Crypto World
Ripple Prime cleared $3 trillion. How much of it actually touches XRP?
Ripple’s prime brokerage sits inside the DTCC’s clearing directory, holds a seat in the 50-firm tokenization working group, and clears more than three trillion dollars a year. The XRP community reads that as quadrillions coming to the ledger. The mechanics say something much narrower. Here is the honest accounting of how much of Ripple Prime’s business reaches the token, and what would have to change for that number to grow.
Summary
- Ripple Prime clears more than $3 trillion in annual trades, but only a small portion of that activity currently creates direct demand for XRP.
- Most institutional settlement within Ripple’s ecosystem now relies on the RLUSD stablecoin, while XRP’s role remains largely limited to fees and internal collateral.
- Ripple’s position in the DTCC tokenization working group could expand XRP’s future use, but broader adoption depends on third party collateral acceptance and official integration into tokenized market infrastructure.
On March 2, 2026, a company called Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC appeared in the participant directory of the National Securities Clearing Corporation, the subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation that clears essentially every stock trade in the United States. Hidden Road is Ripple Prime, the institutional brokerage Ripple bought for $1.25 billion and rebranded, and within hours the listing had been declared proof that XRP was being wired into a system that processes roughly four quadrillion dollars in annual settlement. Ripple’s own chief technology officer emeritus, David Schwartz, allowed himself two words: seems important.
It was important. It was also almost universally misread. The listing did not connect XRP to anything; it registered a brokerage as a market participant, the same mundane onboarding that dozens of firms complete every month, with the actual clearing handled through Pershing, a BNY subsidiary, on rails that never touch a blockchain.
Analysts spent the following weeks correcting the record, and the correction never caught up with the headline. Four months later, with Ripple Prime seated in the DTCC’s tokenization working group and the DTCC’s July pilot for tokenized securities beginning, the same confusion is being recycled at larger scale.
This piece does the accounting the headlines skip. It walks through what Ripple Prime actually is and what its DTCC credentials actually grant, the three and only three mechanical paths by which any of its volume can reach the XRP token, the uncomfortable finding that the asset doing the money work inside Ripple’s own empire is mostly not XRP, the genuine long-game case that the working-group seat represents, and the specific, checkable signals that would show the story changing.
The number at the end is smaller than the community hopes and larger than zero, and knowing which parts are real is worth more than either extreme.
What Ripple Prime is, and what the DTCC credentials actually grant
Ripple Prime is the largest acquisition in Ripple’s history and one of the largest in crypto’s. In April 2025 Ripple agreed to pay $1.25 billion, partly in XRP, for Hidden Road, a prime broker that gives hedge funds and trading firms a single account for clearing, financing, and settlement across traditional and digital assets. The deal closed in October 2025, the business was rebranded Ripple Prime, and it now clears more than $3 trillion in trades annually for over 300 institutional clients, making Ripple the first crypto company to own a global, multi-asset prime broker. By any measure it is a serious Wall Street business, and it has roughly tripled in size since the acquisition was announced.
The DTCC connections came in sequence. In March 2025, before the acquisition even closed, Hidden Road was accepted into the FICC Government Securities Division, gaining access to Treasury clearing. On March 2, 2026, it went live in the NSCC participant directory with an executing broker code, and in late June the DTCC’s new near-round-the-clock clearing service switched on with Ripple Prime already plugged in. In May 2026, the DTCC named Ripple Prime to the roughly 50-firm Industry Working Group shaping its tokenization service, alongside JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Citi, Circle, and Ondo Finance. That service began limited production trades of tokenized Russell 1000 equities, major ETFs, and Treasuries this month, July 2026, with a full launch planned for October.
Each credential is real. None of them puts XRP inside the DTCC. The NSCC listing registers Ripple Prime as an ordinary broker whose over-the-counter trades are cleared and settled through Pershing on the DTCC’s existing, entirely non-blockchain infrastructure; the notice itself shows the clearing code belonging to the BNY subsidiary. The working-group seat is a chair at a standards table, not a contract; the group exists to write rules that all 50 members can live with, and several of those members, most prominently JPMorgan with its Kinexys platform, run their own competing tokenization ledgers. The DTCC’s tokenization service is not built on the XRP Ledger, and the DTCC itself has never said otherwise. When the $4 quadrillion figure appears next to XRP in a headline, the connective tissue between the two numbers is aspiration, not plumbing.
The three paths from volume to token
Strip away the noise and there are exactly three mechanical routes by which Ripple Prime’s business can create demand for XRP, because there are only three ways any business creates demand for any token: paying fees in it, posting it as collateral, or using it as the settlement asset. Each path exists. Each is currently narrow.
The first path is ledger fees. Ripple committed, in its own acquisition announcement, to migrating Hidden Road’s post-trade activity onto the XRP Ledger, and to the extent that record-keeping and settlement operations move on-chain, every transaction burns a tiny amount of XRP as a fee. The arithmetic is brutal, though. XRPL fees are fractions of a cent, and the ledger’s total fee burn since 2012 amounts to roughly 14 million XRP, a rounding error against a 100 billion token supply. Even trillions of dollars of post-trade flow, fully migrated, would generate fee demand measured in thousands of dollars a day. Fees make the ledger useful; they do not make the token scarce.
The second path is collateral. Ripple Prime accepts XRP as collateral for margin and settlement within its own brokerage, and its CEO Mike Higgins has been explicit about the ambition: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana tokenizing anything of value as collateral for margin and settlement is the next step, as he put it in May. Collateral demand is real demand, because tokens posted as margin are tokens bought and held. But note what the current arrangement is: Ripple’s own brokerage accepting Ripple’s own asset. For collateral demand to matter at scale, firms that are not Ripple would need to accept and hold XRP as margin, and that requires the legal certainty of commodity classification plus risk-committee approval at institutions that have their own preferred assets. It is a path, and today it mostly runs in a circle.
The third path is settlement, and here the finding is the uncomfortable one: inside Ripple’s own product stack, the asset doing the settlement work is predominantly RLUSD, the company’s dollar stablecoin, not XRP.
