306 million in investments has helped lift total assets to $996 million—a figure amplified by favorable price movements in ZEC since the fund’s inception.

Broader ETF Expansion in ZcashThe trend toward regulated Zcash exposure extends beyond Grayscale. 21Shares recently introduced a physically backed Zcash exchange-traded product, making ZEC accessible to investors on the Euronext Paris and Amsterdam exchanges. Trading commenced in September, with the product carrying a 2.5% annual fee.

These developments point to a growing ecosystem of regulated financial products centered around Zcash. As funds like Grayscale’s approach the $1 billion milestone and new instruments enter European markets, the demand for diversified ZEC investment options appears to be rising.

In a market where sudden regulatory shifts or new altcoin listings can drive rapid changes, managing portfolios efficiently has become essential. Smart traders are now streamlining their operations with privacy-focused platforms such as CryptoAppsy, which offer consolidated access to charts, price signals, targeted news, and macroeconomic data—eliminating the need for multiple applications or accounts and enabling faster, more effective market responses.

Looking ahead, future inflows into the Zcash ETF will likely depend on renewed investor interest or continued appreciation in ZEC’s market value. Updated flow data in the coming weeks are expected to offer further clarity on sustained demand after the fund’s swift initial expansion.

100% of the Foundation’s allocation and a significant portion of founder and future team allocations are gone for good; the burn is irreversible and verifiable by anyone on-chain

Streamflow Foundation announced that it has burned 699.99 million STREAM, permanently removing 70% of total token supply from circulation in a single on-chain transaction. The burn covers 100% of the Foundation’s allocation, both locked and unlocked, as well as a significant portion of the founder and future team allocation. Total supply now stands at 300 million STREAM, down from 1 billion.

The tokens were destroyed through Solana’s programmatic burn instruction, which reduces total supply directly at the mint level. Nothing was moved to a wallet. There is nothing to recover, unfreeze, or reissue, and no future decision by Streamflow Foundation, Streamflow, or any affiliate can restore the tokens to supply.

The burn is irreversible. It is recorded on-chain and can be independently verified by any observer on Solscan.

Foundation treasury holdings typically represent the largest single variable in a token’s forward supply schedule. They can be distributed, sold, or emitted at the holder’s discretion, and the market has to price in every one of those possibilities. Streamflow Foundation has chosen to eliminate that variable outright rather than defer it through locks or policies that still depend on future decisions.

“A treasury that can be spent is a treasury the market has to price in. Burning it outright is the only version of this commitment that doesn’t depend on anyone’s continued good intentions. The tokens are gone, the transaction is public, and no future decision can bring them back.” – Mališa Stanojević, CEO of Streamflow.

With the overhang removed, every remaining STREAM is accounted for. Of the original total supply, the following remains:

11.47% in existing vesting contracts for private investors and early contributors 4.03% reserved for current and future team members to continue contributing 3.42% currently in the Active Staking Rewards program 11.08% freely circulating supply The full holder breakdown is public on Solscan and on the Streamflow Token Dashboard, where vesting contracts, staking positions, and circulating supply can be tracked in real time. Updated supply figures will be reflected on standard Solana token trackers and data aggregators as they index the transaction.

Streamflow’s product operations are unaffected by the burn. The platform continues to operate token locks, vesting, staking, airdrops, payouts, and treasury tooling for projects building on Solana, with more than $725 million in Total Value Locked across 40,000+ projects and 1.3 million users.

What This Means for STREAMThe burn clears the ground for the next step in STREAM’s structure: a one-way swap from STREAM into xSTREAM, a transfer-restricted security issued by a Cayman special purpose vehicle. With the Foundation’s allocation gone, every STREAM that can enter the swap is held by parties other than Streamflow Foundation, and the supply the swap draws from is fixed.

The swap will run on a public window of six months with no extension. STREAM delivered into the swap is burned on receipt and exchanged for xSTREAM at a 1:1 ratio, so the same programmatic burn mechanics used by the Foundation apply to every holder who participates.

xSTREAM will be available only to verified eligible investors through a dedicated portal, and is not available to retail investors in the United States, the United Kingdom, or the European Union. Full details on eligibility, verification, and what happens to STREAM during and after the window are covered in a separate announcement, with financial terms provided only to holders who complete verification.

About StreamflowStreamflow is a Solana-native token operations infrastructure platform that automates token distribution, locks, vesting, staking, airdrops, and payouts using on-chain smart contracts. More than 40,000 projects and 1.3 million users have used Streamflow, with over $725 million in Total Value Locked. Streamflow’s contracts are audited by Neodyme, FYEO, and OPCODES, and the company is backed by Jump Crypto, Solana Ventures, IVC, John Lilic, and others.

Disclaimer:
This announcement is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security in any jurisdiction where such an offer would be unlawful, and nothing in this announcement constitutes investment advice. The token burn described is a supply-management measure. It is not a price commitment, a guarantee of liquidity, or a representation regarding the future value, returns, or performance of STREAM. Readers should assess their own objectives and risk tolerance and seek full information before making any decisions.

Disclaimer

This third-party press release is published substantially as received and does not reflect BeInCrypto's editorial views. BeInCrypto has not independently verified its claims or assessed the suitability, legality or appropriateness of any referenced asset, product or service; publication is not an endorsement. The content is general information, not investment research, financial, investment, legal or tax advice, a personal recommendation, offer or solicitation. Verify all information and seek professional advice where appropriate before acting. Crypto-assets may result in total loss.

USD.AI has brought its two tokens, USDai and sUSDai, to Solana. Both now support cross-chain transfers using the OFT standard.

Approximately 8.43 million sUSDai, valued at around $9.39 million, moved over to Solana within hours of going live. The token also logged $372,000 in decentralized exchange trading volume over the first 24 hours.

What actually launched The rollout went live on September 24, 2026, at roughly 17:52 UTC. It covers both of the protocol’s core products.

USDai is the base token. Depositors mint it using existing stablecoins, much like trading dollars for casino chips before sitting down at a table.

sUSDai is the staked version. Holders lock up USDai and receive a token that earns yield, which comes from interest paid on loans the protocol issues.

The transfers run on the OFT, or Omnichain Fungible Token, standard. A token issued under it can cross from one blockchain to another without becoming a knockoff version of itself on arrival.

Before this launch, USDai and sUSDai lived only on EVM-compatible chains. The protocol already used LayerZero for cross-chain movement within that family. Solana does not run the EVM, so reaching it means stepping outside that ecosystem entirely.

For anyone who wants to verify they hold the real thing, USD.AI listed the Solana addresses. USDai sits at USDai5XCUzNebYzUk6EuRiFCvnyoyEdj7VSyijYcz2A. sUSDai sits at sUSDai6Y3GxysDEtA9BVcEFTaog6UZpYUVxJiMhAKYE.

Where the money went At launch, USD.AI lined up integrations with six Solana DeFi protocols: Jupiter Lend, Kamino, Orca, Loopscale, Exponent, and Mezzanine. That gives holders options for lending, providing liquidity, and trading in fixed-rate markets.

A meaningful share of the bridged sUSDai has already been put to work across Kamino, Jupiter Lend, and Orca. Kamino and Jupiter Lend handle lending, while Orca is a decentralized exchange where users supply trading liquidity.

For the first eight weeks, eligible users can earn ALLO points, plus additional incentives offered by USD.AI.

The GPU loans underneath The protocol runs a credit system that lends to infrastructure operators in the AI sector. Those loans are secured by GPU hardware, the specialized chips that power AI model training and inference.

The underlying loan book totals more than $280 million, spread across 16 separate facilities. The largest single facility listed is $128.9 million, backed by 2,304 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs.

That concentration is worth noting. One facility accounts for a large portion of the total book, so its performance matters more than any other single loan.

What this means For USD.AI, the first-day figures point to real demand for access on Solana. Roughly $9.39 million in bridged sUSDai and $372,000 in trading volume are modest next to the $280 million-plus loan book, but they arrived within hours rather than weeks.

For sUSDai holders, the move adds flexibility without changing the underlying exposure. Whether the token sits on an EVM chain or Solana, its yield still depends on AI infrastructure operators repaying loans secured by GPUs.

