Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Wall Street just stopped treating tokenized assets like a science experiment. On July 15, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation executed its first-ever live production trades involving tokenized US stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries, with JPMorgan posting tokenized shares of the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF as collateral to meet margin requirements at CME Group.

How the trade actually worked JPMorgan tokenized shares of the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF, one of the most widely held index ETFs tracking the Nasdaq-100. Those tokenized shares were then posted as collateral to satisfy margin requirements at CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives marketplace.

Chainlink served as the connective tissue. Its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol and Runtime Environment handled the movement and verification of the tokenized assets across different blockchain environments.

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The result was immediate capital efficiency. JPMorgan didn’t need to unwind underlying positions or shuffle cash around to meet its margin obligations. The tokenized collateral moved on-chain, instantly, while maintaining all the legal rights tied to the traditional securities underneath.

The road to production In May 2025, JPMorgan partnered with Chainlink and Ondo Finance to test cross-chain Delivery versus Payment settlements of tokenized Treasuries. DvP is the gold standard in securities settlement: assets and payment change hands simultaneously, eliminating the risk that one side delivers while the other doesn’t.

Then in May 2026, DTCC integrated Chainlink’s Runtime Environment into its Collateral AppChain, a purpose-built system designed for around-the-clock collateral management. That integration gave the infrastructure a production-grade backbone, setting the stage for the July trade.

Why CME accepting tokenized collateral is a big deal Margin collateral at CME has historically meant cash, Treasuries, or a narrow list of approved assets. Adding tokenized equities to that list means one of the most conservative, heavily regulated entities in global finance has formally recognized that digital representations of securities carry the same weight as their traditional counterparts.

What this means for investors For Chainlink specifically, being the infrastructure layer that DTCC and JPMorgan chose for production deployment is a significant competitive moat. The Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol is positioning itself as the default bridge between traditional finance rails and blockchain networks.

The broader tokenization market has seen adoption concentrated in Treasuries and money market funds. The inclusion of equity ETFs like QQQ signals that the aperture is widening.

With over 40 Wall Street firms participating in this first production trade, the question is no longer whether traditional finance will adopt blockchain-based settlement and collateral management. It’s how quickly the rest of the industry catches up to the firms that already have.

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

DeFiTuna, a decentralized finance protocol built on Solana, disclosed that an attacker drained $580,000 from its lending pools on July 16. The exploit left a matching deficit in the platform’s USDC lending pool.

The team says it quickly identified and mitigated the attack vector. Recovery efforts and a deeper investigation into the exploit are underway, though the protocol has not yet detailed how, or whether, affected users will be made whole.

What happened and what we know so far DeFiTuna operates as an automated market maker with native lending features, concentrated liquidity, and support for leveraged positions. Users deposit assets into pools, other users borrow against them, and everyone earns yield based on how much of the pool is being utilized.

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The attacker extracted $580K from those pools, specifically impacting the USDC side of the ledger. That created an immediate deficit, meaning the pool’s liabilities now exceed its assets by that amount.

DeFiTuna confirmed that the exploit pathway has been closed. What remains unclear is the precise mechanism of the exploit. The team hasn’t elaborated publicly, which is understandable during an active investigation.

User reactions on social media centered on two questions: will depositors absorb the loss, and why wasn’t this caught during audits? Both remain unanswered.

DeFiTuna’s background and the trust question DeFiTuna’s feature set combines AMM functionality with lending and leveraged trading. The protocol’s native token, $TUNA, is used for staking and revenue sharing, giving holders a claim on ecosystem fees. The lending pools offer variable APY based on utilization rates.

Back in February 2025, the protocol returned investments it had received from Kelsier Ventures following a scandal involving that firm.

What this means for DeFi investors For DeFiTuna depositors, the immediate concern is whether the USDC pool deficit will be covered. There are a few ways this typically plays out: the protocol can use treasury funds to backstop the loss, socialize the deficit across all depositors, or attempt to recover funds from the attacker.

The team’s next public communication will be critical. Investors will be watching for a detailed post-mortem explaining exactly what went wrong, a concrete plan for addressing the USDC deficit, and evidence that the remaining contracts have been re-audited or formally verified.

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

For decades, posting margin for derivatives trades meant wiring dollars through a system that still operates on banker’s hours. Marex Group, a publicly traded clearing firm on NASDAQ under the ticker MRX, just made that process look a little antiquated.

On July 16, Marex announced that clients can now use USDC, the regulated stablecoin issued by Circle, as initial margin collateral for US derivatives clearing. The integration runs through Coinbase Prime, which handles custody, instant fiat-to-USDC conversion, and the reporting infrastructure that keeps the whole thing compliant. The inaugural transaction was executed by Prime Trading, LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm that posted USDC as margin, which Marex then converted to cash to facilitate its trading positions.

How it actually works The Marex and Coinbase setup replaces a chunk of that friction with blockchain rails. USDC moves 24/7 at internet speed, meaning collateral can be posted, adjusted, or withdrawn at any hour, not just during US banking windows.

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In practice, a client holds USDC in a Coinbase Prime account. When margin is needed, the stablecoin is transferred into a segregated, CFTC-compliant environment that Marex manages for clearing operations. Coinbase provides bespoke reporting aligned with Marex’s clearing requirements, essentially acting as the bridge between the crypto-native asset and the regulatory framework that governs futures markets.

The regulatory green light In December 2025, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a no-action letter that effectively permitted the use of stablecoins as margin collateral in derivatives clearing. That letter didn’t change the law, but it told clearing firms and their regulators: go ahead, we won’t pursue enforcement action if you do this within the right guardrails.

The fact that USDC was the stablecoin of choice matters too. It’s fully reserved, meaning every token is backed by cash and short-duration US Treasuries held in segregated accounts. That reserve structure is what makes it palatable to regulators and clearinghouses that need to know the collateral is actually worth what it claims to be.

What this means for institutional markets The most immediate benefit is operational. Firms that trade across time zones or in products linked to 24/7 markets can now manage margin without waiting for a wire to settle.

For Coinbase, the partnership extends its institutional infrastructure play beyond pure crypto trading. Acting as the custody and conversion layer for a regulated derivatives clearing workflow positions Coinbase as a bridge between digital assets and traditional financial market infrastructure.

The risk to watch is regulatory durability. No-action letters can be rescinded, and if a stablecoin used as margin were to depeg during a volatile session, the ensuing mess would give regulators plenty of reason to reconsider.

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

Why Is Marex Accepting USDC as Margin Collateral? Marex Group has begun accepting Circle’s USDC stablecoin as initial margin collateral for regulated derivatives positions, marking a practical step in the use of tokenized collateral inside established clearing infrastructure.

The service allows eligible Marex clients to use USDC held in segregated custody to support positions cleared through the company’s US futures commission merchant business. Coinbase provides the custody, conversion, and reporting systems supporting the workflow, while Marex remains responsible for the regulated clearing relationship.

The first transaction was completed with proprietary trading firm Prime Trading. Under the arrangement, Prime Trading transferred USDC as initial margin collateral, and Marex then provided cash to fund the client’s derivatives positions.

The structure does not mean USDC is being delivered directly to an exchange as margin. Marex accepts the stablecoin from the client as collateral and uses its value within the clearing workflow, with Coinbase supplying custody and operational reporting designed to meet regulatory and clearinghouse requirements.

How Does The CFTC Relief Shape The Framework? The launch follows a December 8, 2025 no-action letter from staff at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission that gave registered futures commission merchants limited regulatory relief to accept certain non-security digital assets as customer margin collateral.

The letter covers specified assets, including payment stablecoins, Bitcoin, and Ether, subject to conditions around custody, segregation, valuation, reporting, and risk management. It also allows futures commission merchants to take the value of qualifying digital assets into account for certain regulatory calculations and permits payment stablecoins to be deposited as residual interest under defined circumstances.

The relief is not an unrestricted approval for digital assets to replace cash or US Treasuries across the derivatives market. Firms using the framework must comply with the conditions set out in the letter, including controls over how assets are held, valued, reported, and managed.

For Marex, the result is a controlled route for bringing stablecoin collateral into a regulated clearing operation rather than launching a standalone crypto product. That distinction matters because the service is tied to existing derivatives market plumbing, not a separate digital asset venue.

Investor Takeaway The Marex structure shows how stablecoins may enter institutional markets first through collateral workflows rather than direct exchange margin. The opportunity is operational efficiency, but the model still depends on custody controls, valuation discipline, and regulatory limits.

Why Does Marex’s Clearing Scale Matter? Marex is not a crypto-native firm testing stablecoins at the edge of the market. The London-headquartered company describes itself as one of the world’s largest non-bank futures commission merchants and provides clearing access across major futures and options exchanges, including CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, ICE, Eurex, Euronext, the London Metal Exchange, and the Singapore Exchange.

Its clearing services cover financial products as well as energy, agricultural commodities, metals, and digital assets. That gives the USDC arrangement a potential route into institutional workflows already used by clients trading across traditional and digital markets.

Marex reported average clearing client balances of $16 billion during the first quarter of 2026, up 33% from $12 billion a year earlier. The company cleared 1.37 billion contracts during the 12 months ended March 31, an 18% increase from the comparable period. Clearing revenue rose 15% to $137.2 million in the first quarter.

Those figures make the initiative more significant than a limited stablecoin pilot. Marex already sits between institutional clients and some of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, which means the collateral arrangement is being introduced inside a market structure that already handles large clearing balances and regulated risk management.

What Role Does Coinbase Play In The Workflow? Coinbase supplies the operational layer underneath the service. Its role includes New York Department of Financial Services-qualified custody, instant conversion between fiat currency and USDC, and customized reporting designed for Marex and clearinghouse requirements.

The reporting infrastructure is intended to support clearing-grade reconciliation and oversight rather than ordinary crypto wallet activity. Coinbase also provides the on- and off-ramps needed to convert dollars into USDC and back into fiat currency.