The third path is settlement, and here the finding is the uncomfortable one: inside Ripple’s own product stack, the asset doing the settlement work is predominantly RLUSD, the company’s dollar stablecoin, not XRP. Traders post RLUSD as margin on partner venues, use it to back Bitcoin options on Bullish, and move it as the cash leg across Ripple Prime’s products. The landmark tokenized-Treasury settlement Ripple executed with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ondo cleared in seconds on the XRPL, and the instrument that carried the money was RLUSD. This is not a betrayal; it is design. Institutional settlement requires a stable, audited, dollar-denominated instrument, and an asset that can move ten percent in a day is disqualified from the cash leg by definition. Ripple built RLUSD precisely to capture the settlement flow that XRP’s volatility rules out, a dynamic this publication has examined in detail, and every institutional win that runs through RLUSD is a win for Ripple, for the ledger, and only residually for the token.
Add the three paths together honestly and the present-day answer to the headline question is: a sliver. Fee burn is negligible, collateral is real but largely internal, and settlement flows to the stablecoin. The $3 trillion is genuine; the fraction of it that translates into XRP demand today is small enough that no serious estimate puts a meaningful number on it.
The bear case: one candidate among several
The skeptical reading of the whole DTCC story goes further than the fee arithmetic, and it deserves a fair hearing because it is held by people who understand post-trade infrastructure.
Start with the working group. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are not at that table to help Ripple; the dealer community sits on standards bodies to make sure no standard threatens its own position. JPMorgan’s Kinexys is the largest bank-run tokenization platform in existence, and several other members operate internal ledgers of their own. The most likely output of a 50-firm committee is a standard that lets each major dealer plug in its own preferred infrastructure, which would leave the XRP Ledger as one candidate among several rather than the settlement layer of tokenized American securities. A standard that anointed a single external blockchain would be an anomaly in the history of Wall Street consortia.
Then there is the DTCC’s own multi-chain behavior. In late May the DTCC announced it would integrate the Stellar network into its tokenized securities platform as the first public blockchain in its strategy, and XLM rallied more than 80% on the news. Whatever one thinks of that choice, it shows that the DTCC is comfortable naming chains when it has chosen them, and it has not named the XRPL. The 2025 DTCC patent filings that reference Ripple and XRPL alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hedera describe compatible architectures, and patents are exploratory documents, not procurement decisions.
Finally, the circularity problem shadows every internal metric. Ripple Prime accepting XRP as collateral, Ripple’s stablecoin settling Ripple’s pilots, Ripple’s ledger hosting Ripple’s products: the empire is impressive and self-referential, and the market has learned to discount announcements in which Ripple is both counterparties. The token’s price behavior through 2026, sliding through a year of institutional wins to trade near $1.13, down roughly 70% from its 2025 peak, is the market pricing exactly this discount. Skeptics do not deny the infrastructure is real. They deny that infrastructure ownership by the token’s issuer, absent third-party adoption, constitutes token demand, and on the evidence to date they have been right.
The bull case: the seat is the point
The strongest version of the bullish argument does not dispute the accounting above. It argues about time and position.
Institutional settlement is repetitive, high-volume, and extraordinarily sticky once integrated. The firms that write the standards for tokenized securities will shape which ledgers are even eligible to carry that flow for decades, and Ripple bought its way into the only room where those rules are being written, at the only moment the writing is happening. No other crypto-native company holds an NSCC credential, an FICC seat, and a working-group chair simultaneously. If the eventual standard is multi-ledger, as the bears expect, then eligibility becomes the prize, and Ripple Prime exists to make the XRPL eligible, integrated, and operationally proven when the flow starts to move. The July pilot and October launch of the DTCC’s tokenization service are precisely the on-ramp: Russell 1000 equities, ETFs, and Treasuries in tokenized form, with Ripple Prime positioned as a broker that can hold and finance those assets and, where clients choose, connect them to XRPL-based collateral and liquidity workflows.
The collateral path is where the bull case gets specific. The joint SEC and CFTC classification of XRP as a digital commodity in March 2026, if made statutory by the CLARITY Act, removes the compliance barrier that keeps third-party risk committees from touching the asset, and the the bill’s progress through the Senate is therefore not background noise to this story but its central variable. A world in which tokenized Treasuries settle at the DTCC, prime brokers finance them around the clock, and XRP is a legally classified commodity accepted as cross-margin collateral at multiple brokerages is a world in which the second path widens from a circle into a market. Higgins’ collateral remark is the roadmap, and the roughly tripled size of Ripple Prime’s business since acquisition suggests institutions are at least walking toward it.
There is also the precedent argument: Stellar’s 80% rally on its DTCC integration happened before anything went live, purely on confirmation of a role. XRP has had no equivalent confirmation, only adjacency, and the bulls read that as meaning the outcome is unpriced. If the working group’s standard, or the DTCC’s later phases, ever names the XRPL the way Stellar was named, the market reaction writes itself. That is a conditional, not a forecast, and the bulls are candid that it is the conditional their entire case rests on.
The July pilot: what actually starts this month
Because the DTCC’s tokenization timeline is the concrete event around which all the speculation orbits, it is worth being precise about what begins now and what does not.
The service launches in two phases. Phase one, this month, is a limited production pilot: real trades, real data, real workflows, but a tightly capped asset pool of Russell 1000 constituents, high-volume index ETFs, and US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds, run across the roughly 50 working-group firms in a controlled environment. Phase two, scheduled for October, is the full-service launch, at which point DTC participants can elect tokenized record-keeping as a standard operational feature. The design is conservative on purpose; the DTCC is not experimenting at the margins of finance but rewiring its center, and it is doing so with the most liquid securities on earth precisely so that any failure is absorbable. A December 2025 no-action letter from the SEC cleared the regulatory path, which is why the schedule has held while so much other crypto policy has slipped.
Ripple Prime’s role in phase one is participant, not platform. It is one of the fifty firms testing workflows, positioned to act as a prime broker on the tokenized rails the way it already acts on the conventional ones, financing and clearing client positions in whatever form the DTCC records them. The XRPL’s role in phase one is, on the public record, nothing, and the Stellar comparison makes the distinction concrete: when the DTCC chose a public blockchain for a component of its multi-chain strategy in late May, it said so by name, XLM repriced 80% in days, and volume ran up ninefold before any integration went live. That is what selection looks like. Adjacency looks like what XRP has: a broker owned by the ledger’s biggest patron, seated at the table, with no chain named. The October full launch is therefore the next hard checkpoint, because a standards document or service specification published then will either mention the XRPL or it will not, and for the first time in this saga there will be a dated, public artifact to check instead of a patent to interpret.