Cross-chain setups also carry their own considerations. Moving tokens between networks relies on the messaging infrastructure behind the OFT standard working as intended. Users taking advantage of the new routes should confirm the official token addresses before transacting, since lookalike tokens are a familiar hazard on any newly supported chain.

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

In brief Decrypt is evolving into The Information Exchange, a financial and intelligence market powered by the MYR token. The Information Exchange brings together news, data, market prices, probabilities and direct participation in a connected media ecosystem. MYR is the shared economic coordination layer of The Information Exchange. Information has always moved markets.

People consume information to understand the world, form a view of what will happen next and decide how to act. But the systems through which people become informed have historically remained separate from the systems through which they participate. We believe that division is ending.

Today, we are announcing The Information Exchange: an information and financial network bringing together news, data, market prices, probabilities and direct participation around the subjects people care about. Brought to you by Decrypt, powered by Myriad and the MYR token.

Decrypt Media homepage. Image: DecryptA person following Bitcoin should be able to understand what happened, see what the asset is doing and understand what markets believe may happen next and act directly. The Information Exchange will combine products we build with products we integrate. Decrypt will provide trusted information and global distribution. Myriad will provide the technology connecting information to financial participation. Solana will provide the high performance on chain environment through which a new generation of users can participate. And MYR will serve as the coordination layer connecting users, creators, traders, publishers, liquidity providers, applications, data providers and autonomous agents.

News + Data + Markets + Prediction + Participation

This is the next evolution of Myriad and the idea toward which we have been building all along.

Why nowHistorically, readers learned about assets through publications like Decrypt, then moved to exchanges and trading apps. Every step introduced more friction. The context of the original story was lost, the publisher’s relationship with the reader ended and the financial value created by that attention accrued to another platform.

Financial products are increasingly composable and can be integrated into the applications where users discover them. A Decrypt reader should not need to leave an article and reconstruct the context of a trade. The opportunity to act can exist alongside the information that created the conviction.

"Solana gives Decrypt the speed, low costs and expanding financial ecosystem needed to embed participation directly into the information experience."

Solana dashboard. Image: DecryptInformation is becoming machine-readable, markets are becoming programmable, and the distance between an event and an economic response is collapsing. This convergence, media, markets and machine intelligence is what makes The Information Exchange possible now.

Why usFor eight years, we have been building around information and the communities that give it value.

Decrypt was created to help people understand fast changing financial and technological system. It has grown into one of the largest crypto-native media platforms.

Rug Radio began from a different place. It showed that Creators and community members could participate in the media they helped make, contribute to its distribution and share in the culture and value surrounding it. Its audience is deeply crypto native.

Folding Rug Radio into Decrypt brought that native perspective together with the reach and authority of an established newsroom, reaching approximately 1.6 million monthly unique users and 3.7 million monthly page views, with more than 73,000 active newsletter subscribers and has generated of hundreds of millions of impressions through social platforms and syndication.

AI Situation Room. Image: DecryptMyriad developed a third audience: active market participants who have already demonstrated that they will move directly from information to action when presented with a compelling product.

These audiences are three points on the same participation curve from understanding, to discovery, to conviction, to execution.

Prediction markets were the proofMyriad Prediction Markets began as an experiment in whether an information audience could become a market network. Prediction markets were the natural first instrument because they are one of the purest ways to financialize information.

Decrypt Predict. Image: DecryptThe important question for us was not whether people wanted another place to trade predictions. It was whether people consuming information could become active market participants within the same experience.

More than $600 million in prediction market volume later, the answer is clear.

Along the way, we deployed Myriad across several ecosystems, experimented with automated market makers and order books, built a wallet and developed our own market infrastructure. Not every strategy worked as intended. At times, we optimized for becoming a conventional prediction market venue instead of concentrating on the larger relationship between information and participation.

But the underlying experiment succeeded. We built a new financial product from the ground up, distributed it through an existing information network and proved that passive content consumers could become active market participants.

Prediction markets were not the destination. They were the proof.

The Information ExchangePrediction markets are one financial expression of information. They will not be the last.

The Information Exchange expands the model across the broader financialized internet. Its fundamental unit is not an article, a token or a trade. It is the subject.

The Trenches/Meme Coin Situation Room. Image: DecryptMyriad can assemble reporting, data, market prices, probabilities and opportunities to participate.

Those opportunities will include

Prediction markets Spot markets Perpetual futures Structured event products New financial instruments. We do not need to manufacture every financial product we distribute. Myriad will continue to provide native market infrastructure while also integrating products from third party protocols and exchanges. The objective is to become the information and participation layer through which people discover, understand and interact with markets.

Supporting our continued media growth will be our in house agentic media operating system: designed to identify emerging subjects, organize data, curate intelligence, assist content production and connect relevant financial products to the infograph.

AMOS – Agentic Media Operating System. Image: DecryptThe MYR TokenMYR is the shared economic coordination layer of The Information Exchange.

MYR can be staked by participants responsible for secured network functions, including information verification and market resolution.

Applications, professional trading systems, data consumers and autonomous agents can stake MYR to access scarce network resources. These may include higher API throughput, low-latency market data, probability feeds, resolution infrastructure, programmatic market creation, execution services and premium intelligence.

MYR will also align the people supplying information, distribution, capital, liquidity and computation. Holders and stakers will receive benefits such as reduced transaction costs, enhanced data access and premium products or services.

Economic activity across The Information Exchange will generate revenue. Portions of network economics will be directed toward open-market acquisition of MYR, supply reduction (Buyback + Burn), staking incentives, network rewards, treasury funding and ecosystem development.

This creates demand connected to the use and growth of the network rather than to speculation alone. The purpose is not to attach a token to a collection of unrelated products. It is to give an expanding information network a common economic language.

One token, infinite possibilitiesThe history of Decrypt, Rug Radio and Myriad is the history of one idea becoming clearer.

The Information Exchange brings our accrued capabilities together. Prediction markets remain central to it because probabilities are among the clearest and most useful expressions of collective belief. But they are one product within a much larger opportunity.

We are building a network in which people can understand what happened, see what markets believe happens next and participate directly; a network in which creators and publishers can share in the financial activity their information produces.

In a world where everything is being financialized, including attention itself, people should be able to benefit from what they know and participate in the markets their activity helps create.

This was the founding purpose of Myriad. Everything we have built and learned has brought us back to it.

One network for information and participation. One unifying technical layer. One token connecting every product and every participant.

Expect a staggered product rollout over the coming weeks, leading into Solana Breakpoint.

Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Muneeb Ali, the co-founder of the Stacks protocol, is becoming CEO of Stacks Labs, the entity responsible for steering core protocol development and ecosystem growth.

A community vote held in July 2026 delivered roughly 99% support for staking upgrades within the Stacks ecosystem.

What Stacks Labs actually is, and why it matters Stacks Labs was formed in 2025 following community approval of SIP-031, a governance proposal that formalized the organization’s role in overseeing protocol development, developer relations, and ecosystem expansion. With around 33 employees operating globally, it is a lean outfit relative to the ambitions it is pursuing.

The core product underlying those ambitions is sBTC, a decentralized asset pegged to Bitcoin that allows BTC holders to participate in DeFi activities without wrapping their coins through a centralized custodian. That framing is exactly what the planned “genesis bond” is designed to demonstrate, a product tied to self-custodial BTC yield that is slated to launch around upcoming network events in 2026.

The protocol itself has been building toward this moment since 2013, when Ali and his co-founders launched the project under the name Blockstack. It rebranded to Stacks in 2020 and runs on a consensus mechanism called Proof of Transfer, or PoX. Rather than competing with Bitcoin’s own security model, PoX anchors Stacks transactions to the Bitcoin chain directly, essentially borrowing Bitcoin’s proof-of-work security to backstop a smart contract layer built on top.

Developers on Stacks write smart contracts in a language called Clarity, designed to be predictable and auditable in ways that Ethereum’s Solidity is not.

Ali’s track record and what he brings to the role Ali holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University and has raised more than $200 million across his various roles and projects over the course of his career. Before focusing on Stacks Labs, he led Trust Machines, a company building applications on top of Bitcoin’s growing software stack.

Prior to Ali’s appointment, Stacks Labs was led by Alex Miller, who oversaw the organization’s formation and early operational structure following the SIP-031 community approval.

