SEC staff has clarified when staking receipt tokens may be treated as digital tools rather than securities under U.S. law, alongside new answers on wrapped assets, token buybacks, and functional crypto networks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance issued the FAQs on Sep. 25 to explain parts of the agency’s March interpretation of federal securities law. The answers describe how the staff would classify certain tokens and assess an issuer’s promises to buyers; they are neither a new rule nor a Commission decision.

For staking receipts, the staff focused on what the token gives its holder. If it serves as proof of ownership of an underlying digital commodity that is not subject to an investment contract, the receipt is a digital tool under the circumstances set out in the March interpretation.

A receipt issued by a protocol-based liquid staking provider may also be classified as a digital commodity when its value is linked to the operation of a functional crypto system and market supply and demand.

When SEC staff treats a staking token as a receipt

In the FAQs, staff described a receipt as proof that a stated amount of an asset has been deposited while the holder retains ownership. It does not change the rights or benefits attached to the deposited asset, or give the holder an added financial benefit.

The issuer of a receipt also cannot use the deposited asset as its own. According to the staff, the issuer cannot transfer, lend, pledge, or otherwise put the asset to use, and the asset cannot become subject to claims by the issuer’s creditors. The explanation applies to the receipt concept used for both staking tokens and redeemable wrapped tokens in the March interpretation.

Although a holder may receive rewards earned on the underlying staked asset, the receipt token itself does not create that entitlement or set the reward amount, the SEC staff said. The distinction turns on the token’s actual rights and the way the underlying asset is held, rather than its name alone.

The agency had addressed a related activity in August 2025. As previously covered by crypto.news, its Corporation Finance staff said certain liquid staking arrangements did not involve the offer or sale of securities when users received tokens documenting ownership of staked assets. The Sep. 25 answers add detail on how those receipts fit into the token categories established by the later interpretation.

How a functional network changes the analysis

The FAQs also address a token that was previously sold as part of an investment contract. In that setting, staff looks at whether buyers can still reasonably expect an issuer to carry out the essential managerial work it promised, rather than assuming the token keeps the same legal treatment indefinitely.

After a crypto system becomes functional, work to secure, maintain, or improve it does not necessarily count as essential managerial work, according to the staff. Its answer includes software upgrades, funding development projects and efforts to help network use grow. An issuer’s promise to continue those services after functionality, on its own, would not satisfy the cited part of the Howey test, staff said.

Functionality depends in part on the promise being assessed. The staff said each issuer’s own description determines whether it has delivered the functionality or decentralization it promised buyers. The definitions in the March interpretation still govern how the SEC classifies a crypto asset, but they do not replace the terms of an issuer’s earlier representations when assessing whether its promised work has been completed.

In March, the SEC and CFTC set out a token framework that distinguished a non-security crypto asset from an investment contract associated with its sale. The interpretation also addressed staking and wrapped assets. The new staff answers deal with narrower questions raised by that framework, including what happens when responsibility for promised work changes hands.

If another party takes over an issuer’s promise to perform essential managerial work, the asset does not separate from the investment contract merely because the party responsible has changed, staff said. By comparison, once a functional network has no central party able to control its success or failure, statements by its original issuer about the network would be unlikely to create a new investment contract, according to the FAQs.

Why token buybacks and marketing remain case-specific

A buyback announcement receives different treatment depending on the network’s state and the issuer’s claims. For a functional crypto system, staff said an issuer’s announcement that it will buy back a non-security token does not amount to a promise to perform essential managerial work. Before a system is functional, however, a buyback could matter if the issuer presents it as a way to produce yield or returns for holders.

The distinction is relevant to an August SEC proposal on crypto offerings, which included a conditional path for an asset to cease being subject to an investment contract once an issuer permanently completed or stopped the essential managerial work it had promised. The proposal described possible rules for qualifying offerings; the Sep. 25 FAQs instead state the Corporation Finance staff’s answers under existing interpretations.

