U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in $2.39 billion during the Sep. 21–25 trading week, with net inflows on all five days. Spot Ether ETFs added $689.8 million, while Solana funds drew $188.1 million.

According to Farside Investors, Monday’s $999 million was the largest daily Bitcoin ETF inflow of the week. The funds then added $714.7 million on Tuesday, $346.9 million on Wednesday, $190.7 million on Thursday and $134.5 million on Friday.

BlackRock leads Bitcoin ETF inflows

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, collected $1.16 billion over the five sessions, based on Farside’s daily fund figures. Fidelity’s FBTC followed with $701.6 million, while ARK 21Shares’ ARKB added $294.7 million. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT drew $203.3 million.

Monday accounted for nearly $1 billion of the Bitcoin funds’ $2.39 billion weekly total. IBIT received $381.4 million that day, while ARKB took in $289.1 million and FBTC added $238.8 million. Tuesday brought another $350.3 million to IBIT and $257.4 million to FBTC.

The pace slowed later in the week, but the combined funds remained positive through Friday. IBIT posted an inflow on every trading day. The weekly total also exceeded the prior week’s roughly $6.1 million net inflow, which included sharp withdrawals on Sep. 15 and 16 before flows recovered.

Bitcoin’s price moved above $87,000 earlier in the week before pulling back. crypto.news reported on Friday that BTC was holding near $84,000 despite continued ETF inflows. The fund data show sustained net buying through the price retreat; they do not establish how much of the price move came from ETF demand.

Ether funds reverse the previous week’s outflow

U.S. spot Ether ETFs recorded $689.8 million in net inflows from Sep. 21 through Sep. 25, according to Farside’s Ether data. The funds added $270 million on Monday, followed by $162.2 million, $104.5 million, $66.1 million, and $87 million over the next four sessions.

The result reversed the previous week’s roughly $140.6 million net outflow. BlackRock’s ETHA led this week’s gains with $326.2 million, while Fidelity’s FETH took in $174.1 million. BlackRock’s staking fund ETHB added $47.5 million.

Monday’s $270 million was Ether ETFs’ strongest day of the week. ETHA received $110.1 million, FETH added $73 million, and Grayscale’s lower-fee ETH fund drew $59.3 million. Daily inflows became smaller as the week progressed, though the group finished each session in positive territory.

Solana ETFs finish with their strongest day

Spot Solana ETFs drew $188.1 million for the week, based on Farside’s Solana figures. Their daily net inflows were $26 million on Monday, $28.9 million on Tuesday, $13.7 million on Wednesday, $32.8 million on Thursday, and $86.7 million on Friday.

Bitwise’s BSOL accounted for $128.4 million of the weekly total. It received $55.7 million on Friday, when Grayscale’s GSOL added $18.5 million, and Morgan Stanley’s MSOL took in $6 million.

Across the Bitcoin, Ether and Solana products tracked in Farside’s three tables, net inflows totaled approximately $3.26 billion for Sep. 21–25. Bitcoin funds accounted for about 73% of that combined figure.

Payward has divided that vision into four pillars: trading through Kraken, banking, asset management and Payward Services, its business-to-business infrastructure division.

Kraken has about 6.6 million funded accounts holding between $40 billion and $50 billion of assets, according to Sethi, across more than 190 countries and territories.

To grow its vision of a unified financial platform, Payward is now adding services around those accounts, including cards, lending, derivatives and tokenized equities, as well as products that allow customers to borrow against assets or deploy them in decentralized-finance applications. Kraken Financial, its Wyoming-chartered special-purpose depository institution, also forms part of the stack.

Build, buy or partner

That thesis is also shaping what the company is buying.

While Payward builds some capabilities internally, it also acquires others that would take years to replicate and partners with institutions whose position cannot simply be bought.

Payward paid $1.5 billion for the acquisition of NinjaTrader to build a U.S. futures brokerage, including its technology and regulatory permissions, which would have been costly and time-consuming, Sethi said. It followed that with a $550 million deal for Bitnomial, adding regulated derivatives infrastructure, including an exchange, clearinghouse and futures brokerage.

The firm is also “about to buy a bank in Europe,” Sethi said, without disclosing who the target was. Bloomberg reported in July that Payward was planning to buy a Lithuanian bank as part of its strategy to expand on the continent.

