Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) shares fell 4.41% to below $900 in Thursday’s premarket trading, extending Wednesday’s 4.10% decline, when the stock closed at $914.13.
The latest drop coincided with Taiwan’s president urging the U.S. memory-chip maker and its workers to resolve a labor dispute that could lead to a strike at a major manufacturing hub.
Speaking at Thursday’s opening of a new Micron advanced assembly and testing facility in Taichung, Lai called for sincere negotiations and stronger communication between management and employees. He said constructive labor relations would allow employees and businesses to move forward together.
His intervention followed an October 7 announcement that Micron’s Taoyuan workers’ union had secured authorization to strike over a dispute involving employee bonuses and profit-sharing arrangements.
Wednesday marked Micron’s fifth consecutive regular-session decline, leaving the stock approximately 16% below its October 7 close of $1,088. The selloff began before Thursday’s labor developments.
The broader memory-chip selloff intensified earlier this week after reports that China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) had advanced a denser 4F² DRAM cell architecture and planned to introduce a server-memory product before the end of 2026.
The development raised concerns about potential competition for established memory suppliers, including Micron. However, the technology’s commercial production yields and scalability remain unproven.
Separately, Micron Technology Tokenized bStocks (MUB) was quoted at $873.14, down 7.14% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. MUB is a blockchain-based instrument providing economic exposure to Micron shares and trades separately from Nasdaq-listed MU. Its 24-hour price change is therefore not directly comparable with the stock’s regular-session or premarket performance.
Micron Union Seeks 15% Profit-Sharing Plan as Strike Threat Continues
The Taoyuan union received 1,994 votes supporting strike action out of 2,012 ballots cast, representing approximately 99% of participating members and 88.3% of its 2,258 eligible members.
Union chairman Jerry Lin said no strike date had been set but warned that workers could stage a walkout at short notice if negotiations failed.
The dispute centers on the union’s demand for a permanent, transparent compensation system that would allocate 15% of Micron’s global operating profit to employee bonuses, with quarterly payments beginning in fiscal 2027.
For fiscal 2026, the Taoyuan and Taichung unions also sought a one-time payment equivalent to approximately 83 months of salary for Taiwan-based employees. They argue that Micron’s existing Incentive Pay Plan does not adequately link employee rewards to the company’s profitability.
Micron announced a fiscal 2026 compensation package in September that included a NT$1 million (approximately $31,000) cash bonus for eligible Taiwan employees, alongside performance-based and equity awards. However, the Taoyuan union said the package did not address its demand for a lasting profit-sharing mechanism.
Mediation between Micron and the Taoyuan union ended without an agreement on September 21. The separate Taichung union remains in negotiations, with another mediation session scheduled for October 22.
The unions are also encouraging workers to attend an October 19 rally in Taipei, which they have explicitly said will not constitute a strike. Micron has maintained that it respects employees’ legal rights and remains committed to constructive discussions.
The dispute poses a potential operational risk because Taiwan is a major manufacturing center for Micron’s dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), both essential to AI computing infrastructure.
Micron employs approximately 15,000 people in Taiwan. According to the unions, their Taoyuan and Taichung chapters collectively represent more than 80% of its local workforce. A prolonged strike could affect production and deliveries, although no manufacturing disruption has been reported.
Micron Opens New HBM Facility With 2027 Capacity Sold Out
The labor uncertainty comes as Micron expands its advanced memory operations in Taiwan, where it inaugurated Micron Advanced Assembly and Test Taiwan 2 (AATT2) on Thursday.
The Taichung facility is Micron’s second advanced assembly and testing plant in the country. It will expand packaging and testing capacity for HBM products used in AI servers, strengthening the company’s ability to fulfill growing customer demand.
Micron President and Chief Operating Officer Manish Bhatia said the facility’s entire planned production capacity for 2027 had already been sold out.
He also said Micron expects HBM demand to grow faster than the broader DRAM industry through 2028, highlighting the demand supporting its ongoing manufacturing expansion.
During the inauguration, Lai reaffirmed government support for advanced semiconductor development and said Micron had secured assistance for HBM research and development in Taiwan.
Injective's IIP-709 governance proposal would enable fixed gas fees for core exchange messages on mainnet. Voting on the $INJ proposal closes October 17, 2026.
Injective (@injective) has put forward a governance proposal that aims to make transaction costs more predictable and reduce latency on its network. The proposal, known as IIP-709, would enable fixed gas fees for core exchange messages on mainnet.
The feature has been available on Injective's testnet since July 2026 but has not been activated on mainnet. Voting is set to close on October 17, 2026. Roughly 23 million $INJ in voting power has been recorded so far, and quorum has been reached, according to the latest data.
What IIP-709 would changeAccording to TokenPost, the proposal would set the exchange parameter fixed_gas_enabled to true. Covered messages include order placement, order cancellations, deposits, withdrawals and subaccount transfers.
Today, gas usage is typically estimated through transaction simulation. Moving to predefined values could reduce that estimation overhead and give users clearer visibility on execution costs, as noted in community commentary on KuCoin News. Integrators and market makers could use published gas requirements for supported messages instead of estimating gas for each transaction, TokenPost reports.
The change would not remove costs altogether. Crypto Briefing notes that fixed pricing does not mean free pricing, so spam protections remain in place. TokenPost adds that trading fees are separate from gas and would be unchanged.
Gas values and documentationInjective's own documentation says the fixed gas heuristics require fixed_gas_enabled to be set to true in the exchange module parameters. The Injective developer docs state the setting is enabled on testnet and would be activated on mainnet through a governance params proposal.
Published figures vary by source and measurement scope. Injective's API reference lists fixed requirements such as 120,000 gas for derivative limit orders and 70,000 for derivative order cancellations, while TokenPost notes the final amounts for the proposed mainnet configuration are not specified.
The proposal comes as Injective already offers low fees. Crypto Briefing puts the minimum gas price at 160,000,000 INJ units, which it says works out to typical fees of about $0.0003 per transaction. Stakers of $INJ can vote on the proposal until the October 17 deadline.
SourcesTokenPost: Injective Proposal Would Set Fixed Gas for Selected Exchange Messages
Crypto Briefing: Injective proposes fixed gas fees to make DeFi trading costs predictable
Phoenix Trade, a fully onchain, non-custodial perpetuals exchange built on Solana, has launched a perpetual futures market offering exposure to Anthropic, giving traders a new way to speculate on the artificial intelligence company's valuation before a potential public listing.
Traders can now go long or short ANTHROPIC 24/7 with up to 6x leverage. Phoenix introduced support for $SOL as collateral in September, and the cash-settled ANTHROPIC perpetual market will support both $USDC and $SOL as collateral, letting users manage positions from the same account they use for cryptocurrency, equity, and commodity markets.
How Phoenix Prices ANTHROPIC Phoenix uses a custom pricing model that combines onchain and offchain inputs to determine ANTHROPIC's reference price. The mechanism builds on Impact Pricing, which Phoenix uses for real-world asset perpetuals when external markets close.
Rather than freezing the last external oracle price until markets reopen, the system gradually adjusts that reference price based on liquidity and activity in Phoenix's order book. This approach lets the market keep operating outside conventional trading hours.
Anthropic's Revenue Climbs 45% to $16.8B The launch comes as Anthropic prepares for a potential IPO that could rank among the largest in history. Anthropic executives reportedly told prospective investors yesterday, October 14, that revenue reached $16.8 billion in Q3 2026, up approximately 45% from $11.6 billion in Q2. Revenue rose from $4.7 billion in Q1, marking successive quarterly increases this year.
The company, which develops the Claude AI assistant, also reportedly said it remained profitable for a second consecutive quarter after certain adjustments. Its adjusted gross margin reached 85%.
Bankers have reportedly discussed a potential fundraising target above $100 billion and a $2 trillion valuation. Anthropic could begin trading publicly as early as next month, although the timing and terms remain uncertain.
These figures help explain why traders may want exposure to Anthropic before a listing. However, ANTHROPIC perpetuals provide leveraged price exposure rather than ownership rights or a claim on the company's financial performance.
Anthropic Already Attracts Pre-IPO Traders on Solana Phoenix enters a market that has already attracted considerable activity on Solana. According to a September report by Allium Labs, 7 pre-IPO tokens generated $1.3 billion in trading volume on Solana this year. SpaceX led with $330 million, followed by OpenAI at $272 million, while Anthropic ranked third by volume.
Anthropic nevertheless attracted 23,722 traders, more than SpaceX, suggesting that interest extends beyond the largest trading markets. Phoenix's new offering gives traders another venue to express their views, now with up to 6x leverage.
Phoenix Volume Climbs as Solana Expands Trading Incentives Phoenix's launch also comes amid rising activity across its perpetual markets. The exchange has recorded several weekly trading volumes above $300 million since late July, according to Blockworks data. Phoenix generated over $1 billion in volume in both August and September alone.
Its growth coincided partly with Flight Club, Phoenix's incentive program that distributed $420,000 to traders between July 27 and August 23. Solana's Frontier Traders program has provided another source of incentives, tracking activity across 16 venues and offering more than $1 million in total prizes. Season 1 focuses on perpetual futures trading through Phoenix Trade and Solflare Perps powered by Phoenix.
Phoenix’s launch of ANTHROPIC perps and its expanding lineup aims to address Solana traders’ long-standing complaints about limited perps trading options and help Solana’s perps ecosystem compete with more established venues like Hyperliquid. Solana traders have long cited the lack of available trading pairs as one of the biggest barriers to adoption. Phoenix’s listings are helping close that gap and give users fewer reasons to look elsewhere.
Read More on SolanaFloor Squads Tests Post-Quantum Signing on Solana Mainnet as Crypto Security Debate Intensifies
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Jito CEO Says The End of CEXs is Closer Than You Think
heyAura is integrating Aurora Intents, a cross-chain execution layer powered by NEAR Intents. The result: more routing options for swaps and bridges, simpler cross-chain workflows, and lower gas fees on batched transactions.
heyAura integrates Aurora Intents for better cross-chain swaps and bridges and lower gas fees heyAura is integrating Aurora Intents, a cross-chain execution layer built by Aurora and powered by NEAR Intents.
The integration expands the infrastructure that heyAura uses for swaps and bridges, with three main benefits for users: more competitive quotes, simpler cross-chain workflows, and lower gas costs for compatible transactions.
Benefits of integrating Aurora Intents
More competitive quotesAurora Intents uses a solver network powered by NEAR Intents, in which independent solvers compete to fulfill transaction intents at competitive prices. Its cross-chain swap infrastructure also provides best-rate routing across its supported networks.
By adding Aurora Intents to heyAura's execution infrastructure, heyAura can access more available quotes and routing options when preparing eligible swaps and bridges.
This gives users a wider execution pool and can result in better quotes depending on the assets, networks, available liquidity, and current market conditions.
Simpler swaps and bridgesCross-chain transactions usually involve several infrastructure components, including liquidity sources, bridges, network-specific transactions, and settlement mechanisms
Aurora Intents combines these components into a single cross-chain execution layer. Its infrastructure handles routing and conversion across supported networks and supports multi-step, composable transaction flows.
heyAura interprets the requested action and prepares the transaction using the available execution infrastructure. The user retains control and provides final approval before execution.
Lower gas fees and faster executionAurora Intents combines multiple transactions and supports multi-step execution within a single coordinated flow. Gas still depends on the network, route, and conditions, but combining transactions lowers fees.
This is particularly relevant for heyAura, as the assistant can prepare batch transactions with a single prompt that would otherwise require several separate onchain operations. This workflow removes complexity, saves transaction time, and reduces gas fees.
One prompt. One approval. Cross-chain.
Here's Aurora Intents inside @heyAura:
→ "Bridge 1,000 USDC from Arbitrum to Base"
→ heyAura finds the route via Aurora Intents
→ Review, confirm, done
No bridge app. No chain switching. pic.twitter.com/TwO2VaShId
— Aurora (@auroraisnear) October 14, 2026 What is Aurora Intents?Aurora Intents provides infrastructure for executing transactions across different blockchain networks. It currently supports more than 30 chains and uses NEAR Intents together with Aurora's execution engine for cross-chain swaps and multi-step flows.
The system is based on intent-driven execution. An intent describes the outcome a user wants to achieve, while the underlying infrastructure handles routing, conversion, liquidity, and settlement.
Expanding heyAura's execution infrastructureAurora Intents joins the growing set of infrastructure providers behind heyAura's transaction capabilities.
The integration gives heyAura access to additional cross-chain liquidity and routing through the NEAR Intents solver network, while Aurora's execution engine adds support for composable multi-step flows.
For heyAura users, the result is straightforward: more routing options, simpler swap and bridge workflows, and more efficient transactions where batching is available.
This integration is another step towards our goal to provide better, more cost-effective, and time-saving services within heyAura.
Interested in heyAura? Follow us:
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Cryptocurrency hacks soared to $1.18 billion across 107 recorded incidents in the third quarter of 2026, according to security company Hacken.
Hacken’s Q3 report attributed 77% (about $906 million) to compromised suppliers or developer tools, publicly disclosed fixes that had not been deployed, or other components outside security reviews.
The four largest incidents included the $387 million Bitget hack, the $320 million Liquid Network exploit, the $120 million Tectonic exploit, and the Coldcard firmware vulnerability, associated with an estimated $115 million in losses.
This Q3 was the most damaging quarter for crypto hacks since Q1 2025, when Bybit’s $1.4 billion loss to North Korea pushed the total to $1.6 billion.
Q3 losses in total amount and composition. Source: Hacken
About 80% of the quarter’s losses were concentrated in four of the largest incidents, while 98 of the incidents recorded losses below $10 million. The median loss across all 107 incidents was $670,000.
While supplier compromises and infrastructure failures drove much of the stolen value, smart contract incidents were the most frequent, accounting for $228 million in losses across 71 incidents as the most exploited attack vector.
About a third of losses was returned or reversed after Q3 crypto hacksOf the $1.18 billion lost, about $387 million was returned or reversed, accounting for the recovery of about 33% of gross losses.
Following the Liquid Network hack, self-proclaimed “white hats” returned $272 million, representing about 85% of the stolen value.
In the Tectonic incident, Cronos validators rolled back 114 minutes of settled blockchain history, reversing about $111.2 million of the $120.4 million in affected borrowing. Also, stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether froze about $340,000 tied to the Bitget theft.
Operators covered an additional $410 million of user losses from their own funds. Bitget’s user protection fund covered $387 million, while Triple-A, Coinsbuy and TAC repaid about $22 million, making users whole, while stolen assets remained with attackers.
About $384 million, or 32% of gross losses, was neither returned nor covered.
Amount of losses covered by operators, compared to amount returned or reversed. Source: Hacken
Hacken urged industry participants to strengthen the cybersecurity of third-party suppliers, developer tools and other external infrastructure that may fall outside security audits.
The company also recommended that protocols expand security audits to include oracles, bridgers, custody systems, signing authorities and other privileged components.
Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes told traders to go long Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) rather than bet on an AI crash. He paired the call with a chart of CoreWeave’s falling stock.
Hayes says he would not wager on AI either way. Instead, he expects a multi-trillion-dollar bailout and wants exposure to the assets that could absorb that money.
Arthur Hayes Trades the Rescue, Not the CrashHayes shared the call on X.
His case for investors rests on history. In his view, every major technology rollout gets overbuilt, then crashes, then gets rescued. He expects the AI data center boom to hit that wall around late 2027 or 2028.
When the rescue comes, Hayes expects authorities to print more money than they did after the 2008 financial crisis.
The new money then needs a home. Hayes argues that Bitcoin and other crypto would absorb that liquidity, and he sees the flood lifting Bitcoin to $1 million or more.
Shorting AI, by contrast, holds little appeal for him. Arthur Hayes would rather wait for the rescue than guess the timing of the crash.
The 2020 pandemic rescue backs the idea. As the Federal Reserve more than doubled its balance sheet, Bitcoin rose from under $5,000 to above $60,000.
US Money Supply vs. Bitcoin Price. Source:BeInCryptoLately, though, that link has frayed. US money supply hit a record in August, yet Bitcoin trades about 35% below its October 2025 peak. The same gap with Bitcoin prices shows up globally.