The arrangement addresses a timing mismatch between digital asset markets and the banking system. Crypto markets trade continuously, while cash collateral transfers still depend on bank operating hours, cut-off times, and conventional settlement systems.

A client facing a margin requirement outside normal banking hours may have digital assets available but be unable to move cash quickly enough. USDC can be transferred around the clock, giving Marex the ability to receive additional collateral while traditional payment rails are closed.

Investor Takeaway The main value of USDC collateral is timing. For firms trading both crypto and traditional derivatives, the ability to post collateral outside banking hours can improve capital flexibility, but it does not remove settlement, credit, custody, or valuation risk.

How Far Can Stablecoin Collateral Scale? The efficiency gain is not the same as eliminating risk. Marex still has to apply collateral haircuts, monitor the stablecoin’s value, and manage the operational and regulatory risks tied to custody and conversion. USDC is designed to maintain a one-to-one value with the US dollar, but its use introduces risks that differ from holding cash directly at a bank.

Circle issues USDC and says the token is fully backed by cash and short-duration US government obligations. Marex described the asset as a regulated, fully reserved dollar-denominated stablecoin.

Prime Trading served as the first client to test the completed process. Its chief administrative officer, Joe Balcarcel, said blockchain-based collateral could improve capital efficiency and allow trading firms to react to market events outside traditional banking hours.

Marex did not disclose the size of the initial USDC transfer, the derivatives positions it supported, the collateral haircut applied, or which CME-cleared products were funded through the transaction. Those details will matter in determining how broadly the model can scale across the firm’s client base.

The transaction still marks a concrete implementation of the CFTC’s December relief. Rather than using a stablecoin only for crypto settlement, Marex has connected USDC to the margin process of a regulated futures commission merchant, with Coinbase providing custody and conversion and a trading firm using the structure to fund cleared derivatives positions.

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Zcash (ZEC) is trading near $578, extending a powerful recovery that has turned the privacy coin into one of crypto’s best-performing large-cap assets this summer. The rally follows a turbulent June that saw ZEC crash more than 40% after developers disclosed a critical bug in the network’s shielded transaction system — and it comes just weeks before the Ironwood upgrade, designed to close that vulnerability for good. For a broader view of how privacy coins and altcoins are trading today, see Crypto Market Today.

Key Takeaways ZEC trades around $573–578, up more than 20% over the past week and roughly 15% below its November 2025 local high near $744. A critical bug in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool was disclosed on June 5, 2026, triggering a crash of more than 40% before developers patched it within days. The Ironwood network upgrade, which introduces a new shielded pool with a bounded supply mechanism, is targeted for activation around July 28, 2026. Project Tachyon researchers say they are close to a formal mathematical proof that Ironwood cannot suffer the same counterfeiting-style vulnerability. Futures open interest has climbed toward $980 million alongside rising funding rates, signaling fresh capital entering long positions. Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn has drawn attention for publicly criticizing Coinbase’s promotion of prediction markets to inexperienced users. What Happened: The Orchard Bug and Market Fallout On June 5, 2026, security researchers disclosed a critical flaw in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool — the core privacy mechanism that lets users send and receive ZEC without revealing sender, recipient, or amount. The bug, which had reportedly existed undetected since 2022, could theoretically have allowed an attacker to mint counterfeit ZEC without detection, since Orchard’s strong privacy guarantees make it mathematically impossible to audit shielded supply after the fact.

Developers patched the flaw within days, and no evidence of exploitation was ever confirmed. But the disclosure alone was enough to rattle confidence: ZEC lost more than 50% of its value in the following days, falling from roughly $630 to around $303, according to The Block. The uncertainty over whether counterfeit coins had been minted — a question that cannot be definitively answered given Orchard’s privacy design — weighed heavily on sentiment through most of June.

A second, unrelated issue surfaced shortly after: a separate vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-34202, carrying a severity score of 9.2, allowed a single malformed Orchard transaction to crash any reachable node, creating a denial-of-service risk and a consensus gap between Zcash’s two node implementations, zcashd and Zebra. That bug was also patched.

The Ironwood Upgrade and Project Tachyon In response to the Orchard flaw, Zcash developers moved quickly to finalize consensus-rule changes for a new upgrade named Ironwood. The plan, confirmed by developer Sean Bowe in early July, introduces a new shielded pool that reuses the Orchard circuit but adds a mechanism to bound the circulating supply of ZEC through the network’s existing “turnstile” — ensuring the amount of ZEC that can be transacted can never exceed the amount that is supposed to exist.

Zcash Open Development Lab has targeted late July for activation, with multiple sources now citing block height 3,428,143 and a target date around July 28, 2026, though co-founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn has cautioned the exact timeline could still shift. The upgrade will let users migrate funds out of the old Orchard pool and into Ironwood, gradually reducing exposure to the legacy vulnerability and, developers say, eventually providing evidence that no counterfeit minting occurred.

Separately, Project Tachyon — an initiative focused on formally verifying the security of Zcash’s shielded pool architecture — is reportedly nearing a mathematical proof demonstrating that Ironwood cannot suffer the same class of counterfeiting risk that hit Orchard. Wilcox has pointed to this progress as a key factor restoring market confidence.

Price Recovery and Market Structure Since bottoming near $303 in early June, ZEC has more than doubled, becoming one of the standout performers among large-cap altcoins in July. Zcash reclaimed $500 in the second week of July and has since pushed toward $600, with the rally accelerating on July 16 as the token broke out of a multi-week consolidation range. The move mirrors a broader risk-on tone across major assets; see current levels on the Bitcoin Price and Ethereum Price pages.

Technical indicators have stayed broadly bullish through the move: ZEC has recovered its 26-day, 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day EMAs, and the RSI has held in the mid-to-high 60s without reaching extreme overbought territory. Traders are watching the $600 level as the next major resistance, with swing highs from late 2025 sitting between $650 and $700.

Derivatives markets have mirrored the recovery. According to CoinGlass data cited in multiple reports, ZEC futures open interest climbed toward $980 million in mid-July, up more than 20% in a single session at one point, while funding rates turned increasingly positive — a sign that traders are willing to pay a premium to hold long positions.

Governance and Ethics: Wilcox vs. Coinbase Away from the technical recovery, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn sparked debate across the crypto industry in late June after publicly criticizing Coinbase for aggressively promoting sports and Bitcoin price-prediction markets to inexperienced users. The comments, posted on X, framed the practice as exploitative of financially vulnerable retail participants and drew responses from across the industry on the ethics of prediction-market marketing. The episode reinforced Zcash’s long-standing positioning as a project with a vocal, principle-driven founder, even as the network worked through its most serious security incident to date. For more industry and regulatory developments, see Crypto News Today.

Frequently Asked Questions What caused the Zcash price crash in June 2026? A critical bug in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool, disclosed on June 5, 2026, could theoretically have allowed undetected counterfeiting of ZEC. The disclosure alone triggered a price crash of more than 50% within days, even though developers patched the flaw quickly and no exploitation was confirmed.

What is the Ironwood upgrade? Ironwood is a Zcash network upgrade that introduces a new shielded pool built on the Orchard circuit, with an added mechanism to bound the circulating supply of ZEC. It is designed to close the vulnerability class exposed by the June 2026 Orchard bug and is targeted for activation around July 28, 2026.

Is Zcash safe to use after the Orchard bug? Developers patched the disclosed vulnerability within days of its discovery, and no confirmed exploitation was reported. The Ironwood upgrade is intended to provide stronger, formally verified guarantees against similar risks going forward.

What is Project Tachyon? Project Tachyon is a Zcash-related research initiative focused on formally verifying the security of the network's shielded pool architecture, including a mathematical proof that the upcoming Ironwood pool cannot suffer the same counterfeiting-style vulnerability found in Orchard.

Why did Zcash's price recover so quickly? The recovery has been driven by the rapid patching of the Orchard vulnerability, progress on the Ironwood upgrade and Project Tachyon's security verification work, and rising derivatives open interest signaling renewed trader confidence, alongside a broader rally across privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.

Who founded Zcash? Zcash was founded in 2016 by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, a cryptographer and security expert who also founded the Electronic Coin Company, which manages core development of the Zcash protocol.

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CROWDFUNDINSIDER: US Senate Passes Resolution Stating FTX Founder Sam Bankman Fried Should Never Receive a Pardon

El Senado de EE. UU. se opone unánimemente a la clemencia para Sam Bankman-Fried, de FTX

English日本語한국어繁體中文ไทยPortuguêsItalianoDeutschFrançaisEspañol El Senado de EE. UU. alcanzó por unanimidad una resolución bipartidista que declara que el ex fundador de FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, no debe recibir clemencia ejecutiva. Este acuerdo unánime del Senado de EE. UU. es una de las señales políticas más contundentes contra un posible indulto presidencial o conmutación de sentencia para el condenado ejecutivo de criptomonedas.

La resolución no vinculante, S.Res. 772, fue aprobada el miércoles tras ser presentada por los senadores Cynthia Lummis (republicana de Wyoming) y Ruben Gallego (demócrata de Arizona), presidenta y miembro de mayor rango, respectivamente, del Subcomité Bancario del Senado sobre Activos Digitales. Aunque la medida no tiene fuerza legal y no puede impedir que un presidente conceda clemencia, refleja un raro consenso bipartidista sobre la rendición de cuentas por uno de los mayores fraudes financieros de la industria cripto.

Resolución del Senado de EE. UU. (S. Res. 772). Fuente: Senador Gallego.

Conclusión para inversores Aunque no es vinculante, la postura unánime del Senado envía una señal contundente de que Washington sigue comprometido con exigir responsabilidad a los ejecutivos del sector cripto.

