Kraken-backed xStocks has launched a new on-chain trading engine designed to connect traditional equity liquidity with decentralized finance infrastructure.

In a March 5 announcement, Kraken said its tokenized equity platform xStocks has introduced xChange, an execution layer that allows users to trade tokenized stocks directly on-chain across Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

xChange allows trading of more than 70 tokenized equities on-chain while keeping prices aligned with real-world public market data.

On-chain trading engine connects liquidity across Ethereum and Solana

Each tokenized stock on xChange is fully collateralized and backed 1:1 by underlying shares held in custody, ensuring transactions represent actual equity exposure rather than synthetic derivatives.

The system introduces atomic settlement, meaning every trade either executes completely at the quoted price or does not execute at all. Partial fills are avoided, giving traders predictable execution similar to traditional market infrastructure.

The trading engine also connects on-chain markets with traditional equity liquidity. Real-time pricing mechanisms link tokenized equities to public market depth, which can tighten spreads and improve execution quality while keeping settlement on the blockchain.

Tokenized equities adoption grows across DeFi platforms

xChange builds on the growth of tokenized equities since the launch of xStocks in June 2025. According to the company, the platform has recorded over $3.5 billion in on-chain transaction volume, alongside $25 billion in total trading volume across exchanges.

Tokenized assets on-chain now exceed $225 million, with more than 80,000 unique on-chain holders interacting with the ecosystem.

The new execution layer operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, allowing tokenized stock trading beyond traditional exchange hours. This extended availability gives DeFi applications and global users access to equities even when traditional stock markets are closed.

Val Gui, general manager of xStocks, said the system brings traditional market liquidity onto blockchain infrastructure while turning tokenized equities into programmable digital assets that can be integrated into DeFi applications.

The approach combines public market pricing with blockchain settlement, allowing tokenized stocks to move across decentralized applications while maintaining exposure to underlying equities.

OKX is now valued at $25 billion following an investment from NYSE’s parent company.

One of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, OKX, was valued at a whopping $25 billion following its latest round of investments.

According to reports, the Intercontinental Exchange, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, acquired a minority stake in the crypto trading firm.

It also places OKX well above recent market entrants such as Bullish and Gemini, currently sitting at $5.39 billion and $1 billion, respectively.

As soon as the news broke out, the price of OKB (the native cryptocurrency of the OKX ecosystem) went vertical. It skyrocketed by a whopping 37% in a matter of minutes.

The move is the last in a series of deepening institutional involvements in the cryptocurrency industry. As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Morgan Stanley also filed for its own Bitcoin Trust ETF, while Kraken – a US-based crypto exchange, became the first to receive a Fed Master Account.

Like the SEC, the derivatives trading regulator, the CFTC, is also working to regulate prediction markets.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has inched closer to creating guardrails to ascertain how cryptocurrencies are regulated.

In a recent commission-level guidance submitted to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the SEC outlined how securities laws can be applied to crypto. If followed, the new guidelines could affect how crypto-focused companies register and operate their businesses in the country.

New Guidelines for Crypto Market

According to the OIRA’s website, the guidance was labeled as the “Application of the Federal Securities Laws to Certain Types of Crypto Assets and Certain Transactions Involving Crypto Assets.”

The website shared sparse details about the SEC’s proposal. Still, an SEC spokesperson informed Bloomberg that the financial agency “will consider interpretive guidance around a token taxonomy for crypto assets.” This means that factors such as a crypto’s inherent properties, behavior, and use cases would be considered to determine whether securities laws apply or not.

With these guidelines in place, crypto firms would know how to proceed with registration, operations, and investor engagement. It is worth noting that commission-level guidance has more power than staff-level guidance. Still, it falls short of the requirements to become a rule, which include processes such as public notice and comment.

The latest move aligns with Paul Atkins’ goal of bringing crypto-friendliness to the country since he became the SEC chairman. A few weeks ago, he hinted at the agency’s commitment to establishing structural crypto regulations despite falling cryptocurrency prices.

