Crypto
OKX launches 10x OpenAI, Anthropic X-Perps in Europe
OKX has introduced pre-IPO derivatives tied to OpenAI and Anthropic alongside 100 tokenized stock markets for eligible European traders.
Summary
- OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO X-Perps offer long and short positions with up to 10x leverage.
- OKX has launched 100 tokenized markets, including Google, Nvidia, Palantir, SPY, and QQQ.
- Tokenized positions trade around the clock but carry no direct ownership or shareholder voting rights.
- Eligible traders can use supported stock tokens as collateral or withdraw them to self-custody wallets.
The Sep. 10 announcement from OKX said its new pre-IPO X-Perps allow eligible European customers to trade changes in the implied valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic before either company goes public.
Traders can open long or short positions at any time and apply leverage of up to 10x. However, the contracts do not represent shares in either private company or give their holders an economic claim against the referenced business.
Prices may also differ from valuations set during private funding rounds or from any price established through a future initial public offering. According to the company’s product disclaimer, an IPO could be delayed, canceled, or never take place.
OKX pre-IPO markets track private company valuations
Unlike a direct private-market investment, an X-Perp is a derivative through which traders speculate on the direction of a referenced company’s implied value. Opening the products with OpenAI and Anthropic gives European customers exposure to two closely followed private technology companies without placing their names on a shareholder register.
OKX said traders can enter and exit positions at any time, while each market will open with liquidity intended to support larger trades. Additional pre-IPO contracts will be introduced when the company considers them relevant.
Although the products extend access beyond conventional private markets, leverage raises the potential size of both profits and losses. OKX warned that customers trading X-Perps could lose part or all of their invested funds, particularly when leveraged positions move against them.
Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, said pre-IPO markets have generally remained unavailable to most European traders through traditional brokerages and regulated platforms. He linked the launch to rising demand for the exchange’s perpetual products following the end of Europe’s MiCA transition period in July.
“X-Perps volume in Europe has grown fourfold since MiCA’s transition period ended in July, and these markets are built for those same traders,” Ghoos said.
According to Ghoos, the company intends to give European users enough liquidity to trade larger positions without requiring them to move to an unregulated venue. OKX did not provide a trading-volume figure or the initial implied valuations assigned to OpenAI and Anthropic in its announcement.
Tokenized stocks add 100 round-the-clock markets
Alongside the pre-IPO contracts, OKX has opened 100 tokenized stock and exchange-traded fund markets. The initial list includes products linked to SpaceX, Google, Nvidia, and Palantir, as well as the SPY and QQQ ETFs.
Customers can buy, sell, or convert the tokens and trade them continuously, including when the traditional markets for their referenced assets are closed. Supported order types include limit, market, stop, time-weighted average price, and Iceberg orders.
Stock tokens can also operate inside OKX’s dollar-cost averaging and Grid trading bots. For customers using multiple products, eligible tokenized positions may serve as collateral for X-Perps, allowing the same account balance to support stock-linked and crypto-linked derivatives.
On-chain transfers give the products another feature not normally available through a standard brokerage account. OKX said supported tokens can be deposited to the platform or withdrawn to external addresses, including self-custody wallets.
Round-the-clock access does not remove the pricing issues created when traditional exchanges are closed. OKX’s disclosure states that the tokens track the price of a referenced share, but holders do not directly own that share and receive no shareholder voting rights.
Company names used for the products do not indicate a partnership or endorsement, the disclosure added. Stock-token holders, therefore, gain price exposure through the instrument issued or supported by the platform rather than membership in the shareholder base of Google, Nvidia, Palantir, or another referenced company.
Ownership rights remain central to tokenized stocks
The distinction between price exposure and direct share ownership has become a central issue as trading platforms list more third-party stock tokens.
In September, crypto.news previously reported that AMC Entertainment objected to a Robinhood token linked to its shares. AMC CEO Adam Aron said his company had neither approved nor participated in the product, while Robinhood maintained that it stood behind its stock-token service.
Robinhood’s product documents described its tokens as debt securities issued by a Jersey entity rather than shares issued by the companies they follow. Buyers received economic exposure but no ownership, voting rights, or direct claim against AMC, creating a distinction similar to the one stated in OKX’s disclosure.
OpenAI raised a related concern in July 2025 after Robinhood distributed tokens offering exposure to the private company. OpenAI said at the time that it had not partnered with Robinhood, did not endorse the tokens, and had not approved a transfer of its equity.
For traders, the structure of each product determines whether a token represents an actual security, a contractual claim against an issuer, or a derivative that follows a reference price. Counterparty and insolvency risks can also differ from those attached to shares held through a conventional regulated broker.