El Senado de EE. UU. afirma: “Sin indulto presidencial” para Sam Bankman-Fried La resolución del Senado de EE. UU. establece que Bankman-Fried no debe recibir, bajo ninguna circunstancia, un indulto presidencial, una conmutación ni ninguna otra forma de clemencia federal. Además, afirma que la sentencia de 25 años de prisión impuesta al exdirectivo de FTX refleja la magnitud extraordinaria de sus delitos, su falta de remordimiento y las devastadoras pérdidas sufridas por clientes e inversores.

La resolución también rechaza las reiteradas afirmaciones de Bankman-Fried de que su procesamiento constituyó una forma de «lawfare» (guerra jurídica), reafirmando en cambio la integridad del proceso de justicia penal federal que derivó en su condena por un jurado unánime y su sentencia dictada por un juez federal.

Según la Galería de Prensa del Senado de EE. UU., la resolución fue adoptada por consentimiento unánime, lo que significa que ningún senador se opuso a su aprobación. Una sección de la resolución establece:

«Considerando que la clemencia borraría la condena de Bankman-Fried, debilitaría el efecto disuasorio y enviaría un mensaje profundamente perjudicial de que los perpetradores de fraudes financieros a gran escala pueden eludir la rendición de cuentas permanente.» Los legisladores también señalaron los procedimientos de quiebra de FTX que siguen en curso, indicando que los esfuerzos para compensar a las víctimas aún no se han completado. La acción del Senado se produce semanas después de que Bankman-Fried, según se informa, presentara una petición formal solicitando clemencia presidencial tras el fracaso de su apelación contra su condena.

La resolución señala que su solicitud está pendiente ante la Oficina del Fiscal de Indultos del Departamento de Justicia, y que la clemencia socavaría el efecto disuasorio frente a los delitos financieros a gran escala.

Conclusión para inversores Las repercusiones del colapso de FTX siguen influyendo en las políticas, con legisladores que señalan que el fraude cripto de alto perfil no será tratado de manera diferente a los delitos financieros tradicionales.

El colapso de FTX sigue marcando la regulación cripto En marzo de 2024, Bankman-Fried fue sentenciado a 25 años de prisión federal y se le ordenó decomisar $11.000 millones. La resolución del Senado de EE. UU. cita hallazgos según los cuales los clientes de FTX perdieron más de $8.000 millones, los inversores en renta variable perdieron más de $1.700 millones, y los prestamistas de Alameda Research perdieron más de $1.300 millones tras el colapso del exchange.

El documento también argumenta que la rendición de cuentas es esencial para mantener la confianza en los mercados financieros estadounidenses y proteger a los inversores de futuras conductas indebidas.

Cabe destacar que la resolución no impide que un futuro presidente conceda un indulto o conmute la sentencia de Bankman-Fried, ya que la clemencia ejecutiva sigue siendo una facultad presidencial de carácter constitucional. Aun así, la votación eleva el costo político de cualquier futura decisión de clemencia, al dejar constancia de que el Senado se opone unánimemente a otorgar alivio al condenado ex multimillonario cripto.

Enterprise blockchain adoption doesn’t get limelight overnight, but Hedera today added another piece to a much bigger puzzle. The network has integrated with Utila, which is known as an institutional grade digital asset custody and wallet infra provider.

By joining hands they are expanding secure access to HBAR and Hedera Token Service (HTS) tokens for enterprises operating at scale.

The partnership arrives as Hedera continues building its presence across regulated financial markets, where security, compliance, and operational control often matter more than hype.

Utila Brings Institutional-Grade InfrastructureUtila enters the collaboration with solid credentials. The platform has secured $51.5 million in funding and processes more than $200 billion in transaction volume, offering Multi-Party Computation (MPC) wallets, customizable policy controls, and enterprise-focused APIs.

For organizations managing HBAR and HTS tokens, the integration introduces compliance-focused custody infrastructure. Which is designed to simplify digital asset operations without compromising security. That lowers the entry barrier for financial institutions seeking blockchain exposure within regulated environments.

Project Acacia Expands Hedera’s ReachThe integration extends beyond custody services. Utila is serving as a key infrastructure provider for project Acacia, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s digital money pilot, alongside Hashgraph and Hashsphere. The initiative operates on a private network powered by Loading profile preview technology, placing the blockchain within a high-profile state-backed financial experiment.

That role reinforces Hedera’s growing reputation as infrastructure capable of supporting enterprise and government-level blockchain deployments.

Network Activity Continues To ScaleMoreover, the latest partnership follows another notable development for Hedera. Per onchain data the rising graph shows increases in transaction counts. Per chart, it is approaching 72 Billions in cumulative transactions count that has been processed across its network.

That figure highlights sustained enterprise usage rather than isolated bursts of activity. As transaction volumes continue growing, Utila integration appears less like an optional upgrade and more like a necessary step.

For Hedera, enterprise adoption isn’t being measured by announcements alone. It’s increasingly being backed by transaction volume, regulated infrastructure, and participation in large-scale financial initiatives.

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Solana has reached a new milestone, becoming the leading blockchain network for real-world asset holders. The network recorded over 300,000 active users in early July, setting an all-time high for engagement with tokenized assets.

Net inflows surge, outpacing other blockchainsOn-chain analytics firm rwa.xyz reported that Solana saw net inflows exceeding $900 million in the thirty days leading up to July 3, 2026. This figure places Solana significantly ahead of competing blockchain platforms in attracting capital for tokenized real-world assets.

The data suggests that asset managers are increasingly opting for public blockchain networks, with Solana cementing its position as the preferred choice for institutions moving tokenized funds to on-chain platforms.

Blockchain30-day Net InflowActive UsersSolana$900 million300,000+Other leading blockchainsBelow $900 millionLess than 300,000Institutional adoption driven by speed and efficiencyAsset managers choosing Solana for real asset tokenization cite low transaction fees and near-instant settlement as key factors. Solana offers an infrastructure that supports high transaction throughput, enabling the network to process large volumes quickly and affordably.

These technical advantages allow both small and large payment operations, such as dividend distributions, to be executed at scale without significant costs. In addition, the streamlined settlement process helps institutions comply with regulatory requirements while keeping operational complexity to a minimum.

Mini dictionary: rwa.xyz is a blockchain analytics platform that tracks data and trends in the real-world asset sector. It provides insights on capital flows, user activity, and protocol adoption for tokenized assets across multiple networks.

Major platforms choose Solana for tokenized fundsWisdomTree, a global asset management firm, has integrated Solana with its tokenization services, including WisdomTree Connect and WisdomTree Prime. Investors and institutions can now mint, hold, and trade the full range of WisdomTree’s tokenized assets—ranging from money market to equity funds—directly on Solana’s blockchain.

Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at Solana, stated that this integration signals rising demand for regulated, on-chain real-world assets. He noted that more than $1 billion in tokenized assets now reside on the Solana network.

Growth in regulated, on-chain real-world assets on Solana has pushed total on-chain value above $1 billion.

Byreal exchange and institutional-grade DeFi activity surgeByreal exchange, a decentralized platform built on Solana, marked its first year with more than $3.7 billion in total trading volume and 25.3 million processed transactions. The exchange offers access to over 20 tokenized equities through services such as Backpack, Tether Gold, and xStocksFi.

The platform has emerged as a major liquidity hub for real-world assets, benefiting from the rapid expansion of institutional-grade trading and the adoption of AI-centric decentralized finance infrastructure on the Solana network.

According to DeFi Planet, Solana’s ecosystem for tokenized assets previously reached a $3.4 billion peak in 2026, underlining growing institutional trust and capital movement toward public blockchain networks.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Morgan Stanley’s E*TRADE platform has launched spot cryptocurrency trading, allowing eligible clients to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin, Ether and Solana through a partnership with crypto infrastructure provider Zero Hash.

Clients can view their crypto holdings alongside stocks and other traditional investments on the E*TRADE platform, while transfer functionality for moving digital assets on and off the platform is expected later this year.

The self-directed channel served 8.6 million households and held about $1.56 trillion in client assets as of March 31, according to Morgan Stanley’s latest financial supplement.

According to Thursday’s announcement, trades carry a 50-basis-point fee, while custody and transaction services are handled through separate Zero Hash accounts that are not covered by FDIC or SIPC protections. Morgan Stanley said it expects to transition the digital asset services to Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, its national trust bank currently in organization.

Morgan Stanley also introduced several non-crypto updates across the customer platform, including fractional share trading, a revamped retirement planning tool and new features for its Power E*TRADE Pro desktop platform.

The rollout follows a pilot launched in May, when the company began testing the service with a limited group of users before expanding access to eligible E*TRADE clients.

Morgan Stanley broadens crypto strategyBeyond retail spot trading, Morgan Stanley has expanded its digital asset business into stablecoin reserve services and crypto exchange-traded funds this year.

In April, the Wall Street giant launched a stablecoin reserve offering that allows issuers to hold the assets backing their tokens in one of the firm’s money market funds while earning interest.

The same month, the company launched its spot Bitcoin ETF with a 0.14% management fee, making it the lowest-cost Bitcoin ETF on the US market at the time. The fund debuted on NYSE Arca as the first spot Bitcoin ETF launched by a major US commercial bank.

During its first six trading days, the ETF attracted more than $100 million in net inflows, surpassing the cumulative inflows of WisdomTree’s spot Bitcoin ETF, which launched in January 2024. At the time of writing, the fund has attracted about $385 million in cumulative net inflows, according to SoSoValue data.

In June, Morgan Stanley amended its proposed spot Ether and Solana ETF filings to set management fees at 0.14% after first applying to list the funds in January.

Top 10 Bitcoin ETFs. Source: SoSoValue

Magazine: Gambling on random Pokémon cards: Onchain gagcha hits record high as crypto sinks

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@TRowePrice, the $1.8 trillion asset manager, has listed the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF under the ticker $TKNZ on NYSE Arca, marking what the firm describes as the first actively managed multi-token spot crypto ETF to reach the market.