CFTC Calls for Regulation of Prediction Markets

The SEC is not the only Wall Street regulator advocating for a crypto-friendly regulatory framework. On March 2nd, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) submitted a measure to the White House’s OIRA on prediction markets.

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Michael Selig, the CFTC chairman, shed some light on the prediction markets’ measure, saying:

“We’re going to be setting very clear standards as to what can be self-certified in our markets and what cannot and how to evaluate the different products that are offered in the space.”

The CFTC’s latest move comes amid heightened attention investors give to prediction markets, popularized by leading platforms Polymarket and Kalshi.

OpenAI’s latest financial-services tools plug ChatGPT into FactSet, Third Bridge, Excel, and Google Sheets, laying the groundwork for AI agents that can treat crypto as just another institutional asset class.

OpenAI’s move to wire ChatGPT directly into FactSet, Third Bridge, and spreadsheet environments is being sold as a play for banks, asset managers, and research shops, but the architecture is asset-agnostic.

Once you have an AI layer that can ingest institutional data, build models, and draft investment memos, swapping equities for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), or alt liquidity pools is just a matter of pointing the same stack at different feeds: exchange APIs, on-chain analytics, and derivatives venues.

OpenAI’s broader agent framework is already being used alongside crypto APIs to automate portfolio rebalancing, yield monitoring, and strategy execution, turning what used to be bespoke quant and dev work into something closer to configuration. That lowers the barrier to running systematic strategies in DeFi and centralized venues, and it pushes crypto trading desks to look more like lean, AI-augmented quant pods than discretionary shops.

At a higher level, the company is positioning itself as middleware for financial workflows, not just a chatbot, embedding AI into risk, reporting, and decision-making across fintech and banking. If that stack becomes standard, crypto will be pulled into the same pipelines, priced and risk-managed by the same agents that handle equities and credit, with human analysts increasingly supervising rather than building models from scratch. For digital assets, the signal is clear: the real AI trade is not another token launch, but the quiet normalization of crypto inside an AI-native financial operating system.

ZeroHash, which develops behind-the-scenes crypto infrastructure for businesses, said it applied for a National Trust Bank Charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), looking to operate under federal regulatory oversight.

If approved, the charter would give ZeroHash permission to issue stablecoins, custody digital assets and manage reserves under direct federal oversight. It would not be allowed to take customer deposits or engage in commercial lending.

That status could allow the Chicago-based company, which already holds licenses in 51 U.S. jurisdictions and operates internationally, to expand its stablecoin and digital asset services under a single federal framework, rather than navigating a patchwork of state-by-state rules.

ZeroHash is following a path forged by a number of other crypto companies. In the past month, several firms have received initial approval for national bank trust charters. These include Stripe’s stablecoin firm Bridge and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com. In December, Circle Internet (CRCL), Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo all received similar approvals.

Founded in 2017, ZeroHash’s platform enables companies to embed stablecoins and digital asset functionality into services like payments, trading and payroll.

Clients include financial heavyweights like Morgan Stanley, Interactive Brokers, Stripe and Franklin Templeton.

In practical terms, a federal trust charter would let ZeroHash offer services that align with recent legislative developments, including provisions in the Genius Act, which clarifies the legal treatment of stablecoins in the U.S.

The OCC is now reviewing the application. No timeline for approval has been given.

US Bitcoin miner CleanSpark last month sold 553 Bitcoin from its February production for about $36.6 million, while producing 568 BTC during the month, according to the company’s latest operational update.

The company ended February with 13,363 BTC (BTC) in its treasury and continued expanding its infrastructure by completing the closing on a second Texas campus that adds 300 megawatts of ERCOT-approved power capacity.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, operates the state’s electrical grid.

CleanSpark said its deployed fleet totaled 235,588 mining machines at the end of February, operating with 50 EH/s peak hashrate, a measure of mining computing power, and 43.2 EH/s average hashrate.

Across its power portfolio, the company has 1.8 gigawatts of capacity under contract, with 808 megawatts currently in use.