Both of his picks have also lagged most AI stocks in 2026.
Bitcoin and Ethereum vs. AI Stocks in 2026. Source: BeInCryptoNot everyone sees an imminent burst either. Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee argues that AI resembles 1997, not 1999, and puts a bubble peak near 2033.
AI Debt Fears Test the Bailout TradeCoreWeave, an AI cloud provider, plunged 15% a day after CNBC host Jim Cramer named it his only trusted AI cloud pick.
Its slide fed a broader worry about AI debt. In a September newsletter, Hayes called major US insurers insolvent over AI debt at market value.
For crypto traders, the debate is moving from whether AI shares fall to who pays if they do. Arthur Hayes has placed his bet on governments printing the bill, with Bitcoin and ETH as the hedge.
Rocket Lab announced it has pushed back the first launch of its Neutron medium reusable rocket from the fourth quarter of 2026 to 2027, primarily due to manufacturing issues with carbon fiber composite parts for the rocket’s first-stage propellant tank. The company still needs to carry out design optimization and adjust production processes. This is not the first technical setback Neutron has encountered: in January this year, the rocket’s first-stage tank ruptured during a pressure test, leading to extended subsequent manufacturing and verification work. The latest delay further pushes back Rocket Lab’s timeline to enter the medium launch vehicle market and compete with SpaceX for large satellite launch contracts, while also extending risks related to its R&D costs and commercial revenue realization cycle. Hit by the news, RKLB (Rocket Lab’s US stock) fell further in after-hours trading. Per TradingBeats monitoring, RKLB on Hyperliquid is currently trading at $54.53, down roughly 14.8% in 24 hours. A whale holding around 44,400 RKLB long positions was liquidated this morning, with a nominal transaction amount of about $2.49 million and a trading loss of approximately $740,000 (0x58f0). In an August 11 Bloomberg report, Rocket Lab had previously stated that its Neutron rocket project faced new delay risks, with the first launch possibly pushed to 2027. The company plans to deliver Neutron to the launch pad in the fourth quarter as scheduled, but has not confirmed the rocket will complete its first flight this year. Rocket Lab had originally targeted a first Neutron launch by the end of 2026. Earlier update: Rocket Lab warned of delay risks for Neutron’s first flight, potentially pushing it to 2027.
RKLB shares tumble 10.15% as Neutron’s maiden flight moves into 2027 again. Air pockets in Neutron’s carbon-composite tank dome trigger further repairs. Rocket Lab’s latest delay follows a tank rupture during testing in January. KeyBanc cuts its RKLB price target to $100, while Clear Street moves to $105. Rocket Lab’s Electron launch business continues as Neutron faces more tests. Rocket Lab Corporation (RKLB) stock fell 10.15% to $53.17 on Thursday morning, losing $6.01 following another Neutron rocket delay. The company pushed its medium-lift rocket’s first launch into 2027 after identifying manufacturing defects in key structural components. The announcement marked another setback for Rocket Lab’s expansion into the competitive medium-lift launch market.
Rocket Lab USA, Inc., RKLB
Rocket Lab disclosed the revised launch schedule Wednesday through an investor update and a regulatory filing. The company identified manufacturing problems involving carbon composite structures in Neutron’s first-stage barrels and propellant tank domes. These components support the rocket’s structural strength and help contain propellant during flight.
Engineers discovered small air pockets within the first-stage propellant tank dome cap during manufacturing inspections. These defects can weaken composite materials and create structural risks under extreme operating conditions. Rocket Lab introduced manufacturing improvements to address the problems and strengthen component reliability.
The latest postponement follows an earlier setback involving a first-stage tank rupture during January testing. Rocket Lab subsequently moved its launch target toward the fourth quarter of 2026. However, further manufacturing challenges have extended the development schedule beyond the company’s previous expectations.
Rocket Lab Faces Delayed Neutron Revenue Opportunities Neutron represents Rocket Lab’s planned expansion beyond its established small-launch operations into larger satellite missions. The reusable rocket aims to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for commercial and government launch contracts. However, the revised timetable delays Neutron’s entry into this market and its potential revenue contribution.
Rocket Lab originally announced Neutron in 2021 and initially targeted a 2024 launchpad milestone. The company later shifted its expected inaugural flight into 2025 following development and qualification challenges. Further testing complications and manufacturing problems eventually pushed the target into 2027.
Rocket Lab continues operating its Electron launch vehicle and developing its HASTE capabilities. In September, the company announced a multi-year agreement covering 20 Electron missions for Japanese satellite operator Synspective. This agreement supports its existing launch business while Neutron undergoes additional manufacturing and testing work.
Wall Street Analysts Reduce RKLB Stock Price Targets The revised Neutron schedule prompted several Wall Street analysts to lower their RKLB stock price targets. KeyBanc reduced its target from $135 to $100 following the company’s latest development setback. Similarly, Clear Street lowered its target from $129 to $105 after assessing the extended launch timetable.
The delay also extends Rocket Lab’s development spending before Neutron can begin supporting commercial launch operations. Meanwhile, the company must complete manufacturing improvements, component qualification, and additional testing before attempting its inaugural flight. These requirements remain central to Neutron’s progress toward operational readiness.
Rocket Lab plans to continue reporting progress through its manufacturing and testing milestones. The company also published additional details about the revised Neutron schedule through its investor relations materials. Its next development updates will clarify progress toward the planned 2027 launch.
Jito [JTO] continued its decline, dropping roughly 14% over the past day and 17% over the past seven days.
The slide coincided with falling Total Value Locked (TVL), lower Fees, and net outflows from the perpetual market. Together, these signals suggested weakening participation, although Spot Exchange Outflows offered a possible counterpoint.
Why did Jito’s TVL fall $193 million?
On-chain activity showed signs of weakness, with Jito’s TVL shrinking notably.
TVL measures the value of assets deposited in a protocol. However, changes can reflect both withdrawals and movements in deposited assets’ prices.
Source: DeFiLlama
Jito’s TVL fell by over $193 million between the 5th of October and press time, reaching $1.076 billion. That decline suggested a smaller capital base, although TVL alone could not establish whether users had withdrawn funds.
Fees weakened too. According to DeFiLlama, Fees fell from $532,600 to roughly $220,729 across the period, a 58.56% decline.
Lower Fees were consistent with reduced revenue-generating activity, adding to the pressure surrounding Jito’s performance.
What are JTO’s derivatives traders signaling?
The weakness extended into the perpetual market, where Netflows remained negative.
Over the past 24 hours, JTO recorded roughly $3.8 million in net outflows. Gross outflows reached about $30.59 million. These figures pointed to capital leaving the market, although they did not independently establish which positions traders closed.
Source: CoinGlass
Meanwhile, the Funding Rate fell to -0.0020%, signaling bearish pressure in perpetual pricing. A negative Funding Rate generally means shorts pay longs. It does not establish how total capital is divided between them.
JTO’s reported $46.93 million in Open Interest therefore represented outstanding contracts, rather than evidence of more capital allocated to shorts.
Could JTO withdrawals offer some relief?
Spot Exchange Netflows offered a different signal, reaching roughly -$635,000 over the past 24 hours.
Negative Exchange Netflows meant more JTO left tracked exchanges than entered them. Those withdrawals could reflect accumulation or transfers into custody.
Traders sometimes withdraw tokens when preparing to hold them longer. Still, exchange withdrawals alone could not confirm fresh buying.
Source: CoinGlass
Cumulative Netflows also remained negative across the 3-day, 5-day, and 7-day periods, showing that withdrawals persisted. That offered a possible bullish counterpoint. Whether those withdrawals translate into price support remains an open question.
Final Summary
Jito’s TVL fell over $193 million, while Fees dropped 58.56%, signaling weaker protocol activity.
JTO’s persistent Spot Exchange Outflows suggested possible accumulation, although fresh buying remained unconfirmed.
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.
Binance.US is seeking $100 million in financing to expand its U.S. crypto operations.
According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter said Binance.US is seeking to raise up to $100 million via private placement, targeting a valuation of around $1 billion, to expand its U.S. operations amid intensifying competition for digital asset clients. The fundraising is still ongoing, and the final size, valuation and investor composition could be adjusted. World Liberty Financial, a crypto project co-founded by former U.S. President Donald Trump, was aware of the fundraising, but another source familiar with the matter said the project is not participating at present. Spokespeople for Binance.US and World Liberty declined to comment.
Binance.US launched in 2019 and operates independently of the global Binance exchange, but Changpeng Zhao is a major shareholder of both companies. In 2022, Binance.US raised over $200 million in a round with a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation. After Binance Holdings reached a settlement with U.S. authorities in 2023, Binance.US lost significant market share and is now seeking to win back clients to compete with larger rivals. The firm has also explored new business lines such as prediction markets.
In terms of expansion plans, Binance.US is seeking to restore money transmitter licenses in some U.S. states and is discussing bringing in external trading liquidity, with potential sources including the global Binance exchange, though no specific plans have been finalized. The company appointed Stephen Gregory as its CEO earlier this year.
The fundraising plan comes as digital asset firms seek to capitalize on a more favorable U.S. regulatory environment, with existing exchanges expanding product offerings and overseas competitors looking to grow their U.S. operations. World Liberty has ties to Binance: According to Arkham data, Binance holds the majority supply of its USD1 stablecoin. USD1 was also used by an investment firm linked to the UAE leadership to purchase $2 billion in Binance equity.
1 seconds ago
Coinbase will suspend trading for NEON and SYND.
Coinbase Assets announced in a post that, based on recent asset reviews, Coinbase will suspend trading of Neon EVM (NEON) and Syndicate (SYND) at approximately 3 AM Beijing time on November 17, 2026.
1 seconds ago
Binance.US is seeking $100 million in financing to expand its crypto operations.
Bloomberg reported that Binance.US is seeking to raise $100 million to expand its cryptocurrency business.
1 seconds ago
Stripe Co-founder: After acquiring Privy, its revenue rose approximately 9-fold, while wallet asset scale surged roughly 25 times.
Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison wrote that since Privy joined Stripe over a year ago, its wallet assets have grown roughly 25 times, monthly active developers have tripled, revenue has increased ninefold, and it now facilitates nearly $25 billion in transactions monthly. Companies including Ramp, Deel, Klarna, and Hyperliquid are building embedded banking features on Privy. Stripe is deeply integrating Privy into its Treasury, Link, and Connect products to accelerate global expansion and feature development, and plans to launch a Link balance feature. Privy’s wallet infrastructure now supports AI agents for transactions and revenue generation, with use cases including Merit Systems and Nevermined. Collison forecasts that the agent economy will continue its rapid growth. The two sides are building a unified API that supports holding stablecoin balances and earning yields, fiat on- and off-ramps, and card-based spending. Collison also noted that significant integration work remains between Privy, Bridge, and Stripe’s other business units.
1 seconds ago
Multiliquid raises $8 million in seed funding, led by Polychain.
Uniform Labs, the developer of tokenized asset settlement platform Multiliquid, has raised a total of $8 million across its Pre-Seed and Seed rounds. The latest Seed round was led by Polychain, with participation from Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, and Circle Ventures. Details on the amount raised in each round and valuations were not disclosed. Multiliquid is now live on Ethereum and Solana, enabling institutions to complete two-way conversions between tokenized assets and stablecoins at net asset value (NAV) in a single atomic transaction with simultaneous settlement. The platform serves asset issuers, institutional treasuries, DeFi lending protocols, and market makers, supporting use cases including reserve rebalancing, margin management, and yield strategy adjustments. Operating on a non-custodial model, it enforces transfer restrictions, identity verification, and issuer-defined compliance rules at the settlement layer, and has already begun processing initial pilot transactions. The funding will be used to expand the protocol engineering team, increase liquidity and trading platform partnerships, and integrate more tokenized cash and Treasury products on EVM networks and Solana. The company stated that it currently has no plans to issue a token.
1 seconds ago
Jensen Huang backs CoreWeave: The company’s financial conditions continue to improve and it does not require guarantees from NVIDIA.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said data center operator CoreWeave’s financial health is improving. Nvidia is CoreWeave’s computing equipment supplier. Speaking at an event in Stockholm, Huang stated: “CoreWeave’s strength grows stronger every day.” He believes Nvidia does not need to provide financial guarantees for CoreWeave. “I am optimistic. In fact, their cost of capital is declining.” Earlier, credit market confidence in CoreWeave had deteriorated, with concerns rising over its default risk, and Huang is trying to restore market confidence in the company. CoreWeave is a key case testing the sustainability of business models for emerging AI infrastructure firms. These firms emerged to meet the nearly unlimited growth in AI computing power demand as described by companies like Nvidia. Backed by suppliers including Nvidia, CoreWeave and similar entities have taken on large amounts of debt, sparking market concerns about circular financing generating artificial demand.
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.
Coinbase Assets announced in a post that, based on recent asset reviews, Coinbase will suspend trading of Neon EVM (NEON) and Syndicate (SYND) at approximately 3 AM Beijing time on November 17, 2026.
6 minutes ago
Binance.US is seeking $100 million in financing to expand its crypto operations.
Bloomberg reported that Binance.US is seeking to raise $100 million to expand its cryptocurrency business.
6 minutes ago
Stripe Co-founder: After acquiring Privy, its revenue rose approximately 9-fold, while wallet asset scale surged roughly 25 times.
Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison wrote that since Privy joined Stripe over a year ago, its wallet assets have grown roughly 25 times, monthly active developers have tripled, revenue has increased ninefold, and it now facilitates nearly $25 billion in transactions monthly. Companies including Ramp, Deel, Klarna, and Hyperliquid are building embedded banking features on Privy. Stripe is deeply integrating Privy into its Treasury, Link, and Connect products to accelerate global expansion and feature development, and plans to launch a Link balance feature. Privy’s wallet infrastructure now supports AI agents for transactions and revenue generation, with use cases including Merit Systems and Nevermined. Collison forecasts that the agent economy will continue its rapid growth. The two sides are building a unified API that supports holding stablecoin balances and earning yields, fiat on- and off-ramps, and card-based spending. Collison also noted that significant integration work remains between Privy, Bridge, and Stripe’s other business units.
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Starknet has launched a seven-day community vote on October 15, 2026, asking STRK holders whether the network should explore leaving Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem to become an independent Layer 1 blockchain designed to resist future quantum computing threats.
Summary
Starknet opened a seven day community poll on researching an independent quantum resistant blockchain network. STRK holders are being asked for their views, but the vote cannot authorize any migration. StarkWare says existing STARK proofs resist quantum attacks, while Ethereum connected infrastructure remains dependent. Starknet says STRK would remain its native token and existing Ethereum bridges would stay open. Approval would begin research and additional votes; rejection would continue quantum upgrades within Starknet L2. The Starknet governance forum published the proposal after StarkWare began discussing the possibility on October 8. The vote is nonbinding and will determine whether developers should conduct further research into the proposed change, with no decision yet made to separate Starknet from Ethereum.
The proposal confirms that STRK would remain the network’s native cryptocurrency under either arrangement, with no replacement token planned. Existing bridges connecting Ethereum and Starknet would remain available.
Starknet considers leaving Ethereum over quantum security Starknet currently operates as an Ethereum Layer 2 network, processing transactions using its own infrastructure while relying on Ethereum for certain security and settlement functions.
The proposed move would allow Starknet to operate as an independent Layer 1 blockchain, giving it more direct control over the systems responsible for its security.
BREAKING: STARKNET TAKES ITS INDEPENDENT POST-QUANTUM L1 AMBITION INTO GOVERNANCE.
A NEW GOVERNANCE POLL ASKS STRK HOLDERS TO BACK FURTHER RESEARCH INTO THE MOVE.
— Starknet Ecosystem 🥷🏽 (@StarknetEco) October 15, 2026 According to the governance proposal, concerns about future quantum computers have prompted developers to examine whether maintaining the current relationship with Ethereum could delay certain security improvements.
Quantum computers could eventually threaten widely used cryptographic systems, particularly some methods used to protect blockchain accounts and authorize transactions.
StarkWare believes its existing technology provides a foundation for addressing those risks. However, the proposal acknowledges that parts of Starknet remain dependent on Ethereum’s infrastructure.