How the Fund Works Unlike passive index-tracking products, $TKNZ can hold between 5 and 15 digital assets from an eligible universe of 15 tokens, with portfolio managers rotating among them based on fundamentals, valuations, and momentum. The eligible universe includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance, XRP, Solana, Hyperliquid, and others.

Blue Macellari leads the ETF alongside four co-portfolio managers, leveraging T. Rowe Price's research-driven active investment strategy. She is joined by Stefan Hubrich (21 years of experience), David Kroger (9 years), Sean McWilliams (17 years), and Dante Pearson (13 years).

The ETF carries a 0.75% management fee, with a fee waiver in place through May 31, 2027. That puts it at a clear premium over passive single-coin Bitcoin funds, though the active mandate is the explicit justification for the higher cost.

Why It Matters It marks the first time a traditional asset manager of T. Rowe Price's scale, a firm that oversees approximately $1.9 trillion in assets predominantly for pension funds, retirement savers, and institutional clients, has received regulatory clearance to offer a regulated crypto product to its distribution network.

The active management structure differentiates $TKNZ from existing passive products, allowing the portfolio team to reduce exposure during downturns and increase it during periods of structural support, a feature that could appeal to institutional risk managers who have flagged volatility as the primary barrier to allocation.

For U.S. retail investors accustomed to accessing markets through mutual funds and ETFs, the product offers a way to gain diversified crypto exposure without opening a dedicated crypto exchange account. Single-coin ETFs opened the door for institutional participation in digital assets. With $TKNZ, the stock pickers are now inside.

Sources:
T. Rowe Price official press release: Active Crypto ETF launch
SEC filing: T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF (TKNZ) Form FWP
Crypto Times: T. Rowe Price Debuts Active Crypto ETF TKNZ

Bitcoin

16 July 2026 | 20:23 E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley completed the rollout of spot cryptocurrency trading on July 16, allowing eligible US clients to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through its website and mobile application.

Key Takeaways E*TRADE has completed the rollout of spot trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Trades carry a flat 0.50% commission with no additional spread fee or markup from E*TRADE. Crypto is currently held in a separate Zero Hash account and cannot yet be transferred to an external wallet. Solana gains access to a large brokerage audience, but that does not immediately translate into activity on the Solana network. According to the official information from the company, clients do not need to fund a separate crypto balance manually. Cash in the linked brokerage account provides the buying power, with funds moving between the accounts when a trade settles.

Morgan Stanley reported 8.7 million self-directed households as of June 30, 2026. That figure describes the service’s potential distribution network rather than the number of immediate crypto users. Clients must still qualify for and open a separate non-brokerage account provided by Zero Hash.

The Distribution Is More Important Than the Asset List Bitcoin and Ethereum are increasingly standard additions to institutional crypto products. Solana’s inclusion is more notable because E*TRADE launched with only three supported assets, placing SOL beside the two largest cryptocurrencies rather than introducing it through a broader catalogue.

The immediate advantage is reduced friction. An investor who already holds cash or securities at E*TRADE can add direct crypto exposure without opening and funding an account at a dedicated exchange. Crypto positions can also be viewed alongside the rest of the investor’s portfolio.

That convenience could expand demand for all three assets, but the size of E*TRADE’s customer base should not be treated as expected trading volume. Morgan Stanley has not disclosed how many households have opened crypto accounts, how much volume the service has processed, or how activity is divided between BTC, ETH, and SOL.

What the 0.50% Fee Costs Against Rivals According to E*TRADE’s official crypto pricing, every transaction carries a commission equal to 0.50% of its notional value. E*TRADE says there is no additional spread fee or markup.

$100 trade: $0.50 commission $1,000 trade: $5 commission $10,000 trade: $50 commission The comparison with other platforms is less straightforward. Coinbase Advanced varies its maker and taker fees according to order type and 30-day trading volume, so some users may pay less than 0.50% and others more.

Robinhood does not charge a separately stated commission under its default market-maker routing, but the execution spread still creates a cost. In Robinhood’s own example, a $100 purchase with a 0.96% buy spread carries $0.96 in spread cost. Applied to a $1,000 order, the same illustrative spread would equal $9.60, although the actual spread changes with the asset and market conditions.

For an occasional investor, E*TRADE’s advantage is predictability: a $1,000 order costs $5 before any later sale. Frequent traders should calculate both sides of the transaction, because buying and later selling $1,000 of crypto would produce approximately $10 in commissions if the value remained unchanged.

What Customers Can and Cannot Do The service is currently available through the main E*TRADE website and mobile application. Support for Power E*TRADE is still listed as coming soon.

According to E*TRADE’s crypto account documentation, the main trading conditions are:

Platform Specifications Assets

BTC, ETH, SOL

Trading Hours

24/7 Always Open

Order Types

Market & Limit

Order Size

$10 – $500k

Precision

8 Decimal Places

Transfers

Not Available

Who Is E*TRADE Crypto Actually For? The service is most useful for investors who already manage stocks, funds, and cash through E*TRADE and want a small allocation to BTC, ETH, or SOL without opening and funding a separate crypto exchange account.

It May Be a Good Fit For: Existing E*TRADE clients who want crypto displayed beside their traditional portfolio. Occasional buyers who prefer a fixed and visible commission over a variable fee structure. Investors seeking price exposure without managing wallet addresses, private keys, or blockchain transactions. Users focused only on BTC, ETH, and SOL rather than a broad selection of smaller assets. It Is a Weaker Fit For: Active traders whose cumulative 0.50% commissions could become expensive. Self-custody users who want to control their own private keys. Onchain participants who intend to stake SOL, use Ethereum applications, access DeFi, or send crypto to another person. Altcoin investors who need access beyond the three supported assets. The product is therefore closer to an integrated brokerage service than a full crypto platform. Its strongest feature is convenience, while its main limitation is the lack of control and utility available through a self-custodied wallet.

How Existing E*TRADE Clients Activate Crypto Trading E*TRADE clients do not receive crypto trading automatically. They must open a separate Zero Hash account and link it to an eligible individual brokerage account.

According to E*TRADE’s official account and trading walkthrough, an existing client follows this route:

1

Navigate to Profile

Log in to etrade.com and head straight to your Profile section.

2

Access Trading Features

Go to “Account Preferences,” then select “Additional Trading Features.”

3

Select Crypto Option

Choose “Crypto powered by Zero Hash” from the list.

4

Link Your Account

Pick the brokerage account you want to connect to the crypto portal.

5

Accept & Confirm

Review the agreements and wait for your application approval.

On the web platform, users open Trading and select Crypto. In the mobile application, they tap Trade, select Crypto under Security Type, and choose BTC/USD, ETH/USD, or SOL/USD.

The order ticket supports market and limit orders. Before submission, the preview screen displays the estimated commission, total cost, selected quantity, and available purchasing power.

Crypto Taxes Are Easier to Track, but Not Automatic Trading through a traditional brokerage interface does not place crypto outside US tax rules. Selling BTC, ETH, or SOL for dollars generally creates a reportable capital gain or loss based on the difference between the sale proceeds and the investor’s adjusted cost basis.

E*TRADE states that Zero Hash will furnish Form 1099-DA and make it available through the E*TRADE Tax Center. The form reports proceeds from digital-asset dispositions and may also include cost-basis information where applicable.

That should make record collection easier than trading across several exchanges and wallets, but it does not calculate the investor’s final tax liability. The IRS requires taxpayers to report their digital-asset income, gains, and losses even when a form is missing or does not contain all the necessary basis information.

For a simple buy-and-hold investor, the process may remain relatively manageable. Frequent buying and selling can produce many separate taxable disposals, making the transaction history, acquisition dates, commissions, and cost basis important at tax time.

The 0.50% trading fee also affects the calculation. Transaction costs may be included when determining the acquisition basis or the amount realized on a sale, depending on the transaction. Investors with substantial activity should confirm the treatment with a qualified US tax professional.

No Withdrawals Means No Onchain Control E*TRADE clients can buy, sell, and hold the three supported assets, but they cannot currently transfer them to an external wallet. In plain English, customers receive economic exposure to the assets without direct control over their private keys.

That Creates Practical Limitations: ETH bought through E*TRADE cannot be used to pay Ethereum network fees. SOL cannot be moved into a personal wallet for staking or use across Solana applications. BTC cannot be transferred to a hardware wallet for self-custody. None of the supported assets can currently be sent to another person or deposited into a DeFi protocol. Solana’s inclusion is still notable because E*TRADE launched with only three assets, placing SOL beside Bitcoin and Ethereum. For now, however, that creates brokerage demand rather than direct activity across Solana applications, staking protocols, decentralized exchanges, or payment services.

The assets are held in the customer’s separate Zero Hash account rather than being custodied by Morgan Stanley. They are not covered by FDIC insurance or SIPC protection.

Morgan Stanley expects transfer functionality to launch later in 2026, but final details such as withdrawal limits, supported wallet types, transfer fees, and eligibility requirements have not yet been published.

Until transfers become available, the service is best understood as a convenient way to trade crypto prices inside E*TRADE, not as a replacement for a wallet or a full crypto exchange.

Morgan Stanley Is Building More Than a Trading Feature The E*TRADE rollout is one part of a broader digital-asset strategy.

In April, Morgan Stanley Investment Management launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust with a 0.14% sponsor fee. Later that month, it introduced a Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio designed for regulated issuers that need eligible reserve assets.

Strategic Business Pillars

Direct Retail Trading:
Empowering individual investors through seamless integration with E*TRADE.

Regulated Investment:
Providing structured Bitcoin exposure via the MSBT investment vehicle.

Reserve Management:
Specialized cash management services tailored for stablecoin issuers.

Digital Custody:
Future-proofing asset security via Morgan Stanley Digital Trust.

Morgan Stanley’s announcement states that the E*TRADE digital-asset service is eventually expected to transition from Zero Hash to Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, National Association, which remains in organization. Until that transition takes place, Zero Hash continues to provide the crypto account, execution infrastructure, and custody.