The empire the token funds but does not run
Widening the lens for a moment explains why the accounting above matters beyond one brokerage, because Ripple Prime is not an isolated bet. It is the largest piece of a deliberate, multi-billion-dollar campaign to turn Ripple from a payments company into a diversified Wall Street conglomerate, and the pattern across the whole campaign repeats the pattern inside Ripple Prime: the company grows, the ledger gains infrastructure, and the token’s role stays indirect.
Count the acquisitions. Standard Custody in 2024 brought regulated digital-asset custody. Hidden Road in 2025 brought the prime brokerage, at $1.25 billion the largest deal a crypto company had ever made for a traditional finance firm. Alongside them came treasury-management tooling, the RLUSD stablecoin build-out, a conditional federal bank charter application, and a $200 million debt raise specifically to expand Ripple Prime, nearly $3 billion in deal-making since 2023 by most counts.
Each acquisition slots into a stack that increasingly resembles a bank holding company for digital assets: custody at the bottom, clearing and prime services in the middle, a regulated dollar instrument moving value across all of it, and the XRP Ledger as the technical substrate. The company’s private valuation, around $50 billion, now exceeds what the entire XRP market capitalization was at points during the 2026 drawdown, a comparison the community finds either inspiring or damning depending on the week.
The XRP holder’s stake in this empire is real but oblique. Ripple funds the campaign substantially from its escrowed XRP, which means every acquisition is, in a loose sense, paid for by the token’s supply overhang; holders bear the dilution that finances the buildout. What holders receive in exchange is optionality: a bigger, more credentialed Ripple is more capable of eventually creating the third-party demand the three paths require, and the ledger those paths run through becomes more institutionally acceptable with every license and directory listing the company collects. What holders do not receive is any mechanical claim on the businesses themselves. Ripple Prime’s revenues belong to Ripple’s shareholders, not to XRP, and the same is true of custody fees, stablecoin float income, and whatever the bank charter eventually earns, the structural separation between company and token that has defined this asset since 2012 and that the empire’s growth makes more visible, not less.
The RLUSD subplot deserves its own paragraph, because it is the empire’s fastest-growing organ and the clearest illustration of the pattern. Launched with a regulated, fully reserved design, the stablecoin crossed $1.7 billion in market capitalization within a year, processed more than $18 billion in transfer volume in a single quarter, and for the first time now holds the majority of its supply on the XRP Ledger itself rather than on Ethereum. It is the margin asset on partner venues, the settlement leg in the JPMorgan pilot, the cash instrument across Ripple Prime’s product suite, and Ripple’s ticket into the Open USD consortium alongside Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and BlackRock. Every one of those roles is a role XRP structurally cannot fill, and each RLUSD milestone therefore reads two ways at once: proof that Ripple’s ledger is winning institutional flow, and proof that the flow’s unit of account is a dollar token whose success accrues to the company. The bulls answer that RLUSD adoption seeds the ledger with exactly the institutional liquidity that XRP-based collateral and bridging would one day plug into, and the answer is coherent; it is also, like everything on the bull side of this story, a claim about sequencing whose first half is observable and whose second half is not yet.
What would actually signal change
Because the two cases disagree about the future rather than the present, the useful exercise is naming the observable events that would settle the argument, and they are unusually concrete here.
The first signal is third-party collateral acceptance: a brokerage or clearing venue that Ripple does not own announcing that it accepts XRP as margin collateral. That single event would break the circularity objection and convert the Higgins roadmap from ambition to fact. The second is a named role in the DTCC build: the XRPL appearing in the tokenization service’s documentation the way Stellar appeared in May, or working-group output that specifies XRPL settlement for any asset class. The third is post-trade migration becoming visible on-chain: Ripple committed to moving Hidden Road’s post-trade activity to the XRPL, and if that happens at scale it will show up in ledger throughput, in escrow-adjacent institutional wallets, and in Ripple’s quarterly disclosures, none of which can be faked. The fourth is legal: CLARITY’s passage converting the interpretive commodity ruling into statute, which gates everything the collateral path requires, and whose precise provisions this publication has mapped.
Against those signals, the counter-signals are equally checkable: a working-group standard that specifies dealer-owned ledgers, the October full launch proceeding with no XRPL role, or Ripple Prime’s growth continuing while its XRPL migration stays a press-release commitment. Watch the RLUSD share of Ripple’s own settlement flow too; if the stablecoin keeps absorbing each new institutional product, as it has across the OUSD consortium and beyond, the token’s role narrows even as the company’s widens.
The honest summary is that Ripple Prime has moved Ripple from crypto’s perimeter into Wall Street’s operational core, and that this is a genuine, hard-won, probably underappreciated corporate achievement whose translation into XRP demand remains, today, mostly prospective. The $3 trillion is real and clears on Pershing’s rails. The quadrillions are real and belong to the DTCC. The token’s share of all of it is currently a fee burn measured in pocket change, a collollateral loop inside one firm, and a settlement role its own issuer assigned to a different asset. What Ripple bought with $1.25 billion is not flow; it is position, the right to be standing at the door if and when tokenized Wall Street opens it. Whether position becomes flow is the entire XRP question for the next two years, and unlike most crypto narratives, this one comes with a checklist.
One number, in closing, deserves to be rescued from both camps: the $1.25 billion purchase price. It is simultaneously the largest sum a crypto company has paid for a traditional finance firm and a rounding error against the flows it positions Ripple beside, and that ratio, enormous by crypto’s standards, trivial by Wall Street’s, is the truest measure of where this story stands. Ripple has bought a seat at the biggest table in finance for the price of a mid-sized protocol’s treasury. What it does with the seat, and whether the token ever shares in the meal, is the part no directory listing can answer.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Legislative and market details are current as of July 8, 2026, and may change. Always do your own research.
SHANGHAI, CHINA – JUNE 29, 2026 – Chinese and foreign tourists visit historical buildings at night near the Bund in Shanghai, China on June 29, 2026. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
China’s domestic tourism market is weakening faster than expected, clouding one of the few bright spots in the country’s sluggish consumer economy.
Hilton China said last week it now expects revenue per available room (RevPAR) to fall by low single digits this year, worse than expectations earlier this year for a flat performance. The hotel group’s RevPAR swung from 1.3% growth in the first quarter, to a 2.2% fall in the second quarter.