The network currently uses Ethereum for functions including data availability and its main blockchain bridge. Changes to the security of those components depend partly on Ethereum’s own upgrade plans. Moving to an independent Layer 1 could allow Starknet developers to set security requirements for those functions without waiting for Ethereum.
The proposal does not identify a date for any transition or explain the complete technical process required to establish an independent network. Developers have not presented a final design covering consensus, data availability, bridging or migration procedures.
StarkWare began discussing the possible change publicly on October 8. The latest vote asks whether the community supports investing further resources in examining that option.
Why Starknet says its technology can resist quantum attacks Starknet’s argument centers on its existing cryptographic system, known as STARK proofs.
These proofs allow computers to verify that transactions follow a network’s rules without repeating every calculation involved.
StarkWare explains that STARK proofs use mathematical techniques that do not depend on the same cryptographic assumptions as conventional elliptic curve signatures. The company describes its proof system as resistant to attacks from sufficiently powerful quantum computers.
Starknet uses native account abstraction, allowing user accounts to operate through programmable smart contracts.
According to its developers, this structure would allow accounts to adopt quantum resistant signature methods without requiring a complete network protocol upgrade.
However, the governance proposal does not claim that every part of Starknet has already completed the necessary security improvements.
The project maintains a Quantum Hub describing existing protections and the components that still need work.
Its research identifies the cryptographic systems used for account authorization, transaction verification and connections with other blockchains as areas requiring continued attention.
The network has previously discussed replacing certain cryptographic components with alternatives designed for stronger quantum resistance.
For example, StarkWare has explored replacing older hash functions and introducing new signature methods as researchers develop and test them.
The company’s published technical work describes quantum protection as a process involving multiple components, not a single network upgrade.
In an earlier discussion of Ethereum security and StarkWare’s research, StarkWare cofounder Eli Ben-Sasson described the company’s history of developing STARK technology for Ethereum.
He pointed to work beginning in 2019 and 2020 on proof systems intended to improve blockchain scaling and prepare for possible quantum computing risks.
Starknet confirms STRK token will remain unchanged The governance proposal addresses what would happen to STRK if developers eventually pursued an independent blockchain. It states that the existing cryptocurrency would remain Starknet’s native token regardless of whether the network continued operating on Ethereum or became a separate Layer 1.
Developers are not proposing to issue a new token as part of the possible transition. The proposal further confirms that bridges between Ethereum and Starknet would remain open.
Consequently, the discussion does not represent a plan to immediately close connections with Ethereum or remove existing routes for transferring assets between the networks.
Starknet’s current infrastructure supports applications involving decentralized finance, cryptocurrency transfers and blockchain privacy services.
On October 13, StarkWare introduced Shadow Accounts, allowing users to interact with decentralized applications without publicly linking every activity to their main wallets.
As detailed in Starknet’s new wallet privacy feature, the system creates separate application accounts funded through shielded balances.
Transactions and positions held by Shadow Accounts remain visible on the blockchain, although the links to their original funding wallets are obscured.
The system is part of Starknet’s ongoing work on account functionality and privacy.
Earlier in June, StarkWare introduced STRK20, a privacy framework that allows compatible tokens to move between public and shielded balances.
The STRK20 privacy framework for blockchain tokens uses cryptographic proofs to verify private transactions while maintaining mechanisms for authorized disclosure.
Neither of those developments requires Starknet to become an independent Layer 1, and developers have not announced changes to the services as part of the governance poll.
Seven day vote will determine whether research continues The community vote is open to STRK holders and will remain active for seven days beginning October 15. Its purpose is to measure whether participants support further examination of Starknet becoming an independent blockchain. The proposal provides three possible outcomes: Yes, No and Neutral.
A Yes result would begin a research process focused on the independent Layer 1 option. Developers would then prepare more detailed proposals and conduct additional votes. A No result would keep Starknet’s quantum security work within its existing Ethereum Layer 2 structure.
If the result is Neutral, the governance discussion would remain open while participants seek answers to unresolved questions. The forum states that results will become visible immediately when the polling period closes.
Community members can participate through the Starknet governance portal, with discussion continuing on the official forum.
The voting process does not establish a timetable for migration, authorize a network upgrade or require existing users to move their assets.
Starknet’s published decentralization roadmap currently includes work on validator participation, consensus and network security.
The roadmap describes plans for validators to participate in block validation and later take responsibility for additional network operations. StarkWare has said that its work on quantum protection remains active regardless of the vote’s outcome.
The October 15 governance proposal specifies that a favorable result would begin research followed by more detailed proposals and polls. No final migration vote or date has been announced.
Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet has opened a non-binding vote asking STRK holders whether it should explore becoming an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain.
On Thursday, Starknet opened a seven-day poll, which offers three options: support further research, oppose it, or remain neutral pending more information. Voting closes on Oct. 22, with results published afterwards.
A “Yes” vote would signal support for further research, not authorize a transition. Further proposals and governance votes would be required, and no timetable for becoming an L1 has been announced.
StarkWare, the developer behind Starknet, said the move could allow the network to pursue quantum-resistant security without depending on Ethereum’s upgrade schedule. Starknet currently relies on Ethereum for infrastructure, including its bridge and data availability, which StarkWare identifies as remaining quantum-security dependencies.
“Quantum-proofing crypto is urgent, so we must move at lightning speed,” StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph, contrasting the proposal with what he described as slower progress at Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Both Ben-Sasson and Starknet hinted at the proposal in separate X posts on Oct. 8, framing it as a move to become “the first fully quantum-resistant network” by 2027.
In June, StarkWare unveiled a three-phase quantum-resistance roadmap for Starknet, covering signature upgrades, smart-contract migration and Ethereum-dependent infrastructure.
In March, Ethereum developers established a dedicated post-quantum team, aiming to introduce initial protocol-level protections by 2029.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet has opened a non-binding vote asking STRK holders whether it should explore becoming an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain.
On Thursday, Starknet opened a seven-day poll, which offers three options: support further research, oppose it, or remain neutral pending more information. Voting closes on Oct. 22, with results published afterwards.
A “Yes” vote would signal support for further research, not authorize a transition. Further proposals and governance votes would be required, and no timetable for becoming an L1 has been announced.
StarkWare, the developer behind Starknet, said the move could allow the network to pursue quantum-resistant security without depending on Ethereum’s upgrade schedule. Starknet currently relies on Ethereum for infrastructure, including its bridge and data availability, which StarkWare identifies as remaining quantum-security dependencies.
“Quantum-proofing crypto is urgent, so we must move at lightning speed,” StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph, contrasting the proposal with what he described as slower progress at Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Both Ben-Sasson and Starknet hinted at the proposal in separate X posts on Oct. 8, framing it as a move to become “the first fully quantum-resistant network” by 2027.
In June, StarkWare unveiled a three-phase quantum-resistance roadmap for Starknet, covering signature upgrades, smart-contract migration and Ethereum-dependent infrastructure.
In March, Ethereum developers established a dedicated post-quantum team, aiming to introduce initial protocol-level protections by 2029.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Ethereum’s layer-2 solution Starknet has launched a non-binding poll to determine whether STRK token holders want to investigate transitioning Starknet into an independent, post-quantum layer-1 blockchain.
Three options in governance pollStarting Thursday, Starknet invited the community to take part in a seven-day vote that offers three choices: support additional research into a layer-1 transition, oppose the move, or adopt a neutral stance until more details surface. Voting concludes on October 22, and the results will be published afterward.
A “Yes” outcome would not authorize a direct transition. Instead, it would prompt further research and discussion, leading to subsequent proposals and more formal governance votes. No definite timeline for potentially becoming a layer-1 chain has been established.
Motivation for quantum resistanceStarkWare, the developer behind Starknet, stated that shifting to an independent blockchain could give the network flexibility to implement quantum-resistant technologies ahead of Ethereum’s pace. Currently, Starknet is reliant on Ethereum’s base infrastructure for essential services such as its bridge and data availability. StarkWare has highlighted these features as continuing points of dependency that could delay the adoption of strong quantum-resistant protection.
Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, emphasized the urgency around strengthening cryptographic protections, stating:
“Quantum-proofing crypto is urgent, so we must move at lightning speed,” said Ben-Sasson, in contrast to what he described as slower progress in Ethereum and Bitcoin networks.
Ben-Sasson, along with the Starknet team, alluded to this initiative in X posts earlier in October, outlining a vision for Starknet to become “the first fully quantum-resistant network” by 2027.
Mini dictionary: StarkWare is the zero-knowledge cryptography company responsible for developing and maintaining Starknet, a scaling network built on Ethereum aimed at increasing throughput and reducing transaction costs using advanced proofs like STARKs.
Quantum-resistance roadmapsIn June, StarkWare presented a three-step plan to enhance the quantum resistance of Starknet. The roadmap details upgrades to cryptographic signatures, migration of smart contracts, and stronger security for infrastructure still connected to Ethereum. The intention is to gradually minimize reliance on Ethereum for critical components that could be vulnerable in a quantum computing scenario.
Meanwhile, in March, Ethereum core developers set up a dedicated post-quantum cryptography team. This group aims to deliver fundamental, protocol-level protections against quantum threats by 2029, focusing on a longer-term timeline.
ProjectQuantum-resistance goalExpected timelineStarknetFirst fully quantum-resistant networkBy 2027 (proposed)EthereumInitial protocol-level protectionsBy 2029 (planned)This proposed transition marks the latest governance initiative for Starknet as it seeks to advance beyond current cryptographic standards, while still relying on community consent for any substantial platform changes.
Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
The crypto project Starknet, which was originally created as a technical add-on for scaling Ethereum, has announced plans to become a fully independent blockchain. The StarkWare team has put a radical question to a community vote: should the project break free from the control of the main altcoin network and move to the status of an autonomous Layer 1?
The market reacted to the prospect of this "divorce" as a powerful financial trigger. In the first weeks of October, the native STRK token had already soared 200%, then pulled back along with the rest of the industry. But today, right on the day the official vote launched, the charts went up again, with the price gaining 25% at one point.
STRK price reaction following StarkWare's Layer 1 governance proposal on October 15, 2026, Source: TradingViewTrading activity has shifted entirely to derivatives: the daily trading volume on the futures market reached $894.84 million, almost eight times the spot sector's figure ($116.38 million). The market is aggressively digesting this flurry of orders alongside today's scheduled unlock of 127 million tokens for early investors.
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Behind this decision lies a cold mathematical calculation: Starknet is trying to protect itself against the quantum computers of the future. The head of the project, Eli Ben-Sasson, is convinced that the development of AI has brought the arrival of machines capable of breaking modern encryption closer.
Starknet is technically ready to deploy quantum resistance as early as 2027. The problem is that it is currently tightly tied to the slow Ethereum, which plans to upgrade its security only by the end of 2029. To avoid losing two years, Starknet wants to take full control into its own hands.
99% "for" and one very big risk. How much it costs to leave EthereumThe poll on the Snapshot platform, which will run until October 22, has already shown total unanimity: the "For" option is gaining 99.88% of the votes. At the same time, the project's tokenomics will not change: STRK will remain the network's only settlement asset, and the bridges to Ethereum will keep working.
However, investors should understand that the current referendum is preliminary (non-binding) and only gives the green light to research. The technical transition itself will require months of preparation and new votes.
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The main price of this independence is security. Currently, Starknet transactions are protected by the authority of Ethereum and the billions of dollars of its staked validators. Having set sail on its own, the project will have to build its own protection system, whose reliability will rest solely on the capitalization of the STRK token.
At the moment, it stands at $580.24 million, which is incomparably smaller than Ethereum's, but the developers are deliberately accepting this trade-off for the sake of a technological edge.
Starknet holders on Thursday began voting on whether the network should explore becoming an independent Layer 1 with greater control over its security as threats posed by quantum computing loom.
At the time of writing, 177.6 million STRK had been cast, with 99.91% in favor of a "Yes" outcome, according to the Snapshot poll. If it passed, the team would follow up with more detailed proposals and additional polls. A "no" result would leave Starknet's post-quantum work on its existing Layer 2 path, Starkware said.
StarkWare first floated the L1 idea earlier this month, saying on Oct. 8 that Starknet's reliance on Ethereum leaves it dependent on the network becoming quantum-safe and AI-safe quickly enough. CEO Eli Ben-Sasson argued that chains need the right cryptography, the ability to upgrade it and, in Starknet's case, a move to Layer 1 to prepare for those threats.
Starknet already uses hash-based STARK proofs and its accounts can adopt post-quantum signatures without a protocol upgrade. However, its bridge to Ethereum and its data availability arrangements remain tied to Ethereum's infrastructure and upgrade timeline, according to the proposal.
"No timeline for that exists yet, but Starknet starts further ahead than most chains," StarkWare said, adding that "the parts of Starknet under Starknet’s control can be quantum-resistant soon."
The security push coincides with new privacy features on Starknet. Earlier this week, StarkWare introduced Shadow Accounts, an STRK20 privacy primitive that uses persistent pseudonymous identities for decentralized applications, allowing users to maintain positions without publicly linking their activity to their main wallets.
Ethena [ENA] fell sharply as bearish pressure persisted following the September Consumer Price Index (CPI) release. The altcoin breached $0.20 support and plunged to $0.182.
In doing so, Ethena erased its October and late September gains. At press time, it traded around $0.184, down 12.3% over the past day. Trading Volume rose 49% over the same period, showing increased activity during the sell-off.
Why did Ethena’s long liquidations surge? As Ethena [ENA] lost $0.20, leveraged bulls took a heavy hit. CoinGlass data showed that ENA’s price volatility exceeded 15% over 24 hours.
The sharp move increased liquidation risk, with over $8.2 million in long positions liquidated.
Source: CoinGlass Forced long closures can amplify selling pressure, leaving remaining leveraged positions vulnerable to further declines. Capital also flowed out of the Futures market. Ethena recorded $301 million in outflows against $263 million in inflows over the past day.
Source: CoinGlass That left Futures Netflow at -$38 million, reflecting net outflows. These flows alone could not establish whether traders predominantly closed longs or shorts.
Are Ethena’s whale sales adding pressure? Beyond derivatives, some large holders also reduced exposure.
Nazoku reported that a whale sold nearly $800,000 worth of ENA before the CPI release.
According to the report, the investor anticipated a lower-than-expected reading and realized roughly $50,000 in profit.
Separately, YZi Labs transferred 1.2 million ENA, worth $252,000, to exchanges, raising the prospect of additional selling.
Source: Arkham The cited report put YZi Labs’ cumulative sales at 135 million ENA. However, the latest exchange deposit alone did not confirm another sale.
Even so, Spot Exchange Netflows offered a possible counterweight to the selling pressure.
Source: CoinGlass Spot Netflow remained negative during the decline, reaching roughly -$2.4 million at press time, compared with -$4 million previously.
More tokens left tracked exchanges than entered them. This could reflect accumulation, although withdrawals alone did not confirm dip-buying.
Net outflows also narrowed, suggesting that the withdrawal trend offered less support than the previous day’s reading.
Can ENA reclaim $0.20? Ethena remained under downside pressure following heavy Long Liquidations and net Futures outflows.
If selling persisted, $0.16 could become the next downside level, with $0.13 representing a deeper bearish scenario. For buyers, reclaiming and holding $0.20 could weaken the immediate bearish case. Until then, Spot withdrawals offered encouragement without confirming a recovery.
Final Summary Ethena fell 12.3%, losing $0.20 support as Long Liquidations exceeded $8.2 million. ENA left exchanges during the sell-off, but withdrawals offered little certainty about who was buying.
Marc Andreessen sounded angry. It was May 22, 2024, and he was venting to a table full of President Joe Biden’s officials in the West Wing office of Jeff Zients, then the White House chief of staff. The famed venture capitalist was in town with his longtime investing partner, Ben Horowitz, to discuss US tech policy, and the private lunch soon turned heated. Andreessen expressed his frustration about a slew of Biden administration initiatives and regulations, especially ones he believed were crippling the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries. Near the end of the lunch, he also launched into a tirade against a Democratic proposal to hike taxes on the wealthiest 0.01% of American households. “The billionaire tax seemed to offend him more than anything we’d done on AI or even crypto,” says Bruce Reed, one of the handful of White House advisers who had joined the meeting.
