ICE ramps up its presence at airports

To do so, the Administration invoked a section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows the government to bypass laws that obstruct the building of border wall.

Migrant encounters are relatively rare at the section of the border that runs through the park, however—and have become more so in recent years. The park includes roughly 118 miles of what’s known as the Big Bend Sector of the border, which spans 517 miles from Sierra Blanca, Texas, to Sanderson, Texas, and covers roughly one-quarter of the full length of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. CBP recorded a 74% decrease in border crossings through its Big Bend Sector between fiscal years 2023 and 2025, with apprehensions dropping from 11,823 to 3,096. There were a total of 237,538 migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border in FY 2025, meaning that the 3,096 apprehensions in that sector accounted for just 1.3% of the total number. And CBP’s planned border wall in the park would only cover a fraction of a fraction of the full sector.

Ripple has raised $275 million through an upsized senior note offering by Ripple Prime to fund the brokerage unit’s expansion across financing, clearing, and other financial services in the United States.

Ripple said Tuesday that the senior unsecured notes were issued through Ripple Prime, its non-bank prime brokerage unit, in a private placement that drew participation from institutional investors across financial markets.

Proceeds from the offering will support Ripple Prime as the company adds capacity across its financing, clearing and brokerage operations in the United States. Ripple did not disclose the maturity, coupon, or identities of investors participating in the placement.

Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel said investor participation represented “confidence in our long-term vision for the growing intersection of traditional and digital asset financial infrastructure.”

The financing adds another source of capital for a brokerage operation Ripple acquired through its $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, followed by a separate $200 million credit facility secured earlier this year.

Ripple Prime gets fresh capital for U.S. expansion

Ripple Prime operates across digital assets and traditional markets, giving institutional clients access to clearing, financing and trading services covering crypto, foreign exchange, derivatives, swaps and fixed income.

The business came under Ripple through its acquisition of Hidden Road, which was announced in April 2025 and completed in October. Ripple subsequently renamed the operation Ripple Prime, creating an institutional brokerage arm alongside its payments, custody and stablecoin businesses.

Hidden Road was already handling roughly $3 trillion in annual clearing volume across more than 300 institutional clients before the business was integrated with Ripple. The brokerage serves hedge funds, proprietary trading firms and liquidity providers that need financing, clearing and settlement services across multiple asset classes.

As part of the transaction, Ripple completed the Hidden Road acquisition in October 2025 after agreeing to pay $1.25 billion for the company earlier that year. The deal gave Ripple ownership of a global multi-asset prime broker and expanded its operations beyond its existing payments and digital asset infrastructure.

Ripple has since integrated some of its blockchain products into the brokerage. Ripple USD, or RLUSD, can be used as collateral within Ripple Prime, while the company has also disclosed plans to move some post-trade activity onto the XRP Ledger.

The brokerage’s U.S. presence had started expanding before Ripple completed the acquisition. Hidden Road received a broker-dealer license from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in April 2025, allowing it to provide additional prime brokerage, clearing and financing services for fixed-income assets to institutional clients.

A month later, the firm launched over-the-counter cash-settled crypto swaps for U.S. institutional investors through its Financial Conduct Authority-regulated U.K. entity.

Ripple Prime financing has reached $475 million since May

Tuesday’s $275 million note placement follows another financing transaction completed three months earlier.

Ripple Prime secured a $200 million facility in May from funds managed by Neuberger Berman, giving the brokerage additional lending capacity for institutional customers.

The facility was arranged through Neuberger Berman’s specialty finance group and can be drawn according to client borrowing demand. Ripple said at the time that the funding would support margin services spanning digital assets, equities, fixed income and foreign exchange.

Combined with the latest note offering, the two transactions have provided Ripple Prime with access to as much as $475 million in new financing since May, although the structures serve different purposes. The Neuberger Berman agreement provides lending capacity tied to client demand, while Tuesday’s transaction involved Ripple Prime issuing senior unsecured debt to institutional investors.

Prime brokerage businesses require access to capital because clients can borrow against positions, finance trades, and use collateral across several markets. Ripple Prime also offers cross-margining, which allows qualifying institutional clients to offset exposures across positions rather than funding each trade separately.

The brokerage has continued building connections to traditional market infrastructure as its business expands. A July review of Ripple Prime found that the operation had entered the National Securities Clearing Corporation participant directory in March and had a place in a Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation tokenization working group.