The company does not maintain a shopping list or broadly solicit pitches from bankers. Instead, it uses a quantitative framework to determine whether a target fills an infrastructure gap and provides capabilities customers want, Sethi said.

Zcash price has gained about 102% over the past month to trade near $1,535 as co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson has repeated his forecast that ZEC will reach $5,000 by the end of 2026.

Ben-Sasson said in a recent X post that he still considers his $5,000 year-end prediction on track. He also said large holders had asked him about ZEC’s latest rise, while acknowledging that he did not know precisely what caused the move.

The forecast follows an earlier call for ZEC to exceed $1,200 by Sep. 25. Zcash passed that price during its September rally and later traded above $1,600, putting the token well beyond the level Ben-Sasson had named for the month.

At roughly $1,535, a move to $5,000 would require ZEC to rise about 226%. The year-end figure remains Ben-Sasson’s prediction; his post did not identify a price model or a sequence of levels leading to it.

Zcash price holds above $1,500 after its monthly surge

Zcash price traded near $1,535 on the Binance daily chart captured on Sep. 26. The session showed an opening price of $1,555.74, a high of $1,559.02, and a low of $1,527.56 at the time of the reading.

Price remained above the chart’s $1,500 Murrey Math level after pulling back from a recent peak above $1,600. The next marked level above price was $1,625, followed by $1,750. Below $1,500, the chart placed the next levels at $1,375 and $1,250.

The daily average directional index, or ADX, stood at 60.44. ADX measures the strength of a trend without showing its direction; ZEC’s price action supplies the directional context after its climb through the September levels.

The speed of the advance has also brought sharp reversals. On Sep. 18, ZEC reached $1,535.82 before retreating toward $1,455, as previous Zcash price coverage detailed. At the time, the $1,500 level acted as resistance. ZEC has since moved above it, though its retreat from the latest high leaves that level close to the market again.

Earlier in September, ZEC rose from around $814 to more than $1,200. The rise included a move above $1,000 on Sep. 4, when short liquidations added to trading activity. Price then crossed $1,250 and $1,375 during the next leg of the rally.

Grayscale’s Zcash fund gives U.S. investors exchange access

Grayscale’s Zcash product began trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH on Aug. 25 after the firm converted its existing trust into an exchange-traded fund. The listing gave U.S. brokerage investors a way to gain ZEC exposure without buying and storing the token themselves, as crypto.news covered after its launch.

Grayscale launched the product with about $304 million in assets held by the former trust. Its assets passed $500 million within weeks and reached more than $1 billion roughly one month after the listing, according to Grayscale’s reported fund figures. Asset growth includes changes in the value of ZEC already held by the fund, as well as investment flows.

ZCSH is also approaching a change to its share structure. Grayscale has scheduled a three-for-one forward split, with investors on record at the close of Sep. 28 set to receive two additional shares for each share held. Distribution is scheduled for Sep. 29, and split-adjusted trading is due to begin before the market opens on Sep. 30.

The split will triple the number of shares held by each eligible investor while reducing the net asset value per share proportionately. It will not change the value of the investor’s holding at the time of the adjustment, according to the ZCSH split filing.

For U.S. investors comparing the fund with direct ZEC ownership, Grayscale states that ZCSH is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Its shares trade through brokerage accounts, while direct holders own the cryptocurrency itself.

Network upgrade plans add dates to the ZEC calendar

Zcash developers have set an Oct. 6 testnet activation target for Network Upgrade 7, or NU7, according to the project’s published upgrade timeline. The plan includes reducing the target time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.

The proposed schedule calls for a final decision on mainnet activation on Oct. 20, after developers review the testnet rollout. Mainnet activation is targeted for Nov. 5. The upgrade package also includes changes to older transaction formats and the network’s funding mechanism.

Coinholders had backed the faster block target in a September poll. Nearly 99.9% of the participating ZEC supported the 25-second proposal, while about 98.9% favored retaining the existing halving schedule, according to coverage of the NU7 vote.

Outside the U.S., 21Shares launched a physically backed Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam in September. The product gives eligible European brokerage customers another route to ZEC exposure, weeks after ZCSH began trading in New York.