OKX’s pre-IPO disclaimer states that its X-Perps provide no ownership or economic claim in the private company being referenced. Its tokenized stock disclosure separately says those instruments confer neither direct ownership nor shareholder rights.
US regulators are considering a different model
The OKX products have been launched for eligible European traders, leaving American investors outside the stated rollout. In the United States, regulators have been considering how round-the-clock tokenized equity trading could operate under federal securities rules.
On Aug. 17, earlier coverage detailed work by the Securities and Exchange Commission on a limited exemption that could allow selected platforms to test tokenized securities. No final eligibility criteria or implementation date had been announced when that report was published, and existing federal securities requirements remained in force.
SEC staff has distinguished between tokens issued with the involvement of the company whose shares they represent and third-party instruments that merely track a security or provide a claim against another issuer. According to the agency’s position covered in that report, placing a stock on a blockchain does not remove it from U.S. securities law.
Ownership records, custody, disclosures, market surveillance, and investor claims during issuer insolvency remain among the matters U.S. regulators are assessing. Trading outside regular exchange hours also raises questions about price discovery and execution when the underlying cash market is closed.
A regulated model has already entered limited testing in the United States. In March, Nasdaq received SEC approval for eligible participants to trade certain securities in either conventional or tokenized form.
Nasdaq’s pilot covers eligible Russell 1000 stocks and major index-linked ETFs. Under the approved structure, the traditional and tokenized versions carry the same pricing and shareholder rights, unlike products that only follow a company’s market value.
For European customers, OKX has placed the new instruments in the same account as its crypto spot, X-Perps, trading bots, Earn, and Pay services. Users can apply the platform’s order types, automated strategies and margin balance across the supported products without maintaining a separate brokerage account.
Financial instruments and related investment services are offered through OKX Europe Markets Ltd., which the company said is authorized and regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority under Malta’s Investment Services Act.
Crypto
The year’s second-largest XRP hack is spilling over to Bitcoin and Ethereum
The D’CENT wallet hack, the year’s second-largest drain of XRP behind the Bitget crypto exchange hack, has spilled beyond the XRP Ledger onto additional blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stellar.
Hackers have drained more than 12.4 million XRP from more than 7,000 D’CENT wallets, still some way behind Bitget’s loss of 102.9 million XRP.
Although the wallet was popular among the XRP community, D’CENT users who owned assets of other blockchains have also lost their funds.
D’CENT’s own disclosure named Bitcoin, Tron, and Ethereum, for example. Even a Stellar user has lost XLM in the incident.
Hackers are able to sweep funds across blockchains with one compromised recovery phrase for the multi-blockchain wallet.
IoTrust, the maker of D’CENT, confirmed at least 110 abnormal transfer reports, including non-XRP assets, per ZDNet Korea.
XRP holders lose $18 million in D’CENT hack
Drains of XRP are the most well-documented, due to the prominence of D’CENT among XRP holders.
At least six waves of theft occurred between September 15 and 20, emptying 6,678 wallets of 11.7 million XRP.
The thief stole from large wallets first, by hand, and soon wrote scripts to take funds from progressively smaller wallets.
Warnings from D’CENT and other members of the XRP community couldn’t stop the drainage. Thieves took 640,370 additional XRP after September 21, bringing the tally to above 12.4 million.
By Friday, 6.3 million of those stolen XRP had crossed to Ethereum’s blockchain through the swap service THORChain.
As the theft spilled over to other blockchains, researchers admitted the scope of the losses, saying, “Most of it is no longer XRP.”
Read more: David Schwartz warns of hard fork because XRP nodes won’t upgrade
In August, D’CENT was still touting its hardware wallets’ secure element, boasting that it was impervious to vulnerabilities linked to the Coldcard hack.
D’CENT now warns users that wallets they created using its app are vulnerable, urging them to create a fresh recovery phrase and immediately migrate everything, including tokens, NFTs, and any staked assets.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Crypto
Analysts see 10-year Treasury yield hitting 6%. Bitcoin bulls shouldn’t panic
Market action since 2022 backs Thielen’s take. The 10-year yield more than doubled to 3.88% that year as the Fed raised interest rates rapidly, including several 50- and 75-basis-point hikes to fight inflation.
Bitcoin fell 64% that year. Fed tightening and rising yields added to the pain from crypto scams and blowups.
The picture has been different since. From the end of 2023, the 10-year yield has risen 135 basis points to 5.23%, the highest since 2007. Over the same stretch, bitcoin has roughly doubled to $86,000, even after pulling back from its October record above $126,000.