Its NSCC participation gives the brokerage access to U.S. securities clearing infrastructure, although the listing itself does not mean trades are settled using XRP or the XRP Ledger.

RLUSD becomes part of Ripple’s institutional finance stack

Ripple has also expanded RLUSD alongside the buildout of its brokerage operation, positioning the dollar-backed stablecoin for institutional payments, trading and collateral use.

In July, the company introduced Ripple Mint, a platform designed to give institutions tools to mint, redeem and manage RLUSD. Ripple said the product provides businesses with infrastructure for incorporating the stablecoin into treasury, payment and other financial operations.

RLUSD’s circulation has increased considerably since its December 2024 launch. The stablecoin had a market capitalization of roughly $1.76 billion at the last check, according to CoinGecko data.

On-chain activity has also increased. A June 30 report from Ripple-backed Evernorth found that RLUSD trading volume had exceeded $2.5 billion across XRP Ledger pairs since the stablecoin’s public launch.

Evernorth said RLUSD’s share of XRP Ledger trading increased from less than 1% to roughly 12% during 2026. The RLUSD/XRP pair alone had processed roughly $900 million over six months, according to the firm’s report.

Ripple Prime represents one institutional use case for the stablecoin because clients can use RLUSD as collateral within the brokerage. Ripple has said that integrating the stablecoin with prime brokerage services can allow clients to manage collateral across digital and traditional assets from the same platform.

The company has been adding other distribution channels for RLUSD at the same time. In July, Ripple joined the x402 Foundation as a Premier Member, supporting the use of XRP and RLUSD for payments made through the open x402 protocol.

Ripple has built out financial services through acquisitions

The note offering also comes after several large acquisitions that moved Ripple into businesses outside its original blockchain payments operations.

Hidden Road was the largest of the transactions when the $1.25 billion deal was announced in April 2025. Ripple also acquired treasury management software provider GTreasury for $1 billion in October 2025 and payments infrastructure company Rail for $200 million in August of that year.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in January that the company was focusing on integrating its acquisitions after the dealmaking completed during 2025.

For Ripple Prime, the Hidden Road purchase gave the company an established brokerage with institutional clients and existing access to traditional financial markets. Ripple has since added its stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure to parts of that operation while providing additional capital for client financing.

The latest $275 million private placement leaves Ripple Prime with another source of funding for that business. Ripple said proceeds will be used for its continued expansion into prime brokerage, financing and multi-asset clearing services in the United States.

Maya Protocol, a cross-chain decentralized exchange built from THORChain’s open-source code, halted its network after an attacker reportedly exploited multiple software weaknesses to siphon roughly $1.7 million worth of crypto assets. The protocol’s pseudonymous co-founder, Aalux, said the immediate goal of the shutdown was to stop further damage while the team worked toward a fix to resume swaps.

In a preliminary technical account posted to X, Aalux described the theft as involving about 20 bitcoin (valued at $1.4 million) alongside approximately $300,000 in other assets. The post also argued that the exploit’s impact extended beyond the direct theft, with MayaChain’s liquidity pools losing far more value amid downstream effects.

Key takeaways

• Maya Protocol halted operations after a reported $1.7 million exploit tied to a chain of software bugs across trade accounting and liquidity pool calculations.
• The attacker’s reported actions appear to have manipulated how withdrawals and compensation were computed for a low-liquidity pool.
• While the hack haul was estimated at about $1.7 million, a technical analysis cited pool losses of roughly $10.9 million linked to arbitrage activity and the collapse of MAYAChain’s gas/settlement token, CACAO.
• The protocol attributed the incident to six interconnected issues, including how outbound transfers were tracked and how credits were applied to pools.

What Maya Protocol said happened

Maya Protocol operates as a cross-chain swapping system, and the incident centered on MAYAChain liquidity pools and protocol-controlled reserves. In the ecosystem, CACAO serves as the gas and settlement token and is paired with supported assets in liquidity pools.

Aalux’s preliminary analysis, shared on X, attributed the incident to six “chained bugs.” The description focused on three main areas: trade accounts, outbound transaction handling, and liquidity pool math. According to the account, the exploit overwrote records that track outbound transfers, causing transfers to be treated as missing. That classification triggered a theft-protection mechanism—but the mechanism then miscalculated what compensation should be for Maya’s low-liquidity ARB.LINK pool on Arbitrum.