Staff also drew a line between describing a network’s uses and promising work that buyers may expect to produce profits. Promoting functions a system already has would generally not, on its own, be a promise of essential managerial efforts. Broad statements about possible future features would likewise be less likely to count when they make no claim about potential profit. The staff said the result depends on the facts of the communication.

For U.S. trading platforms, listing a token in a secondary market does not automatically make the platform its promoter. The FAQs say a platform would have to meet the existing definition of “promoter” in Securities Act Rule 405 for that label to apply. The SEC said the staff answers have no legal force, do not change federal securities law, and have not been approved or disapproved by the Commission.

Crypto and blockchain companies announced more than $104.2 million across eight disclosed financings from Sep. 19 to Sep. 25, 2026.

HIFI’s $37 million Series A was the largest venture round. The total also includes Forward Industries’ $25 million registered direct stock offering, which is public-company financing rather than venture capital.

Atum’s $13.5 million raise and MeshWallet’s $10 million private round put payment infrastructure among the week’s largest deals. The total is a floor because infiniFi described its new round as more than $3 million. Two other tracked investments had no disclosed amount.

The inventory draws on DropsTab’s funding table and DefiLlama’s raises database, with material deals checked against company announcements, filings, and crypto.news coverage. The total counts new financing announced during the reporting period. It excludes acquisitions, older rounds, and valuations.

HIFI raises $37 million for stablecoin infrastructure

HIFI announced a $37 million Series A on Sep. 24, led by Left Lane Capital. The company said the funding will support its stablecoin settlement platform and expansion into card issuance and tokenized capital markets. HIFI also plans to add staff and deepen its regulatory coverage.

The New York company offers payment infrastructure that connects stablecoins with conventional financial services. Its announcement cites a Visa Direct integration for payouts and a connection to the Circle Payments Network. HIFI said its platform processes more than $7 billion in annualized volume, a business measure separate from the amount raised.

Forward Industries completes $25 million stock offering

Forward Industries completed a $25 million registered direct offering to an institutional investor. Its SEC filing says the company sold 3,125,000 common shares for approximately $25 million in gross proceeds before fees and expenses. The filing does not name the buyer.

Forward said the financing is intended to expand its SOL treasury. The U.S. public company holds and stakes Solana as part of a digital-asset strategy it began in 2025. Its share sale is included in the overall financing total but is separate from the private venture rounds.

Atum launches with $13.5 million for payments network

Atum announced $13.5 million in funding as it emerged from stealth on Sep. 22. Its investors include Variant, PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Road Capital, Mirana Ventures, First Commit and Credibly Neutral.

The company is building a network to coordinate transfers across stablecoins, blockchains and other payment systems. Atum says it does not issue a currency or take custody of customer funds. It is targeting financial institutions and stablecoin card issuers. The announcement disclosed the amount and investors but did not give the financing a seed or Series A label.

MeshWallet secures $10 million for USDT wallet

TRON-based MeshWallet raised $10 million in a private round backed by private investors and small family offices. The Tallinn-based company said it will use the money to develop its self-custodial wallet and add services for retail and business users.

MeshWallet’s product lets users send TRC-20 USDT without keeping a separate TRX balance for network fees. The company did not identify an individual lead investor in the crypto.news report. Its round, together with HIFI’s and Atum’s, brought disclosed payment-related financing to $60.5 million for the week.

Funding from $6 million to $8 million

• CatchBack — $8 million seed: Foundation Capital led the collectibles marketplace’s round, with Y Combinator, Robinhood Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and the Solana Foundation participating, according to RootData. CatchBack links digital mystery packs to physical trading cards that users can trade or redeem.
• Infini — $6 million seed: The company announced the close of its round on Sep. 22. Its platform uses stablecoin settlement for accounts, payments, cards, and treasury services. DefiLlama lists Reforge, Enlight Capital, Fortwest Capital, NexGen Capital, SNZ Capital and Vernal Capital among the investors.