What investors and developers should watch The staking upgrade vote and the genesis bond announcement represent two distinct signals worth tracking separately. The vote tells you about internal ecosystem health: near-unanimous community support is rare in crypto governance, where voter apathy and factional disagreement are the norm. A 99% approval figure suggests the Stacks community has coalesced around a shared technical direction, which reduces the governance risk that tends to stall protocol upgrades.

The genesis bond is a different kind of signal. It is a product, not a vote. When it launches, it will provide observable data on whether retail and institutional BTC holders actually want self-custodial yield. Demand for the bond will be a leading indicator of sBTC adoption at scale.

Stacks Labs has 33 employees, a bold 2026 product roadmap, and a market that will eventually compare its Bitcoin DeFi offering against alternatives that will emerge from other ecosystems.

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

Gate.io’s BENUSDT perpetual futures contract, which tracks Franklin Resources (NYSE: BEN), triggered 92 liquidations on September 30 after the exchange settled a quarterly dividend adjustment. At 08:00 UTC, the platform credited $0.33 per share to net long positions and deducted the identical amount from net short holders via a funding-fee mechanism. Traders on the wrong side of that ledger who hadn’t topped up their margin got force-closed in a matter of minutes.

The exchange had flagged the risk two days earlier, issuing a warning on September 28 that short holders should ensure they had enough margin to absorb the upcoming deduction. Evidently, 92 accounts did not heed the memo.

How a stock dividend becomes a crypto liquidation event Gate.io offers perpetual futures contracts tied to traditional equities, not just crypto tokens. When the underlying stock pays a dividend, the exchange mirrors that payout synthetically: longs get credited, shorts get debited. Think of it as the exchange recreating corporate actions inside a 24/7 derivatives market that never actually touches a share of stock.

Social media discussions highlighted a key wrinkle: the BEN perpetual contract was trading near $0.000585 at the time of the adjustment. A $0.33 credit on a contract priced at fractions of a penny is an enormous ratio. Long holders effectively received a payout that dwarfed the notional value of the contract itself. Short holders, meanwhile, faced a deduction that could swallow their entire margin and then some.

Franklin Resources: 45 years of dividend raises, one day of perp chaos The $0.33 quarterly distribution represents a 3.1% increase year-over-year and extends the asset manager’s streak of consecutive annual dividend raises to 45 years.

September 30 was the ex-dividend date for BEN shares, which is why Gate.io chose that date for its synthetic settlement. The exchange has conducted similar equity-perpetual dividend adjustments for other tickers throughout September, including contracts tied to Sitio Royalties (STR-C), Syneos Health (SYK), and Medical Properties Trust (MPW). None of those settlements appear to have generated the same level of liquidation activity.

The difference comes down to contract pricing. When the perpetual’s trading price is reasonably aligned with the underlying stock, a $0.33 adjustment is a small percentage move. When the perp trades at a fraction of a cent, the same dollar amount becomes a wrecking ball.

What this means for traders on equity-linked perps In a conventional brokerage account, a short seller of BEN stock would see the dividend deducted from their account, but their broker would have margin requirements calibrated to the actual share price. On Gate.io, the perp’s price can diverge significantly from the underlying equity, creating scenarios where the dividend adjustment represents a far larger percentage of the position’s collateral than anyone might expect from a blue-chip asset manager’s quarterly payout.

For traders holding short positions on equity-linked perps, the lesson is straightforward: check the dividend calendar. Gate.io publishes notices ahead of these adjustments, and the September 28 warning gave shorts a full two days to either close positions or add margin. The traders who got liquidated either missed the announcement or misjudged how much collateral they needed.

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

ARK Invest, a prominent US asset management firm led by Cathie Wood, has brought its flagship venture capital strategy onto the blockchain by tokenizing the ARK Venture Fund on Ethereum. Collaborating with Securitize, ARK Invest is enabling certain investors to access private market holdings like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stripe via blockchain-powered channels. This initiative, announced on September 24, marks the company’s first move into fund tokenization and is considered one of the largest such efforts in the venture space to date.

Fund structure and blockchain integrationInstead of directly tokenizing shares in the underlying portfolio companies, the ARK Venture Fund provides a regulated, blockchain-based tokenized interest in the fund itself. This approach leverages public blockchains for fund administration and broadens access to private technology firms that have attracted rising investor demand, especially in the artificial intelligence sector.

The fund’s tokenized share class, ARKVX, trades on Securitize’s platform. Ethereum functions as the settlement network for ARK Venture Fund’s $1.3 billion portfolio, making on-chain proof of ownership possible for select investors via digital tokens.

ARK Venture Fund operates as an actively managed closed-end interval fund. As of August 31, 2026, net assets stood at $1.3 billion. The portfolio typically holds between 25 and 50 assets, blending private positions—such as OpenAI (5.26%), Anthropic (3.86%), and Stripe—with public equities including Tesla and Coinbase. Notable allocations also include SpaceX at 7.54%, alongside Databricks and Figure AI.

For eligible investors, access is limited to the ARK Venture Fund itself and does not represent direct equity in portfolio companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. Securitize, which manages over $5 billion in tokenized real-world assets, serves as the issuer and administrator for ARKVX. Subscriptions are accepted in USDC, with a minimum investment of $500, and tokens are distributed following net asset value determination. The offering remains restricted to qualified investors and is not open to the general public.

Mini dictionary: Securitize, a digital asset securities platform, specializes in tokenizing traditional investment funds and private company shares for compliant blockchain trading and administration.

Regulatory developments and trading mechanicsOn September 21, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a modified order for the ARK Venture Fund, permitting ARKVX holdings to be tracked using a distributed ledger and to trade through regulated alternative trading systems and quotation facilities.

Given the interval fund structure, share repurchases only occur periodically through scheduled offers that may be oversubscribed. Currently, Securitize does not expect a secondary trading market for ARKVX in the near future. This setup distinguishes ARK Venture Fund from tokenized money market funds such as BlackRock’s BUIDL, which offers daily liquidity, anchoring it instead in a model typical of private-market infrastructure where blockchain use centers on administrative transparency rather than on immediate tradability.

FundSubscriptionLiquidityPlatformARK Venture Fund (ARKVX)USDC, $500 minimumPeriodic buybacks onlySecuritize (Ethereum)BlackRock BUIDLRegular cash investmentsDaily redemptionVarious (private blockchains)Leadership perspectives and industry implicationsCathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, emphasized that trading the ARK Venture Fund token exemplifies a tangible step forward for blockchain adoption in capital markets. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo commented that the fund’s on-chain launch showcases how established fund managers are embracing new technologies. The partnership between ARK Invest and Securitize was strengthened after ARK Invest participated in a funding round for Securitize in October 2025, underpinning their cooperation on ARKVX issuance.

Trading the ARK Venture Fund token demonstrates how established managers are able to place existing investment products onto blockchain rails, offering streamlined access and transparent ownership registration.

Broader impact on private markets and tokenization trendsIn the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem, ARK Invest’s initiative cements Ethereum’s status as a preferred settlement network for compliant real-world asset tokenization. Securitize has previously supported offerings for large institutions such as BlackRock and Hamilton Lane, but the ARK Venture Fund brings tokenization into the traditionally inaccessible realm of venture capital, where operational hurdles once discouraged broader institutional participation.

For eligible buyers, the fund’s structure removes some obstacles to investing in private artificial intelligence companies previously limited to specialist venture capital vehicles. Industry observers are watching whether Securitize will eventually migrate ARKVX to other chains, whether alternative trading systems will list the token for secondary trading, and whether investor demand will hold up as on-chain share repurchase programs become available.

While the fund’s interval structure may restrict liquidity, ARK Venture Fund’s tokenization may serve as a prototype for other venture funds seeking to expand investor access, combining private technology exposure with blockchain-based recordkeeping and administration.

Zano has announced that the privacy-focused L1 chain is in a ‘stable’ condition following a recent hotfix and rollback. 

In an X post, the team said it will recover affected balances in full, but it may take a little longer as exchanges verify ZANO transactions. 

ZANO supply and emission will remain unchanged. Funding comes from the developer fund, team members’ personal funds, and contributors who have committed support.

Source: X On the 28th of September, the blockchain was rolled back by a month to resolve an inflation vulnerability that let hackers mint an unspecified amount of ZANO and fUSD. 