What Would Make the Rollout Material The launch expands access, but access alone does not establish adoption. The next evidence should come from disclosed account openings, trading volume, client assets, and the share of activity generated by each supported cryptocurrency.

Three developments would make the rollout more consequential:

A meaningful number of E*TRADE households activating linked crypto accounts. The launch of external transfers, especially for ETH and SOL users seeking onchain access. An expansion beyond the initial three assets or the addition of services such as staking. The rollout’s importance will ultimately be measured by activated accounts, trading volume, client assets, and whether Morgan Stanley expands the service beyond basic buying and selling. E*TRADE has opened a large distribution channel for crypto, but the size of its customer base alone does not establish adoption.

The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice.

Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

In brief Eligible E*Trade customers can now trade spot Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Crypto trades are executed through Zero Hash, which also provides custody. The launch follows Morgan Stanley's ETF filings, tokenization plans, and stablecoin initiatives announced earlier this year. Morgan Stanley has launched spot cryptocurrency trading on its E*TRADE platform, allowing eligible customers to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through a partnership with digital asset infrastructure provider Zero Hash.

In a post on Thursday, Morgan Stanley said the new offering lets investors view their cryptocurrency holdings alongside stocks and other investments in E*TRADE. Digital assets are held in linked Zero Hash accounts rather than by Morgan Stanley. The company said trades will carry a 50-basis-point fee, while crypto transfer functionality is expected later this year.

“Our clients’ needs are evolving, and they want to invest, trade, bank, and plan for the future all in one place,” Matt Jones, Head of E*TRADE, said in a statement. “Whether they’re buying their first share, exploring crypto, participating in an IPO, or planning for retirement, our job is to meet them where they are – with the confidence and trust that comes from being part of Morgan Stanley.”

The rollout coincides with a broader platform update that includes retirement planning tools, fractional share trading, an updated IPO Center, and new features for active traders.

"With the rollout of crypto trading on E*TRADE we're advancing our digital assets strategy and bringing new capabilities to clients in an integrated way," Chad Turner, head of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Platforms, said in a statement.

The launch follows several crypto-related initiatives by Morgan Stanley this year.

In January, the firm filed registration statements with the SEC for spot Bitcoin and Solana exchange-traded funds, marking its move toward offering branded crypto investment products. In April, Morgan Stanley said it was exploring tokenization, tokenized money market funds, and tax-management tools for digital assets. Later that month, the bank introduced a money market fund designed for stablecoin issuers to manage reserves under the GENIUS Act.

Morgan Stanley first disclosed plans to bring crypto trading to E*TRADE in September 2025, saying it would initially support Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through Zero Hash. The rollout completes that plan, adding direct spot crypto trading to the firm's brokerage platform as it continues to expand its digital asset offerings.

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Morgan Stanley’s brokerage firm, E*TRADE, has completed the rollout of its spot crypto trading offering following an initial pilot earlier this year. This comes as the Wall Street giant continues to deepen its push into the crypto space, with the imminent launch of two new crypto ETFs.

Morgan Stanley Completes Rollout of Spot BTC, ETH, SOL Trading In a press release, E*TRADE announced that it had completed the rollout of spot trading in digital assets. Its eligible clients will now be able to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana directly on its platform through its partnership with Zerohash.

The Morgan Stanley brokerage firm will charge a fee of 50 bps on each trade as its clients buy, sell, and hold crypto in a linked Zerohash account. The firm added that it expects to launch transfer functionality later this year.

The full rollout of spot crypto trading on the E*TRADE platform follows the initial pilot program in May. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the firm had first announced plans to offer spot crypto trading last year.

This move deepens Morgan Stanley’s push into the crypto space. As CoinGape reported, Morgan Stanley Ethereum and Solana ETFs are nearing launch after the bank filed amended S-1 filings. The bank became the first to offer a crypto ETF after it launched its Bitcoin ETF earlier this year. The BTC Fund currently boasts net assets of $384 million, according to SoSoValue data.

Plans For The National Trust Bank E*TRADE stated that its crypto services will transition to Morgan Stanley’s national trust bank, Morgan Stanley Digital Trust. The firm made this note in relation to launching the transfer functionality later this year.

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley applied for a crypto-focused national trust bank with the OCC, joining crypto firms such as Ripple, Crypto.com, and Coinbase that have also applied for trust charters. However, it is worth noting that firms such as Ripple have already received conditional approvals.

Meanwhile, USDC issuer Circle recently received approval from the OCC to launch its national crypto bank. Like Ripple, the stablecoin issuer had received conditional approval last year, alongside BitGo, Fidelity, and Paxos.

Please check out our page on Best Regulated Crypto Exchanges in the USA

Wall Street’s slow walk into crypto just became a full sprint. Morgan Stanley has launched direct spot trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on its E*TRADE platform, giving eligible U.S. clients the ability to buy, sell, and hold digital assets inside the same interface they use to trade stocks and ETFs.

This is not a crypto ETF wrapper or a futures product. Clients are getting actual spot exposure, with 24/7 trading available through E*TRADE’s web and mobile apps, and automatic fund transfers between their brokerage and crypto accounts.

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How the plumbing works The infrastructure behind the service is Zero Hash, a B2B crypto platform that handles liquidity, execution, custody, and settlement. The partnership was first announced in September 2025, with a pilot launched around May 2026 and full availability rolled out by mid-July 2026. Morgan Stanley also participated in Zero Hash’s $104 million Series D-2 funding round, which valued the company at $1 billion.

The fee structure is straightforward: a 0.50% commission on notional value, with no spreads or markups layered on top. The full rollout targets E*TRADE’s entire eligible client base of approximately 8.6 million users.

Why this matters beyond the headline Morgan Stanley is not offering this through a separate app or a cordoned-off crypto subsidiary. The integration sits inside E*TRADE’s standard brokerage workflow. The choice of Solana alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum is also notable — including it at launch signals that Morgan Stanley views the top tier of the crypto market as a legitimate asset class rather than a reluctant concession to client demand for Bitcoin.

What investors should watch For the broader crypto market, 8.6 million newly enabled potential buyers represents a meaningful supply of latent demand. A 0.50% flat commission with no spread markups, offered inside a trusted brokerage account, is a direct competitive pitch against Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood’s crypto arm.

Morgan Stanley’s broader digital asset ambitions extend beyond this launch. The firm has been building out Bitcoin ETF access for wealth management clients and has signaled interest in ether and Solana-related financial products. The Zero Hash investment and the E*TRADE integration together suggest a coordinated strategy rather than a one-off product launch.

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

Claynosaurz, a Solana-based NFT brand, launches its animated series on Amazon Prime Video, reaching a potential audience of 245 million subscribers.

A dinosaur that started as a sketch on Solana four years ago just landed a spot on one of the world's biggest streaming platforms.

Claynosaurz, the Solana-based animation studio behind one of crypto's most recognizable NFT collections, launched Season 1 of its animated miniseries on Amazon Prime Video on July 14. 

The debut gives the clay-inspired dinosaur brand a shot at reaching Prime Video's global subscriber base of more than 245 million people, a scale few NFT projects have ever come close to.

From a sketch to a streaming debutThe series opens with three micro-episodes following four lifelong dinosaur friends, Flea, Bex, Trix, and Milo, as they navigate the everyday complications of growing up together in Claynotopia, an imaginary world built from clay and childhood creativity. Claynosaurz describes the episodes as glimpses into a larger animated series still to come.

The project traces back to late 2021, when animation industry veterans Nicholas Cabana and Dan Cabral began developing the Claynosaurz concept. Cabana's brother, Phil Cabana, later suggested turning it into an NFT project as the market gained momentum.

The team began teasing the idea publicly in March 2022 with an image of a shadowy dinosaur, before revealing its full 3D animation style the following month and announcing plans for a 10,000-piece NFT collection.

Founded by Cabana, Cabral, and Daniel Jervis, Claynosaurz has since released more than 10,000 unique animated dinosaur NFTs and built out an ecosystem that goes beyond simple collectibles, including its Claymaker crafting system, companion NFTs, and planned gaming integrations.

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Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:Mysterious trader buys millions ahead of Trump's White House meetingSpaceX stock hits an all-time low below IPO price, what it means for its 18,712 BTCGoogle searches for XRP sink amid 60% price crash in a yearBetting on fandom over formatNicholas Cabana, Chief Creative Officer of Claynosaurz, framed the Prime Video launch as a deliberate departure from convention. "Maybe it doesn't have to fit a template of X-episodes or a movie," he wrote in a LinkedIn post. 

"The real asset is fandom. Content is abundant. It's also easier to make. An audience that chooses to return, share, and participate is the scarce resource."

Claynosaurz is also indexed on Apple TV.

Solana's Head of Consumer, Pedro Miranda, pointed to Claynosaurz as an example of what the network can produce. 

"Born on Solana, the Claynosaur team is at the forefront of super fan participation and ownership through collectibles through a mainstream IP now on Amazon Prime," he said. 

Solana is infrastructure for the next generation of internet-native consumer brands, Miranda added.

Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.

Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.

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Losing a match and making history at the same time is a strange place to be. That’s exactly where Team Secret found itself on July 16, 2026, when the Filipino Valorant squad faced VARREL in the opening match of VCT Pacific Stage 2’s Group Stage, on the competitive debut of Summit, the newest map in the Valorant roster.

The result was a 1-2 series loss. But the story is a bit more layered than that.

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What actually happened on the server Team Secret dropped the first map, Split, in convincing fashion, losing 6-13. They bounced back on Haven, winning 13-9 to level the series. Then came Summit, the new map built around the lore of a Radiant training academy, and the decider came down to a razor-thin 11-13 scoreline in VARREL’s favor.

The series loss keeps Team Secret in a difficult spot within the Group Stage standings, but the VCT Pacific Stage 2 schedule runs through early September 2026. There is runway left. Their next test comes on July 19 against DRX, one of the more established and decorated rosters in the Pacific region.