Ripple’s RLUSD has reached a circulating supply of about 2.49 billion tokens as the value of stablecoins on the XRP Ledger has risen roughly 6% in a week.

CoinMarketCap data places RLUSD’s circulating supply at approximately 2.49 billion tokens and its market value close to $2.5 billion. The stablecoin trades near $1, so the increase in market value comes mainly from more tokens in circulation, rather than a rise in its price.

Ripple said RLUSD had crossed $2 billion in market value in late August. At the time, close to $1 billion had been issued on the XRP Ledger, according to the company. The latest total puts circulation roughly $490 million above that milestone, though tracker readings can differ by snapshot time and by how they count tokens across networks.

The XRPL figures describe a smaller pool. DefiLlama data cited in the source report placed all stablecoins on the ledger at approximately $1.19 billion, up about 6% over seven days and 11% over 30 days. About $1.10 billion of that amount was attributed to RLUSD, giving Ripple’s token more than 92% of the ledger’s tracked stablecoin supply.

RLUSD supply has grown beyond its August milestone

Ripple launched RLUSD in December 2024 as a dollar-pegged token for payments and other financial transactions. The company first issued it on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum and has since listed additional supported networks in its documentation.

When RLUSD passed $2 billion in August, Ethereum held slightly more of the token than XRPL. As crypto.news reported at the time, on-chain figures put about $963 million on XRPL and $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ripple described the ledger’s share as close to $1 billion.

The current XRPL figure of about $1.10 billion points to further issuance on Ripple’s home ledger. It also means that well over $1 billion of the roughly $2.49 billion total remains on other supported networks. The figures should be kept separate: RLUSD’s total circulating supply counts the token wherever it has been issued, while the XRPL stablecoin total counts dollar tokens on that ledger.

Institutional clients have a direct route to create and redeem the token through Ripple Mint. Ripple introduced the service in July with an interface and API for eligible clients to manage RLUSD operations. The company presents it as a way to fit stablecoin issuance into existing treasury and payment systems.

Ripple has also identified corporate treasury payments as a possible use for RLUSD. In September, the company pointed to clients handling an estimated $13 trillion annually, according to earlier treasury coverage. That figure describes the payments handled by potential clients; it is not a measure of transactions already settled in RLUSD.

XRP Ledger stablecoins remain concentrated in RLUSD

DefiLlama’s XRPL total puts other stablecoins on the network at roughly $90 million after subtracting the reported $1.10 billion in RLUSD. The estimate depends on the timing of each tracker reading, but it shows the size of Ripple’s token relative to the ledger’s other dollar assets.

For XRPL users, RLUSD provides a dollar-denominated asset that can move on the same ledger as XRP. Ripple’s documentation describes the stablecoin as redeemable for U.S. dollars through its issuer’s arrangements. XRP serves a different role as the ledger’s native token and is used to pay network fees.

The difference matters when assessing what the new supply means for XRP holders. More RLUSD on XRPL can produce additional ledger activity, but it does not require holders of the stablecoin to buy an equivalent value of XRP. A September report on XRP examined the two assets’ separate price and usage trends as RLUSD grew past $2.3 billion.

Ripple has described RLUSD uses that include payments, trading collateral and tokenized assets. In August, it joined Clearpool and Cicada on a planned institutional credit fund denominated in RLUSD. The proposed credit fund was still under development when announced, and its planned size had not been disclosed.

New York oversight governs RLUSD’s reserves

In the United States, RLUSD’s issuer is Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple subsidiary chartered as a limited-purpose trust company by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Ripple says the tokens are backed by cash and permitted cash equivalents held in segregated reserve accounts.

According to Ripple’s transparency disclosures, the company publishes monthly third-party attestations of the assets backing RLUSD. Those reports show reserves and circulation at a specified date, while market trackers update their supply estimates more frequently. Ripple selected BNY in 2025 as the primary custodian for RLUSD reserves.

Ripple’s terms state that RLUSD is not an insured bank deposit. For U.S. holders, redemption rights and the assets in reserve therefore depend on the issuer’s arrangements and applicable oversight, rather than Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation coverage.