The Freedom Dollar team behind fUSD said that a preliminary investigation showed “several million dollars” worth of assets were exchanged for counterfeit fUSD. 

According to the Zano team, the rollback and hotfix were aimed at restoring the chain and maintaining a capped ZANO supply. 

As part of the recovery, users will need to get updated mobile wallets. For third-party platforms and payment services, they can access the new network by updating their nodes. 

These services will audit a month of transactions before reopening withdrawals and deposits. As such, the full recovery may take a little while to complete. 

This (activity verification) takes time, and doing it carefully is what prevents balances from being credited to the wrong people or twice.

Zano vs. Zcash: Are private pools becoming a risk? Interestingly, the Zano exploit took about a month to notice after its Hard Fork 6 went live in late August. It’s the upgrade that introduced the inflation bug that was exploited by hackers. 

This is slightly similar to Zcash’s Orchard pool inflation bug in May. It took four years to be found, and this was the second incident for Zcash. Another counterfeiting flaw was found in 2018. And the private nature of these shielded pools initially made it challenging to flag these flaws in time.

To keep the privacy feature and still minimize these flaws, Zcash introduced turnstile accounting, allowing assets to be tracked and counted between protocol upgrades. 

Zano’s aggressive network rollback is just another way privacy-focused protocols are adopting to respond to hacks and counterfeit flaws. 

Still, it’s unclear if these remedies will restore the confidence of privacy-leaning investors.

In the past week, ZANO’s price declined by 36% to $5.5, fueled by the inflation bug. This level has been a key support in 2026, but it’s unclear whether bulls will increase exposure amid the network recovery plan. 

Source: ZANO/USDT, TradingView  Final Summary Zano project team promises full balance recovery as exchanges begin transaction audit. ZANO’s price dumped 36%, partly fueled by the inflation bug.

Financial analyst Levi described the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s latest crypto guidance as a major milestone for the industry, stating that the recent update is “massively bullish for crypto and $XRP.” Levi made his remarks after the SEC published new guidance and FAQs on September 25, 2026, covering several aspects of the digital asset sector.

SEC guidance expands on previous XRP classificationThe latest document builds directly on the March Interpretive Release that the SEC issued jointly with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That earlier release explicitly classified XRP as a digital commodity, marking a pivotal moment in the asset’s regulatory history.

Levi responded to the new guidance on X, writing, “BIG WIN FOR CRYPTO!!” He suggested that the SEC’s clarifications on how securities laws apply to digital assets could create industry-wide benefits and strengthen the position of XRP. The remarks highlighted positive sentiment among segments of the crypto community.

Levi declared, “BIG WIN FOR CRYPTO!! SEC issues new guidance clarifying securities laws on crypto. This is massively bullish for crypto and $XRP.”

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance released the updated material to offer deeper insight into digital asset transactions. However, the agency stated that the document only provides staff interpretation, not new binding rules.

Functional networks, token buybacks, and liquid staking addressedThe SEC guidance clarifies the regulatory status of crypto networks that have achieved full functionality. According to the document, routine operations related to the security, maintenance, or improvement of a network do not automatically meet the “essential managerial efforts” required for a securities law analysis under the Howey test.

In addition, staff addressed the issue of token buybacks in fully functional and decentralized networks, stating that such buybacks do not inherently constitute investment contracts. The characterization, the SEC explained, depends on transaction structure and profit expectations related to managerial actions.

The guidance also provided details on liquid staking receipt tokens. The SEC outlined situations where these tokens may represent interests tied to underlying digital commodities, but do not automatically result in an investment contract.

These points are intended to give developers and market participants greater clarity regarding several digital asset activities that previously faced regulatory uncertainty.

Mini dictionary: Howey test – A US legal standard from a 1946 Supreme Court case, used to determine whether a transaction qualifies as an investment contract and therefore falls under securities regulation.

Guidance offers clarity but does not change securities lawWhile Levi viewed the guidance as a “BIG WIN,” the SEC clarified that the material reflects staff views and does not carry the force of law. The Division of Corporation Finance emphasized that the FAQs do not amend US securities regulations or supersede existing legal precedent.

The agency indicated that each case involving digital assets continues to be reviewed individually based on specific facts and circumstances. The update aims to provide market participants with additional regulatory insight but does not grant blanket exemptions for cryptocurrencies or related businesses.

The Division of Corporation Finance emphasized, “Staff guidance does not have the force or effect of law and does not alter the application of federal securities laws.”

XRP’s legal position and prior court decisionsAlthough the new SEC guidance addresses several crypto activities in general terms, it does not create new rules specifically for XRP. The current regulatory treatment of XRP remains influenced by previous court cases. On July 13, 2023, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP on digital exchanges did not meet the conditions of the Howey test. However, the court reached a different conclusion for some institutional sales.

This legal distinction is important in evaluating the significance of the SEC’s guidance for XRP holders and investors. Levi’s remarks place the latest update within an overall positive regulatory climate for both the crypto market and XRP, but do not signal a new legal determination for the asset itself.

The recent SEC release adds to the available regulatory information for the crypto industry while maintaining individualized assessments for each asset according to its unique circumstances.

Solana held steady above $120 on Tuesday, maintaining a firm technical stance after a brief rally toward $125 the previous week. The cryptocurrency’s resilience at the $116 to $120 zone coincides with broad strength in digital asset markets, as total crypto capitalization approached $2.9 trillion over a 24-hour period. Market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum also remained robust, trading near $84,000 and above $2,700 respectively.

Sustained ETF inflows highlight institutional demandFor 11 consecutive weeks, US-based spot Solana ETFs have reported persistent positive net inflows. Analyst Ali Charts confirmed that, since July 13, these funds have accumulated around 4.37 million SOL, currently valued at approximately $450 million. His analysis suggests this accumulation phase extends through September 25, covering the latest completed trading week.

Ali Charts outlined that institutional demand for SOL remains strong, with significant absorption of available tokens by ETF products. He set a $150 upside target for the asset, citing ongoing capital inflows as a critical supporting factor for further price appreciation.

With institutional demand continuing to absorb Solana, the analyst expects the next price move upward toward $150 as SOL ETFs reach $450 million in holdings over an 11-week period.

This development underlines Solana’s mounting appeal among institutional investors, who continue to increase their exposure despite recent market volatility.

Weekly ETF inflows reach year-highDuring the week ending September 27, spot Solana ETF products in the United States collected $188.21 million in net inflows, according to SolanaFloor. This stands as the highest single-week inflow in the past 10 months and reflects growing confidence from market participants.

Bitwise’s BSOL led the pack, drawing in $128.46 million in new assets. Grayscale’s GSOL contributed $28.06 million, while Fidelity’s FSOL added $17.59 million over the same period. Additional figures from SoSoValue revealed another $12.70 million in SOL ETF inflows on September 28, bringing the cumulative total across all US-listed Solana ETFs to $1.62 billion. These products now collectively manage $1.93 billion in assets, representing about 2.76% of Solana’s total market capitalization.

In related activity, DeFi Development Corp expanded its Solana holdings by approximately 47,706 tokens since September 21, now holding nearly 2.54 million SOL in total.

Dominance in tokenized commodities and technical outlookSolana’s ecosystem is also strengthening in the tokenized commodities sector. Between September 21 and 27, decentralized exchanges built on Solana processed $91.1 million in tokenized commodities trades. This figure accounts for 28% of the $322.7 million total market, up markedly from just 5% four weeks earlier. Competitors such as Robinhood Chain and Ethereum lagged behind with $81.3 million and $62.6 million in transaction volumes, respectively, while Canton Network registered $67.4 million.

The stablecoin supply on Solana reached $17.3 billion as of September 25, based on network data, with DeFiLlama reporting a slightly more conservative estimate of $16.37 billion.

Analysts pointed to technical indicators showing momentum is building. The four-hour Relative Strength Index stood at 55.99, while the MACD remained below its signal line, with a negative histogram still present. Analysts and investors continue to watch the $120 zone as primary support, with additional levels at $115 and $110. A successful close above $125 could open the way to $130, with the $150 target remaining a longer-term focal point.