The miscalculation allegedly resulted in an incorrect credit of 49.45 million CACAO to the affected pool. Even though the transfer meant to back up that credit reportedly failed due to the reserve holding insufficient CACAO, the inflated pool balance remained on-chain.

The pool manipulation and reported extraction

With the pool balance allegedly overstated, the attacker then added only negligible liquidity—an approach intended to convert the manipulated accounting state into control of the pool. Aalux’s technical write-up says the attacker was able to obtain 99.93% of the pool and then withdraw 48.87 million CACAO from Asgard, described as the system holding protocol assets.

Blockchain security researcher Vini Barbosa summarized the findings and pointed to the token price impact during the incident. Barbosa reported that CACAO fell by 88.7%, dropping from roughly $0.115 to about $0.013 as the exploit unfolded.

As a result, readers should separate two different outcomes: the attacker’s direct asset extraction (estimated by Aalux at about $1.7 million) and the broader market/liquidity damage that followed once the token and pool states deteriorated.

Why the losses may have exceeded the theft

Even though the attacker’s reported haul was around $1.7 million, Aalux’s analysis suggested a significantly larger loss footprint across MAYAChain liquidity pools—estimated at about $10.9 million in value. The write-up attributed the higher figure to effects such as arbitrage and the collapse of CACAO.

This distinction matters for investors and users because it highlights how cross-chain DEX incidents can propagate. When a token’s price and liquidity conditions break down quickly, the system can experience cascading effects: arbitrageurs may rebalance across venues, and pool accounting changes can trigger a feedback loop of reduced depth and further price pressure. In other words, even if the attacker’s withdrawal amount is limited, the protocol’s liquidity environment can still suffer outsized damage.

Aalux also said the protocol intended to pursue recovery of the stolen funds via a bug bounty process and work to restore liquidity, alongside efforts to resume swaps once the underlying issues were fixed.

What to watch next

With Maya Protocol currently halted, the next signals to monitor are (1) whether the team can restore correct liquidity pool accounting and outbound transfer tracking, and (2) whether CACAO and impacted pools recover without triggering additional exploit pathways. Until a full post-incident fix and recovery plan is confirmed, the key uncertainty remains how comprehensively the exploited logic has been patched and how fast liquidity can return.

Standard Chartered and HSBC have completed the first live cross-border transaction using Swift’s blockchain-based ledger, marking an early proof that tokenized deposit systems from different banks can interoperate in real time. The demonstration comes roughly a month after Swift said its ledger was ready for initial use.

According to Swift’s description of the approach, the test relied on payment messages exchanged between the two banks through the ledger. The resulting obligations were recorded on HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service and StanChart’s tokenized deposit infrastructure, while Swift’s ledger served as an orchestration layer—matching and netting the obligations before settlement was completed through existing payment channels.

Key takeaways

• HSBC and Standard Chartered have executed the first live cross-border transaction on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger.
• Swift’s ledger was used to orchestrate, match, and net obligations between different banks’ tokenized deposit systems before final settlement.
• The workflow is designed to preserve banks’ existing settlement, compliance, and risk controls rather than replace them.
• The move follows Swift’s July announcement that a pilot with 17 banks across six continents was preparing to run live transactions using tokenized deposits.

How the ledger-based payment run worked

The core idea behind Swift’s blockchain-based ledger is interoperability: connecting tokenized deposits issued on separate bank infrastructure so that cross-border payments can operate more continuously. In this live transaction, payment messages were exchanged between HSBC and Standard Chartered via the ledger, and the banks’ respective tokenized systems captured the obligations created by that messaging.

Swift characterized the ledger as an orchestration layer rather than a replacement for settlement rails. In the described process, the ledger helps match and net what each party owes to the other. Settlement then proceeds through existing payment systems, reflecting a hybrid design aimed at reducing operational friction while keeping established governance and controls intact.

Why this matters for tokenized deposits

Banks have been testing tokenized bank deposits for a range of use cases, but interoperability remains the major hurdle. Tokenized deposits can improve settlement speed and enable more flexible payment flows, yet meaningful progress depends on whether institutions can connect their systems across jurisdictions and counterparty networks.