Separately, the Federal Reserve released two proposed rules on Sep. 24 to implement parts of the GENIUS Act for issuers under its supervision and for insured state member banks seeking to issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries. The Fed’s proposed rules cover permitted reserves, capital, risk controls, and bank applications. Public comments are due 60 days after the proposals appear in the Federal Register.

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade has reached its public developer network, letting application teams test a system designed to cut transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds.

According to the Solana Foundation’s upgrade page, Alpenglow is now active on devnet and testnet but has not been activated on mainnet. Anza, which develops Solana’s core validator software, announced the devnet switch on Sept. 25, one day after testnet completed its transition.

The two networks serve different parts of the rollout. Application teams can use devnet to check how their software behaves with tokens that have no real value, while testnet gives validators and infrastructure operators a place to test the network software under more demanding conditions.

For developers, the new devnet stage means they can check applications against Alpenglow without waiting for the system to reach the blockchain that handles users’ funds. Solana’s mainnet continues to use TowerBFT, so the 150-millisecond figure remains a target for the planned upgrade rather than a finality time available to users today.

Solana’s Alpenglow changes how validators finalize blocks

Under TowerBFT, validators submit votes as transactions that appear inside blocks. Enough votes must accumulate across 32 slots before a block becomes final, which currently takes about 12.8 seconds, according to the Foundation.

Alpenglow’s first phase, called Votor, has validators send votes directly to one another instead. The Foundation says a block can reach finality after one voting round if validators representing at least 80% of stake vote to accept it. A second round provides another path when the first does not meet that threshold.

Finality is the point at which the network has agreed on a transaction strongly enough that it can no longer be reversed under its consensus rules. A faster result could matter to a U.S. exchange deciding when to credit a Solana deposit or to a payment provider deciding when to treat a merchant’s sale as complete. Each service may still apply its own checks before releasing funds or confirming a payment to a customer.

The Foundation separates finality from the time it takes to produce a block. In September, Solana reduced its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, with a further reduction to 200 milliseconds planned under a separate upgrade. Shorter slots change how often the network can produce them; Alpenglow changes how validators agree that a block is final.

A previous crypto.news report covered the testnet preparations on Sept. 23, when developers were preparing Agave 4.3 for the public test. The move to devnet now gives application teams access to the upgraded consensus system in the network they commonly use for development.

Block-data services face changes before mainnet

For an application that sends transactions and reads account balances, the Foundation says Alpenglow requires no migration. Transaction execution, fees, and the formats used to send transactions remain the same under the consensus upgrade.

Services that build transaction histories have more work to do. Alpenglow can expose competing candidate blocks for the same slot before the network selects one. The Foundation tells data providers to keep those candidates separate, then retain the block that reaches confirmation. Combining transactions from different candidates could leave an explorer or other service with an incorrect record.

Validator votes will also disappear from blocks because they will no longer be submitted as transactions. As a result, a chart that counts both user transactions and validator votes will show a lower transaction total after activation even if users make the same number of payments and trades. The Foundation has told data providers to reset comparisons and alerts built on the old figures.

Some services also read validator participation from vote transactions. Under Alpenglow, the Foundation says that information moves to certificates attached to block data, requiring those services to change where they obtain it. Operators using Solana’s Geyser or gRPC data streams must also account for the identifiers that distinguish candidate blocks within a slot.

The changes make devnet testing relevant to exchanges, explorers and other firms that rely on transaction records, including U.S. services connected to Solana. Their deposit rules remain their own operational decision; the network upgrade does not automatically change when a platform makes funds available.

Mainnet activation still has no firm date

Solana’s earlier Alpenglow roadmap tied the proposed mainnet rollout to Agave 4.3 and an October target. Neither the testnet transition nor the devnet activation sets a confirmed date for the live-network switch.

Anza’s software schedule tentatively allows mainnet feature activations to resume on Sept. 28. The schedule does not identify that day as Alpenglow’s activation date, and the Foundation’s status page still lists the upgrade as inactive on mainnet.

The Foundation describes Votor as the first phase of Alpenglow. A later phase, Rotor, is planned to replace the system used to spread blocks across the network. The current rollout concerns the voting and finality changes, while the roughly 150-millisecond target comes from testing and simulations rather than transactions settled under live-market conditions.