Andreessen’s free-market principles were no surprise, but it was odd that he acted as if those across the table were somehow his enemies. Zients, after all, had previously served with Andreessen on the board of Facebook. (Zients declined to comment.) Nevertheless, the officials were used to hearing business leaders advocate for their interests and mostly hoped to clear up the misconceptions Andreessen seemed to have about an executive order Biden had issued on AI safety. Tensions eventually eased, and the lunch ended cordially, according to people familiar with the discussion who asked not to be named discussing details of the private meeting. Andreessen had positive talks with different Biden advisers two days afterward. His visit was quickly forgotten amid the intensifying presidential race.
Forgotten, at least, until Donald Trump won the election months later and Andreessen revealed in the aftermath the crazy reason why he had unexpectedly plowed millions of dollars into the Make America Great Again movement during the campaign. Andreessen, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and said back then that Trump’s immigration regime “makes me sick to my stomach,” explained on a podcast that he was compelled by “absolutely horrifying” discussions he once had with Biden officials. In his retelling, they divulged a top-secret plan for the federal government to take control of the AI industry and outlaw all startups and open-source software. “ ‘You guys think you can just start companies and write code and release code on the internet—those days are over,’ ” he remembered them warning in the meeting.
Andreessen was so aghast that he felt it was in the best interest of his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, which is known as a16z, to publicly endorse Trump. “They’re going to kill us,” Andreessen recalled thinking on Ross Douthat’s podcast in January 2025. “We walked out and stood in the parking lot of the West Wing and took one look at each other, and we’re like, ‘Yep, we’re for Trump.’ ” (Horowitz later hedged his support when Kamala Harris replaced Biden in the race, and he made a significant personal donation to her campaign.)
The incident became Silicon Valley lore, but at first the Biden-Harris camp couldn’t even figure out what meeting Andreessen was referring to, according to four people familiar with the situation. When they finally realized he was talking about the lunch in Zients’ office, those who attended were baffled: Andreessen is prone to hyperbole, but this neared complete fiction. “It is simply false that the Biden administration told Andreessen and Horowitz that the government would ban all AI startups,” says Ben Buchanan, then a special adviser to the president on AI, who attended the May 22 meeting. It also made little sense why Andreessen hadn’t asked about this astonishingly draconian plan at a meeting on May 24 with national security advisers including Anne Neuberger. (Neuberger, whom a16z has since hired, declined to comment.) As another top Biden official familiar with their visits told colleagues of Andreessen’s version of events: “Total bulls---.”
Illustration: Derek Abella for Bloomberg Businessweek
A representative for Andreessen, Horowitz and a16z’s government affairs chief, Collin McCune, who also attended the contentious meeting in DC, has said the firm stands by their recollections. (Horowitz and McCune didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.) Whatever actually occurred at that lunch matters less than what’s happened since: a16z, known for Andreessen once proclaiming that “software is eating the world,” is now eating the political world. The dominant VC firm, which manages more than $100 billion in assets, has gone from Valley kingmaker to DC power broker. Through political action committees and funding tied to its co-founders and partners, the Andreessen Horowitz team has poured at least $116 million into federal politics since Trump’s reelection. They have contributed more to campaign efforts for the coming midterms than George Soros, Miriam Adelson or Charles Koch.
A16z generally supports candidates whose views align with its priorities in AI and crypto. But since choosing Trump, Andreessen has contributed more in party-aligned donations than he did in the preceding three decades combined, with roughly 94% going to Republicans, including $6 million for the MAGA Inc. super PAC. This shift remains a subject of debate. In interviews, current and former a16z partners, firm-backed startup founders, fellow board members and VCs, political associates and old friends describe Andreessen as an undeniably brilliant industrialist, but also someone who is perpetually driven by grievances that don’t quite match reality. Most of these people asked not to be named, to avoid getting on the wrong side of one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley.
For his part, Andreessen, who declined to comment for this article, has suggested his values have always leaned conservative because of his Midwestern roots. He’s spoken of ambitions to reverse a US decline caused in his view by anti-American sentiment, media elites and incompetent bureaucrats. (He was an early recruiter for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.) Private messages sent to a WhatsApp group, which were reported by the Washington Post, show Andreessen ripping immigration and diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which he said are harming native-born Americans, especially in the Trump voter base. He complained about progressive universities such as Stanford, describing them as political lobbying operations, and said the National Science Foundation (NSF) deserves “the bureaucratic death penalty,” apparently for funding research that allegedly led to online censorship of the right. “I was born in 1971 in Iowa and grew up in Wisconsin,” he wrote. “My people are furious and not going to take it anymore.”
One illustrious a16z-funded founder, who hails Andreessen as likely the “highest IQ” investor on the planet, says it never made sense why he seemed to hold such resentment toward the very institutions that helped him achieve the American dream. “It’s like, dude, you’ve made billions of dollars,” this founder says. “How can you think the government is f---ed up and everything is wrong with America when it’s obviously worked better for you than it has for all but maybe a dozen people in human history?”
These days, Andreessen, 55, splits his time between his California estates. In Malibu, he has a $34 million beach house that’s held in an LLC called Paradise Shack, but he prefers to do his extensive podcasting at a separate beach house down the road valued at $44.5 million. That’s when he’s not at his $177 million compound, also in Malibu, which has oceanfront guesthouses, caretaker quarters, a cinema and spa, or his Bay Area properties in Atherton. Aside from special events, such as Jeff Bezos’s 2025 wedding, Andreessen, his wife and their two children spend most of their time as a family at home, according to two people familiar with their living situation. When the family does venture out, they often bring their security guards.
Andreessen came from humbler beginnings. He grew up on the piney edges of New Lisbon, Wisconsin, a small town about two hours from Milwaukee. His childhood home was a split-level about the footprint of one of his swimming pools today. It still sits on a shallow lake inlet and hasn’t changed much since the Reagan era. For years after escaping, Andreessen professed to hate talking about his youth there, and rarely did.
The house where Andreessen grew up in rural Wisconsin. — Photographer: Caleb Alvarado for Bloomberg Businessweek
For a renowned native son who’s lately been ascribing his moral reawakening to his proud Wisconsin heritage, it’s remarkable how few vestiges of him remain there. There’s no bronze plaque commemorating his role in the tech boom in New Lisbon’s tired downtown. Residents say he pretty much disappeared long before he was pictured on a throne barefoot on the cover of Time magazine in 1996. Neighbors on Cherokee Lane say they had no clue the creator of Netscape, which ushered in the internet age, originally learned to program next door.
The only visible sign of Andreessen’s Midwestern past is hidden at the Beer Hunter, about 20 minutes away, in the village of Hustler. In the bar’s bathroom, above the urinal, is a nostalgic snapshot of a teenage Andreessen plucking his electric guitar with a wide grin and “Buddy frickin’ Holly hairdo,” as owner Kelly Deasy puts it. Deasy was good friends with Marc growing up in the 1980s. He fondly remembers jamming with him after school, summers occasionally swimming at the lake behind his house and playing Dungeons & Dragons together. Andreessen loved concocting detailed definitions for new D&D inventory items, including rings of power that allowed your character to shape-shift or command creatures with fewer than 13 points of intelligence. “Marc was always the dungeon master. He was great at telling stories,” Deasy says.
A photo of Andreessen, bottom left, in the bathroom of a bar near his hometown owned by Kelly Deasy, a childhood friend — Photographer: Caleb Alvarado for Bloomberg Businessweek
It’s still a mystery to many classmates why Andreessen, until very recently, expressed such acrimony toward his upbringing. It wasn’t unusual for kids there to dream of a less boring life, but Andreessen has said in interviews that Midwestern culture is “all wrong,” rife with “subsistence farmers” and “self-denying people who go through life never expecting to be happy.” He’s described having to chop wood one winter to heat the family home and suffering through public schools with meager resources and no advanced classes. His relationship with his parents, Patricia and Lowell, was apparently so fraught that he refuses to speak of them. “His childhood was so intensely bad he just won’t go there,” Horowitz once told the New Yorker.
Dozens of longtime residents and family friends, however, describe New Lisbon as a normal slice of Middle America. Richard Hoile says Andreessen was the smartest kid in their class and was selected in fourth grade for a program to give gifted students early access to the high school’s new computer. He taught himself to code from a library book and persuaded his parents to buy him a computer from Radio Shack. Lowell, a sales manager for an agriculture company, even had a bulky dial-up device for booking seed orders remotely that Marc loved showing to his old buddies. “The first modem I ever saw,” says Andy Kurtz of the device. “He pulled out this briefcase and said, ‘This allows me to connect to computers anywhere in the world!’ ”
A freshman Andreessen during New Lisbon High School’s televised quiz bowl in the 1985-1986 season. — Source: WKBT News 8 Now
People close to the Andreessens say they were on the middle-class end of the blue-collar town and that Lowell and Pat were incredibly nice folks who supported Marc’s tech passions. Family friend Ken Southworth also notes that the town is so tiny that if there ever was trouble at home or “this or that SOB” mistreated Marc, word would’ve gotten out that could explain his puzzling animosity toward his parents and New Lisbon. “But there’s nothing—flat nothing,” Southworth insists.
New Lisbon’s high school had two computer labs with Apple IIs and IBMs, as well as classes devoted to teaching spreadsheets, word processing and other software applications. They were rudimentary, but Andreessen, who was more advanced than the teachers, was pretty much given free rein. “Marc acts like he was treated so poorly. That’s bulls---!” says Kim Dvorak, who says she always sat behind Andreessen in school. Archived yearbooks and newspapers capture an ordinary community supporting the wunderkind. He was a top 10 student, a member of the math club and Model UN and quiz bowl team, class treasurer and a Youth Governor for a county judge. He won a $2,000 scholarship sponsored by Eastman Kodak Co. his senior year, and he was named a young scholar by the same NSF that he now says deserves the bureaucratic death penalty.
He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which then ranked second only to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in engineering and was one of five institutions in the US chosen to host an NSF-funded supercomputer program. Andreessen worked at the school’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the early 1990s, where he helped create the groundbreaking Mosaic browser, which made the World Wide Web accessible to the masses.
Soon, Andreessen was off to California for an $80,000 tech job. Then, with Silicon Graphics Inc. founder Jim Clark, he co-founded Mosaic Communications Corp., as if they were authorized to build the commercial edition of the university’s Mosaic program. He and Clark ransacked NCSA talent to release the Mosaic Netscape browser. (After a legal dispute with Andreessen’s alma mater, the startup dropped the Mosaic branding.)
Images from a Businessweek photo shoot for the 1998 article “The Education of Marc Andreessen.” — Photographer: Alan Levenson
Netscape, which retailed for $39 a copy, rapidly eclipsed the original Mosaic and went public a mere 10 months after its beta launch. The 24-year-old Andreessen was suddenly worth $50 million. His parents stopped hearing from him around that time. They said in newspaper interviews they were proud of their son and missed him, but they wouldn’t follow him to California. His younger brother, Jeff, told Businessweek in 1998 that their childhood was a happy one and he didn’t understand why Marc hadn’t spoken to him in four years. When reached recently by phone, Lowell, who still lives in the area, says he cannot continue the conversation and asks never to be called again.
Deasy, the Beer Hunter owner, recalls sending Marc a congratulatory email after his early success, joking that “it wasn’t enough for him to take over New Lisbon. He also had to take over the world.” Andreessen never responded.
In Dungeons & Dragons games, “Marc was always the dungeon master,” says Deasy. “He was great at telling stories.” — Photographer: Caleb Alvarado for Bloomberg Businessweek
In many ways, Andreessen, an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, was the original hoodie-wearing tech bro. In the Netscape days, he wore baggy shorts, played Doom at the office, emailed through the night, and lived off SpaghettiOs and other junk food. (Netscape’s subsequently hired chief executive officer said the 6-foot-4 Andreessen ate burgers “like a horse, both in quantity and mannerisms.”) The company struggled to compete with Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer, the web browser that came standard on Windows and later proved central to the US Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust case against the tech giant. AOL acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion in stock a year before the dot-com bubble burst.
After that, Andreessen built several startups, joined the boards of eBay Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., and along with Horowitz, a Netscape product manager he had teamed with afterward, turned his attention to investing. In July 2009 they co-founded what became known as a16z (there are 16 letters between the A and Z bookending Andreessen Horowitz). He and Horowitz marketed a16z as the most founder-loyal VC firm in Menlo Park. Their stunning 2010s track record yielded stakes in Airbnb, Facebook, GitHub, Instacart, Instagram, Lyft, Slack Technologies and Twitter.
Andreessen acted as a caricature of himself online, averaging more than 100 tweets a day, frequently about inane memes or provocative topics. But he exuded more gravitas in person. The firm’s Sand Hill Road office has a modernist aesthetic, and Andreessen enjoyed clinking glasses of Highland Park 18 scotch on Fridays with his partners and studied out-of-print tomes on niche subjects in business history. He has said he thinks of himself as a “Midwestern engineer tinkerer” counterbalancing the tech industry’s “acid-dropping” culture. This self-conception came from a 1983 Esquire magazine profile he deeply loved of Robert Noyce, the legendary co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and then Intel Corp. In the article, the author, Tom Wolfe, describes how Noyce ventured to California with his Iowa values “sewn into the lining of his coat” and became known as the “Mayor of Silicon Valley.”
Andreessen treated the founders he backed like A-list Hollywood clients, and they insist he can be incredibly caring behind the scenes. Patrick Collison, CEO of fintech juggernaut Stripe Inc., remembers once falling seriously ill prior to a group dinner at Andreessen’s home and hurrying to Stanford Hospital. Collison texted his apologies for having to miss the dinner, and then was shocked when Andreessen showed up at his recovery room. “Marc didn’t just come by to give best wishes,” Collison says. “He spent three hours sitting with me in that little room.”
Andreessen’s insights were invaluable on company boards. One colleague was surprised how “linear” Andreessen’s mind was in a corporate governance role, unlike the wackier role he played online. A different board director says Andreessen is “a joy” to serve with: a great listener and pattern-matcher who isn’t afraid to vigorously challenge others, usually with humor. “For those who don’t know him, he’s clearly intimidating,” this director says. “For those of us who know him, we’re always waiting in anticipation for him to inject his viewpoint.”
A big appeal of a16z was that it offered expert resources for functions like marketing and sales, but political lobbying was not originally on the menu. Andreessen played the game himself and made no bones about switching allegiances when expedient. He donated $250,000 in support of Vice President Al Gore in 2000, and then threatened to drop support for John Kerry four years later after the senator sought to kill tax incentives for companies outsourcing jobs to China. After a gushing 1,500-word blog endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008, he threw his weight behind Mitt Romney in the next presidential election.
By the 2016 presidential race, Andreessen was already questioning his political assumptions. He later told Joe Rogan and other podcasters that Trump’s victory set off a phase of introspection during which he concluded that he had become too assimilated to California and needed to get back to his Wisconsin values. But people close to him say his conversion wasn’t so immediate. Andreessen had actually expressed concern years earlier that Valley-driven social upheaval was likely inevitable, whether due to data privacy issues or growing monopoly power in the tech industry.
His falling out with the media was underway before as well. He became notorious on Twitter for blocking anyone with whom he had the slightest disagreement and said he disliked the “nasty articles” about tech entrepreneurs in Gawker’s heyday. It’s not hard to see where he was coming from: Once, a magazine intern haplessly emailed a fact-checking request to a16z’s communications team asking for confirmation that Andreessen’s head was indeed shaped like an egg. He experienced WTF moments when friends were canceled, including one from his Netscape days who was essentially forced by activists to leave his new job as CEO of Mozilla Corp., the maker of the Firefox browser, over a years-old $1,000 donation in support of a ban on same-sex marriage in California.
Yet Andreessen and his team were far from right-wing culture warriors during Trump’s first term. If anything, they remained relatively progressive. While Andreessen said at a tech conference in 2017 that Breitbart’s news coverage had a better read on Middle America than coastal elites did, he also agreed onstage with investor Reid Hoffman that it was vital to build bridges between the country’s factions. The next year, a16z introduced a Cultural Leadership Fund to increase Black representation in the tech industry, with Diddy and Will Smith as limited partners. Horowitz, a friend and champion of then-Senator Kamala Harris, continued advocating for DEI causes through her 2020 presidential primary campaign.