“The China economy is sputtering, and I mean it’s growing, but not consistent with what prior growth rates have been,” Christopher Nassetta, President and CEO of Hilton, said in the group’s earnings call on Tuesday, according to a FactSet transcript.
A weekend night in August at a Hilton resort in Dali, Yunnan province, popular with domestic Chinese tourists, runs at $173. But other options recommended on travel booking site Trip.com are less than half the price, with one around $50.
Across China, hotel RevPAR has tumbled 6% year-on-year through late July, following a 1% drop in June, according to Smith Travel Research data cited by Goldman Sachs on Tuesday. That’s after RevPAR rose mildly this spring, the data showed.
A three percentage point drop in occupancy along with a 1% decline in average daily rates versus a year ago dragged down revenue, the Goldman report indicated.
The downturn reflects how China’s post-Covid tourism boom is fading after three years, amid a broader slowdown in the economy and retail sales.
Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis, noted that there has been a “sharp decline of per-capita spending” on tourism since the third quarter of 2025.
“While tourism is still a bright spot, [it] cannot escape this broad macro trend,” he said, adding that consumers in China increasingly seek more unique or premium experiences, amid slower wage growth.
BAOSHAN, CHINA – JUNE 04: Tourists take photos at a viewing platform overlooking coffee plantations on June 4, 2026 in Baoshan, Yunnan Province of China. Xinzhai Village in Baoshan, known as “China’s First Coffee Village,” has over 70 years of coffee planting history and offers visitors experiences including picking, processing, roasting and brewing. (Photo by Li Jiaxian/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
China News Service | China News Service | Getty Images
Trip.com data showed price competition was clear in the three most-popular Chinese regions for travel this summer — Shanghai, Xinjiang and Yunnan.
An August weekend stay in China can cost anywhere from 40 yuan (US$6) to 18,000 yuan (US$2,633) per night, according to a CNBC analysis of Trip.com listings.
One-night stays saw a median price of just 192 yuan (US$28) in Kashgar, Xijiang, 373 yuan (US$55) in Dali, Yunnan, and 595 yuan (US$88) in Shanghai. Although premium rooms costing thousands of yuan lifted the averages, typical prices were far lower, with inexpensive options widely available in all three destinations.
KASHGAR, CHINA – OCTOBER 10: Tourists enjoy the picturesque scenery of the Bandir Blue Lake on October 10, 2025 in Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. (Photo by Bao Gansheng/VCG via Getty Images)
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
China’s retail sales have remained sluggish since the pandemic, with spending dipping in May from a year ago. Consumer prices have likewise been subdued, with a slower-than-expected 1% rise in June from a year ago.
Reflecting a sequential decline, the travel sub-index – part of the broader consumer price index – dropped by 0.6% in June from the prior month, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. In accompanying commentary, chief statistician Dong Liquan also pointed to sharp price drops in hotel rates and airfares.
The foreign luxury boost
While sentiment towards the domestic tourism market remains dim, inbound travel is emerging as a source of hope for the industry.
Thanks to China’s policy of allowing in travelers visa free from a growing number of countries, including in Europe, visitors from economies with far higher per capita income than China‘s are coming.
Upscale U.S. hotel operator Hyatt on Thursday reported an 18% increase in U.S. visitors into China, and 24% from Europe in the past quarter.
This premium end of the market offers a far brighter picture than the rest of the industry.
“China luxury properties were up 11% this past quarter in China. Lot of it’s leisure. So China is on fire,” Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt president and CEO, said on the earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.
Hyatt’s Greater China RevPAR rose 7.2% year-on-year in the second quarter, as Hoplamazian cited “leisure luxury” as a key driver.
Inbound travelers offer modest support for China’s tourism market. Overseas visitors account for 12% to 13% of total tourism spending, according to Natixis estimates.
Two French crypto investors have been held captive in London for more than 52 hours in a kidnapping and extortion case that ended with five men convicted after the victims were forced to transfer $30,000 in cryptocurrency.
Summary
- Five men were convicted after two French crypto investors were held captive in London for more than 52 hours and forced to transfer $30,000 in cryptocurrency.
- Prosecutors said the victims were tortured and threatened during the ordeal, while the alleged mastermind remains at large.
- Police rescued the victims after tracing a forgotten mobile phone and arrested several suspects following a high speed chase.
The Daily Mail, citing proceedings at Inner London Crown Court, reported that the two French cryptocurrency investors, both in their 20s, were abducted while visiting London and subjected to more than two days of confinement, violence and threats before officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad rescued them.
Prosecutors told the court the victims’ lavish lifestyle, much of it documented on social media, may have drawn the attention of the group behind the attack. The prosecution argued that their public online presence made them attractive targets for criminals looking to extort digital assets.
Convictions follow London crypto kidnapping
A jury found Gerson Borges and Mohamed Osman guilty of conspiracy to blackmail and false imprisonment, while Julius George, Isaac Bakoya and William Adebisi were convicted of false imprisonment. The defendants were cleared of kidnapping, possessing an imitation firearm and sexual assault charges.
Court proceedings also identified Ibrahim Mohamed, known as “Nino,” as the alleged organizer of the operation. Prosecutors said he directed members of the group from overseas through WhatsApp and Snapchat and remains at large.
One of the victims alleged that he had been sexually assaulted during the ordeal. The jury acquitted the defendants on those allegations, but UK reporting restrictions prevent identification of two defendants because of laws protecting alleged victims in sexual offence cases.
Victims said torture was used to force crypto transfers
According to evidence presented in court, the victims traveled from France to London and were staying in Kensington before arranging to buy cannabis in east London.
After leaving their rented Mercedes in Shadwell, prosecutors said they were confronted by three masked men carrying a gun and a knife before being forced back into the vehicle and driven to an apartment in Canning Town.
The victims told investigators they were held inside the flat for about 52 hours. During that time, they said they were stripped naked, bound with tape and cable ties, beaten, burned with cigarettes and scalded with boiling water, including on their genitals.
Prosecutors said the gang also threatened to mutilate them, force them into sexual acts and attack one victim’s girlfriend unless they handed over cryptocurrency.
The court heard the group initially demanded $150,000 in crypto. The victims ultimately transferred about $30,000 before the attackers concluded no more funds were immediately available.
Evidence presented during the trial stated that one victim was released, while the second remained captive. In a recorded police interview played to jurors, the remaining victim said he believed he had been “sold” to another criminal group that intended to continue the extortion.