Who is Team Secret, and why does this matter Team Secret is a Filipino esports organization with roots that go deeper than Valorant. The organization originally built its reputation in Dota 2, a heritage that carries weight in Southeast Asian esports culture. The transition into Valorant’s competitive ecosystem represents a deliberate strategic pivot toward a title that has grown into one of the most watched and most invested competitive games globally.

VCT Pacific, Riot Games’ top-tier Valorant league for the Asia-Pacific region, is not an open circuit. Participation requires either a partnership slot or qualification through the challengers pathway, placing it in the same structural tier as major North American and European leagues. The organizations inside it are competing for global circuit points, Masters appearances, and ultimately a shot at the Valorant Champions tournament, which functions as the sport’s world championship.

The organization entered Stage 2 with what was described as a refreshed lineup. Summit was introduced with Patch 13.00 in Season 2026 Act 4, meaning every Pacific team is encountering it simultaneously at the professional level.

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

Table of contents

Asia-Pacific enterprises are moving past the question of whether blockchain works and into deciding where it fits in their core business. From Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities’ Zipangcoin on OP Mainnet to Sony Block Solutions Labs’ Soneium and Upbit operator Dunamu’s planned GIWA Chain, a wave of established consumer and financial platforms is building on the OP Stack. Juntaro Iwase, Managing Director for Japan and Southeast Asia at OP Labs, spoke with blockchainreporter about what’s driving this shift, how OP Enterprise addresses regulatory and operational demands, and why distribution — not just technology — is APAC’s biggest advantage.

1. What is the approach of Asia-Pacific-based enterprises toward blockchain adoption in comparison with Europe and the U.S.? The clearest difference is posture. Many APAC enterprises are no longer asking whether blockchain works. They are asking where it belongs in their core business. The recent examples speak for themselves. Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities launched Zipangcoin on OP Mainnet. Sony Block Solutions Labs built Soneium for consumer and creator applications. Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, plans to use the OP Stack for GIWA Chain, and Toss has announced a proof of concept exploring a Korean won-backed stablecoin.

Europe and the U.S. are progressing too, as Kraken’s Ink and Bitpanda’s Vision Chain demonstrate. What stands out in APAC is the combination of large consumer platforms, digitally sophisticated users, and companies with the distribution to bring onchain products to millions of customers who already trust them.

2. Why are Optimism and other Ethereum L2 solutions gaining preference as infrastructure among APAC enterprises? Enterprises are not choosing an Ethereum L2 for scalability alone. They evaluate the full solution, including the infrastructure, the operating model, the ecosystem, and whether they can integrate the tools their business requires.

Those requirements differ by company. Toss is running a proof of concept on the OP Stack alongside KYC and AML infrastructure and Privacy Boost from Sunnyside Labs. GIWA Chain plans to use the Self-Managed tier of OP Enterprise so Upbit can retain control over its sequencer and configuration while receiving engineering support and backup resilience. Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities launched Zipangcoin on OP Mainnet, which it has said supports its plans to reach investors worldwide.

The common thread is choice. Companies can build on an established public network or deploy dedicated infrastructure, and in either case work with the compliance, custody, monitoring, and privacy providers appropriate for their business.

3. What are the regulatory compliance and privacy demands of the APAC-based entities that are shifting on-chain? Regulated institutions open with questions about accountability, data visibility, operational control, and how blockchain fits into their existing systems. Public blockchains are transparent by default. If a financial product requires transaction details or customer balances to remain confidential, an additional privacy layer may be needed. Institutions may also need KYC, AML, transaction monitoring, custody, permissioning, and reporting tools. A blockchain infrastructure provider does not replace those functions or determine whether a product is compliant. Our role is to provide reliable infrastructure, clear operating models, and the technical integration points needed to work with specialist providers.

The Toss proof of concept demonstrates this layered approach. The OP Stack provides the blockchain infrastructure, Sunnyside Labs provides Privacy Boost, and separate KYC and AML infrastructure supports the compliance requirements. Each layer is handled by the party best equipped to handle it.

4. What is the role of the OP Enterprise in advancing enterprise-scale blockchain adoption across APAC? The hardest part of enterprise blockchain adoption is often not launching the technology. It is establishing an operating model that can support a critical business. Organizations need to know who runs the infrastructure, who responds when something breaks, how upgrades are managed, and how the network fits their internal security and procurement processes.

OP Enterprise is designed around those operational requirements. Companies can use a Fully Managed model or operate the infrastructure themselves through Self-Managed with direct engineering support. They can also begin on OP Mainnet before deciding whether they need a dedicated chain. The organization chooses the level of operational responsibility and control that fits its capabilities, and can change that answer as it matures.

5. How does the rollout of Optimism and Soneium benefit creator and consumer applications in Asia? Soneium shows how blockchain can support consumer experiences without requiring users to understand the technology underneath. Built by Sony Block Solutions Labs using the OP Stack, Soneium gives developers an Ethereum-compatible foundation for entertainment, gaming, creator, and community applications.

Sony has described its goal as making blockchain operate quietly behind the scenes while enabling trust, traceability, digital ownership, and clearer attribution of creative work. For creators and fans, this can support new ways to participate and collaborate, while the OP Stack provides the scalable infrastructure underneath those experiences. That philosophy of keeping the technology in the background and the experience in the foreground is exactly how consumer adoption happens in this region.

6. What is the significance of Upbit’s plan to develop the GIWA Chain via the OP Stack to advance the future of exchange-scale infrastructure? Upbit’s decision to develop the GIWA Chain reflects a broader shift in how major exchanges think about infrastructure. They increasingly want to own the infrastructure through which their users access onchain products. A dedicated chain can provide greater control over performance, transaction policies, user experience, product development, and the economics generated by the ecosystem.

Under the planned partnership between Dunamu and the Optimism Foundation, GIWA Chain intends to become the first chain on the Self-Managed tier of OP Enterprise. Upbit would retain control over the primary sequencer and configuration, while Optimism would provide monitoring, engineering support, and backup resilience.

7. Can you highlight the opportunities and challenges that shape enterprise-level blockchain adoption within the APAC region in comparison with the global markets? APAC’s biggest advantage is distribution. Sony, Upbit, Toss, and Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities already have established brands, customers, and business relationships. They do not need to build an audience from zero. The challenge is turning blockchain infrastructure into a reliable and sustainable business. Regulations differ across Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other markets. Companies must also integrate blockchain with existing systems and work with the appropriate providers across custody, identity, monitoring, privacy, and liquidity.

In my experience, local system integrators and trusted vendor relationships also play a major role in markets such as Japan. Technology matters, but local operational credibility often determines whether a project reaches production.

8. How will built-in interoperability for OP Chains facilitate enterprises developing in APAC? Native interoperability is still in development. Today, OP Chains rely on existing bridges and messaging solutions to connect across networks. The longer-term objective is to make participating OP Chains work more like a connected ecosystem. Assets and information could move between them more easily, allowing companies to operate dedicated infrastructure without creating completely isolated networks. This could be particularly valuable in APAC, where products often launch for a domestic market but may later seek international users, applications, and liquidity. 

9. What is OP Stack’s contribution to ensuring resilience and scalability for massive institutional workloads? The OP Stack was designed for the performance, reliability, and flexibility that enterprises require as blockchain moves into production. Its modular architecture allows organizations to tailor infrastructure to their specific operational needs while continuing to benefit from Ethereum’s security and ongoing innovation.

The proof is in production. More than 50 chains run on the OP Stack today, including networks built by Sony, Uniswap, OKX, and Kraken. Rather than building and maintaining a blockchain from scratch, enterprises can deploy infrastructure that has been proven at scale, reducing technical complexity while supporting high transaction volumes and long-term growth.

10. What is Optimism’s strategy to deal with regulatory requirements for compliant financial institutions operating in Asia? Every regulated institution operates under different legal and operational requirements, and those requirements vary meaningfully across APAC jurisdictions. Rather than imposing a single deployment model, OP Enterprise gives institutions the flexibility to configure infrastructure according to their specific needs, including how the chain is operated, who controls the sequencer, and which compliance, custody, and privacy providers are integrated.

That flexibility supports institutions in meeting their own regulatory obligations in their own jurisdictions, while still benefiting from the Ethereum ecosystem’s security and innovation. Compliance decisions remain with the institution and its advisors, and the infrastructure supports a range of deployment and integration requirements.

11. How do fully self-managed tiers of OP Enterprise shape enterprise-focused blockchain strategies within the APAC region? The Self-Managed tier reflects a consistent request from large financial institutions. They want the ability to control their own blockchain infrastructure without taking on the burden of building everything themselves.

For regulated institutions, the appeal is programmable financial infrastructure that combines operational sovereignty, direct control, and dedicated engineering support. The institution decides how the infrastructure is operated, secured, and integrated with its existing systems, while drawing on proven technology underneath. For many APAC institutions, that combination is what finally moves blockchain from the innovation lab into the infrastructure roadmap.

12. What is APAC’s role in accelerating the expansion of Optimism’s network and Optimism’s network globally? APAC has become one of the strongest examples of how blockchain is evolving into enterprise infrastructure. Activity across finance, payments, consumer technology, and entertainment shows that adoption is no longer limited to crypto-native companies.

Across the region, organizations are deploying or exploring the OP Stack, OP Mainnet, and OP Enterprise. In doing so, they are helping define what enterprise adoption could look like at global scale.

Over the next twelve months, I expect the question in APAC boardrooms to shift from “should we pilot this” to “which of our products goes onchain.” The companies with distribution, regulatory discipline, and the right infrastructure partners will be best positioned to answer it.

At Base, our goal is to build the secure, trusted infrastructure for global finance: an economy that runs 24/7 with deep liquidity to power any transaction at scale. But infrastructure is only as powerful as the applications built on top of it. It is the entrepreneurs and founders, the builders creating real-world use cases, who ultimately make the difference.