A friend and former VC associate says any personal transformation for Andreessen around this period seemed more driven by business than politics, especially as the Securities and Exchange Commission ramped up pressure on the crypto industry, which a16z had invested in significantly. Scotch Fridays dried up as the firm ballooned from a few dozen employees to several hundred. This friend sensed Andreessen becoming more guarded as a16z’s stature grew and says the “real Marc” was only accessible to a dwindling circle of friends. “His public persona is a lot less human than his personal one,” the friend says. “But I think you get to see the ‘real Marc’ when he’s with his family. You’d be surprised. He’s just a regular guy.”
Andreessen in 2015. — Photographer: Joe Pugliese/AUGUST
Marc and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, stayed put at their Atherton compound during the Covid-19 pandemic. Their household staff normally numbers in the dozens, including personal assistants, chefs, housekeepers and nannies, according to three people familiar with the setup. But like everyone else, they found the ordeal excruciating. Laura was already fastidious about germs, and Andreessen would get pains in his neck from marathon Zoom calls at the dining table.
He coped with walks around Stanford University’s deserted campus, where Laura’s surname adorns almost a dozen buildings and landmarks. (Her father, billionaire Silicon Valley real estate developer John Arrillaga, was one of Stanford’s largest benefactors and a hero of Marc’s.) It was a radicalizing time. He loathed what he saw as the government’s catastrophic unpreparedness and ineffective policies, not to mention that damn Stanford security guard who kept yelling at him from a distance to put his mask back on as he marched by outside.
Andreessen, who complained about tech-platform censorship, began opening up in private group chats with like-minded colleagues in tech and politics. They fumed about what they saw as anti-police hysteria after George Floyd’s death and argued it was ludicrous that Democratic officials and public-health experts supported 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in spite of their opposition to large public gatherings. One Republican participant says Andreessen would routinely get “activated” by some hot-button issue, engage in hours of text-debating through “long, long, long group chat essays” and then often delete everything when the conversation died.
Not long after he and Laura bought their Malibu estate in the exclusive beach enclave of Paradise Cove—then the most expensive home purchase in California history—people close to him noticed a real change. Amid all the podcast talk of reembracing his Wisconsin values, he seemed to become more withdrawn from the outside world, one estranged tech colleague says. He and Laura, who was undergoing her own anti-DEI conversion, homeschooled their young son and even hired a mixed martial arts coach to teach him to fight in an octagon cage erected in one of their backyards. (Andreessen has since said publicly that such training is necessary in an increasingly violent America.)
Andreessen’s grievances worsened throughout Biden’s term in office. He eventually started fulminating publicly about suppressed masculinity, waning patriotism and the “woke mind virus.” To some, the sentiments came across as opportunistic posturing as Biden’s approval ratings collapsed and SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan upset a16z partners with their aggressive crypto enforcement actions and merger-and-acquisition reviews.
Richard Hanania, a right-wing political scientist who Andreessen asked in 2022 to put together a Signal chat of smart conservatives, noticed Andreessen’s views growing more extreme that year. He recalls the small group, which Tucker Carlson later joined, becoming an echo chamber of MAGA tribalism. It felt to him as if Andreessen’s principles were mostly driven by a reactive dislike of liberals, the media and really anyone challenging his tech efforts. “By 2023, Marc just had it with anyone who he didn’t see as sufficiently loyal to the Trump movement,” says Hanania, who soon left the Signal chat. (Andreessen has since blocked him on X.)
Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal Holdings Inc. and is now the CEO of a16z-backed Affirm Inc., has looked up to Andreessen ever since they crossed paths at the University of Illinois. Levchin has watched his tech friends shift to the right in recent years. He says that Andreessen distinguishes himself with his “moral backbone” on polarizing political issues. At the same time, Andreessen is “completely unafraid to take a 90- or 180-degree turn and say, ‘This is my new conviction,’” Levchin says. “At the most profound level possible, he’s willing to learn and be like, ‘Oh, I was wrong. Now I believe this is the truth, and everyone else can go f--- themselves.’”
Illustration: Derek Abella for Bloomberg Businessweek
In May 2023, a16z said it committed $500 million to its new focus on what it calls American Dynamism, which involves investments in homegrown companies in defense tech and other industries of strategic importance, such as Anduril Industries Inc. and SpaceX. Also in this portfolio is Flock Safety, which makes surveillance technology for police departments and commercial organizations. CEO Garrett Langley says no VCs wanted to get near Flock because of its third-rail mission, glossing over the fact that Y Combinator, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and five other institutional investors had backed the startup before a16z. “There was a realization that someone has to stand up and say the only way America is going to be a better place to live is via technology,” Langley says, praising Andreessen and Horowitz. “They’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.”
Andreessen codified his ethos in his viral “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” a lengthy October 2023 screed that heralded “technological supermen” as the engines of progress and cast central government planners as cloggers of this free-market machine. Andreessen, who has long lionized Gilded Age titans such as Andrew Carnegie and John Pierpont Morgan, wrote of the greatness of the “industrialists who came before us” and a yearning to make them proud. The manifesto cited Atlas Shrugged protagonist John Galt as one of its “patron saints” and railed against “enemies” of progress, especially “know-it-all” experts “indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable—playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.”
Maybe not coincidentally, Andreessen published his manifesto a week before participating in a bipartisan Senate forum discussing how the US should govern AI. Also in attendance were some of the kinds of people Andreessen had labeled as enemies in his manifesto, setting up a potential confrontation. Andreessen recalled recently on X that Max Tegmark, an AI safety researcher at MIT, “pound[ed] the table” in front of the senators, “demanding open source AI software be made illegal.”
Tegmark says that’s totally false. Five other attendees agree, saying the closed-door meeting was cordial and uneventful; Andreessen, they remember, didn’t say much at all. It seemed to reflect a decades-long pattern of tactical fabulism. Aside from being a replay of the disputed descriptions of the 2024 White House lunch, the episode echoed an event that helped spark the government’s monopoly case against Microsoft some 30 years ago. Andreessen, then at Netscape, sent his notes from a routine business meeting with Microsoft executives to the DOJ, claiming that Microsoft had explicitly threatened to annihilate his company if he didn’t cede control of the browser market. Microsoft execs who attended the meeting said they learned of these claims only years later and were bewildered, swearing that Andreessen’s recollections were nonsense.
Perhaps because of its framing of technologists as surrounded by such threats, the Techno-Optimist Manifesto was a hit among people inspired by Andreessen’s refrain that it’s finally “time to build.” In private, though, some big-name technologists and VCs say they found the 5,000-word essay somewhat ridiculous. (Even Thiel called the piece “pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda,” according to a leaked recording from an off-the-record talk in San Francisco.) It clearly repackaged tenets of effective accelerationism, or “e/acc,” a trendy pro-tech philosophy that argues in favor of unfettered innovation and against AI doomerism.
Four of the many a16z-backed startup founders interviewed for this story describe Andreessen’s manifesto as weirdly angry and oversimplistic. “Marc really does believe that all you have to do is build stuff and lives will improve, at the expense of nuance about how the real world operates and these things affect real people,” says one of these founders, noting that government intervention has hardly impeded tech leaders from accumulating trillions of dollars of wealth. “It’s not going to end well for this country if we keep going down this path.”
Andreessen and Horowitz first met Trump in July 2024 for dinner at his New Jersey golf club. They hit it off, people familiar with their interactions say, and Vice President JD Vance further persuaded Andreessen to contribute to the Trump 2.0 movement. His Wisconsin backstory and bet on American Dynamism played well at donor summits. In August 2024, at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s private GOP retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, one attendee says Andreessen impressed the crowd with a 40-minute fireside chat about a16z’s investments in military tech and AI breakthroughs. “He kept repeating that he only invests in companies that he firmly believes will help the country,” the attendee recalls.
After Trump’s election win that November, Andreessen spent a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago helping with the transition. (He jokingly referred to his position there as “unpaid intern.”) This included vetting DOGE hires and candidates for jobs at other government agencies. A source close to Andreessen says he was one of the loudest voices urging Trump to pick conservative investor David Sacks, the PayPal-veteran-turned-All-In podcaster, as his czar on AI and crypto, key priorities for a16z. Trump also appointed Scott Kupor, a16z’s first employee and longtime managing partner, to the influential post of director of the Office of Personnel Management.
Andreessen balked at joining the administration himself, in part because he didn’t want to divest from a16z, says a person familiar with his thinking. Not that this has curbed his influence: Andreessen has since been selected to serve in advisory roles with the Federal Reserve and the Department of Defense, while remaining on the boards of Coinbase Global Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. (née Facebook) and delving deeper into startups that depend on Pentagon contracts. Three people close to the White House say Andreessen cultivated a tight relationship with Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, who occasionally relays his guidance to senior White House staffers.
What’s stood out to observers is how Andreessen has managed to stay in the president’s good graces for so long, given Trump’s tendency to expel those he suspects are putting their interests before his. Where Musk has proved unpredictable on this front, Andreessen has gained a reputation as a rather shrewd diplomat willing to prove his loyalties. He was spotted cageside with Zuckerberg at the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s White House spectacular in June. During this year’s government deliberations over AI safety, he surprised some by encouraging Wiles to ease tensions with leaders from Anthropic PBC (the main rival of a16z-backed OpenAI), who Trump had branded “Leftwing nut jobs” on Truth Social. A person who’s closely observed Andreessen’s political interactions recalls how “utterly effusive” he was in talking with Trump officials, even thanking them at times for their service to the country.
This treatment has led to tangible victories in crypto for a16z, whose funds in the space total almost $10 billion. Pressure from the SEC has largely disappeared under Trump, and Congress handed Andreessen a big win in July 2025 when it passed a friendly national framework for stablecoins.
Equally important for a16z has been stamping out state laws on AI while advocating for lighter-touch federal oversight, a position Sacks has championed. For a state-level AI safety bill under consideration in New York, a16z lobbied to exempt “small” startups, which it defined as those with as much as $50 billion in annual AI revenue, a threshold that would have then excused virtually every company on the planet. When the law passed without the exemption, an a16z-allied super PAC poured millions of dollars into defeating Alex Bores, one of the bill’s authors, in his recent run for Congress. After Senate Democrats helped block a new pro-crypto bill, another affiliated PAC said it would invest $30 million to campaign against Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, a critic of the crypto industry.
A former Trump official says it’s become clear that Andreessen’s favorite AI policy is no policy, particularly with the debates this fall about whether the federal government should impose a pause in the development of frontier AI models or introduce a system for evaluating safety threats. Beyond AI and crypto, Andreessen mostly seemed keen to play “demolition derby” with any institutions he believed had somehow wronged him, says the ex-official, who often couldn’t understand the origin of his grievances. “Marc’s two top principles are supporting builders in this Randian quest against bureaucracy, and revenge,” this person explains. “Ultimately Marc comes down more on the side of ‘F--- my enemies.’”
Other critics worry that Andreessen is indulging in luxury beliefs, as his manifesto warned that his enemies tend to do, playing God with everyone else’s life while insulated from the consequences. The Andreessen family still spends much of its time in the bubble of their California compounds, according to people close to them.
Andreessen’s old friends and neighbors in New Lisbon remain blown away by his accomplishments. They are hopeful that his renewed interest in his Wisconsin roots will bring some of his techno-optimist prosperity back to their hometown, especially as he’s talked more lately about wanting to help “farm boys” like himself achieve success in America. Yet in all the years since he left, town leaders, who have continuously tried contacting Andreessen to seek support for the rural community, say he’s never responded and that they’re not aware of him ever giving back to the area save an unpaid $25,000 reward he once offered for information on a teacher who went missing in 1987 and was later found dead. The local school and library where Andreessen first learned to program have been renovated, but his name is not on the list of donors. (Andreessen, who is on the advisory board for his wife’s nonprofit Institute on Generosity, griped recently that the government has made it illegal for rich people to build public libraries the way Carnegie once did.) One resident says the town is “stuck in the 1970s.”
And unlike his Midwestern tinkerer idol, Robert Noyce, Andreessen hasn’t given anything back to his alma mater either. The original “Mayor of Silicon Valley” contributed significantly to the Iowa college that nurtured him, but Andreessen is still bitter about that decades-old legal spat with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which forced him to drop the Mosaic name and assure the university he hadn’t copied any code for Netscape. In a statement, the current dean of UIUC’s college of engineering says Andreessen remains an inspiration to students, adding: “We regret that we didn’t do a better job of celebrating him and his entrepreneurship at that time.”
If Andreessen’s June 2024 comments about the situation are any indication, he’s not ready to move forward. “To be totally honest, I’m still upset. Every subsequent administration, every subsequent new administration at the university has attempted to reach out and repair the bridge. I have not returned the calls,” Andreessen told Horowitz on their podcast. “I greatly value my grudges. They’re very important to me.” —With Sophie Alexander and Emily Birnbaum
Tokenized exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and indices have seen remarkable growth in 2026, with the sector’s market value more than tripling since the start of the year. Data from the blockchain analytics platform Token Terminal shows that the combined market capitalization of tokenized ETFs and indices rose from $219.2 million on January 1 to $686.5 million, an increase of 213% year to date.
Surge in Holder NumbersThe number of wallets holding tokenized ETFs has grown at an even faster pace. Since the beginning of 2026, the total has climbed from approximately 17,500 wallets to 897,700, increasing more than 51-fold. By comparison, the holder base for individual tokenized stocks grew by 26.6 times across the same span. This trend highlights that tokenized ETFs are now attracting holders at more than twice the rate seen for single stock tokens.
Much of this growth accelerated over the past two months. Holder counts saw steady increases through the first seven months of 2026, followed by a sharp rise in late August after Binance introduced its bStocks tokenized products, which significantly changed activity patterns in the sector.
Holder and Capital DistributionAnalysis of user demographics and funding shows a bifurcation in the market. Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, leads in holder numbers with its bStocks platform, reaching 448,400 holders and accounting for half of all tokenized ETF users tracked by Token Terminal. However, Binance’s share of the market capitalization stands at $160.1 million or 23.3%, signaling that individual holders, primarily retail, tend to invest smaller amounts.
Robinhood’s tokenized ETF platform demonstrates a similar trend, with 13.1% of holders making up just 5.4% of overall sector market cap. These statistics suggest growing adoption by retail investors through familiar trading apps.
In contrast, Ondo Finance, a decentralized finance platform, holds a smaller share of wallet count at 20.3% but commands the largest portion of market capitalization, with $325.7 million or 47.4% of the total. This distribution points to fewer, likely institutional participants with much larger individual stakes.
Mini dictionary: Ondo Finance is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that enables users to access tokenized securities and investment products, often bridging traditional and blockchain finance.
PlatformHolder Share (%)Market Cap Share (%)Market Cap ($M)Binance bStocks50.023.3160.1Robinhood13.15.4N/AOndo Finance20.347.4325.7Top Tokenized ETF ProductsBinance’s product based on the Nasdaq-100, QQQb, has emerged as the largest tokenized ETF by market cap and user count. QQQb now holds $67.6 million in capitalization and serves 314,500 holders, representing roughly 35% of all tokenized ETF holders. The SPYx tokenized S&P 500 tracker follows at $62.2 million, with Ondo’s IVVon, another S&P 500-linked token, trailing closely at $61.5 million.
Broad U.S. index trackers now dominate tokenized ETF demand; S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100-linked products in the top 10 capture nearly $330 million, about half of the sector’s overall value.
Many of these products track identical underlying indices but are launched by different issuers across multiple blockchains. This has led to demand being distributed among similar or near-identical tokens depending on the network and provider.
Ethereum Leads Among BlockchainsEthereum remains the leading blockchain for tokenized ETFs, hosting $303 million in value and representing 44.1% of the market. BNB Chain, often used for Binance’s products, ranks second with $192.1 million and 28% of sector share. Solana’s share stands at 13.3%, while Arbitrum One, Robinhood Chain, and X Layer each account for less than 5%.
The increase in holder numbers since August has outpaced the growth in capital, highlighting a clear divide between platforms like Binance, which draw numerous users making smaller investments, and Ondo, which aggregates larger capital often from institutional sources.