The victims also described harsh treatment during their confinement. Court testimony stated they received only one spicy chicken wing from a KFC meal while members of the gang ate the remaining food. One victim also alleged he was forced to drink toilet water.
Police tracked the gang through a forgotten phone
The prosecution said the investigation turned after a friend who had traveled with the victims escaped during the ambush.
Although he was pulled from the Mercedes by the attackers, his mobile phone remained inside the vehicle without the gang noticing. After reaching a McDonald’s in Earl’s Court, he persuaded a security guard to call emergency services.
Using the phone’s location together with CCTV footage, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad identified the location where the victims were being held.
Police intercepted the suspects after a vehicle pursuit through residential London streets that reportedly reached speeds of about 70 mph.
When officers rescued one of the victims from the suspects’ car, prosecutors said his hands were still tied and visible cigarette burns covered parts of his face, including his forehead and cheek.
The victims later declined to testify in person during the trial, telling the court they remained afraid of the group after the attack.
Crypto kidnapping cases continue to draw attention
The London convictions add to a series of violent crimes targeting cryptocurrency holders, with criminals increasingly relying on physical coercion rather than online attacks to steal digital assets.
Earlier this year, two Texas brothers pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal case after admitting to holding a Minnesota family at gunpoint for more than eight hours and forcing the transfer of more than $8 million in cryptocurrency. Investigators later traced the suspects using physical evidence, rental records and surveillance footage.
Security researchers commonly describe such incidents as “wrench attacks,” where victims are threatened or assaulted to surrender access to digital assets instead of having their wallets hacked remotely.
France has also experienced a rise in crypto-linked violent crime. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said on June 30 that authorities had recorded 77 cases involving kidnapping, unlawful detention, extortion or attempted offences connected to the crypto sector in 2026, compared with 45 cases during 2025.
Nuñez said around 200 people had been arrested following attacks or preventive operations, while the government has expanded cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the country’s digital asset industry. French officials have also warned that organized criminal groups increasingly target individuals whose crypto wealth is visible through social media or public activity.
The circumstances described by prosecutors in the London case closely match that pattern, with the court hearing that the victims’ online display of wealth may have contributed to them being selected by the gang.
Stablecoin transfers from South Korea to overseas crypto platforms surged again in June, underscoring how much demand from local users continues to flow outside domestic rails. According to Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) data cited by Yonhap News Agency, South Korea recorded stablecoin outflows of 560.3 billion won (about $367 million) to foreign exchanges—marking an 18-month streak of net outflows.
The same FSS data, obtained by People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jong-wook, points to a large volume of cross-border movement through the country’s five major exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax. In June, these platforms transferred 2.7 trillion won (about $1.81 billion) in stablecoins offshore while receiving 2.2 trillion won (about $1.44 billion) from foreign platforms.
Key takeaways
- South Korea’s stablecoin outflows hit 560.3 billion won in June, extending a net outflow streak to 18 straight months.
- The FSS figures cited by Yonhap show South Korean exchanges both exported and imported large stablecoin volumes in June, with exports exceeding imports.
- Yonhap market participants linked the outflows to overseas products that may be restricted or unavailable domestically, including derivatives and certain DeFi and staking offerings.
- Lawmakers and regulators are reviewing investor protection and cross-border supervision as authorities seek to finalize a broader digital-asset framework.
- Regulatory discussions also include expanding crypto transfer reporting and tightening scrutiny of unregistered overseas exchanges.
Why stablecoins are leaving: availability and product access
In commentary collected by Yonhap, market participants attributed the cross-border stablecoin transfers to practical access differences between local and offshore venues. They pointed to demand for products that are either restricted or unavailable on South Korean exchanges, such as overseas derivatives, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), and various decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking products.
That framing matters because it suggests the outflows aren’t simply about holding stablecoins abroad—they’re tied to the ability to deploy them in specific strategies. If domestic platforms cannot offer comparable products under current rules, users may prefer the regulatory and product availability advantages of offshore exchanges.
Investor protection concerns rise as outflows persist
Lawmaker Lee Jong-wook used the June figures to argue that South Korea needs to re-examine how it safeguards investors across borders. As reported by The Korea Times, Lee called on the government to “comprehensively examine its investor protection and supervisory frameworks again and move swiftly to improve regulations.”
The core concern is that stablecoin users may be exposed to risks that aren’t fully addressed by domestic oversight once funds move to jurisdictions with different licensing and supervision standards. The persistent nature of the outflows—net outflows for 18 months—also increases pressure on policymakers to ensure the new regulatory framework can address the real-world behavior of market participants, not just domestic activity.
Policy work continues: phased stablecoin rules and a new digital-asset framework
The latest outflow data arrives as South Korea continues building a broader legal structure for digital assets. A policy report released this week recommended that authorities introduce interim licensing guidance and phase in stablecoin regulation before the Digital Asset Basic Act is finalized, according to earlier coverage on Cointelegraph.
If enacted, the proposed act would be South Korea’s first comprehensive digital asset framework, covering areas such as stablecoin issuance, required disclosures, and rules governing market activities. However, the reporting also highlighted that lawmakers are still negotiating how the framework should work in practice—particularly which institutions should be permitted to issue won-pegged stablecoins. Disagreements on that point have contributed to delays, leaving a window where the regulatory environment may still be incomplete for some market participants.
For users and investors, the uncertainty has direct implications: when licensing, issuance rules, and market-activity requirements are not fully aligned, offshore venues can remain more attractive—especially if they already support the products users want.
Reporting expansion and tighter scrutiny of offshore venues
Beyond stablecoin-specific rules, South Korea’s regulators are also targeting cross-border compliance. Cointelegraph previously reported that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) sought to broaden reporting requirements for crypto transfers. On June 22, the FIU proposed extending Travel Rule reporting requirements to transactions below 1 million won (roughly $650).
The FIU also urged stronger enforcement against unregistered overseas exchanges serving South Koreans. The agency argued that uneven licensing and supervision across jurisdictions can create opportunities for regulatory arbitrage—effectively allowing users to route activity to less constrained environments.
That enforcement argument dovetails with the persistent outflow trend. If domestic supervision tightens while offshore compliance remains uneven, policymakers may expect some shift back toward regulated channels. But the data cited by Yonhap suggests the decision to move stablecoins offshore is also driven by product access; enforcement alone may not be enough if users still perceive offshore platforms as offering functionalities they cannot obtain at home.