Funding below $5 million

• infiniFi — more than $3 million: Electric Capital led the DeFi protocol’s latest round, with New Form Capital, Generative Ventures, Fasanara Capital and others participating. The company said the financing brings its total outside funding across earlier and current rounds to more than $6 million. Only the newly announced amount is counted this week.
• functionSPACE — $1.7 million pre-seed: Maven 11 Capital led the round for an onchain pricing protocol, with Blockwall and Smape Capital participating, according to CryptoRank. DropsTab dates the round to Sep. 24.

Undisclosed strategic and seed rounds

• XStable — undisclosed investment: DefiLlama lists YZi Labs, the Sui Foundation, Taisu Ventures and CatcherVC as backers of the project, which is building onchain trading infrastructure for precious metals and foreign-exchange markets. The amount is excluded from the weekly total.
• Travix — undisclosed seed round: DefiLlama lists Amber Group as lead investor in the onchain perpetuals project. The database dates the entry to Sep. 21 and gives no amount.

NFT sales reached approximately $55.51 million over the seven days ending Sep. 26, up 57.17% from the prior seven-day period, according to a CryptoSlam dashboard captured on Sep. 26. Ethereum led blockchain sales, while CryptoPunks ranked first among collections.

According to data from CryptoSlam, seller addresses rose 39.19% to 150,410. The 39.65% increase in buyer addresses was much larger than the 5.93% rise in transactions. CryptoSlam counts addresses, so those buyer and seller figures do not establish how many individual people traded NFTs.

The NFT increase took place alongside gains in the two largest cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin traded near $83,914, up 3.60% over seven days, while Ethereum traded near $2,686, up 2.70%. CoinGecko put the total crypto market capitalization near $2.97 trillion.

Ethereum leads NFT sales with $30.33 million

Ethereum recorded approximately $30.33 million in seven-day NFT sales, a 113.52% increase. Its 19,043 buyer addresses were up 40.61%. CryptoSlam separately listed about $1.07 million in wash-trading volume for the network; that measure should not be added to its sales figure.

Polygon placed second with $7.44 million in sales, up 6.66%, and 37,499 buyer addresses, up 41.04%. Its listed wash-trading volume was far larger, at $18.50 million. CryptoSlam’s separate “Total” column combined those figures to show $25.94 million for Polygon, but that total is not the same as the network’s $7.44 million sales figure. Polygon also hosted Courtyard, the second-ranked collection by sales.

Bitcoin followed with $5.13 million in sales, up 18.33%. Its buyer addresses climbed 45.89% to 7,938, while listed wash-trading volume came to $109,667. Two Bitcoin NFTs appeared among the five largest individual sales, although Bitcoin’s overall network sales remained below Ethereum and Polygon.

Base ranked fourth with $3.30 million in sales, up 87.59%, and 2,934 buyer addresses, up 26.30%. Its listed wash-trading volume reached $4.80 million. Beezie, a Base collection, accounted for $1.69 million in sales, including the week’s largest listed individual trade.

BNB Chain completed the top five at $2.66 million in sales, up 2.76%, with 15,000 buyer addresses. Immutable followed closely with $2.39 million, up 32.70%, while Solana recorded $2.03 million, up 17.25%. The six leading chains from Ethereum through Immutable accounted for about $51.23 million in sales, most of the $55.51 million global figure.

CryptoPunks tops weekly NFT collection sales

Ethereum-based CryptoPunks ranked first among collections with $8.24 million in sales, up 1,066.53% from the prior period. CryptoSlam recorded 85 transactions, 62 buyer addresses and 55 seller addresses. Transactions rose 844.44%, while the buyer-address count increased 520%.

Courtyard, on Polygon, ranked second with $6.56 million in sales, up 6.67%. Its 111,471 transactions were down 7.54%, and its 17,014 buyer addresses declined 14.29%. The collection’s sales increase therefore came alongside fewer recorded transactions and buyer addresses.