Ondo's tokenized Treasury note $USDY (Ondo US Dollar Yield) has hit a record supply of $2.35B, up about 233% since February, as tokenized Treasuries gain traction.
Ondo Finance's yield-bearing token $USDY (Ondo US Dollar Yield) has reached a record supply of $2.35 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. On February 24, supply stood at about $705 million. That is growth of roughly 233% in under eight months.
$USDY is issued by @Ondo, the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) project behind the $ONDO governance token. The milestone adds to a broader push to bring U.S. government debt onto blockchains.
What $USDY is and how it works$USDY is a tokenized note backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank deposits, as described by RWA.xyz. The token is aimed at non-U.S. individuals and institutions. It does not pay out interest directly. Instead, Eco's explainer notes that it accrues yield through a rising redemption value, so the token trades at a premium to $1.00 that grows over time.
Access is also relatively broad. Altrady's guide to Ondo says USDY has a $50 minimum, compared with $5 million for BlackRock's BUIDL fund. That gap helps explain why a retail-accessible product can scale quickly outside the U.S.
Growth in a competitive marketOndo's own figures show how fast the product has expanded. In a company blog post, Ondo said USDY had passed $1 billion in total value locked and was available across nine blockchains. The latest supply figure is more than double that earlier milestone.
Data from RWA.xyz, as reported by KuCoin News, shows USDY holdings of about $2.328 billion, ahead of BlackRock's BUIDL at about $2.204 billion. The same report put Ondo's combined tokenized Treasury holdings, including $USDY, OUSG and tokenized ETFs, at about $3 billion. Figures differ slightly between data providers because of timing and methodology.
Competition is likely to intensify as more issuers launch tokenized Treasury products. For now, $USDY's supply trend suggests demand for onchain, dollar-denominated yield remains strong among non-U.S. investors. Investors should note that $USDY is not available to U.S. persons and that its yield depends on the performance of the underlying Treasury and deposit portfolio.
SourcesRWA.xyz: Ondo U.S. Dollar Yield (USDY)
Ondo Finance: Largest provider of tokenized Treasuries and stocks
KuCoin News: Ondo tokenized U.S. Treasury reaches $3 billion
ZKsync’s ZK token rose 6.2% after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly praised Airbender Prime, the project’s new Ethereum prover.
What Airbender Prime actually does
ZKsync unveiled Airbender Prime on October 13, 2026. The pitch is real-time Ethereum proving without a rack of specialized hardware.
A prover is the machine that produces cryptographic receipts showing that a batch of transactions was processed correctly. Anyone can check those receipts quickly without redoing the original work.
In ZKsync’s test run, Airbender Prime proved 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each. Every single block in that stretch was proven in under 12 seconds.
The hardware behind those numbers was one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU.
ZKsync also leads the ETHproofs.org public leaderboard on average proving time, GPU efficiency, and cost.
Under the hood, Airbender Prime is built on hash-based STARKs, a proof system chosen with post-quantum security in mind. ZKsync plans to implement Keccak-256 for Layer 1 proofs. The system also supports multi-GPU configurations, so one card is the floor rather than the ceiling.
Buterin’s compliment came with homework
Buterin weighed in on October 15, 2026, two days after the launch. He congratulated ZKsync and said the speed race for zkEVMs is “definitively won.”
Then came the pivot. Buterin argued that attention should now shift away from how fast zkEVMs are and toward how secure they are. He called for formal verification to make sure provers align with Ethereum’s specifications. He also advocated for hard limits on prover costs relative to gas prices.
The ZK token’s 6.2% gain coincided with the announcement and Buterin’s comments.
Why accessible hardware is the real headline
ZKsync frames its work on efficient, verifiable computation as part of a broader Ethereum goal: lowering the hardware barriers to verification. The project has also pointed to finance and other industries as places where cheaper independent verification could matter.
What this means for ZK holders and the zkEVM field
There are concrete items worth tracking. These include the planned Keccak-256 implementation for Layer 1 proofs, how multi-GPU setups perform in practice, and how the post-quantum design holds up under outside scrutiny.
The biggest signal may be how ZKsync responds to Buterin’s call for formal verification. Matching Ethereum’s specifications with mathematical proof is slower, harder work than shaving seconds off a benchmark.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan outlined a regulatory approach that would shield his fast-growing cryptocurrency trading platform from direct US exchange oversight, as American authorities consider how to bring offshore venues into the domestic financial system.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, Yan argued that regulatory obligations should fall on financial firms operating markets on Hyperliquid’s blockchain rather than the network itself. The distinction would allow the company to expand its reach into Wall Street without assuming the full compliance burden of a traditional exchange.
Traders and market watchers around the world started talking about a crypto platform called Hyperliquid earlier this year, when speculators used markets built on top of it to trade crude oil after war broke out in Iran. What Hyperliquid allowed for was a 24/7 market on the blockchain. Then in August, President Trump said the CFTC was working on bringing “Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” Hyperliquid currently operates outside the US, but that hasn’t stopped it from growing prodigiously in the last year. Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, joins us today to explain how exactly the platform — works: He walks us through the protocol he and his co-founders built, the ecology of actors and assets that are tied to Hyperliquid (like the platform’s cryptocurrency HYPE), how perps are bought and sold on the platform, he explains what a blockchain oracle is, and he discusses what has to happen for Hyperliquid to start operating in the US.
Hyperliquid is best known for offering perpetual futures, which allow traders to make leveraged bets on cryptocurrencies and other assets without the expiry dates of conventional futures. Yan, 31, is the co-founder of Singapore-based Hyperliquid Labs, which is the main developer of the trading venue’s underlying blockchain. Hyperliquid remains off-limits to US customers, although Kraken parent Payward has announced plans to offer American investors derivatives using its technology through a regulated exchange.
Read: The Little-Known Crypto Powerhouse Behind Billions in Trading
Yan compared the proposed division of regulatory responsibilities to internet infrastructure, which supports financial services without itself being subject to the same oversight. His broader ambition is to provide the underlying trading technology for established Wall Street institutions rather than displace them, drawing a parallel with Amazon Web Services and its role in corporate computing.
Jeff Yan, chief executive officer of Hyperliquid Labs, during the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. — Photographer: Ore Huiying/Bloomberg
“The regulation sits at the layer where there are controls, and indeed the deployers are the ones that exercise these controls,” Yan said. “And so it’s a very natural way for the protocol to continue playing its role as a networking liquidity infrastructure layer.”
Hyperliquid, once a little-known startup, is gaining mainstream popularity especially after President Donald Trump said in August that US regulators are working to bring the exchange into the country. Yan noted that while US regulators are conservative, they are willing to move fast with new technologies.
Regulators “want to embrace innovation, but there’s a very heavy responsibility with that because there’s an existing system that by and large works well, serves many people, and has protections built in place,” said Yan. “So I think there’s very naturally this gap of wanting to understand, ‘is this technology truly compatible with our core principles?’”
The question of how to regulate Hyperliquid has also drawn scrutiny from established exchange operators, including CME Group Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange Inc., Bloomberg has previously reported. In the Odd Lots interview, Yan pushed back on calling traditional finance players as “legacy,” as he believes that Wall Street institutions will also want to come and build on Hyperliquid eventually.
Read: The $500 Billion Experiment to Build 24/7 Markets on Blockchain
“We’re not trying to displace anything,” Yan said. “In fact, I think the technology can benefit everyone who currently operates markets in a more traditional setting. And whether these markets are perpetual markets or settled dated futures is irrelevant because ultimately what you really need is an order book, clearing system and global distribution, concentration of liquidity.”
On Hyperliquid’s ambition to be the“house of all finance,” Yan said his team is “very serious” about it.
“Ultimately, the thinking is that the financial system is there to better serve as many people on this planet as possible,” said Yan. “I think many layers are moved, but this sort of permissionless employment system ultimately is accomplishing that goal.”
Before he moved to Singapore to start Hyperliquid Labs, Yan lived in Puerto Rico and ran a crypto fund called Chameleon Trading. Yan also worked at Hudson River Trading after he graduated from Harvard University.
Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan is advocating for US regulatory frameworks that would exempt the blockchain from being categorized under direct US exchange oversight. The move aims to protect Hyperliquid’s Layer-1 blockchain, which hosts a decentralized perpetual-futures exchange, from stringent regulatory measures typically applied to exchanges. Currently, Hyperliquid does not possess a CFTC exchange license and restricts US users, positioning itself as infrastructure rather than a regulated intermediary. This development emerges as the regulatory classification of on-chain market infrastructure remains a pivotal issue for platforms like Hyperliquid seeking to operate within US compliance.
Key Takeaways
The announcement appears to align with efforts to gain regulatory clarity, potentially boosting market confidence in Hyperliquid.
Market activity suggests a decrease in confidence regarding Hyperliquid reaching $100 by the end of 2026, with YES probabilities falling from 72% to 47% over the past week.
Regulatory discussions may influence perceptions of Hyperliquid’s compliance and operational viability in the US market.
What to Watch
Observers should monitor further statements from US regulatory bodies like the CFTC, as their decisions could significantly impact Hyperliquid’s classification and market dynamics. Developments in partnerships or endorsements from major financial entities could also suggest increased confidence in Hyperliquid’s regulatory path. As regulatory clarity evolves, market pricing may adjust in response to perceived risks and opportunities for Hyperliquid’s operations in the US.
Crypto trader Machi Big Brother has seen his Hyperliquid trading account fall to just $21,800 after building a $56,000 stake into more than $12 million over four months.
Summary
Machi Big Brother’s Hyperliquid trading account fell from a reported peak of $12.25 million to approximately $21,800 following liquidation.
Lookonchain said the trader had turned an initial $56,000 into more than $12 million over four months before losing nearly all of those gains.
The liquidation occurred as Bitcoin dropped below $81,000 and Ethereum approached $2,380 amid heavy selling across the crypto market.
Machi reportedly returned to trading shortly afterward, opening another Ethereum long position with 25x leverage.
According to blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain, the trader, whose real name is Jeffrey Huang, was fully liquidated on October 15 after a series of leveraged trades went against him.
In an October 15 X post, the platform said Machi had grown his initial $56,000 into $12.25 million through trading before his account balance dropped to $21,787.78.
The decline represents a loss of more than 99% from the account’s reported peak, effectively wiping out the gains accumulated over the preceding four months.
The account had been used to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, where traders can borrow exposure to take positions larger than their available collateral.
Reports indicated that Machi returned to trading shortly after the liquidation, opening another leveraged Ethereum long position with 25x leverage.
Crypto market downturn triggers heavy liquidations
Machi’s losses occurred as Bitcoin and Ethereum faced renewed selling pressure, with BTC falling below $81,000 and ETH approaching $2,380.
The latest downturn followed several days of heavy liquidations across cryptocurrency derivatives markets.
On October 14, crypto.news reported another liquidation wave that erased approximately $811 million in leveraged positions. Open interest remained near $140.9 billion after the selloff, according to Bitget Research.
Bitcoin had already fallen below $82,000 following the release of hotter than expected U.S. inflation data. Annual inflation reached 3.7% in September, above the 3.6% market forecast.
Selling pressure had been building since the previous week, when crypto liquidations reached $1.09 billion in the 24 hours leading to October 9. Long positions accounted for approximately $1.05 billion of that total.
Ethereum faced similar pressure as U.S. spot Ether ETFs recorded $542.2 million in weekly outflows during the week ending October 9.
Machi’s reported decision to reopen a 25x leveraged Ethereum position followed the liquidation, leaving the trader exposed to further price movements in the cryptocurrency.
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.
Jensen Huang backs CoreWeave: The company’s financial conditions continue to improve and it does not require guarantees from NVIDIA.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said data center operator CoreWeave’s financial health is improving. Nvidia is CoreWeave’s computing equipment supplier. Speaking at an event in Stockholm, Huang stated: “CoreWeave’s strength grows stronger every day.” He believes Nvidia does not need to provide financial guarantees for CoreWeave. “I am optimistic. In fact, their cost of capital is declining.” Earlier, credit market confidence in CoreWeave had deteriorated, with concerns rising over its default risk, and Huang is trying to restore market confidence in the company. CoreWeave is a key case testing the sustainability of business models for emerging AI infrastructure firms. These firms emerged to meet the nearly unlimited growth in AI computing power demand as described by companies like Nvidia. Backed by suppliers including Nvidia, CoreWeave and similar entities have taken on large amounts of debt, sparking market concerns about circular financing generating artificial demand.
12 minutes ago
During intraday U.S. stock trading, most crypto-related concept stocks turned positive, with Circle surging over 7%.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), most US-listed cryptocurrency-related stocks turned positive during US trading hours. Circle (CRCL) rose 7.10%, Block (XYZ) gained 3.80%, Strategy (MSTR) rose 3.79%, Coinbase (COIN) gained 3.29%, and BitMine (BMNR) rose 1.71%.
12 minutes ago
Nasdaq is currently experiencing network issues, and clients may intermittently encounter data gaps.
Nasdaq stated it is currently experiencing network issues, which may cause intermittent data gaps for its clients. The firm recommends clients use Chicago-based data sources as a backup.
12 minutes ago
Jupiter launches YOLO, a high-leverage trading product modeled after PaperTrade, supporting up to 1000x leverage.
Jupiter co-founder SIONG announced in a post that Jupiter Labs has launched an experimental high-leverage trading product called YOLO, which offers leverage ranging from 500x to 1000x. The product adopts the JLP model framework, simulating positions based on real market prices, with actual realized profits and losses—no need to execute corresponding leverage positions in the open market. YOLO’s profits are disbursed from a dedicated fund pool. If the fund pool lacks sufficient liquidity to settle profit positions, payouts may be queued instead of processed instantly. SIONG emphasized that this model differs from traditional perpetual contracts, carrying its own unique risks and limitations. He stated that launching YOLO under Jupiter Labs is to provide a testing ground for such new financial products and trading experiences, without the need to adapt to existing offerings. Currently, YOLO remains in the early stage of development, with room for further improvement. The launch was inspired by PaperTrade, he added.
12 minutes ago
Final implementation rules for the GENIUS Act are expected to be released by the end of October.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Director Jonathan Gould said the final rules for the OCC’s implementation of the GENIUS Act are expected to be released soon, by the end of October. Gould made the remarks at the "Building the New Digital Economy" event hosted by the Milken Institute, which was held concurrently with DC FinTech Week.
12 minutes ago
The three major U.S. stock indices opened lower but climbed higher, with the S&P 500 index turning positive.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower and moved higher: the S&P 500 turned positive, the Nasdaq’s decline narrowed to 0.4%, and the Dow Jones rose nearly 1%. Among component stocks, Micron Technology neared a positive turn after falling more than 6% earlier; Microsoft, Apple, and Google gained 0.5% each, while SanDisk and SpaceX fell 3%.
Odd Lots: Jeff Yan's Plan to Bring the Entire Financial Industry Onto Hyperliquid (Podcast)
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Traders and market watchers around the world started talking about a crypto platform called Hyperliquid earlier this year, when speculators used markets built on top of it to trade crude oil after war broke out in Iran. What Hyperliquid allowed for was a 24/7 market on the blockchain. Then in August, President Trump said the CFTC was working on bringing “Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” Hyperliquid currently operates outside the US, but that hasn't stopped it from growing prodigiously in the last year. Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, joins us today to explain how exactly the platform works: He walks us through the protocol he and his co-founders built, the ecology of actors and assets that are tied to Hyperliquid (like the platform's cryptocurrency HYPE), how perps are bought and sold on the platform, he explains what a blockchain oracle is, and he discusses what has to happen for Hyperliquid to start operating in the US.
Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan said U.S. regulators should oversee financial firms operating on the blockchain rather than regulate the network itself.Yan’s proposal could allow Wall Street firms to build regulated trading businesses on Hyperliquid without requiring the blockchain to register as an exchange.Kraken parent Payward plans to offer U.S. investors derivatives using Hyperliquid’s technology through a regulated exchange, even as Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures market remains closed to them.Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan wants U.S. regulators to oversee financial firms using his blockchain rather than the network itself.
Companies operating trading markets on Hyperliquid should be responsible for meeting regulatory requirements, much like financial firms using internet infrastructure, Yan said Thursday in a Bloomberg interview.
“The regulation sits at the layer where there are controls, and indeed the deployers are the ones that exercise these controls,” Yan said.