As South Korea moves toward interim licensing and broader stablecoin regulation ahead of the Digital Asset Basic Act, investors and market participants should watch for two things: whether the promised phased approach closes gaps that currently push activity offshore, and whether expanded Travel Rule reporting and offshore enforcement meaningfully reduce regulatory arbitrage without constraining legitimate domestic market development.
South Korea’s largest crypto exchange Bithumb said Monday it is preparing for a 2028 initial public offering (IPO) following a major internal reorganization to strengthen control and adoption of international account standards.
Seoul-based Bithumb did not reveal where it plans to launch the IPO. However, it did say it is working with domestic and international securities, law and account firms on the IPO process. Last year, Bithumb was said to be considering a NASDAQ listing, and later changed its plans to a listing on South Korea’s Kosdaq first.
CoinDesk approached Bithumb via email for more information, including where it plans to list its IPO, but had not received a response as of press time.
The crypto trading platform also said it plans to complete its risk management systems assessments and meet domestic and international account standards by the end of 2026. It then plans to apply for a preliminary listing review in 2027, with the IPO targeted for 2028.
Bithumb said the timetable could change depending on market conditions and regulators’ reviews.
Crypto and stock trading platform Robinhood has secured UK crypto registration ahead of the country’s new licensing framework.
Summary
- Robinhood has secured FCA registration to offer cryptocurrency services in the United Kingdom.
- The approval comes before the UK’s new crypto regulatory framework begins rolling out in late 2027.
- Robinhood had previously said it planned to launch crypto services in the UK after reporting its second quarter results.
- The company joins more than 50 crypto firms already registered under the FCA’s anti money laundering regime.
According to a recent announcement, Robinhood has received approval to offer cryptocurrency services in the United Kingdom after its UK subsidiary was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s register of cryptoasset firms on July 31.
Under the FCA’s existing crypto registration regime, the approval confirms that Robinhood meets the regulator’s anti-money laundering requirements, allowing the company to operate crypto services before the UK’s new regulatory framework begins taking effect.
Robinhood gains an early position before new UK rules
Since 2020, the FCA has required crypto businesses operating in the UK to register under its anti-money laundering framework. More than 50 companies currently appear on the regulator’s register, including Ripple, Kraken, BlackRock and BNY.
Robinhood’s latest approval comes before the UK introduces its new crypto authorization regime. According to the announcement, applications under the updated framework will open at the end of September and close at the end of February next year, with the full regulatory system scheduled to take effect in October 2027.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Robinhood, and we’re excited to take the first important step towards bringing our investing platform to customers in the U.K. I’m thrilled to be a part of Robinhood and our effort to expand into a new international market.”
– Wander Rutgers, President, Robinhood International.
Because Robinhood already holds registration under the current framework, the company may have completed part of the regulatory work before the transition begins. Further, the announcement noted that firms already registered under the existing regime could enter the new authorization process with much of that groundwork already in place.
The approval follows Robinhood’s earlier statement that it planned to expand its crypto business into the UK.
During its second-quarter earnings release on July 29, the company said it intended to launch cryptocurrency offerings in the country but did not provide a timeline. The latest FCA registration now gives Robinhood the regulatory approval needed to move ahead with those plans.
Robinhood’s crypto business has continued to expand even as trading activity softened during the second quarter. The company reported crypto transaction revenue of $100 million, down 38% from a year earlier, although it launched Robinhood Chain, introduced Stock Tokens in more than 120 countries, rolled out Robinhood Earn and completed its acquisition of WonderFi during the same period.
Crypto becomes one part of Robinhood’s expansion
Robinhood has increasingly diversified its business outside traditional crypto trading.
Its second-quarter results showed total net revenue rose 32% year over year to $1.31 billion, supported by growth in event contracts, options and equities. Event contracts generated $156 million in revenue during the quarter, making them the company’s fastest-growing transaction business.
Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Robinhood had discussed adding Crypto.com’s event contracts to its prediction markets hub. Neither company confirmed an agreement, and the report said the talks could still end without a deal.
Robinhood has already expanded its prediction market network through Kalshi, ForecastEx and Rothera, the exchange it operates through a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group. According to the company, working with multiple exchanges helps provide customers with a wider selection of contracts while reducing dependence on a single supplier.
Registration arrives before a new regulatory phase
The UK’s upcoming crypto framework will replace the current registration system with a more comprehensive authorization process covering crypto firms operating in the country.
The registration window under the new framework will remain open for only a limited period before the new rules fully take effect in October 2027. Companies seeking to continue serving UK customers will need to obtain authorization under that system.
Robinhood enters that process after already obtaining FCA registration under the existing anti-money laundering regime. While the company has not announced when its UK crypto services will become available, the latest approval removes an important regulatory requirement ahead of the country’s transition to its next phase of crypto oversight.
The market that dragged bitcoin off $65,000 this week didn’t sell it hard. It just stopped showing up.
Bitcoin closed the week near $62,600 after failing to reclaim $65,000, and Yusuf Fakhro, a partner at Bahrain-based ARP Digital, reads that through the market’s plumbing rather than the Fed headline that nudged it lower. The ETF bid that powered July’s recovery has stalled, flipping to net outflows of nearly 4,000 BTC on the week after a run of steady inflows.
The rest of the tape has gone quiet to the point of dormancy. July logged the lowest average daily spot volume since November 2023. CME open interest sits at 2023 levels. Perpetual-futures positioning has stalled near 300,000 BTC.
It’s a market that has stopped participating, Fakhro said, and even Strategy has paused its bitcoin buying for a fifth straight week, so the biggest structural buyer is sitting on its hands too.
The July 29 Fed meeting held rates and offered no easing signal, stripping out the catalyst bulls had leaned on.
The week’s real jolt came from custody. A Coldcard firmware flaw dormant since 2021 was exploited to drain roughly 1,367 BTC, about $89 million, from thousands of self-custodied wallets, and some holders have since moved coins back onto exchanges and into regulated products.
Bitcoin traded near $62,700 on Monday, down 3.5% on the week. Watch the next inflow print: if the ETF bid stays flat while price holds, Fakhro’s exhaustion read is right, and if fresh outflows can’t push it under $60,000, the sellers really are done.
