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Bitmine Immersion Technologies added to its Ether holdings last week while projecting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual staking revenue, highlighting how its massive ETH treasury could generate income even during volatile market conditions.

In a Monday announcement, Bitmine said it acquired 27,180 ETH last week, bringing its holdings to more than 5.95 million ETH, worth roughly $15.4 billion and representing about 4.9% of Ether’s circulating supply. Including cash and other crypto assets, Bitmine reported total holdings of approximately $15.8 billion.

Bitmine said more than 5.06 million ETH is now staked, generating an estimated $334 million in annualized staking revenue at current rates.

With roughly 85% of its ETH now staked, Bitmine is turning its crypto treasury into a potentially significant source of recurring revenue. For comparison, Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE), the first spot Ether US exchange-traded product, has 84.6% of its Ether holdings staked, according to the fund’s webpage.

The company’s strategy also offers a key advantage over Bitcoin treasury companies, whose core BTC holdings do not generate native staking yield.

Bitmine shares were little changed on Monday, trading just below $25 in morning trading. The stock has gained nearly 38% over the past month but remains down year to date, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Related: Bitmine buys 28k ETH, completes 97% of treasury accumulation goal

Strategy skipped Bitcoin purchases last week

While Bitmine continued adding to its Ether treasury, Michael Saylor’s Strategy went a second consecutive week without buying Bitcoin (BTC), directing capital toward its preferred stock instead.

Strategy repurchased about 1.42 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $139.3 million between Sept. 8 and Sept. 13. The company also bought back $176.3 million worth of STRC the previous week, according to a Monday filing.

Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings remained unchanged at 845,050 BTC as of Sept. 13. Its last purchase came in late August, when the company acquired 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million.

In the final week of August, Strategy purchased 4,603 BTC for roughly $370 million, marking its first Bitcoin purchase since June. The subsequent pause, alongside the significant STRC buybacks in recent weeks, shows how the company is balancing Bitcoin accumulation with support for its preferred stock.

Related: Crypto Biz: AI took a back seat when Bitcoin started climbing

S&P Global has led a strategic investment in crypto data provider Kaiko that has expanded the company’s Series B funding round to $110 million as it builds data infrastructure for tokenized capital markets.

Kaiko said Monday that BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Stellar and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments participated in the investment.

Existing shareholders Anthemis, Point Nine and Revaia took part in the financing as well. Kaiko did not disclose its valuation or specify how much S&P Global and the other investors contributed individually.

The funding gives Kaiko fresh capital to develop its market data business while extending its infrastructure into onchain financial markets, where banks and other financial firms have been testing tokenized securities, settlement systems and blockchain-based financial products.

Kaiko funding reaches $110 million

The expanded Series B builds on the $53 million Kaiko raised in June 2022, when Eight Roads led a funding round involving Revaia and existing investors Alven, Point Nine, Anthemis and Underscore.

Crypto.news previously reported that Kaiko secured the $53 million investment during a period of falling digital asset prices and stress across the crypto market.

The latest financing brings a different set of financial institutions into Kaiko’s shareholder base. Several of the new investors have businesses spanning market data, banking, exchanges, blockchain infrastructure and capital markets.

Kaiko said the new investors have joined a Strategic Industry Working Group chaired by the company. The group will concentrate on data and infrastructure needed for tokenized markets as financial assets increasingly move onto blockchain networks.

Fresh capital will be directed toward Kaiko’s existing digital asset market data operation and its infrastructure for onchain capital markets. The company currently provides data covering more than 150 exchanges and protocols.

Kaiko has spent several years building products around institutional crypto pricing, liquidity, indices and market information. Its expansion has included acquisitions as well as integrations with companies that provide digital asset infrastructure to banks and other financial institutions.

In November 2024, Kaiko acquired index provider Vinter as part of its expansion into digital asset indices and European exchange-traded products. The transaction was described at the time as Kaiko’s third and largest acquisition, though financial terms were not disclosed.

Kaiko had previously bought quantitative data firm Kesitys in April 2022 and Napoleon Index from CoinShares later that year.

More recently, the company acquired DeFi infrastructure provider Cometh and U.S. digital asset data company Amberdata, extending the areas covered by its data and technology business.

S&P Global deepens work with Kaiko

S&P Global’s investment follows existing work between Kaiko and S&P Dow Jones Indices on blockchain-based benchmarks and crypto indices.

“As digital assets accelerate, S&P Global is investing for the future, and this investment underscores that conviction,” S&P Dow Jones Indices CEO Cathy Clay said.

Earlier this month, the two companies launched the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices, bringing their crypto index products into a single co-branded suite.