Given the potential for rapid market change driven by key macro events, technical breakouts, or surprises such as new altcoin listings, many investors face challenges managing their positions across various platforms. In response, privacy-focused applications like CryptoAppsy are gaining traction among traders seeking efficiency. These tools provide real-time charts, price alerts, and crypto news without account registration, consolidating essential trading information on one screen.

Spot Solana ETF inflows for the latest full week totaled $188.21 million, marking the strongest capital influx for the asset class in nearly a year and underlining increasing institutional adoption.

Zcash has fallen back toward the $1,400 area after losing $1,500 support, putting its strong September rally under fresh selling pressure.

Summary

Zcash trades near $1,400 after losing $1,500 support during its latest sharp market pullback today. RSI has fallen to 53.41, while its moving average remains notably higher near 65.60 today. Alpha Crypto Signal identifies 1,170-1,210 as the next potential zone for bullish confirmation on ZEC. Gemini migrated its Zcash infrastructure to Zakura before NU7’s planned faster block schedule in November. Zcash Foundation tentatively targets November 5 for NU7, which cuts block spacing to 25 seconds. CoinGecko shows ZEC trading near $1,412 at the time of research, down 0.4% over 24 hours and 12% across seven days. The token traded between roughly $1,360 and $1,488 during the latest 24-hour period, with market capitalization near $24 billion and trading volume around $1.31 billion.

The pullback comes after ZEC repeatedly traded above $1,500 during September and reached a seven-day high close to $1,688. CoinGecko data still showed the privacy coin up about 70% over 30 days despite the latest decline, leaving the current move within a much larger monthly advance.

Zcash price is now testing the $1,400 area On the daily chart, ZEC has slipped slightly below its 20-day middle Bollinger Band near $1,410.33. The upper band sits around $1,772.26, while the lower band is close to $1,048.41. Trading below the middle band points to weaker short-term momentum following the climb through September.

A recovery above roughly $1,410 would put ZEC back over that middle Bollinger reference. The next hurdle remains $1,500, which recently acted as support before sellers pushed the token lower. Above that level, the 1,600-1,700 area remains the main resistance zone seen during the latest advance.

Momentum has cooled at the same time. The 14-day Relative Strength Index stands near 53.41, down sharply from the overbought readings reached during the September rally. Its RSI moving average remains higher at around 65.60.

Zcash (ZEC) price chart, source: TradingView An RSI reading above 50 does not place ZEC in oversold territory. The indicator instead sits close to neutral while showing less buying strength than earlier in the month. Price action around 1,390-1,410 therefore remains the first technical area to watch before lower support comes into focus.

Analysts are watching support closer to $1,200 Crypto analyst Alpha Crypto Signal wrote that ZEC is approaching an area where a potential long setup could form if the pullback continues.

The analyst identified 1,170-1,210 as the key lower horizontal support zone and said any long position would depend on bullish price confirmation after ZEC reaches that range. The analyst described the area as a “potential long interest zone” but did not claim that the price would necessarily fall there or rebound from it.

Chart Request: #ZEC$ZEC is approaching a potential long interest zone after the recent pullback. The lower horizontal support around $1,170–$1,210 is the key area I’m watching for a reaction.

If $ZEC reaches this zone and shows bullish confirmation, I’ll be looking for a long… pic.twitter.com/5noAqJm7r5

— Alpha Crypto Signal (@alphacryptosign) September 29, 2026 The $1,170 area has appeared in earlier ZEC market structure as well. During Zcash’s earlier breakout above $1,300, crypto.news reported that liquidity remained concentrated below roughly $1,170 while ZEC climbed more than 20% in a single session on Sept. 16.

For the current setup, losing $1,400 would leave the recent intraday floor around $1,360 as the next visible price reference. A deeper decline toward the analyst’s 1,170-1,210 zone would represent a much larger retracement from September’s highs. A sustained recovery above $1,500 would instead return price to the level lost during the latest sell-off.

September rally still leaves ZEC far above earlier levels Zcash entered September with strong momentum following the launch of the first U.S.-listed spot Zcash ETF. ZEC crossed $1,000 in early September after Grayscale converted its long-running Zcash Trust into the ZCSH spot ETF on NYSE Arca in August.

The rally continued through the middle of the month. Crypto.news reported ZEC trading near $1,337 on Sept. 16 after a 20.46% daily gain, with the token reaching an intraday high around $1,385. Technical resistance at the time was concentrated around $1,375 and $1,500.

ZEC later cleared both levels and traded above $1,600 before reversing. Recent derivatives data have pointed to traders cutting leverage during the retreat. One Sept. 28 snapshot of OKX perpetual futures recorded dollar open interest falling from $190.69 million to $164.95 million over 24 hours as ZEC declined. The figures describe reduced outstanding exposure on that venue and do not establish which side initiated the selling.

On-chain activity has meanwhile shown a large wallet moving ZEC away from centralized exchanges during the pullback. Onchain Lens reported that the wallet withdrew 2,640 ZEC, worth roughly $3.72 million at the time, from Binance around two hours before its post.

ZEC WHALE ACCUMULATES $20M IN A MONTH

A whale withdrew another 2.64K $ZEC (~$3.72M) from Binance two hours ago.

Over the past month, the wallet has accumulated 14.19K $ZEC (~$20M) from Binance and Gate. pic.twitter.com/SUeKci0uYb

— Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) September 30, 2026 Over the past month, the same wallet accumulated 14,190 ZEC, valued near $20 million, through withdrawals from Binance and Gate, according to the tracker. Exchange withdrawals alone do not establish whether the holder intends to keep, transfer or later sell the tokens.

Tyler Winklevoss has meanwhile compared current interest in Zcash with an earlier period in the crypto market. The Gemini co-founder wrote that Zcash “feels like crypto in 2019,” referring to renewed attention around the privacy-focused asset. His comment represents his view of market sentiment and does not provide a ZEC price target.

Gemini prepares Zcash infrastructure for NU7 Away from price action, Gemini said on Sept. 29 that its Zcash infrastructure now runs on Zakura, an open-source full node written in Rust. The exchange made the change before NU7, Zcash’s next planned network upgrade.

Gemini said Zakura reached the chain tip in a little over six hours during its deployments, compared with close to one day for Zebra. The exchange said customer deposits and withdrawals will continue working as before because the infrastructure change takes place behind the scenes.

NU7 is set to reduce Zcash’s block target spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. The protocol specification describes a threefold reduction in block spacing, while the Zcash Foundation said the upgrade is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 5.

Before NU7, the Zcash Foundation released Zebra 6.4.2 on Sept. 25 to fix a high-severity vulnerability in versions 6.4.0 and 6.4.1 that could let a peer remotely crash a node. The Foundation said the flaw affected node availability but had no consensus or funds impact, and advised operators of the recalled versions to upgrade to 6.4.2.

Robinhood Chain generated $50.2M in transaction fees through September 23. Stock tokens recorded $10.4B in 30-day decentralized exchange volume. Only 1%–2% of early transactions were attributed to Robinhood users. Robinhood Chain is beginning to reveal a less obvious side of tokenized equities: the brokerage may bring the assets onchain, but independent DeFi protocols can capture a meaningful share of the resulting economics.

Since its July launch, the Ethereum Layer 2 has developed a sizable market for tokenized stocks, with trading activity accelerating sharply in September. Uniswap has emerged as the dominant DeFi venue for those assets, creating an early test of what happens when Robinhood’s financial products enter infrastructure that Robinhood does not exclusively control.

Stock Tokens Are Finding a Market Outside the Brokerage Robinhood launched its public Chain mainnet on July 1 as an Ethereum Layer 2 built using Arbitrum technology.

Unlike a closed brokerage environment, the permissionless network allows outside applications to build markets around assets issued on the chain.

Tokenized equities have quickly become a significant part of that activity.

Over the 30 days through September 23, Robinhood stock tokens generated approximately $10.4 billion in spot DEX volume, according to Token Terminal data. Nvidia alone accounted for about $2.1 billion in cumulative trading volume.

4/ That activity is already generating meaningful revenue for both Robinhood & Uniswap

Robinhood Chain generated $50.2M in transaction fee revenue from launch through Sep 23

In Sep 1–23, Robinhood Chain also accounted for $7.1M, or 57.3%, of Uniswap protocol revenue pic.twitter.com/Ows6dEbyvY

— Token Terminal 📊 (@tokenterminal) September 29, 2026

The activity has also translated into network economics. Transaction-fee revenue increased from $3.6 million in July to $6.7 million in August and $39.9 million during September 1–23.