David Schwartz, an XRP Ledger co creator and current Ripple board member, proposed a Bitcoin inheritance setup on Aug. 3 that separates access to duplicate hardware wallets from the PIN needed to unlock them.
Summary
- David Schwartz proposed giving two duplicate Bitcoin wallets and their shared PIN to separate people.
- The setup uses one seed across devices, so it remains a single signature wallet structure.
- Four suspected Coldcard waves moved about 1815 BTC from more than five thousand addresses overall.
- Coinkite says fixed firmware protects new seeds but cannot repair phrases generated on affected devices.
- Multisignature inheritance systems require separate keys, unlike duplicate devices sharing one recovery phrase between them.
His post followed a renewed debate over paper backups after the Coldcard firmware failure. Ripple identifies Schwartz as an original XRP Ledger architect, while its current leadership page lists him as a board member.
Schwartz described the idea as “one way” to handle inheritance, not as a finished product or guaranteed security model. He suggested loading the same 24 word recovery phrase onto two additional cold wallets, setting the same PIN on both, giving one device to each of two relatives, and sharing the PIN with two trusted friends who would disclose it after the owner’s death. The post did not name a wallet model or use the “nuclear briefcase” label.
How the Bitcoin inheritance plan would work
The proposed setup creates two physical copies of the same wallet. Each relative would hold a signing device but lack the PIN. Each friend would know the PIN but hold no device. Under normal conditions, neither group could access the Bitcoin without cooperating with someone from the other group.
Schwartz’s argument came during a discussion about whether paper backups are simpler than hardware wallets. Paper avoids firmware exposure, but it remains vulnerable to theft, fire and accidental destruction. Bitcoin Design notes that metal backups offer greater physical durability, while hardware wallets isolate recovery phrases and private keys from connected devices.
Meanwhile, the arrangement does not create a multisignature wallet. Both devices contain the same recovery phrase, so each represents the same signing authority. One relative and one friend could therefore gain full control together. A leaked PIN paired with a stolen device could create the same result.
True multisignature systems use separate keys and require more than one signature before funds move. Unchained describes a common two of three structure where one compromised key cannot spend the Bitcoin alone. Schwartz’s proposal instead divides one complete credential into a physical component and a knowledge component.
Coldcard losses make seed quality the central risk
The debate follows a Coldcard flaw that weakened randomness during seed generation on affected firmware. Coinkite has released corrected versions, but updating firmware cannot repair an earlier recovery phrase. Affected users must create a new seed and move their Bitcoin. Coinkite says sufficient private dice entropy or a strong passphrase may provide additional protection in some cases.
Block’s security team traced the issue to a deterministic software fallback and limited reseeding process. It cautioned that it had “not done full empirical testing to confirm exploitability,” while reporting that active theft was underway. The findings show why copying a wallet is safe only when the original seed was generated securely.
As crypto.news reported, a fourth suspected attack wave moved 448.7 BTC from 709 possible victim addresses. Four observed waves may total about 1,815.75 BTC across 5,294 addresses if there is no overlap. Those figures remain onchain estimates rather than losses confirmed by every wallet owner, Coinkite or law enforcement.
A complete inheritance plan needs legal steps
Schwartz’s outline addresses access, but inheritance also requires clear instructions, legal ownership records and a process that heirs can execute under stress. Unchained advises documenting the security model and ensuring an executor or trustee understands how to use the relevant keys. In related coverage, crypto.news noted that self custody can leave assets permanently inaccessible when owners fail to prepare heirs.
The setup also depends on relatives and friends remaining reachable, trustworthy and capable of coordinating. Device failure, forgotten PINs, disputes or premature disclosure could still disrupt the transfer. The claim that heirs are “guaranteed” to receive the funds would therefore be too strong.
Schwartz’s post did not announce a commercial service, audit or formal technical specification. Independent review would need to compare the approach with multisignature wallets, time based controls and professional estate planning. Any recovery process should also be tested with a small balance before it is trusted with long term Bitcoin savings.
Gold has had a rough year. After hitting an all-time high near $5,602 in January, the metal has since dropped roughly 27% from that peak, weighed down by rising Treasury yields, a firmer dollar, and cooling demand for safe-haven assets.
This week brought a fresh twist. Gold climbed back above $4,050 on Monday after President Trump signaled that peace talks with Iran would resume, following pressure from regional allies like Saudi Arabia to pause military strikes. The news pushed oil prices lower and eased inflation fears, but it also reduced some of the safe-haven demand that had been supporting gold.
Despite the sharp correction, most analysts still expect gold’s long-term uptrend to eventually reassert itself. In the near term, though, all eyes are on Friday’s US jobs report, the week’s key catalyst: a weak print could revive rate-cut expectations and give gold fresh support, while a strong one could extend the current pullback.
Technical Analysis of XAU/USD Chart
As the XAU/USD chart shows, gold remains locked in a broader downtrend since January’s record high, currently testing the descending trendline from below while holding just above the 3,900-4,000 support zone.
Bullish Scenario
Gold has already shown signs of life bouncing from the 3,900-4,000 support, and the RSI divergence lends some credibility to this reaction. Should price break decisively above the descending trendline, the next real test becomes the 4,400 resistance zone, where the 200-period EMA also converges—a level that has proven highly significant over recent months. A confirmed break above this confluence would mark a meaningful shift in gold’s broader structure.
Bearish Scenario
Should gold instead reject the trendline once again, price risks getting trapped between resistance above and support below. In that scenario, Friday’s NFP report looms as a potential catalyst: a strong print could tip the balance, breaking the 3,900-4,000 support and opening the path toward the next meaningful level, the former resistance-turned-support zone at 3,400-3,500.
With price squeezed between a stubborn trendline and a battle-tested support, and a major data release just days away, gold’s next move could finally answer the question traders have been asking since January’s peak: is the correction over, or just catching its breath?
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Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stopped recommending that all children get an annual influenza vaccine. Instead, it made the shot a matter of “shared clinical decision-making”—something for parents and a doctor to weigh case by case—citing, among other reasons, a lack of randomized controlled trials proving the vaccine’s efficacy in children, including the very young.
After a lawsuit from public health organizations, a federal court blocked it, leaving the previous recommendation in place. But the case is ongoing, and earlier this year President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the government to treat a recent HHS assessment as a “guiding resource” and to revisit the childhood vaccine schedule. That assessment argues that recent evidence behind annual flu shots for children, much of it from observational studies rather than randomized trials, is thin. While we believe that the evidence base, which in fact includes many clinical trials, is stronger than suggested by that assessment, it is correct to note that observational studies of annual flu shots suffer from various statistical biases.