Hyperliquid, best known for its eponymous perpetual futures trading platform, remains closed to U.S. customers.
However, Kraken’s parent company, Payward, plans to offer investors in the country derivatives using Hyperliquid’s technology through a regulated exchange. For Hyperliquid, this means it could add a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulated operator even though its perps market remains unavailable to U.S. customers.
Yan’s proposal would allow Wall Street firms to build trading businesses on Hyperliquid without requiring the blockchain itself to operate as a regulated exchange.
“We’re not trying to displace anything,” Yan said. “In fact, I think the technology can benefit everyone who currently operates markets in a more traditional setting.”
His comments come after President Donald Trump said in August that the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. under federal regulations.
Jensen Huang backs CoreWeave: The company’s financial conditions continue to improve and it does not require guarantees from NVIDIA.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said data center operator CoreWeave’s financial health is improving. Nvidia is CoreWeave’s computing equipment supplier. Speaking at an event in Stockholm, Huang stated: “CoreWeave’s strength grows stronger every day.” He believes Nvidia does not need to provide financial guarantees for CoreWeave. “I am optimistic. In fact, their cost of capital is declining.” Earlier, credit market confidence in CoreWeave had deteriorated, with concerns rising over its default risk, and Huang is trying to restore market confidence in the company. CoreWeave is a key case testing the sustainability of business models for emerging AI infrastructure firms. These firms emerged to meet the nearly unlimited growth in AI computing power demand as described by companies like Nvidia. Backed by suppliers including Nvidia, CoreWeave and similar entities have taken on large amounts of debt, sparking market concerns about circular financing generating artificial demand.
12 minutes ago
During intraday U.S. stock trading, most crypto-related concept stocks turned positive, with Circle surging over 7%.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), most US-listed cryptocurrency-related stocks turned positive during US trading hours. Circle (CRCL) rose 7.10%, Block (XYZ) gained 3.80%, Strategy (MSTR) rose 3.79%, Coinbase (COIN) gained 3.29%, and BitMine (BMNR) rose 1.71%.
12 minutes ago
Nasdaq is currently experiencing network issues, and clients may intermittently encounter data gaps.
Nasdaq stated it is currently experiencing network issues, which may cause intermittent data gaps for its clients. The firm recommends clients use Chicago-based data sources as a backup.
12 minutes ago
Jupiter launches YOLO, a high-leverage trading product modeled after PaperTrade, supporting up to 1000x leverage.
Jupiter co-founder SIONG announced in a post that Jupiter Labs has launched an experimental high-leverage trading product called YOLO, which offers leverage ranging from 500x to 1000x. The product adopts the JLP model framework, simulating positions based on real market prices, with actual realized profits and losses—no need to execute corresponding leverage positions in the open market. YOLO’s profits are disbursed from a dedicated fund pool. If the fund pool lacks sufficient liquidity to settle profit positions, payouts may be queued instead of processed instantly. SIONG emphasized that this model differs from traditional perpetual contracts, carrying its own unique risks and limitations. He stated that launching YOLO under Jupiter Labs is to provide a testing ground for such new financial products and trading experiences, without the need to adapt to existing offerings. Currently, YOLO remains in the early stage of development, with room for further improvement. The launch was inspired by PaperTrade, he added.
12 minutes ago
Final implementation rules for the GENIUS Act are expected to be released by the end of October.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Director Jonathan Gould said the final rules for the OCC’s implementation of the GENIUS Act are expected to be released soon, by the end of October. Gould made the remarks at the "Building the New Digital Economy" event hosted by the Milken Institute, which was held concurrently with DC FinTech Week.
12 minutes ago
The three major U.S. stock indices opened lower but climbed higher, with the S&P 500 index turning positive.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower and moved higher: the S&P 500 turned positive, the Nasdaq’s decline narrowed to 0.4%, and the Dow Jones rose nearly 1%. Among component stocks, Micron Technology neared a positive turn after falling more than 6% earlier; Microsoft, Apple, and Google gained 0.5% each, while SanDisk and SpaceX fell 3%.
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.
Jensen Huang backs CoreWeave: The company’s financial conditions continue to improve and it does not require guarantees from NVIDIA.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said data center operator CoreWeave’s financial health is improving. Nvidia is CoreWeave’s computing equipment supplier. Speaking at an event in Stockholm, Huang stated: “CoreWeave’s strength grows stronger every day.” He believes Nvidia does not need to provide financial guarantees for CoreWeave. “I am optimistic. In fact, their cost of capital is declining.” Earlier, credit market confidence in CoreWeave had deteriorated, with concerns rising over its default risk, and Huang is trying to restore market confidence in the company. CoreWeave is a key case testing the sustainability of business models for emerging AI infrastructure firms. These firms emerged to meet the nearly unlimited growth in AI computing power demand as described by companies like Nvidia. Backed by suppliers including Nvidia, CoreWeave and similar entities have taken on large amounts of debt, sparking market concerns about circular financing generating artificial demand.
12 minutes ago
During intraday U.S. stock trading, most crypto-related concept stocks turned positive, with Circle surging over 7%.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), most US-listed cryptocurrency-related stocks turned positive during US trading hours. Circle (CRCL) rose 7.10%, Block (XYZ) gained 3.80%, Strategy (MSTR) rose 3.79%, Coinbase (COIN) gained 3.29%, and BitMine (BMNR) rose 1.71%.
12 minutes ago
Nasdaq is currently experiencing network issues, and clients may intermittently encounter data gaps.
Nasdaq stated it is currently experiencing network issues, which may cause intermittent data gaps for its clients. The firm recommends clients use Chicago-based data sources as a backup.
12 minutes ago
Jupiter launches YOLO, a high-leverage trading product modeled after PaperTrade, supporting up to 1000x leverage.
Jupiter co-founder SIONG announced in a post that Jupiter Labs has launched an experimental high-leverage trading product called YOLO, which offers leverage ranging from 500x to 1000x. The product adopts the JLP model framework, simulating positions based on real market prices, with actual realized profits and losses—no need to execute corresponding leverage positions in the open market. YOLO’s profits are disbursed from a dedicated fund pool. If the fund pool lacks sufficient liquidity to settle profit positions, payouts may be queued instead of processed instantly. SIONG emphasized that this model differs from traditional perpetual contracts, carrying its own unique risks and limitations. He stated that launching YOLO under Jupiter Labs is to provide a testing ground for such new financial products and trading experiences, without the need to adapt to existing offerings. Currently, YOLO remains in the early stage of development, with room for further improvement. The launch was inspired by PaperTrade, he added.
12 minutes ago
Final implementation rules for the GENIUS Act are expected to be released by the end of October.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Director Jonathan Gould said the final rules for the OCC’s implementation of the GENIUS Act are expected to be released soon, by the end of October. Gould made the remarks at the "Building the New Digital Economy" event hosted by the Milken Institute, which was held concurrently with DC FinTech Week.
12 minutes ago
The three major U.S. stock indices opened lower but climbed higher, with the S&P 500 index turning positive.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower and moved higher: the S&P 500 turned positive, the Nasdaq’s decline narrowed to 0.4%, and the Dow Jones rose nearly 1%. Among component stocks, Micron Technology neared a positive turn after falling more than 6% earlier; Microsoft, Apple, and Google gained 0.5% each, while SanDisk and SpaceX fell 3%.
A Hyperliquid perpetual linked to Anthropic’s implied value traded after the company’s investor briefing this week, with a reported $1.95 trillion mark and almost $21 million of turnover in the previous 24 hours. The contract is a wager settled between traders. It grants no Anthropic stock, no claim on company earnings and no ability to redeem for a share. Its most important unresolved question is how a market sets a reference price for a company whose shares do not trade publicly.
Summary
MarketWatch reported an Anthropic linked Hyperliquid contract near $1.95 trillion on October 15.
Its reported 24 hour trading turnover was almost $21 million at that snapshot.
The io:ANTH market is a builder deployed perpetual operated by Entropy, not an Anthropic share.
HIP 3 puts oracle selection and market parameters in the hands of the deployer.
A $1 move in io:ANTH’s quoted price represents $1 billion of implied company value.
MarketWatch’s October 15 observation said the indicative contract fell 4%. The name of a private company on a trading screen can make the instrument look like a share. In Entropy’s io:ANTH market it is a cash settled derivative built under Hyperliquid’s HIP 3 framework. Anthropic neither issued it nor received proceeds when one trader bought from another.
Prior coverage of Hyperliquid’s pre IPO markets explained the rise of synthetic company exposure. Today’s hook is sharper because Anthropic has been discussing its financials with prospective investors while the derivative generates a price minute by minute. The way that price is produced deserves more attention than whether its last tick was green or red.
A market cap quote is not a share price
The io:ANTH instrument is quoted in units of implied billions of dollars of Anthropic value, according to FalconX’s examination of its contract design. A displayed price around 1,950 corresponds to an indicative $1.95 trillion company valuation. A move from 1,950 to 1,900 is a 50 point fall, or $50 billion in the convention used by this market. It does not mean $50 billion left Anthropic or that investors sold $50 billion of its shares.
MarketWatch’s nearly $21 million is gross notional trading turnover in a day, not the amount of equity exchanged. Dividing $1.95 trillion by $21 million gives roughly 92,900. The ratio is a deliberately simple scale comparison, not a liquidity metric: the valuation mark is roughly 93,000 times the reported daily derivative turnover. It shows why a small market can display a very large implied company value without buying anything close to that value in underlying shares.
The market does not know an authoritative public share count and a continuously traded share price from which to calculate an ordinary equity market capitalization. Its quotation convention bypasses that problem by expressing the view as a valuation number directly. Another venue could quote an expected share price using its own assumed capitalization and share count. The two numbers are not directly comparable until those assumptions are reconciled.
An Anthropic employee or early investor holding actual shares would have a different legal position. Private share transfers can require approval and may be subject to restrictions. A perp trader has an exchange position with collateral, funding and liquidation terms. It can move in the same direction as an eventual IPO price, but it is not a substitute for a shareholder vote, distributions or a legally enforceable claim on Anthropic’s assets.
Entropy defines the market that appears on Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid’s HIP 3 documentation says an independent deployer sets a market’s definition, oracle and specifications and operates its oracle prices, leverage limits and settlement. The base platform supplies an order book and margin infrastructure. For io:ANTH, Entropy is the deployer. Calling it simply a Hyperliquid listing can hide the company that chooses the key contract terms.
The documentation says a deployer must maintain 500,000 HYPE staked and can be slashed through validator voting for certain irregular actions affecting protocol operation. That mechanism is relevant to malicious or disruptive deployer behavior; it is not a guarantee that the Anthropic valuation is accurate. Hyperliquid’s own guidance cautions that an oracle is most suitable when there is a well defined external price hard to manipulate. A private company’s value is precisely the case where external observations are sparse.
Entropy’s interface terms describe perpetual futures as synthetic and warn that oracle feeds can be stale or manipulated, that funding changes, and that a leveraged position can lose its collateral through liquidation. The terms do not promise best execution. Such provisions should be read as actual product conditions, not dismissed as generic crypto boilerplate when the underlying company has no public stock price.
The operator can run a market before an IPO because buyers and sellers can take opposing positions in a collateralized contract. No Anthropic employee needs to sell a share into the venue. The system only has to keep those positions margined and define how gains, losses and a possible final settlement are calculated. The hard part is choosing a credible price path when no public underlying trade resolves the disagreement.
BREAKING: Anthropic picks Nasdaq for IPO at a potential $2T valuation
The move would put Anthropic above SpaceX’s reported $1.75T valuation, as the AI company heads toward a major public debut amid renewed debate over AI safety and extinction risks. pic.twitter.com/Oio2oho0Yh
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) September 13, 2026
The oracle has to use the market it helps govern
The FalconX analysis describes Entropy’s pre IPO oracle as a blend of external private market information and the contract’s own order book. The weight given to the local market depends on executable two sided depth near the midprice, while an external component remains. Private transactions and funding round marks can be intermittent, and their economic rights may differ from those of ordinary common shares.
This creates a feedback problem. A deep order book can be a useful price discovery venue, but if the oracle starts to rely more on that book, its own participants have a greater role in the reference used for funding and margin. Liquidity around the midprice must be executable, not just displayed orders that vanish before a trade. The deployer’s methodology, parameter updates and market data matter more than a one day percentage move.
The Hyperliquid developer rules describe oracle submissions and the mark calculation, including order book inputs and limits on update frequency and abrupt mark changes. The platform’s ordinary BTC spot oracle, described elsewhere in its docs, is not automatically the oracle for an independently deployed private company perp. Confusing those designs would give io:ANTH a false aura of external exchange price verification.
If a thin book pushes the displayed trade far from a private market reference, funding payments and risk rules can pull positions toward the contract’s mark over time. They cannot prove the mark equals what a buyer would pay for actual private shares. A prospective IPO may eventually supply a public trading reference, but there can be important differences between the contract’s settlement formula and the first listed share price.
Anthropic’s briefing supplies news, not a settlement price
Reuters reported on the investor presentation, citing people who attended. The report said Anthropic disclosed third quarter revenue growth of 45% from the preceding quarter. Prospective investors can use such figures in negotiations, and perp traders can react to the report. A presentation does not produce a continuous stock price or an obligation for Anthropic to honor the perpetual market’s valuation.
Different interpretations of the financials can justify very different implied company values. Revenue is not profit; quarterly growth does not automatically continue for years; capital spending, competition and share terms matter. A private round may give investors preferences that ordinary shares or a synthetic perp do not have. A headline valuation can be a negotiation outcome for a particular security class, not a universally executable price for all company ownership.
Markets can sometimes anticipate a public valuation. Traders who follow the company closely may aggregate information faster than a static funding round mark. FalconX argues that pre IPO derivatives can contribute to price discovery around a listing. The opposing case is serious: a liquid, competitive book can be more current than a months old private transaction. Its strength depends on depth, independent participants and how closely the eventual settlement mechanism is tied to a real public market.
The October 15 turnover is evidence of trading interest, not proof of pricing accuracy. A market can trade frequently at a price that later looks wrong. Some participants may be hedging exposure elsewhere, some expressing a directional view, and others trading funding or volatility. Public notional turnover does not reveal their identities or whether a single position is being repeatedly opened and closed.
Earlier Anthropic markets make the distinction important
Crypto.news’s report on the Ventuals team’s move noted that a previous Hyperliquid based Anthropic and OpenAI market experiment had been shut down. The current io:ANTH contract is operated by Entropy under its own specifications. The existence of one market in the past does not preserve its quotes, open interest or settlement terms in a later deployer’s product.
The HIP 3 product explainer explains that outside teams can create perps. Such openness expands the range of tradable exposures, but means a user must identify which team deployed the particular market. Different Anthropic contracts on different platforms may use a different unit, oracle, leverage cap or resolution rule while sharing a company name.
An investor buying a tokenized private share through a regulated special purpose structure would have yet another claim: potentially a contractual interest in an entity holding shares, with custody and transfer restrictions. That is not what io:ANTH represents. The phrase tokenized Anthropic can blur equity backed exposure and a cash settled forecast. Product documents, not the ticker, determine what the holder owns.
If Anthropic does list, a perp may transition toward a listed market reference or settle under its rules. The timing, share class, first trading session and final reference could all matter. No October 15 MarketWatch price is a promise that future public investors will pay the same valuation. The operator’s current specifications and any later notices should be checked before claiming a one to one conversion.
Leverage turns a small valuation move into a large account move
A trader posts collateral for exposure larger than the cash committed. If a position has three times exposure, a 5% adverse move in its reference price corresponds to about 15% of initial collateral before funding, fees and maintenance margin. Liquidation can arrive before an eventual recovery or a future IPO clarifies the company’s value. That example uses simple arithmetic, not the live terms of a particular user’s position.
Funding payments can accumulate even if the indicative company value does not change. Long and short traders exchange payments under a formula designed to keep a perpetual market aligned with its reference. A thin or uncertain external anchor can alter that relationship. The trade is therefore about the path of the market, not only the final belief about Anthropic’s eventual public valuation.