Thielen and others attribute much of the recent rise in yields to fiscal fears and a higher term premium. In plain English, investors want to be paid more to lock up their money in long-term bonds, given the uncertainty over inflation and government borrowing.
Chicago-based Strategic Analytics made a similar point about gold, noting that it has tracked fiscal risk more closely than the Fed’s policy path since 2022.
“Since 2022, gold has increasingly tracked fiscal-risk perceptions – term premium, deficits, debt sustainability – rather than the Fed’s policy path. Gold is not defying real yields. It is pricing fiscal sustainability and currency debasement, which has become the marginal driver,” it said recently in a LinkedIn post.
Crypto
China has three new criteria for humanoid robot IPOs. Few, if any, meet them
Humanoid robots box during the 5th Global Digital Trade Expo on September 25, 2026 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
BEIJING — China’s securities regulator is raising the bar for public listings of humanoid robot startups, according to three sources familiar with the CSRC’s thinking.
It’s a sign of how one of the hottest sectors of the market is cooling, as investors globally assess whether artificial intelligence stocks are in a bubble.
The Chinese regulator wants local “embodied AI” startups seeking to go public to meet three specific criteria, according to the sources, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
They are:
- The “window guidance” requires that the humanoid applicants have sustainable revenue and commercial orders.
- Losses must narrow, with one source saying a three-year forecast is needed.
- The company must possess core technology such as robotic brain or hands.
Even if a startup only has to meet two of the three criteria, as one source indicated, it’s unclear which, if any, of the companies can do so.
That’s lowered expectations to just a handful, or none, of these startups making it to public markets, the sources said.
At least two dozen humanoid-related embodied AI companies have filed to list in Hong Kong alone, according to two of the sources. Hong Kong in May 2025 started letting tech companies file confidentially for IPOs.
The Hong Kong stock exchange declined to comment. The China Securities Regulatory Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mainland China companies wanting to list in Hong Kong also need the CSRC’s blessing.
Unitree IPO impact
Scrutiny on China’s growing number of humanoid robot startups and their fast-growing valuations — supported by a mix of government and private sector funds — has grown over the last several weeks.
The industry’s posterchild, Unitree, got a regulatory fast-track to its listing in Shanghai on Aug. 19 as the World Robot Conference kicked off in Beijing.
But in a keynote a day later, founder Wang Xingxing cautioned that commercialization beyond dancing robots remained years away. It accentuated a debate that picked up in subsequent weeks on what humanoids can actually do — and whether industry startups were actually making money.
China now has well over 100 humanoid companies, which fall under the national push for “embodied AI.” The term received Beijing’s support in the last two annual government work reports, although authorities have warned of a bubble in the humanoid robot industry.
Reflecting a rapid surge in interest, investment in the sector hit 47.09 billion yuan ($6.95 billion) in the second quarter, more than double that of the first quarter — and up over six times versus the same period last year, according to industry data provider Xiniu.
Unitree raised about about 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million) in its IPO on Aug. 19 with Shanghai-listed shares skyrocketing more than 460% in their debut to close at 845 yuan.
The stock had nearly halved in price as of Monday, at 459.65 yuan a share.
Hong Kong-listed Ubtech has also tumbled more than 40% so far this year. The company, which went public in December 2023, still reported an operating loss for the first half of this year of 279 million yuan.
The share price decline contrasts with the flood of capital pouring into humanoid robotics companies over the last 12 months or so. The tech, often called “physical AI” in China, has been seen as a way for early-stage investors to benefit from the surge of interest in artificial intelligence models.
However, Rhodium Group analysis this month found that China’s AI companies only make about 10% the revenue of Anthropic and OpenAI. The ratio of valuation to revenue — especially for Chinese AI startups Moonshot and DeepSeek — was far higher than their U.S. rivals, the report said.
While expectations grow for the U.S. AI giants’ IPOs, chipmaker AMD said Monday it is acquiring World Labs for $8.2 billion in a stock deal. The startup, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is building AI models for creating virtual 3D environments frequently used in humanoid robot development.
Crypto
A SpaceX Starship Rocket Officially Reached Orbit. Why That’s So Significant
The launch this morning was both imperfect and stripped down to its orbital essentials. On the way up, one of the Starship’s six engines failed to burn properly, requiring the other engines to compensate for the missing thrust to get the ship in orbit.