Credits, an Ethereum collection, placed third at $5.18 million. CryptoSlam showed no week-over-week change in its displayed sales, 57,288 transactions or 4,124 buyer addresses. Another Ethereum collection, Argonauts, followed with $1.97 million in sales, down 28.61%, across 952 transactions.

Base-based Beezie ranked fifth with $1.69 million in sales, up 176.70%, across 7,367 transactions and eight buyer addresses. Its $1 million sale of Beezie #4365 represented about 59% of the collection’s weekly sales. That concentration makes the collection’s increase a poor measure of trading across all its items.

Bored Ape Yacht Club placed sixth with $1.49 million in sales, up 213.39%, from 79 transactions and 48 buyer addresses. Immutable-based Guild of Guardians Heroes ranked seventh with $1.28 million, up 31.93%, from 870 transactions and 530 buyer addresses.

Beezie leads high-value NFT sales with $1 million trade

CryptoSlam listed Beezie #4365 as the largest individual sale at $1 million, settled in 1 million USDC on Base about three days before the dashboard capture. The transaction alone represented roughly 1.8% of global seven-day NFT sales.

The next two listed sales came from $X@AI BRC-20 NFTs on Bitcoin. One sold for approximately $519,364, or 5.9999 BTC, about three days before the capture. Another sold for approximately $409,140, or 5 BTC, about seven days before it. Together, the two transactions accounted for about $928,504 of Bitcoin’s $5.13 million weekly NFT sales.

Alchemix V3 Transmuter #229 ranked fourth at approximately $398,081, settled in 149.95 WETH on Ethereum about two days before the capture.

The fifth-largest listed sale was Cardano Warriors – Islands #asset1sq7qkdve0ngmgllap7cw2… at approximately $378,237, settled in 1,651,099.8227 ADA on Cardano about six days before the capture. These five transactions totaled about $2.70 million, or roughly 4.9% of CryptoSlam’s global seven-day sales figure.

Investors were rattled this week as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield soared to its highest level since 2007, but sticky inflation is just one of the factors behind this latest surge.

The key 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgages, leapt to 5.23% on Friday for its highest level since 2007. It was the latest leg higher for the benchmark yield, which earlier this month was trading just below 4.8%. Bond yields and prices move inversely to one another.

The 10-year yield’s rapid climb above 5% shows how quickly investors’ expectations have shifted toward additional tightening from the Federal Reserve in light of stubborn inflation. Fed funds futures trading shows a 64% likelihood of a rate hike in October, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Indeed, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index showed that year-ahead inflation expectations leapt to 4.6% in September, rising from 4% in August and marking the highest reading since June.

When it comes to the runup in yields, stubborn inflation and the market’s growing anticipation for more rate hikes only tell part of the story, according to Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie Group. 

“I think this year it has more to do with the bond issuance than the inflation story,” he told CNBC.

Wizman said yields at these levels are not themselves unusual, particularly because they are not being accompanied by extreme inflation expectations or an aggressively tightening Fed.

“We don’t have a Federal Reserve that’s tightening aggressively, so a lot of things look pretty normal. The thing that’s abnormal is that we’re in the midst of a very strong investment cycle,” he said. 

Heavy bond issuance

The federal government is issuing debt to finance a large deficit, while companies are borrowing heavily to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Wizman said it is that combination that has increased bond supply enough to put upward pressure on yields.

The AI spending boom is adding another source of bond supply to compete with Treasuries.

Vanguard estimates that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle issued about $132 billion of debt through July, up sharply from the roughly $35 billion annual average between 2020 and 2024. Broader AI-related debt issuance could reach $300 billion to $570 billion this year as companies across the data-center, semiconductor and utility ecosystem borrow to finance the buildout. 

At the same time, higher yields can weigh down stocks by raising borrowing costs for companies and making bonds seem more attractive to income-seeking investors.

Wizman said the capital-spending plans of hyperscalers and their suppliers are likely to keep bond issuance elevated through this year and into next year.

“So these yields could go higher,” he said.