Those figures do not prove stock-token trading caused the September increase. Available data does not provide enough attribution to isolate the fee contribution of individual assets or applications.

What they establish is that a large decentralized market for Robinhood-issued assets was developing alongside the network’s sharp increase in fee generation.

Uniswap Has Become the Liquidity Center Liquidity is even more concentrated than trading activity.

By September 23, approximately $53 million of Robinhood stock-token DeFi deposits were held through Uniswap v4, with another $25 million in v3 and about $174,000 in v2. Combined, Uniswap represented more than 99% of tracked stock-token DeFi deposits.

The distribution is notable because v4 has accumulated the largest deposit base while v3 remains heavily used for trading.

A September 17 market snapshot recorded approximately $758.5 million of 24-hour DEX volume through Uniswap v3, compared with $326.5 million through v4. Together, the two versions accounted for roughly 81% of the $1.33 billion captured by that dataset.

Rather than merely deploying contracts on another Layer 2, Uniswap has become core trading infrastructure for Robinhood Chain’s emerging tokenized-equity market.

One Market, Two Revenue Layers The economics are easier to understand when network activity and application revenue are separated.

ROBINHOOD CHAIN

MARKET RECEIPT

SEPTEMBER
2026

NETWORK LAYER

Robinhood Chain
Transaction fees · Sep. 1–23

$39.9M

APPLICATION LAYER

Uniswap
Protocol revenue · Sep. 1–23

$7.1M

SHARE OF UNISWAP PROTOCOL REVENUE

57.3%

came from Robinhood Chain during the period.

Network transaction fees and protocol revenue are separate economic layers and should not be added together.

The structure shows how a single ecosystem can generate revenue for companies occupying different positions in the stack.

Robinhood supplies the blockchain infrastructure and tokenized assets. Uniswap operates decentralized markets on top of that infrastructure. Once those assets enter permissionless markets, Robinhood no longer has exclusive control over who monetizes their trading activity.

That is a meaningful departure from the economics of its conventional brokerage.

Robinhood’s 28 Million Customers Are Still Mostly Missing The early growth becomes more interesting when compared with who appears to be using the network.

Early September that existing Robinhood users represented only around 1%–2% of Robinhood Chain transactions.

If that estimate broadly reflects current participation, the chain’s initial liquidity boom is primarily a crypto-native phenomenon rather than a mass migration of Robinhood brokerage customers.

That leaves Robinhood’s existing distribution network largely untapped.

The company reported nearly 28 million customers across 38 countries when the public mainnet launched.

Bringing even part of that audience into an ecosystem that already has functioning decentralized liquidity would represent a different growth phase from the one visible today.

It would also test whether mainstream investors actually want to use tokenized equities beyond the familiar brokerage interface.

The Next Test Is Distribution, Not Another Token Launch Robinhood Chain has already answered one question: crypto-native markets are willing to trade tokenized traditional assets at substantial scale.

The unresolved issue is whether Robinhood can connect that activity with the customer base that made its brokerage business valuable in the first place.

If more brokerage customers migrate onchain, Uniswap and other permissionless applications could gain access to investors who previously interacted with financial markets through centralized platforms. Robinhood’s distribution advantage would effectively become an acquisition channel for an open ecosystem.

If participation remains dominated by existing crypto traders, Robinhood Chain could still succeed as a tokenized-asset venue, but its growth would be driven by a different audience than the company’s traditional retail base.

That makes the early revenue data particularly revealing.

Robinhood has created the network and supplied the assets. Uniswap is already proving that once those assets enter open markets, somebody else can build a substantial business around them.

Alex is a financial markets journalist and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, and he's spent close to ten years trying to answer one stubborn question: what's really driving this? It started in 2016, when Bitcoin refused to make sense to him - and rather than shrug, he stayed with it until it did. That patience became his method. He's less interested in what an asset is doing today than in the plumbing behind it: how liquidity flows, where risk hides, what a chart is quietly telling you that the headline isn't. That lens eventually stretched well past crypto into traditional markets, because the same forces - fear, leverage, incentives, timing - show up everywhere once you know how to look. Most coverage, in his view, insults the reader by stopping at the surface. Price up, price down, moving on. He'd rather leave someone genuinely understanding a move than merely informed that it happened. His path into markets ran through a Tourism degree at New Bulgarian University - proof, maybe, that curiosity beats credentials. With more than 200 deep analyses and over 10,000 articles behind him, he still walks away from most trading days having learned something he didn't know that morning.

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Bitwise has opened the first US spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) for NEAR Protocol (NEAR). The fund began trading on NYSE Arca on Tuesday under the ticker NRR.

The product’s debut comes amid a time when NEAR nearly tripled in value.

The Rally Ran Ahead of the Opening BellNEAR trades at $5.04, according to BeInCrypto Markets data. That price reflects a 175.24% gain over 30 days, from below $2 at the start of September.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto MarketsThat gain ranks fourth among the 100 largest crypto assets by monthly performance, according to CoinGecko.

Much of the climb came in the second half of September, as the listing cleared its final steps. NYSE Arca certified the fund’s registration with the SEC on September 28, one day before trading began.

The rally has also lifted Bitwise’s European NEAR product. Its assets passed $100 million this month, although rising token prices drove most of that growth.

Grayscale filed in January to convert its own NEAR trust into an ETF. That fund has not listed yet, so Bitwise reached US investors first.

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What Bitwise Is Selling to US InvestorsNRR charges a 0.75% management fee. Bitwise plans to stake the fund’s NEAR in-house, giving shareholders exposure to the network’s average staking reward of about 5%.

Beyond the yield, Bitwise pitches NEAR as a settlement layer for AI agents that book, pay, and swap for users.

“NEAR sits at the intersection of two of the biggest trends in technology: AI and crypto. As AI agents start transacting on our behalf—booking, paying, swapping, and more—the world is going to need settlement infrastructure that’s fast, trustworthy, and doesn’t depend on a single custodian,” Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, said.

The launch announcement points to NEAR Intents, its flagship product, as early evidence. The protocol has processed over $32 billion, up from under $1 billion a year ago.

The asset manager laid out what that bet could be worth in a previous research report. Its base case sees NEAR at $155.85 by the end of 2030, about 31 times today’s price.

The bear case puts NEAR at $1.63 by 2030, well below today’s $5.04. It assumes centralized AI firms such as OpenAI end up dominating. The max case reaches $562.81.

Meanwhile, the launch coincides with a retreat elsewhere in Bitwise’s lineup. The firm is winding down BWOW, its Dogecoin (DOGE) ETF, which stops trading on October 14. 

BWOW’s closure shows that a low fee alone did not draw US investors to a single-token fund. NRR’s first weeks of flow data will show whether demand for NEAR extends beyond the price rally.

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Avalanche Treasury Corp (NASDAQ: AVAT) has offloaded a portion of its locked $AVAX holdings back to the Avalanche Foundation, raising $15 million in the process and signalling a measured shift in how the company manages its balance sheet.

The Transaction at a Glance

By disposing of its furthest-maturity holdings first, the company has effectively shortened the overall lock-up profile of its remaining position.

What the Proceeds Are For The move reflects a broader effort to manage leverage while keeping the company operationally funded.

The deal was disclosed through a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, giving the transaction formal regulatory visibility. Avalanche Treasury's exclusive relationship with the Avalanche Foundation has been a defining feature of its structure since its formation.

The September 23 sale does not represent a full exit from $AVAX. Rather, it trims the tail end of the company's lock-up schedule and frees up capital at a time when many crypto treasury vehicles are facing pressure to demonstrate financial discipline alongside their token holdings.

Sources:
Investing.com: Avalanche Treasury completes $15 million AVAX token sale to Avalanche Foundation
SEC Filing: Avalanche Treasury Corporation 10-Q (June 30, 2026)

Solana is drawing renewed attention from institutional investors, driven by advances in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization through the Metaplex protocol. The network’s latest innovation, Metaplex’s MPL-3643, enables native on-chain issuance of permissioned assets with compliance and composability features designed to appeal to regulated institutions.