The Base Ecosystem Fund exists to find and enable these exceptional builders. We provide pre-seed and seed-stage capital, combined with dedicated, hands-on support from the Base team, to give the best founders the resources they need to succeed.

The Base Ecosystem Fund believes that global finance is the defining, killer use case for blockchains. This spans the full spectrum of financial activity, including payments, stablecoins, credit, trading, tokenization, derivatives, prediction markets, agents, and more.

Rather than keep our theses behind closed doors, we are sharing the active areas we are most excited about right now. These represent the specific ideas we want to see emerge, scale, and fundamentally grow within the Base economy.

Alternative Yield-Bearing Assets
As tokenization proliferates and asset coverage expands, we are particularly excited about bringing productive, yield-bearing assets onchain. This includes short-duration working capital instruments such as stablecoin pre-funding, invoice financing, trade finance, and revenue-based financing, as well as longer-duration assets such as REITs, royalties, licensing income, and private credit funds. Delivery models can span from wrapped off-chain funds and native onchain issuance to stablecoin vaults that deploy into targeted opportunities. What matters most is partnering with deep domain experts who possess the vertical-specific underwriting capabilities to originate and manage these assets responsibly. These alternative assets introduce genuinely uncorrelated, productive yield for holders while unlocking the full structural benefits of composability, liquidity, and distribution.

Tokenized Portfolios as Collateral
Most brokerages offer margin lending, but far fewer offer Securities-Backed Lines of Credit (SBLOCs). This is because many brokerages aren't banks, and funding loans at scale is expensive, making SBLOCs historically a high-net-worth product. This leaves tens of millions of everyday brokerage users with no access to non-margin credit against assets they already own. Tokenizing these portfolios and moving them onchain bypasses those traditional hurdles. With programmatic credit drawn against customer holdings via DeFi lending protocols, we can remove the balance sheet constraints that have historically made SBLOCs uneconomical at scale. The ideal model is B2B2C: an end-to-end solution handling everything from asset tokenization to credit deployment, giving brokerages a way to embed credit they couldn't otherwise fund, and giving their customers liquidity they've never had access to before.

Stablecoins & Emerging MarketsStablecoin Distribution in Cash-Centric Emerging Markets
In under-financialized emerging markets with de jure or de facto dollarization—such as Argentina, Cambodia, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Venezuela—the US dollar serves as the primary unit of account for capital. Yet, this wealth remains structurally trapped in physical cash with little to no access to yield or credit. A large opportunity exists to make this capital productive by connecting local physical cash networks to stablecoins. By meeting end users where they are and building directly on existing cash-centric behaviors, these distribution networks can serve as a highly defensible wedge to leapfrog subpar legacy banking solutions with direct flows between paper currency and stablecoins, setting the stage for frictionless access to noncustodial yield and financial services.

Local Stablecoins
Despite the dominance of USD stablecoins today, there remains a large opportunity to drive adoption of local stablecoins as first-class assets. Many local fiat rails remain slow, costly, and, in some jurisdictions, subject to burdensome taxes. Savers who prefer to hold local currency are typically locked out of competitive rates unless they hold large balances at traditional banks. Enterprises and merchants operating in corridors where sender and recipient share the same currency face unnecessary FX intermediation steps, and merchants remain dependent on third-party payment solutions. Moreover, tokenizing local assets remains highly constrained until the corresponding local currency liquidity exists onchain. Local stablecoins address this by enabling faster, cheaper onchain payments that can pass yield directly to end users while allowing merchants to settle natively. They also eliminate FX friction by enabling direct currency pairs and serving as the essential quote pair for tokenized local assets.

Unsecured Consumer Credit
Punitively high costs of capital and rigid legacy underwriting metrics continue to lock millions out of the global credit market. Unlocking broader access and lowering the cost to borrow requires a shift from basic credit scoring to a comprehensive, verifiable, multi-signal underwriting framework. Utilizing zkTLS enables secure verification of offchain data—such as salary, bank accounts, and assets—to be paired alongside onchain collateralized credit histories. To scale safely, this stack can integrate localized collections partnerships and legal or credit-reporting recourse. Capitalizing on this market means building the underlying underwriting engine and capital aggregation infrastructure to sell into existing wallets, fintechs, and neobanks, meeting users where they already transact to structurally drive down capital costs across the board.

Multi-Party Credit
Merging multiple credit histories into a single, unified profile unlocks massive, historically untapped lending opportunities like intra-family lending and remittance-backed credit. By leveraging smart contract vaults, stablecoins, and zkTLS, lenders can make multi-party underwriting automated, secure, and frictionless. This enables them to safely service lower-credit borrowers by enforcing joint recourse through a high-credit guarantor, such as a parent backing an entrepreneur or an international remittance sender backing a local recipient. To make this a reality, we are looking for teams building the infrastructure and consumer applications for merged-profile credit rails, multi-party debt, and programmable shared recourse.

Conditional Asset Markets
Conditional asset markets have the potential to achieve significant scale by enabling the trading of state-contingent outcomes, where participants trade positions across potential future states, with only one market realized upon settlement. By isolating how specific events impact particular assets, this mechanism enables precise hedging across liquid assets of all kinds, rather than forcing investors to speculate on raw event probabilities. Crucially, this structure produces highly valuable information, revealing exactly how the market values the future of those assets across different circumstances.

Verticalized Prediction Markets
Verticalized prediction markets represent the move beyond generic platforms toward domain-specific information and execution hubs. While this shift to date has largely been concentrated in sports, other sectors remain underdeveloped. We see strong potential in dedicated platforms for politics, where real-time data and social mechanics can improve forecasting accuracy; culture & media, where embedded tools can turn passive audiences into financially engaged participants; institutional risk & insurance, where programmatic hedging can help underwriters manage tail risks through market-driven pricing; and clinical trials, where specialists use market mechanisms to surface the most effective therapies and techniques. By attracting domain-specific market participants, these venues can achieve a quality of price discovery that generalist platforms cannot replicate.

Legacy & Institutional MarketsForeign Exchange Markets
Traditional FX markets heavily favor large institutional players, leaving cross-border enterprises and SMEs to face high costs, opaque pricing, and restrictive capital requirements when trading major, minor, or exotic currency pairs. Using programmable rails, stablecoins, and derivatives, the status quo can be disrupted by rebuilding the entire suite of global currency markets. These can span spot, forwards, NDFs, futures, and options—all natively onchain. Creating 24/7 liquid FX markets can enable advanced, composable use cases built directly on top, such as seamless and accessible hedging and structured cross-currency products.

Onchain Bilateral Agreements
Traditional bilateral OTC agreements, including repos, total return swaps (TRS), and credit default swaps (CDS), are vital for institutional funding and risk transfer, but private execution breeds opacity, friction, and counterparty risk. Onchain bilateral agreements transform this model by recording contract terms, collateral, and lifecycle events on a shared ledger to enable real-time transparency and programmability. To ensure these digital contracts are structured for integration into existing legal frameworks and eventual regulatory standardization, an orchestration protocol can facilitate agreements via smart contracts on a permissionless rail, bypassing public DeFi's shared liquidity risks while keeping structures easy to underwrite, audit, and legally validate. Ultimately, this offers a transparent alternative to legacy infrastructure, creating a compliant pathway to migrate institutional-grade instruments onchain without sacrificing established risk frameworks or legal certainty.

Agents for Everyday Commerce
As agent infrastructure outpaces real consumer use cases, the open problem is shifting from building agents to making them compelling enough for everyday consumers to actually rely on. There is a large opportunity in agents that take user intent and see it through to a completed transaction, rather than bolting AI on to existing commerce flows. Areas with potential for disruption include agentic shopping and checkout, booking and reservation assistants, event ticket purchasing, and coupon and discount agents. We are looking for founders building in these segments that can translate consumer demand into stablecoin and ERC-7496 / onchain checkout volumes.

SKU Tokenization
Today, merchant catalogues live in fragmented, proprietary Web2 databases, siloed and inaccessible to AI agents, fundamentally constraining agentic commerce. SKU Tokenization solves this by migrating catalogue inventory onchain as composable, programmable assets, making products universally discoverable across any wallet, aggregator, or distribution channel. This gives any agent the lowest friction path to find, evaluate, and purchase in a single atomic flow. Beyond discoverability, liquid onchain markets for tokenized SKUs unlock a new commercial primitive: the separation of selling from delivery. Merchants can sell inventory before demand materializes. Market makers (i.e., resellers) can intermediate supply. And end users can redeem purchased assets for physical delivery on their own timeline. Static product inventory becomes a tradeable, liquid asset class.

While these are some of our current areas of interest, we know the strongest signal ultimately comes from high-quality founders and where they see the most significant opportunities.

If you are building in these categories or in an adjacent space you are excited about, please reach out and apply here.

Most RPC providers, Ankr included, support the same popular chains. Ethereum, Solana, BNB, a handful of L2s. This is the multi-chain stack, and for many use cases, it's enough.

Until you're building on something else.

Tron processes more daily transactions than chains that dominate every conference keynote. It moves more USDT globally than networks with three times the media buzz. And it's been underserved by enterprise infrastructure for years, either ignored outright or treated as a box to check by providers who never bothered to build for it properly.

Trust Wallet wasn't willing to accept that. So they went with Ankr.

Trust Wallet's Tron Infrastructure Ankr powers Trust Wallet's RPC infrastructure, handling over 1 billion requests a month across the chains Trust Wallet's users actually rely on. Tron included.

Tron's volume and usage patterns demand infrastructure built for it, not bolted onto something generic. Ankr's distributed node network, plus operational experience across 100+ chains, is what makes reliable Tron infrastructure possible at enterprise scale. Trust Wallet's users transact on Tron every day. The infrastructure holds up because Ankr built it to hold up.