Swift’s ledger approach targets that gap by acting as a shared orchestration mechanism. The result, if the pilot continues to demonstrate reliability at scale, is a pathway toward 24/7 cross-border payment capability without forcing each bank to abandon its existing settlement processes, compliance frameworks, or risk management procedures.

That “connect without replacing everything” philosophy is a key distinction from proposals that attempt to rebuild the full payment stack end-to-end. It also helps explain why interoperability-focused pilots have gained momentum alongside stablecoins and other digital settlement narratives: regulators and risk teams may be more comfortable with incremental changes that preserve familiar guardrails.

The timeline: from Swift’s pilot plans to a first live run

The transaction follows Swift’s July announcement that its blockchain-based ledger was ready for initial use and that 17 banks across six continents were preparing to pilot live transfers. The pilot group included Citi, BNP Paribas, BNY, Wells Fargo, UBS, MUFG, DBS, and ANZ, alongside the institutions involved in this first live cross-border transaction.

Swift also described the ledger as designed to support 24/7 cross-border payments while maintaining existing settlement, compliance, and risk controls. By reporting a first live cross-border transaction only weeks after the ledger’s readiness announcement, Swift and participating banks are effectively moving from planning to operational validation—an important step for any distributed ledger initiative aimed at financial messaging.

Earlier reporting highlighted that the ledger approach would enable banks to connect tokenized deposits issued on separate infrastructures. This first execution between HSBC and Standard Chartered provides a tangible example of how that “connection” can work in practice: obligations are recorded on the banks’ tokenized services, while Swift’s ledger handles the orchestration needed for interoperability.

Broader industry push toward interoperable digital settlement

The Swift-led progress sits within a wider push by financial institutions toward tokenized bank money and networked settlement. In November 2025, HSBC said it planned to expand its Tokenised Deposit Service to corporate clients in the US and UAE in the first half of 2026. The bank also previously launched the service in the US, offering eligible corporate and institutional clients 24/7 domestic and cross-border transfers using tokenized deposits (HSBC’s expansion plan is described in its coverage at Cointelegraph and the related press release is hosted on HSBC’s site).

Standard Chartered has also participated in real-value settlement efforts. In July, it was included among institutions and central banks involved in Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agorá trials, which reportedly settled about $1 million across six currencies using tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves (as covered by Cointelegraph).

Meanwhile, other industry players are building parallel network concepts. The Clearing House—owned by some large US banks—has been reported to plan a tokenized deposit network in the first half of 2027 intended to connect traditional payment rails with digital asset infrastructure for round-the-clock settlement (details appear in Cointelegraph).

Taken together, these efforts point to a sector trying to standardize interoperability through multiple routes: shared orchestration layers like Swift’s ledger, institution-specific tokenized deposit platforms such as HSBC’s service, and broader network initiatives like those discussed by payments operators. The question for the market is whether these paths converge into interoperable standards—or remain fragmented across separate ecosystems.

For investors, traders, and builders, the next watch is performance and scale: whether further live transactions on Swift’s ledger expand beyond a limited bilateral test, and how quickly participating banks can expand tokenized deposit interoperability across routes while keeping settlement and risk controls aligned with established regulatory expectations.

Ethena and FalconX have launched a $1 billion secured lending facility that will use assets backing USDe to finance overcollateralized loans for institutional borrowers.

How the $1 billion USDe facility will work

FalconX and Ethena said the warehouse financing arrangement will give FalconX capital to extend secured loans to institutional clients for trading, corporate treasury operations, and payment-related services.

Operating through a special purpose vehicle, FalconX will originate the loans, assess borrowers, service the credit, and manage the collateral. Qualified third-party custodians will hold the assets securing each position rather than leaving them under the borrower’s direct control.

Borrowers must pledge assets worth more than the amount they receive, creating a buffer that FalconX can use if the collateral loses value. Ethena will retain a first-priority security interest over assets held within the facility, according to the company’s announcement.

Collateral values, margin requirements, and liquidation procedures matter because falling crypto prices can quickly reduce the protection created by overcollateralization. While the structure can limit potential losses, it does not remove market, custody, operational, or counterparty risks.

FalconX will provide financing across several institutional activities, with both companies planning to increase deployments when borrowing demand supports additional loans. Neither party disclosed the interest rates, loan durations, eligible collateral, or minimum collateral ratios that will apply across the full facility.

Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, described institutional credit as a large and established source of returns that on-chain capital has rarely accessed.

“Partnering with FalconX gives us a secured, overcollateralized channel into institutional credit,” Young said.

FalconX Head of Credit Craig Birchall said the agreement would let the company provide secured financing for several institutional uses as digital asset lending becomes more connected with other capital-market services.

Ethena adds institutional credit to USDe backing

For Ethena, the facility introduces another source of returns for the portfolio supporting USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to track the value of the U.S. dollar.

USDe has historically relied on crypto collateral and hedged derivatives positions, including short futures positions intended to offset changes in the value of backing assets. Returns can come from funding payments, staking rewards, liquid stablecoins, tokenized assets, and lending arrangements.

Institutional loans had already become part of the reserve structure before the FalconX agreement. Ethena’s June governance report placed the segment at about $310 million, equal to 6.9% of USDe backing as of July 3, with an estimated annual yield of between 4% and 7%.

By comparison, DeFi lending accounted for roughly $2 billion, or 46%, across Aave, Morpho, Kamino, and Jupiter. Liquid stablecoins represented about 35% of the portfolio, while tokenized real-world assets made up 11.2%.

Crypto basis positions, once a central part of Ethena’s model, had fallen to around $39 million, or 1% of the backing portfolio. The same governance report recorded a backing ratio of 101.59%, a reserve fund of approximately $62 million, and nearly $1.2 billion in stablecoins available to process redemptions.

The figures show that Ethena was already reducing its reliance on derivatives-based returns before allocating additional capital to FalconX. Credit exposure carries a different set of risks because returns depend on borrower performance, collateral quality, enforceable legal claims, and a lender’s ability to liquidate pledged assets promptly.

Ethena’s institutional lending framework requires separate reviews for each counterparty. The protocol also includes off-chain credit positions in its proof-of-reserves reports and transparency dashboard, allowing users to see how much backing has been allocated outside DeFi markets.

FalconX joins Anchorage Digital, Maple Institutional, and Coinbase Asset Management among the counterparties approved under the program during March and April.

FalconX relationship expands beyond USDe trading

The lending facility builds on FalconX’s previous integration of the synthetic dollar. In September 2025, FalconX added USDe support across parts of its spot, derivatives, and custody operations.

Approved institutional clients gained access to over-the-counter liquidity and could hold USDe or use it as collateral for selected credit and derivatives transactions. The new arrangement reverses part of that relationship by allowing USDe backing assets to fund loans originated through FalconX.

Ethena has also connected USDe with other institutional platforms. As crypto.news reported in June, BlackRock integrated the synthetic dollar into Aladdin, an investment and risk management system used by institutions overseeing more than $20 trillion.

Ethena also selected BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund as the main reserve asset for a white-label stablecoin product. BUIDL invests in cash, repurchase agreements, and U.S. Treasury securities, giving Ethena another reserve strategy outside its original crypto-based trades.

Public-market exposure to the Ethena ecosystem increased days before the Aladdin announcement when StablecoinX completed its merger with TLGY Acquisition Corp. The company began Nasdaq trading under the ticker USDE on June 26, with warrants listed under USDEW.

StablecoinX held about 3.03 billion ENA tokens valued at approximately $275 million using the 30-day average applied before the transaction closed. Its operating plan includes Ethena infrastructure, software services, and institutional distribution.

U.S. access depends on the contracting entity

For American institutions, the FalconX group operates through several affiliated entities with different registrations and permitted activities. FalconX Bravo Inc. appears on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s list of registered swap dealers and is a member of the National Futures Association.

FalconX Delta provides trading services to eligible U.S. institutional clients and is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a money services business, according to FalconX’s licensing disclosures. State money-transmitter requirements apply in jurisdictions listed by the company.

The Ethena facility, however, extends credit to a Cayman Islands segregated portfolio rather than FalconX Bravo or FalconX Delta. Its legal structure therefore depends on the contracting vehicle, the jurisdiction governing the arrangement, and the enforceability of Ethena’s first-priority claim.

For ENA holders and investors in Nasdaq-listed StablecoinX, the arrangement adds indirect exposure to Ethena’s institutional lending activity because revenue and ecosystem demand depend partly on the performance and adoption of USDe. The announcement does not state that retail customers or U.S. investors can borrow directly through the $1 billion facility.