In addition, the return to Earth was simplified. SpaceX has made itself famous for safely landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 and Starship boosters—with 641 out of 688 Falcon 9 launches featuring this kind of recovery, allowing the boosters to be reused and make flying cheaper. Starship’s first stage, meantime, performs what has become known as a chopstick recovery, with the booster navigating its way back to the launch tower where two giant metal arms pluck it from the sky. For the current mission, the chopstick recovery was done away with to simplify the flight objectives; instead the first stage made a soft, engine-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship spacecraft was planned for a six-orbit, 10-hour mission, with the ship’s engines set to fire around the dinner hour Monday to bring the spacecraft down for a similar gentle, watery landing.
Crypto
Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI
Goldman Sachs’ Anshul Sehgal says bonds yielding 5% or more are not the best trade right now. He still favors AI infrastructure, which he sees as a far more asymmetric bet than the long bond.
Sehgal, a global co-head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) at the bank, laid out the view just a few days after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds
On Goldman’s The Markets, Sehgal said the 30-year Treasury, known as the long bond, had hovered around 5% for weeks. He noted that clients want to buy it at 5% or higher, yet he still sees little upside.
The yield has kept climbing since the recording, reaching 5.56% on September 29, a new 52-week high. Sehgal blamed structural pressure for the strain on the long end. Retiring baby boomers are buying fewer long bonds, and heavy long-dated borrowing tied to AI is crowding the market.
Those pressures explain why the selloff can persist even without a fresh inflation shock. Fewer retirees buying long bonds and a steady flow of long-dated borrowing tied to AI both weigh on prices, and neither fades quickly.
Sehgal adds that fear over US debt sustainability makes investors less willing to hold the long end, which feeds on itself.
The takeaway is that a rising yield does not necessarily break his thesis. It may instead show why he sees limited reward in owning the bond, while the risk to his AI trade is that costlier long-term borrowing squeezes the levered companies he favors.
AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade
An asymmetric trade offers far more potential gain than risk. Sehgal applies that label to compute (AI computing power), data centers, and Neoclouds, which are cloud providers built to rent out that capacity.
“I think the asymmetric expression is being long compute.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
The catch is leverage. Savers collecting higher interest have effectively financed the AI build-out, leaving equities more indebted than a year ago. Sehgal admits these are levered bets. Still, he thinks they can multiply in value, while the wider stock market looks less certain.
Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital
Sehgal says the Fed frames its September 16 hike as catch-up after five years above its inflation target. Schwab counts 16 of 19 Fed officials expecting another increase this year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also stressed three times that the Fed is easing back some stimulus rather than turning restrictive, Sehgal adds.
He argues that government interest payments flow to capital rather than workers, so higher rates curb household spending, a risk for the broader stock market.
He also rejects the debt-sustainability fears weighing on long bonds.
“For me, that’s a red herring.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
Meanwhile, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder is cutting equities for bonds paying 7% to 8%, though his high-grade bond call still cautions against rushing into the 10-year Treasury.
Sehgal names the Middle East conflict as the top driver of policy and markets in the weeks ahead.
The post Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto
BTC, ETH price news: Bitcoin slips to $83,000 as ZEC drops 12% and oil climbs again
“Bitcoin has pulled back to $83K, testing the lower boundary of last week’s consolidation range,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “As with the market as a whole, a retest of the $82K region, where peaks were formed in May and early September, is entirely to be expected under current conditions.”
“Looking ahead, a sustained return to prices below $80K would be an important signal that the market is not ready to move higher for some time yet. If, however, this consolidation is soon followed by a new bullish momentum, it could send the leading cryptocurrency well above $90K,” he added.
The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.
Treasuries steadied in Asia after tumbling during U.S. trading, with the 10-year yield up one basis point to 5.25% after reaching its highest level since 2007 on Monday. A higher guaranteed return on government debt raises the bar for holding assets that pay no income, bitcoin among them.
Brent rose more than 1% to nearly $107 a barrel, its second straight gain, as hopes for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough with Iran faded.
Pricier oil feeds into inflation, and traders have been adding to bets that the Fed will raise rates again. MSCI’s All Country World Index fell to its lowest since Sept. 18, and Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.3% after Monday’s tech-led selloff on Wall Street.
Crypto
Tether is a ‘lifeline’ for Iranian regime, Senate Dems say in new report
U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether is a go-to tool for the Iranian government to bypass sanctions, a new report from a group of Senate Democrats said.
Democrats on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence published a report Monday laying out the argument that Tether plays a key role in allowing Iran to conduct transactions that skirt international sanctions.
“Iran’s cryptocurrency-based shadow banking network has processed significant volumes of funds and implicates various Iranian interests,” the report said, adding that Tether has “repeatedly failed” to block Iran-connected wallets.
“USDT has become a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network,” the report said.
When Tether does freeze wallets, it sometimes takes weeks, but the company also sometimes responds to requests without actually blacklisting wallets, the report claimed.