Beyond Tron: The Chains Everyone Else Skipped Trust Wallet is the most visible example of something you'll find across Ankr's entire client base: a willingness to support chains other providers passed on.

Kaia is a public blockchain built for mass adoption in Asia, with deep ties into the Kakao and LINE ecosystems. Ankr runs the enterprise mRPC infrastructure behind it. AB Foundation runs a live public RPC endpoint at rpc-AB.com, powered entirely by Ankr. Every developer building on AB hits Ankr's nodes to do it. DogeOS brings smart contracts and a full developer platform to Dogecoin. Ankr provides its mRPC infrastructure at up to 1 million API calls a day. Electroneum is a mobile-first proof-of-work chain built for real-world payments. It needs bare metal infrastructure, not the virtualized cloud stack most providers lean on. Ankr built for that requirement instead of skipping it. Xphere is a dual-chain proof-of-work network governed by its validator Union. Ankr runs both the RPC infrastructure and a validator node here, with Union membership and voting rights. That's a direct stake in where the network goes next. Why This Matters for Enterprise and dApp Teams The pattern holds across every one of these: chains with active users and real transaction volume that most providers decided weren't worth the effort.

If you're an enterprise client or a dApp team operating across multiple chains, especially ones outside the mainstream, the gap between what a provider says they support and what they actually support well is exactly where things break.

Ankr's bare metal infrastructure, distributed node network, and track record across 100+ chains is what makes that breadth real. Not a marketing number. A pattern of saying yes when everyone else says no.

If your chain isn't on everyone else's list, it's on ours.

See all supported chains →

Talk to our enterprise team →

Join the Conversation on Ankr’s Channels! X | Telegram | Substack |  Discord | YouTube | LinkedIn | Reddit

Federal Reserve's Lorie Logan: Should Raise Interest Rates to Combat Inflation

Fed’s Logan says the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates to address elevated inflation, a comment suggesting she may be prepared to oppose a decision to hold rates steady later this month. Logan noted that June inflation data released on Tuesday showed price gains are slowing, but not enough to convince her inflation is back on track to hit the Fed’s 2% target. “The June CPI data does indicate inflation has the potential to return to the target level, making the outlook more optimistic,” Logan said. “But this path remains very fragile. I currently believe a moderate interest rate hike would help better balance the outlook and risks.” (Jinshi)

5 hours ago

US stock market sell-off drags Bitcoin lower, while Micron falls more than 30% from its all-time high.

Bitcoin pulled back alongside U.S. stocks on Thursday, trading around $64,500 in a range, down roughly 1.5% from the three-week high it notched the prior day. Earlier, both U.S. June CPI and PPI came in below expectations, spurring brief gains for crypto assets and U.S. equities, but tech stocks were subsequently sold off. Micron Technology has now pulled back over 30% from its all-time high set on June 22. The Kobeissi Letter noted that retail investors are cashing in on tech stock gains, with net selling of Tesla and Apple hitting $200 million each over the past two weeks, while total retail stock trading volume rose to a record $370 billion. Market participants remain cautious about Bitcoin’s price trajectory. Exitpump said Bitcoin is testing the anchored volume-weighted average price (VWAP) calculated from its early-May high of $82,000, a level that could cap the current rally and trigger stronger resistance. Rekt Capital stated that Bitcoin has shown initial signs of stalling at its 50-month exponential moving average (EMA) near $65,900, and continues to believe the current trend could mirror the 2022 bear market, with the next macro bottom potentially arriving later this year.

5 hours ago

BlackRock withdrew 1,246 BTC and 3,542 ETH from Coinbase Prime.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, BlackRock withdrew 1,246 BTC (valued at approximately $80.6 million) and 3,542 ETH (worth around $6.69 million) from Coinbase Prime.

5 hours ago

Base Ecosystem Fund opens applications, prioritizing support for areas including stablecoins, lending, and prediction markets.

，Base 发文表示，Base 生态基金正在面向全球链上金融领域征集建设者，并将为入选项目提供 Pre-Seed 及种子轮资金，以及 Base 团队的持续支持。该基金当前重点关注代币化、稳定币与新兴市场、信贷、预测市场、传统及机构市场和智能体商业。其中，代币化方向包括收益型资产上链及以代币化投资组合作为抵押品；稳定币方向包括现金经济占主导的新兴市场分发网络和本地稳定币。信贷方向涵盖基于链下及链上数据的无抵押消费信贷和多方信贷；预测市场方向包括条件资产市场，以及政治、文化与媒体、保险和临床试验等垂直市场。Base 还希望支持链上外汇市场、链上双边场外协议、面向日常消费的交易智能体及 SKU 代币化。相关团队可向 Base 生态基金提交申请。

5 hours ago

OpenAI's Chairman: No latest updates on the company's IPO timeline.

OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor told CNBC in an interview that investors waiting for news of OpenAI’s initial public offering (IPO) will have to continue holding their breath, adding there is no latest update on the IPO plans. He reiterated the company’s stance from when it confidentially filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month: “We did that to have options when we want to, but we haven’t made specific plans. There are still many things we want to do while we remain private.”

5 hours ago

Morgan Stanley’s E*TRADE Launches Crypto Spot Trading Function

Morgan Stanley’s E*TRADE has launched crypto spot trading, the firm announced. Eligible clients can directly buy, sell and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana via accounts linked to digital asset infrastructure provider Zerohash. Transactions carry a 50 basis point (0.5%) fee. Clients can view both crypto and traditional investment portfolios on the E*TRADE platform, while digital asset transfer functionality is slated to roll out later this year. E*TRADE also simultaneously launched fractional share trading, retirement planning tools and a new IPO hub, and upgraded Power E*TRADE Pro for active traders. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management noted the launch is part of its strategy to expand digital asset services.

5 hours ago

A Regulated On-Chain Record-Keeper@Injective has filed its transfer agent registration with the @SECGov, a move that positions the $INJ blockchain as a regulated venue for the issuance and management of securities in the United States.

Under U.S. law, transfer agents registered under Section 17A(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 maintain shareholder records, process ownership changes, issue and cancel certificates, and distribute dividends on behalf of publicly traded companies. By filing for this status, Injective is seeking to take on that role natively on-chain, shifting the authoritative record of asset ownership away from traditional off-chain intermediaries and onto the $INJ network.

The practical implication is significant. If a blockchain forms part of the official ownership record, a token transfer can carry legal effect. That is precisely the structure Injective appears to be pursuing: one where on-chain activity produces legally enforceable ownership updates in real time, rather than simply mirroring a record held elsewhere.

Where Injective Fits in a Shifting Regulatory LandscapeThe filing arrives as the SEC moves to clarify how existing securities law applies to tokenized assets. Recent SEC guidance has allowed transfer agents to maintain certain shareholder records on-chain for tokenized securities, enabling digital assets to operate within established regulatory frameworks. Injective's registration positions the protocol to serve as the primary record-keeper for who owns, votes on, and transacts with tokenized assets under that framework.

The SEC's January 2026 statement confirmed that issuer-sponsored tokens carry the same federal securities law obligations as traditionally issued shares, raising the stakes for any blockchain looking to host compliant securities infrastructure. Registering as a transfer agent is one of the clearest signals a network can send that it intends to operate inside that perimeter, not around it.

An industry group for transfer agents is already urging the SEC to favor issuer-sponsored tokenized shares over third-party stock tokens as it writes rules for moving U.S. equities onto blockchains, arguing that only issuer-authorized tokens recorded in official shareholder registers should qualify as true tokenized stock. Injective's move aligns with exactly that model.

The registration also comes as the broader tokenized securities market grows, with most of the roughly $2 billion market of tokenized stock following the third-party synthetic model at present. A blockchain with native transfer agent status could offer issuers a more direct and legally robust alternative.

Sources:
BeinCrypto: What Is a Transfer Agent in Tokenized Securities?
CoinDesk: Battle Over Blockchain Stock Ownership Is Heading to Washington Regulators
TokenizationPolicy.com: SEC Tokenized Securities Framework: Complete 2026 Regulatory Guide

Injective said Thursday it has filed a transfer agent registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to bring one of the core record-keeping functions of securities markets onto blockchain infrastructure.

Transfer agents are a core part of US market infrastructure, maintaining shareholder records and tracking changes in securities ownership. Injective, a layer-1 blockchain focused on decentralized finance and tokenized real-world assets, said bringing that function onchain would create a regulated pathway for issuing and managing tokenized assets.

Source: Injective

If approved, the registration would move Injective beyond blockchain infrastructure for tokenized assets and into the regulated systems that determine who legally owns a security. Injective said the approach could reduce delays and reconciliation between intermediaries.

“Tokenized securities and RWAs need compliant ownership records on infrastructure that settles in less than a second,” Injective wrote in an X post, adding that it aims to offer the capability at scale in the United States.

Injective did not identify the legal entity behind the application or provide a public SEC filing, and Cointelegraph could not independently verify the submission at the time of publication.

Capital markets infrastructure moves onchainTraditional financial institutions have increasingly turned to blockchain to modernize the infrastructure underpinning capital markets. Beyond tokenizing assets, exchanges and market operators are applying the technology to market data distribution, securities issuance, settlement and other post-trade functions.

Nasdaq has been among the most active. Last month, the exchange partnered with onchain financial data network Pyth to distribute its proprietary TotalView market data to blockchain applications. Earlier this year, Nasdaq also partnered with Kraken and tokenization firm Backed to develop infrastructure linking traditional equities to blockchain networks.

Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has also expanded its tokenization strategy through a partnership with Securitize to develop infrastructure for onchain stocks and exchange-traded funds designed to support 24/7 trading and instant settlement.

Meanwhile, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the primary post-trade infrastructure provider for US securities markets, is preparing to launch its tokenized Collateral AppChain platform to automate collateral management and settlement across financial markets.

Magazine: Is Robinhood Chain’s success bullish or bearish for ETH the asset?

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