The Metaplex project, a leading developer of digital asset standards, has introduced MPL-3643 to allow institutions to tokenize physical assets directly on Solana, while meeting regulatory requirements such as permissioned access and restricted transfers. The protocol is engineered to ensure tokenized assets can still interact with existing Solana-based applications, preserving the network’s composability.

By offering this balance between compliance and interoperability, Metaplex aims to serve issuers searching for blockchain solutions that align with regulatory standards yet provide flexible on-chain trading capabilities.

Mini dictionary: Metaplex, a Solana-based protocol, establishes standards and tools for creating and managing digital assets. MPL-3643 by Metaplex is a standard for permissioned tokens, enabling regulatory compliance features such as restricted transfers and configurable permissions for real-world asset tokenization on Solana.

This dual approach has attracted institutions seeking to participate in blockchain networks without compromising compliance mandates.

Rising Network Activity and ETF DemandConcurrent with protocol developments, Solana has experienced robust activity on its decentralized exchange (DEX) platforms. Data from analytics provider SolanaFloor indicates that the network led all Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains in weekly DEX trading volume for 22 consecutive weeks. This sustained level of activity points to continued retail and institutional engagement across the Solana ecosystem.

Institutional demand has also been reflected in the market structure, particularly through the growth of U.S.-based spot Solana ETFs. Since July 13, these funds have accumulated approximately 4.37 million SOL, representing about $450 million in value and marking eleven straight weeks of positive net flows.

MetricValueWeekly DEX volume leader22 weeks (Solana)Total SOL held by ETFs4.37 million SOLApproximate ETF value$450 millionConsecutive weeks of ETF inflows11 weeksMarket analyst Ali Charts noted that persistent buying by these investment products could drive further accumulation and potentially encourage a breakout in the Solana price. The analyst highlighted a possible target around $150, but emphasized that this represents a projection, not an accomplished milestone.

Institutional buying pressure may support a move toward the $150 level for SOL, with the current structure reflecting robust demand, ongoing network participation, and increasing RWA developments.

Technical Outlook for SOLSolana has recently traded near $118 and reclaimed the $120-$125 price range following a recovery from lower levels. This zone is regarded as a key technical level, with further price action likely guided by support and resistance markers rather than predetermined trends. Sustaining momentum above support could reinforce confidence in the ongoing recovery, while a drop below may signal a potential slowdown in momentum.

Breakout above resistance would further validate Solana’s recovery pattern, while loss of immediate support could slow progress, leaving technical levels as critical references for market participants.

The evolving landscape includes institutional inflows, active on-chain participation, and new infrastructure for asset tokenization, positioning Solana at the forefront of composable and compliant blockchain solutions.

Source: Binance EN

This is a general announcement. Products and services referred to here may not be available in your region. Fellow Binancians, Starting at approximately 2026-10-07 15:00 (UTC), Binance will suspend the deposits and withdrawals of token(s) on the Ronin (RONIN) network to support its network upgrade and hard fork to ensure the best user experience. The network upgrade and hard fork will take place at approximately 2026-10-07 16:00 (UTC). Please note: The trading of token(s) on the aforementioned network will not be impacted.Binance will handle all technical requirements involved for all users.Deposits and withdrawals for token(s) on the aforementioned network will be reopened once the upgraded network is deemed to be stable. No further announcement will be posted.There may be discrepancies between this original content in English and any translated versions. Please refer to the original English version for the most accurate information, in case any discrepancies arise. For more information, please refer to the announcement from the project team. Thank you for your support! Binance Team 2026-09-30

Aster DEX adds peer-to-peer OTC desk for perpetual contracts@Aster_DEX has launched over-the-counter (OTC) trading on its platform, giving counterparties a way to negotiate and open perpetual positions at a privately agreed price, bypassing the public order book entirely. $BTC perps (BTC-USDT) are the first market available, with additional pairs set to follow.

The mechanics are straightforward. One party sets the terms of the trade and generates a Deal Code. The second party receives that code and signs to accept the deal. To protect both sides from pricing that strays too far from fair value, the agreed price must remain within 8% of the prevailing mark price.

OTC trading has long been a tool for larger participants who want price certainty without moving the market. Crypto OTC allows buyers and sellers to transact directly outside public exchanges, with trades happening privately between parties rather than through a public order book. The key advantage is that large positions can be opened or closed without the slippage or signalling risk that comes with routing a big order through a live order book.

Where OTC fits inside Aster's broader roadmap Aster is a perpetuals-first decentralized exchange running on BNB Chain, with deposit support from Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum. The platform has grown rapidly since its token launch and has been expanding its product suite steadily. OTC trading appeared as a planned feature on the project's official roadmap, described as support for private over-the-counter perpetual transactions between users, allowing them to trade at mutually agreed prices without relying on the order book.

The launch is a practical step for traders who need to move size quietly, particularly in a derivatives market where price certainty is a major factor: in an OTC workflow, the client receives a firm quote, and if accepted, the trade executes at exactly that price, with no partial fill risk and no uncertainty about the final average price.

BTC-USDT perpetuals are the starting point, but Aster has indicated that more markets will be added. The 8% mark-price band acts as a guardrail, keeping bilaterally agreed prices anchored close to the wider market rate and limiting the potential for extreme off-market prints.

Sources:
Aster DEX Official Roadmap
Aster DEX vs. Hyperliquid: The Perps Fight of 2026, Ryder One
Crypto OTC Trading: Concepts to Strategies, ConduitPay

David Pan _ writes about the latest tinkering by Michael Saylor to revive Bitcoin accumulator Strategy Inc.’s crypto-funding engine. _

Perpetual payments
Michael Saylor is back in sales-pitch mode.

Bitcoin’s best-known evangelist is asking Strategy Inc. shareholders to approve shifting the dividend payments on its billions of dollars in outstanding preferred shares to daily from semi-monthly and quarterly distributions.

“This is the latest exciting development in the digital-credit space,” Saylor said in a video presentation Friday, where he outlined the benefits to liquidity and market efficiency for the securities paying an annualized yield as high as 12%.

The proposal is the latest in a string of moves by Saylor — who pioneered the strategy of companies buying and holding the cryptocurrency as an appreciation bet six years ago — to shore up demand after the firm’s outlook faded among investors. After initially selling common shares to fund purchases, Saylor shifted to non-dilutive preferred stock after the initial premium paid on the common evaporated.

Some market observers say the dividend change still doesn’t address the underlying question of whether “digital credit” can become a durable source of capital rather than a product that works only when enthusiasm for Strategy and Bitcoin is running high.

“The change would mainly reduce dividend-related volatility rather than the underlying credit and Bitcoin-linked risk,” said Lacie Zhang, research lead at Bitget Wallet. “Deeper liquidity is also not guaranteed simply by increasing the frequency of payments.”

Investors had initially flocked to the STRC, or Stretch, perpetual preferred securities marketed as being comparable to money market securities, but with junk-bond level returns. That was until Bitcoin’s price crumbled. Without a continual funding source, the financial flywheel created by Saylor risks grinding to a halt.

Strategy then sold a handful of Bitcoin in June, breaking with Saylor’s long-held recommendation to never part with the digital currency. That helped to send crypto prices even lower. To halt the slide, Strategy set up cash reserves and began buying back STRC to boost its price to par, a level that would make new issuance accretive to shareholders.

Despite repurchasing more than $1 billion of the variable-rate securities, the firm hasn’t been able to issue new STRC since May. Strategy — which has more than $14 billion in preferred shares outstanding — declined to comment beyond the presentation.

“The goal is pretty simple,” said Adam McCarthy, head of research at trading firm LO:TECH. “It’s another attempt of securing demand.”

Preferred stock sits between debt and common equity. Holders get priority over common shareholders for dividends, but typically give up much of the upside that comes with ordinary shares. And because Strategy’s preferreds are perpetual, the company doesn’t face a set date when it must repay the capital. That gives Saylor another pool of investors to tap for financing without relying solely on buyers of Strategy’s more volatile common stock.

Saylor isn’t alone in seeking to resort to daily payments to entice buyers. Strive Inc. has issued more than $1 billion of the securities since June. The much smaller Bitcoin treasury firm is paying an annualized yield of 13%, while using the proceeds to buy the non-income asset.