A sharp news event can strain a book with relatively modest executable depth. A stop or liquidation is governed by the mark and margin system, and the price at which a trader can exit depends on actual bids and offers. Turnover of $21 million over a day says nothing precise about the amount available within 1% of the current price for a large order. Order book depth and slippage should accompany any claim that the market is a reliable valuation signal.
Earlier reporting on a SK Hynix perp dislocation illustrates how a synthetic company market can produce contentious marks and liquidations. It concerns a different asset and operator. It is relevant as a mechanical warning, not evidence that the same error occurred in io:ANTH today. No incident is showed by the October 15 decline alone.
What the price can and cannot tell an IPO investor
The $1.95 trillion mark reports a marginal price within Entropy’s Anthropic contract at a particular time. It is an observable expression of the traders participating there. It cannot show Anthropic’s issued share count, its enterprise value after debt and cash, the terms of a future offering or the price at which actual shareholders can sell. A valuation may be a useful signal without becoming an independent appraisal.
A better comparison would put dated private funding or tender terms, any IPO filing and the perp’s implied value side by side, adjusting for share rights and timing. If the gap persists after a public share begins trading under a reliable oracle, the contract’s basis and funding will explain whether convergence occurred. Until then, a large nominal mark attached to relatively small turnover should be described as this market’s indication, not the company’s settled worth.
The named operator matters in any dispute. Hyperliquid provides settlement infrastructure, Entropy sets the market specific inputs, and traders supply bids, asks and collateral. Anthropic is the subject of the wager but is not a counterparty. A holder seeking a correction to an oracle or clarification of settlement would need the deployer’s published process, not Anthropic investor relations.
The $21 million turnover does not fund the company
Consider two traders exchanging a contract with $10,000 of notional exposure. The same position can be bought and sold repeatedly, adding to volume on every execution, without a share moving or Anthropic receiving any cash. Gross 24 hour notional is therefore a measure of trading activity, not capital invested in the underlying company. Open interest counts positions that remain outstanding; executable order book depth indicates what can trade near the mark now. Each metric answers a different question.
The implied market value is especially easy to misread because Entropy’s quote compresses billions of dollars into a single index point. A 1% move near $1.95 trillion corresponds to roughly $19.5 billion in the quotation convention. If only millions of dollars of derivative notional changed hands, the market has repriced a reference, not transferred $19.5 billion between buyers and sellers. Traders’ actual gains and losses depend on their exposure size, entry price, funding and fees.
Nor is the mark an offer to acquire Anthropic in full. A negotiated acquisition would involve control, liabilities, approvals and shareholders with distinct rights. A funding round prices a specific security with its own preferences. The perp expresses the marginal balance of buyers and sellers in one synthetic instrument. Comparing those values may be interesting, but treating them as interchangeable prices erases the terms each one measures.
A reader seeing two different Anthropic valuations in the same week should ask whether they refer to a private funding round, an IPO target, a derivative market cap unit or an enterprise value calculation. A headline number can be correct within its convention while being wrong as a statement that the company has been sold. Precise attribution protects the distinction.
An oracle dispute would reach the deployer first
Crypto.news coverage of HIP 3 access controls describes how deployers can set additional conditions for their markets. The HIP 3 rules put the price input and market operation with Entropy. Hyperliquid validators apply protocol rules and can vote on slashing for irregular behavior affecting the system, but its documentation says the system should not intervene in every subjective disagreement about an oracle. A trader convinced that a private valuation input is too high does not automatically have a protocol level remedy. The trader may simply take the other side in the market, subject to margin and liquidity.
The external component of Entropy’s blend is hard for outsiders to reproduce if it draws on private deal indications and market making quotes. The local order book is more visible, yet displayed depth can change quickly. An audit of a sharp mark move would need the dated input prices, the depth calculation, parameter settings and the deployer’s signed oracle updates. Public onchain actions can show what the deployer submitted; they cannot by themselves prove the undisclosed private market data were representative.
One concern is circularity: a derivative mark influences funding and liquidation, while the same derivative book partly informs that mark. The stronger counterargument is that a live book with meaningful two sided depth can contain fresher information than a stale private funding round. Entropy’s weighting design aims to let the market speak more when that depth exists. Whether it succeeds is observable around independent news and, eventually, a public listing reference.
A change to the upper or lower valuation bounds could matter even when no company news occurs. FalconX described operator discretion over some parameters and a scheduled resolution if the company remains private. A holder should verify the current contract specification, not assume a screenshot from August still governs an October position. Any material change should be dated against open interest and communicated before readers are asked to treat a price series as continuous.
A public listing might not settle every disagreement
A conventional share price becomes observable when Anthropic lists, but a derivative tied to market capitalization still needs a share count and rules for which shares and session count. IPO shares could trade differently from restricted pre IPO holdings. A first day print may be volatile or thin compared with a later closing average. The contract’s documentation, not a generic definition of an IPO, determines whether it transitions to a public oracle, closes positions or continues with adjusted terms.
If Anthropic delays a listing, the synthetic market may remain active while external evidence stays sparse. FalconX described a scheduled end and cash settlement path for Entropy’s pre IPO contracts. A long horizon exposes traders to funding and operator decisions before any company event. The final formula could rely on a trailing average of the contract’s own mark, which would be a settlement to the market’s internal history rather than to a verified sale of shares.
This explains why a hedge with io:ANTH is imperfect for an actual private shareholder. The shareholder’s economic interest can change with the terms of its shares, dilution, transfer restrictions and an eventual public conversion. The perp’s reference can diverge, and its collateral can be liquidated before that shareholder can sell. A trader can still use it to express a view on value, but the basis risk remains even if the headline valuation looks similar.
The decisive evidence arrives when a public filing details share count, financials and offer terms, then when shares trade with enough depth to anchor a reference. Until that sequence, the market supplies a price for its contract. It does not supply a title deed for a piece of Anthropic.
Today’s valuation has more than one denominator
Reuters’s report on Anthropic’s investor briefing gives a financial event that actual IPO buyers may weigh. A derivative market can react to it immediately while investors in a future offering negotiate access, allocation and share terms. The same revenue headline might raise expectations of growth and concern about spending on computing at once. Without detailed costs and the final capital structure, a price to revenue multiple inferred from the $1.95 trillion mark is at best an illustration.
The accounting unit also matters. Entropy quotes a company value convention directly, while a conventional stock market price multiplies a share price by a disclosed diluted share count. A new issue in an IPO increases the number of shares and brings cash into the company. Employee options and other convertibles can add dilution. A pre IPO synthetic mark can be close to a quoted IPO target yet differ materially from a properly diluted public equity value when the documents arrive.
A public filing may reveal classes with different voting or economic rights, commitments to investors or a reserve of shares for employees. Private holders can face lockups after a listing. A perp trader’s position has none of those rights or restrictions in the same form; it has its own collateral and funding rules. Explaining those differences is not a claim that the market is useless. It locates what the market is pricing and what a reader cannot infer from it.
The reported four percent fall on October 15 is not a standalone referendum on the briefing. It coincides with public reporting and wider market conditions, while the derivative’s own funding and order flow can move its mark. A causal claim would need a time series comparing the news release, quotes across venues and changes in depth. The MarketWatch snapshot alone provides the price change and turnover, not who sold or why.
Distinguishing risk from a bad prediction
A trader could accurately anticipate Anthropic’s eventual IPO valuation and still lose money on a leveraged pre IPO perp. A temporary drawdown can liquidate the account. Funding can drain collateral while the prediction takes months to play out. A contract may resolve under a trailing average before the desired company event or change parameters under its published governance. Accuracy about the company is therefore insufficient; the timing and contract path matter.
The reverse is possible. A trader might profit from buying an underpriced contract and selling it weeks later even if Anthropic ultimately lists below the earlier mark. The profit would be a transfer from another derivative participant, not evidence that the initial price correctly described the private company’s long term worth. A functioning speculative market can have valuable price discovery and still produce many wrong interim prices.
FalconX’s research presents the positive case that liquid pre IPO trading can precede and help anticipate a public market. Its historical examples are informative, but Anthropic has a different investor base, growth profile and disclosure schedule. A market that predicts one listing does not have a guarantee on the next. A comparison after Anthropic’s actual listing would have to date each derivative quote and account for differences in contract units and share terms.
The contract’s operator and exchange infrastructure can publish enough information for that comparison. Dated oracle inputs, funding history, executable depth, open interest and any contract updates would allow outsiders to assess how the indicated valuation was formed. Without those records, the $1.95 trillion figure risks being repeated as a company fact when it is a venue specific market mark.
What to watch
Entropy specifications: Any change to io:ANTH’s oracle, leverage, valuation unit, funding or resolution terms.
Executable depth: Bid and ask amounts near the mark, alongside volume and open interest at a dated snapshot.
External evidence: Anthropic’s actual offering documents or verified private share transactions with comparable rights.
Oracle behavior: The gap between local book, published oracle and mark during major news or low liquidity.
Listing event: Whether a public share price becomes available and how the contract’s stated settlement process uses it.
FAQ
Can I buy Anthropic stock through the io:ANTH perp?
No. The Entropy contract is a synthetic perpetual on implied valuation. It conveys no Anthropic share or ownership rights.
What did the $1.95 trillion number mean?
It was MarketWatch’s October 15 snapshot of the valuation implied by the Hyperliquid linked market, not a completed sale of Anthropic at that price.
Did Anthropic receive the $21 million traded?
No. The reported amount was 24 hour notional turnover in a derivative market. It was not a company capital raise.
Who operates io:ANTH?
Entropy operates the market as a HIP 3 deployer using Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure. The deployer sets market specific oracle and risk parameters.
How is a price possible without public shares?
Traders bid and offer a synthetic contract, while its operator defines a reference using market and external inputs. No public stock sale is needed for the derivative to trade.
Is the quote a per share price?
No. A point in io:ANTH’s price corresponds to $1 billion of implied company value under the contract’s convention.
Can a trader be liquidated before an IPO?
Yes. A leveraged perpetual position is margined continuously and can be closed under exchange risk rules after an adverse mark move, regardless of a later listing.
Is this a verified valuation of Anthropic?
No. It is a price in a particular synthetic market whose liquidity and oracle design should be evaluated. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of October 15, 2026.
Ripple Prime, through its multi-asset brokerage platform, is rolling out TradFi perpetuals for its Wall Street clients via Trade.xyz’s markets on Hyperliquid. This comes as the crypto firm continues to expand its offerings and builds on an initial DeFi rollout earlier in the year.
Ripple Prime Rolls Out TradFi Perpetuals For Institutional Clients According to a Bloomberg report, the brokerage platform has launched TradFi perpetuals for institutional clients in partnership with Trade.xyz, the largest HIP-3 deployer on Hyperliquid. These reference markets cut across stocks, ETFs, indices, and commodities such as gold and silver.
This move comes as the demand for 24/7 perpetuals heats up, with Trade.xyz notably providing access to the TradFi markets beyond the traditional hours. The report also cited the rise in open interest on these real-world asset perpetual contracts, which has climbed to $9 billion over the past year.
Ripple also continues to expand its institutional offerings through its brokerage platform. As CoinGape reported, Ripple Prime now offers swap financing for leveraged ETFs, an area that banks and securities firms have largely dominated.
The brokerage platform also recently launched its Delta One business, enabling its institutional clients to trade total return swaps on U.S. stocks, indices and crypto. The company also added support for Hyperliquid earlier this year, giving clients access to DeFi trading.
Virtu Onboarded As First Client Ripple also confirmed it launched access to RWA perpetuals for its institutional clients, with Virtu among the clients now trading these RWA swaps. “With reference markets trading continuously, including weekends, clients can manage exposures to traditional asset classes outside typical exchange operating hours,” the crypto firm said.
Commenting on the rollout, Ripple Prime’s International CEO Michael Higgins said RWA swaps are where TradFi and DeFi converge. He added that these institutions want 24/7 access to these assets and are best positioned to provide it given their ties to both worlds.
The crypto firm also noted that clients will benefit from cross-margining RWA swap exposures against the other asset classes the brokerage supports. Clients can also use the RLUSD stablecoin as collateral for these transactions.
For more on derivatives trading, check out Best Crypto Derivative Futures Trading Platforms
Ripple Prime, the prime brokerage unit of Ripple, has added real-world asset (RWA) perpetual swaps for institutional clients, with the products referencing perpetual futures listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid.
The swaps cover more than 100 reference markets across equities, equity indices, exchange-traded funds, metals, energy and foreign exchange, Ripple said Thursday, adding that trading and settlement are available around the clock, including weekends.
RWA perpetual swaps are crypto derivative contracts that let users trade traditional financial assets using leverage without an expiration date. Market maker Virtu is among the institutional clients already trading the products, Ripple said.
"Virtu is ramping up across emerging liquidity pools, and Ripple Prime's 24/7 cross-margining across asset classes helps us expand our presence more efficiently as markets move toward round-the-clock access,” said Scotte Moegling, head of business development for digital assets at Virtu.
Ripple Prime acts as the principal in the trades, while the value of the swaps is linked to the Trade.xyz perpetual futures listed on Hyperliquid.
RLUSD accepted as collateral Clients can use Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin as collateral for the RWA swaps, although its availability may differ by jurisdiction, Ripple said.
Ripple Prime also lets clients manage margin across different assets, meaning they may need less collateral if some positions reduce the risk of others.
Ripple said clients can manage their trading through one counterparty and see their margin requirements and risks across their entire portfolio in one place.
Ripple Prime was formed after Ripple completed its $1.25 billion acquisition of non-bank prime broker Hidden Road last year. The platform supports digital assets, foreign exchange, fixed income, derivatives and swaps through one institutional account.
Ripple Prime added support for Hyperliquid in February, allowing institutional clients to access the decentralized derivatives venue while managing margin alongside their other positions.
The new RWA swaps are currently offered through Ripple Prime's CIV BVI license. Ripple said it plans to make them available from more regions, but did not give a timeline or name the next markets.
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Ripple has expanded its institutional prime brokerage platform to support perpetual swaps tied to traditional financial assets, allowing clients to trade exposure to more than 100 markets around the clock.
The new offering, announced Thursday, covers equities, stock indices, exchange traded funds, metals, energy and foreign exchange. Institutional trading firm Virtu is among the clients already using the service.
The swaps are offered through Ripple Prime, with contracts referencing perpetual futures listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid. The structure gives institutions continuous exposure to traditional markets, including weekends, without requiring direct ownership of the underlying assets.
Ripple expands institutional access to Hyperliquid Under the arrangement, Ripple Prime acts as the principal counterparty to clients trading RWA swaps linked to contracts listed by Trade.xyz, a decentralized trading platform built on Hyperliquid that offers perpetual futures tied to traditional assets.
Clients can also use Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as collateral and cross margin their RWA positions against other asset classes supported by the prime brokerage platform.
This allows institutions to manage multiple exposures through a single counterparty relationship, with centralized risk management and consolidated margin requirements.
“Institutions want exposure to equities, commodities, and currencies with the round the clock access and efficiencies of digital infrastructure,” said Michael Higgins, international CEO of Ripple Prime.
Virtu is already participating in the offering. Scotte Moegling, the firm’s head of business development for digital assets, said Ripple Prime’s continuous cross margining capabilities would help it expand into emerging liquidity pools.
The service is currently available through Ripple Prime’s British Virgin Islands licensed entity, with plans to expand into additional jurisdictions.
Hyperliquid strengthens its role in traditional asset derivatives The launch builds on Ripple Prime’s February integration with Hyperliquid, which initially brought decentralized derivatives liquidity into its institutional brokerage platform.
Since then, Hyperliquid has expanded its reach beyond crypto derivatives through Trade.xyz, offering perpetual futures tied to stocks, indices and commodities that trade continuously, including outside traditional exchange hours.
Unlike tokenized equities backed by actual shares, these perpetual contracts provide synthetic price exposure without ownership of the underlying securities.
The expansion comes as institutional interest in traditional asset derivatives on blockchain networks continues to grow. Open interest in RWA perpetuals across major trading platforms has reportedly reached approximately $9 billion, according to Bloomberg figures cited in subsequent coverage.
For Ripple, the launch also extends its strategy of connecting institutional finance with onchain markets. The company established Ripple Prime after completing its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road in 2025, expanding its services across digital assets, traditional securities and derivatives.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