Their relationship had already extended into tokenized traditional financial benchmarks. In April, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko unveiled plans to tokenize the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries index on Canton Network.

Under that project, the index was designed to operate through smart-contract infrastructure carrying index data, intellectual property rights, licensing conditions, fees and access controls. The arrangement was intended to let developers use the benchmark in blockchain-based financial products while retaining the controls required by institutional market participants.

The project placed the iBoxx benchmark on the same network where other financial firms have been working with tokenized government securities and institutional settlement infrastructure.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has continued building digital asset benchmarks outside its work with Kaiko. In August, S&P and Pantera Capital introduced a crypto index built around protocol revenue, liquidity and market capitalization, with ETH, BNB, SOL, TRX and HYPE among its largest constituents at launch.

Tokenized markets draw institutional infrastructure

Kaiko’s new Strategic Industry Working Group brings together several companies that already have exposure to digital asset or tokenized financial infrastructure.

Canton Foundation’s participation connects the group with Canton Network, where Kaiko and S&P have worked on the tokenized iBoxx Treasury index. Financial institutions have been testing the network for use cases involving securities, collateral, repo markets and settlement.

Activity on Canton has extended into government bond markets. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group has been involved in work examining Japanese government bond repo transactions on the network, while another industry group has been studying tokenized JGBs, stablecoin settlement, T+0 processing and round-the-clock market access.

The network has attracted capital from large financial institutions as well. Digital Asset, the company behind Canton, raised $355 million in June in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participants including Citadel Securities, Apollo, BNP Paribas, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, Optiver and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

BNP Paribas and Coinbase Ventures now appear among the investors in Kaiko’s expanded Series B as well.

Institutional products have started using Kaiko data as their underlying pricing source. Bitwise’s Canton Coin ETP, launched on Deutsche Börse Xetra in May, tracks the Kaiko CANTO Reference Rate LDNLF index and carries an annual expense ratio of 0.85%.

Kaiko has worked with institutional digital asset infrastructure provider Taurus as well. A 2025 integration made Kaiko’s pricing and liquidity information available through the Taurus platform, extending access to clients using its digital asset infrastructure.

Taurus has since continued expanding the blockchain networks available to financial institutions through its technology. In August, the company completed an 18-month Hedera integration covering custody, staking, token issuance, node infrastructure and smart contract deployment for banks and regulated institutions.

Kaiko said its latest investment will support the core market data operation while financing further development of data infrastructure designed for onchain capital markets. The company has not disclosed a timetable for deploying the new capital or the valuation attached to the expanded Series B round.

Fragmented regulatory regimes are limiting stablecoin adoption in international trade, according to Juan Marchetti, director of the trade in services and investment division at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“The constraint is not technology. It is actually regulation and the lack of development of regulatory frameworks,” said Marchetti during a Monday speech in Geneva, at the launch of WTO’s study on stablecoins in world trade.

He cited an October 2025 report from the Financial Stability Board which found that only 39%, or 11 out of 28 surveyed jurisdictions, have finalized their stablecoin regulatory frameworks.

Marchetti added that stablecoins may improve some of the main friction points of trade finance, but currently only account for 3% of total international payments due to fragmented regulatory regimes. 

The WTO’s report identified five friction points that may be improved by stablecoin adoption, including high costs, low speed, limited access, insufficient transparency and foreign exchange limitations.

Stablecoins ability to ease friction in international payments. Source: Cointelegraph/WTO

The report also revealed that stablecoin payments in cross-border payments grew 35-fold between 2020 and mid-2024.

Related: Metaplanet cuts Series 10 stock pool by 41%, plans Hong Kong subsidiary

Emerging economies stand to gain most from stablecoin adoption: WTO

Developing economies stand to benefit most from stablecoin adoption due to their ability to reduce remittance fees. However, these same countries have the least developed regulatory regimes to facilitate adoption, according to the WTO’s director. He said:

“Contribution to trade will depend far less on the technology than on regulatory convergence, interoperability and the surrounding financial infrastructure, especially in developing economies that stand to gain.”

Some of the largest global payment processors are exploring stablecoins to improve cross-border payments.

In August, Mastercard partnered with stablecoin orchestration network Borderless to pilot how to bring more trust into cross-border stablecoin transfers through the payment processing giant’s Crypto Credential framework. In June, it announced plans to expand its settlement capabilities to include intraday, weekend and holiday card settlement, including settlement through stablecoins.

Also in August, Western Union said it partnered with stablecoin infrastructure provider Rain to launch a digital wallet and Visa-branded card that enables users to hold and spend a US dollar-backed stablecoin in 37 markets, planning to expand it to more than 60 markets by the end of the year.

Magazine: Why Australia’s $17B crypto opportunity depends on regulation