The voting process for Strategy shareholders is set to be completed on Oct. 28. With Saylor being the dominant shareholder, the measure is likely to pass.

And if daily dividends aren’t enticing enough to restart demand, the advocate for never selling your Bitcoin can always resume selling more of its $71 billion of the cryptocurrency to meet the never-ending payments.

Charting it out

Bitget recorded roughly $463 million in net outflows in the 24 hours into Tuesday, as customers moved assets off the platform following last week’s $388 million theft.

Counting it out

US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted about $2.4 billion in the week ended Sept. 25, their biggest weekly haul since the period that ended on Oct. 10, when inflows topped $2.7 billion. That came just ahead of a selloff that extended through much of 2026.

Hearing them out
What we’re reading (and writing)

Bukele Turns to Stablecoins as Bitcoin Payments Fail to Catch On
Bitcoin Pioneer Adam Back’s Empire Beset by Hack, Lawsuits
Senate Investigation Finds Rampant Use of Tether by Iran (WSJ)
Blockchain.com Is Said to Target $500 Million IPO This Year
CFTC Pulls Back on Markets Enforcement Under Trump (NYT)
Crypto Hack Spurs $463 Million in Customer Outflows at Bitget
Pokemon Fan Charged With $55 Million Crypto Hack Goes on Trial

What we’re watching on Bloomberg TV
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce joins Scarlet Fu and Tim Stenovec on “Bloomberg Crypto.” This week marks the last one for Peirce at the regulator. They discuss how the crypto industry has changed during her almost nine years in the position.

More from Bloomberg

Markets Daily for what’s moving in stocks, bonds, FX and commodities
Banking Monitor for staying on top of the global banking industry with emerging trends, winners and losers and market opportunities.
CFO Briefing for Nina Trentmann’s weekly newsletter on what finance leaders need to know
Going Private for coverage of private markets and the forces moving capital away from the public eye
Money Stuff for Bloomberg Opinion’s Matt Levine’s newsletter on all things Wall Street and finance

Explore all Bloomberg newsletters.

Brazilian financial-market infrastructure provider CSD BR has moved to integrate the XRP Ledger into its regulated securities infrastructure, according to a local media outlet. 

The Ripple-led initiative will initially use the XRP Ledger as an additional record and audit layer for investment fund shares held at CSD BR. The first assets involved will be fund shares from Brazilian banking giant BTG Pactual.

According to Ripple executive Luke Judges, the project could open a path for significant portions of Brazil's massive fixed-income market to move onto the XRP Ledger.

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"This is the first time the XRP Ledger is publicly being integrated into core financial market infrastructure of this scale," Judges said.

Regulated market infrastructureCSD BR forms part of Brazil's regulated financial-market infrastructure. Its services cover asset registration, central securities depository functions and so on. 

The company is authorized by major Brazilian financial regulators, including the Central Bank of Brazil.

Judges described Brazil as the world's 10th-largest economy and said CSD BR has more than BRL 22 trillion worth of registered assets. Hence, the sheer scale of the tie-up should not be underestimated. 

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The XRP Ledger is being connected to infrastructure that already sits inside Brazil's regulated capital markets.

The rollout will begin with investment fund shares from BTG Pactual that are deposited with CSD BR.

The CSD BR project is intended to move beyond the familiar proof-of-concept model.

Ripple Latin America Managing Director Silvio Pegado described the transition from pilots into live national capital-market infrastructure as an important milestone for the broader distributed-ledger industry.

According to Judges, CSD BR selected the XRP Ledger because the network was designed around financial applications.

"CSD BR chose the XRPL because it was purpose-built for financial use cases and can integrate with existing regulated infrastructure out of the box," he said.

XRPL is not being deployed as one network within a large multichain experiment. According to Judges, it is currently the sole blockchain included in the technology stack.

"Today, XRPL is the only blockchain in the stack," he said.

@Coinbase has expanded its crypto-backed lending product, allowing eligible U.S. residents outside of New York to borrow up to $100,000 in USDC by pledging their $HYPE (Hyperliquid) or $ZEC (Zcash) tokens as collateral. Loans are processed instantly through the Coinbase app.

Liquidity Without the Tax Hit The key appeal is the tax treatment. Borrowing against crypto holdings is not considered a taxable event, meaning users can access dollar liquidity without selling their positions and without realising a capital gain. According to Crypto Briefing, the feature lets holders of Hyperliquid and Zcash tokens borrow up to $100,000 in USDC "without triggering a taxable sale."

Risk parameters for altcoin collateral on the platform are set at a maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of 49%, with liquidation triggered at 62.5%. In practical terms, that means a user posting $10,000 worth of $HYPE could borrow up to roughly $4,900. There are no fixed repayment schedules, though borrowers must keep their LTV ratio within limits to avoid automatic liquidation.

Built on Morpho and Base The product is powered by the @Morpho Protocol, an on-chain lending platform, running on @Base, Coinbase's own Layer-2 network. When a user posts collateral through the Coinbase app, the mechanics are handled by Morpho's smart contracts in the background. As Coinbase's own help documentation notes, "borrowing is enabled by the Morpho onchain lending protocol on Base."

The addition of $HYPE and $ZEC continues a steady expansion of accepted collateral assets. The platform already supports borrowing against Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Cardano, Dogecoin, and Litecoin, with the programme having launched in early 2025. The broader Morpho and Coinbase partnership has grown considerably, with onchain collateral in their shared vaults rising 133% in 2026 to approximately $3.5 billion, alongside $1.57 billion in outstanding loans across roughly 53,000 active users.

Sources:
Crypto Briefing: Coinbase expands crypto-backed loans to include HYPE and ZEC
Crypto Briefing: Base financing markets grow 133% this year, driven by Morpho and Coinbase integration
Coinbase Help: Crypto-backed loans introduction

A year ago, Zcash was a rounding error next to Bitcoin. Its market cap sat at roughly 0.1% of Bitcoin’s, the kind of ratio that makes a coin easy to ignore. Fast forward to September 2026, and that number has jumped to 1.5%, according to new research from Grayscale.

ZEC went from approximately $60 to around $1,500 in twelve months, a roughly 19-fold increase that pushed its market cap near $13.74 billion by late August. For context, Bitcoin’s market cap hovered around $1.56 trillion at the time.

What’s driving the surge Grayscale’s report, published September 29, 2026, attributes the rally to growing demand for financial privacy. The thesis is straightforward: as blockchain transparency improves and on-chain surveillance tools proliferate, a segment of users and investors increasingly values the option to transact privately.

Zcash’s core feature, shielded transactions, lets users encrypt sender, receiver, and amount data while still settling on a public blockchain.

By late September 2026, ZEC was trading around $1,400, with its market cap reported near $23-24 billion, suggesting continued momentum even after the initial price spike earlier in the summer.

Grayscale frames the opportunity in relative terms. Bitcoin dominates what the firm calls the “currencies sector” of crypto, holding roughly 90-93% of that category’s total market cap.

The ETF factor On August 25, 2026, the firm launched its Zcash ETF under the ticker ZCSH on NYSE Arca. The product was a conversion of Grayscale’s longstanding Zcash Trust, which dates back to 2017.

Converting a trust into an ETF matters because it eliminates the persistent premium or discount to net asset value that plagued Grayscale’s earlier trust products. Now, ZCSH offers direct exposure to ZEC with the arbitrage mechanism that keeps ETF prices tethered to the underlying asset.

The ETF has reportedly attracted considerable inflows since launch.

Grayscale’s report includes hypothetical scenarios showing ZEC’s price at various levels of Bitcoin market-cap capture. If Zcash hit 2% of Bitcoin’s market cap, the implied ZEC price would land near $1,622. These are explicitly hypothetical, not forecasts.

Privacy’s moment, and the risks that come with it Zcash offers optional privacy that users can toggle on or off depending on the situation, using shielded transactions based on zero-knowledge proofs.

But privacy coins carry specific risks that Grayscale itself acknowledges. ZEC is significantly more volatile than Bitcoin. Regulatory risk looms larger too — several exchanges have delisted privacy-focused tokens in recent years under pressure from regulators concerned about money laundering.

Zcash also has a capped supply of 21 million coins, mirroring Bitcoin’s scarcity model.

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