In a new study published this summer, we showed one way that vaccine efficacy can be reliably measured each season using data we already collect, minimizing statistical bias without running a randomized trial at all. In principle, it’s a measurement that could be repeated every year.
Randomized trials have earned their reputation as the “gold standard” because they address a real statistical problem. When we simply compare children who got the flu shot with those who didn’t, for example, the two groups can differ in ways that have nothing to do with the vaccine, like how cautious their parents are or how often they visit a doctor. A randomized trial solves this by assigning the shot purely by chance, so the only way the groups differ is in whether they got a flu shot.
But randomized trials are not the only place to find randomized data. Sometimes the world randomizes people for us by accident.
Young children tend to have their annual checkup around their birthday, and that visit is a convenient moment for a flu shot if the vaccine happens to be available in the pediatrician’s office. Children with fall birthdays, who tend to see their pediatrician in the fall, just as the season’s vaccine arrives, can get it then and there. Children with summer birthdays have to make a separate trip, which many families never get around to doing. And birth month is essentially random when it comes to the flu; there is no biological reason a child born in October should need a flu shot more than a child born in June.
This lottery has real consequences. In a prior study, we showed that among children aged two to five, those with fall birthdays are more likely to be vaccinated, less likely to be diagnosed with the flu, and less likely to have a family member catch it than children with summer birthdays.
For this new study, we took advantage of this same randomization, but this time we used it to estimate how effective the vaccine was in each of five recent flu seasons, tracking vaccination and influenza rates among two- to five-year-olds with fall vs. summer birthdays.
In a given flu season, if children with fall birthdays were vaccinated more than children with summer birthdays, but didn’t get the flu less often, it would suggest that the flu shot wasn’t very effective in that season. This could happen if the strains of influenza that the flu shot protected against didn’t end up circulating that season. Alternatively, in a season where children with fall birthdays got vaccinated more and also avoided more flu than the summer-born children, it would tell us the vaccine was effective in that season.
In every season we examined, the vaccine clearly worked as intended: for every 100 children vaccinated because of the timing of their birthday—the children whose shot hinged on that convenient scheduling—there were between 9 and 14 fewer diagnosed cases of influenza, depending on the season.
If children with fall and summer birthdays are truly comparable—as they would be in a randomized trial—we shouldn’t see differences in conditions the flu shot doesn’t prevent. So, we compared their rates of non-influenza infections, like stomach viruses and common colds, and found no difference. That result suggested our flu findings weren’t the result of one group simply seeing the doctor more often, or being more health-conscious than the other.
As helpful as accidental randomization can be, producing what are called “natural experiments” like this one, true randomized controlled trials remain the most rigorous form of evidence. But it is simply not feasible to run a trial to settle every question medicine and public health face each year. Trials are slow, expensive, and logistically challenging. And when it comes to research on existing treatments, they can be unethical, since researchers cannot withhold treatments believed to be effective just to keep proving the point.
If the federal government’s concern is that we lack fresh randomized evidence that a long-established treatment is effective, the solution isn’t to stop the treatment and wait for a trial that may never come. Using the enormous quantity of data the health care system already generates—that is largely sitting idle and unexamined—to its fullest potential is an excellent alternative. Birthdays handed us a natural experiment that, unlike a randomized trial, didn’t require enrolling thousands of patients, spending millions of dollars, or waiting years to complete.
With a bit of creativity and rigorous statistical methods, that evidence can be drawn from the data we already have in the form of natural experiments. The efficacy of flu shots in children is just one of thousands of questions we could answer this way—no new trial required.
The crypto market will welcome tokens worth around $630.2 million in the first week of August 2026. Major projects, including Hyperliquid (HYPE), Succinct (PROVE), and Ethena (ENA), will release significant new token supplies.
These unlocks could introduce market volatility and influence short-term price movements. So, here’s a breakdown of what to watch.
1. Hyperliquid (HYPE)
- Unlock Date: August 6
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 433,000 HYPE
- Released Supply: 454.99 million HYPE
- Total Supply: 1 billion HYPE
Hyperliquid is a leading decentralized perpetual futures exchange built on its own Layer-1 blockchain. It offers high-performance trading with low latency, on-chain order books, and sub-second transaction finality.
On August 6, the team will unlock 433,000 HYPE worth $22.74 million. The tokens account for 0.19% of the released supply.
The team has allocated the unlocked supply to core contributors. Tokenomist pointed out that HYPE has historically claimed far fewer tokens than its projected unlock amounts.
2. Succinct (PROVE)
- Unlock Date: August 5
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 208.33 million PROVE
- Released Supply: 200 million PROVE
- Total Supply: 1 billion PROVE
Succinct is a zero-knowledge proof infrastructure project built around SP1, a zkVM that lets developers generate ZK proofs from ordinary Rust code without custom cryptography. The Ethereum-based PROVE token handles payments, staking, and governance.
The team will release 208.33 million tokens on August 5. The tokens are worth $34.7 million. The unlock exceeds the token’s entire released supply, representing 104.17% of tokens currently on the market.
Succinct will split the supply five ways. The network will direct 83.33 million tokens towards the ecosystem and research and development. Contributors and investors will get 73.75 million tokens and 26.25 million tokens, respectively.
In addition, the team will allocate 16.67 million PROVE to public allocation and incentives. Finally, the Succinct Foundation will get 8.33 million tokens.
3. Ethena (ENA)
- Unlock Date: August 5
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 171.88 million ENA
- Released Supply: 8.73 billion ENA
- Total Supply: 15 billion ENA
Ethena is a synthetic dollar protocol built on Ethereum (ETH). The protocol’s flagship product is USDe, a synthetic dollar stablecoin. Furthermore, ENA is the protocol’s governance token.
The team will release 171.88 million ENA tokens on August 5. The tokens, worth $15.36 million, account for 1.97% of the released supply.
Ethena will award the 93.75 million tokens to core contributors. In addition, the investors will receive 78.13 million ENA.
In addition to these three, Opinion (OPN), BounceBit (BB), and Momentum (MMT) will also experience new supply entering the market in the first week of August.
The post 3 Token Unlocks to Watch in the First Week of August 2026 appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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