“Prior to 2024, Tether did not comprehensively and consistently freeze wallets designated by counter-terrorism agencies and continues to fail to proactively block clearly illicit wallets,” the report said. “This absence of deterrence invited abuse: terrorist organizations such as Hamas shifted from transacting in Bitcoin and a mix of cryptocurrencies to promoting USDT.”
Crypto
Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event
Elon Musk’s Grok AI predicts an extremely bullish price for Ripple (XRP) by January 1, 2027, that will blow the minds of even the most dedicated members of the Ripple Army.
If you’re holding a sizeable bag of XRP USD, you may want to sit down before reading this. Grok claims that $25–$40 is achievable by 2027, with a stretch target of $50+ under the assumption of a full-blown crypto bull market returning and being supercharged by an unprecedented institutional catalyst.

XRP currently trades near $1.50–$1.52 as of September 28, 2026, down nearly -3% over the past 24 hours and with a daily trading volume of $3.5Bn, up from $3.2Bn the day prior.
This outlook is extreme and leans far beyond standard institutional forecasts. It assumes not only a strong late-2026 bull market driven by liquidity and risk-on conditions, but also a once-in-a-generation catalyst.
What is the Catalyst that Grok AI Predicts Could Spark an XRP Run Toward $40
Major central banks (including the Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, and PBOC) announcing that the XRP Ledger will serve as a primary settlement layer for cross-border CBDC and tokenized asset flows, combined with large commercial banks being incentivized or required to hold XRP as a liquidity buffer, and revelations of massive sovereign wealth fund accumulation.
Under this highly speculative scenario, forced institutional demand collides with retail FOMO in a classic late-cycle mania, allowing XRP to move from the current ~$1.50 range through previous-cycle highs and into the mid-to-high double digits by early 2027.
This remains pure speculation and entertainment, not a base-case or even high-probability outlook. Crypto markets are extremely volatile, and the catalyst described above would require multiple extraordinary policy and institutional developments.
However, with Ripple’s case against the SEC dropped and its subsequent rise as a highly favored US-based digital asset company under President Trump, anything could be on the table for XRP if the perfect scenario aligns.
Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out 3.7X on Polymarket
Technical Analysis Supporting the Insane Grok AI XRP Price Prediction
On the higher timeframes, XRP has already established a constructive recovery base after reclaiming key moving averages from the mid-September lows near $1.25–$1.30. Price is consolidating in the $1.45–$1.55 region after testing highs near $1.63–$1.66.
In a normal bull market, a sustained break above $1.70–$2.00 would open the door to the prior cycle high near $3.65. Under the extreme institutional adoption scenario outlined above, that prior high would likely be cleared with significant force, triggering a series of measured-move and Fibonacci extension targets far beyond historical levels.
Aggressive projections from the multi-year base, combined with the kind of vertical price discovery seen in previous mania phases, could theoretically extend into the $25–$40+ zone if volume and momentum expand dramatically. RSI and momentum indicators would almost certainly reach deeply overbought levels during such a move, which is typical of parabolic advances.
Key nearer-term supports remain in the $1.40–$1.45 and $1.30 zones; holding those would keep the broader recovery structure intact while the market waits for (or prices in) any extraordinary catalysts.
Overall, while the current chart supports continued upside in a standard bull market, only an extreme surge in institutional demand and narrative intensity could justify the kind of multi-thousand-percent extension implied by the $25–$50 targets.
Earn $50 and Enter $300K Prize Draw on EdgeX
Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels
While the Grok AI prediction of a potential 30x run for XRP is exciting, presale plays have a stronger track record of producing such returns. It does explain why attention keeps drifting toward presale-stage plays with smaller denominators.
Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is one of those plays. It is an Ethereum-based meme token built around a 240-lb canine mascot and a “1000x leverage” trading-culture identity. The presale has raised $4.8M at a current price of $0.0002841, with dynamic APY staking live for holders.
Standout features include holder-only trading competitions with leaderboard rewards and a Maxi Fund treasury earmarked for liquidity and partnerships.
The meme-first, gym-bro marketing angle (“never skip leg day, never skip a pump”) is endearing. The accumulation numbers suggest plenty of traders are picking a side.
Get Ahead of Next Meme Coin Launch Here
Discover: The Best Token Presales
The post Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event appeared first on Cryptonews.
Crypto
Trump Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards. Will Cars Really Get Cheaper?
When it was first proposed in December 2025, the rule was divisive, drawing ire from environmental advocates while garnering praise from auto-industry trade groups. The Administration finalized it last week with a signoff from President Donald Trump.
The President commented on the forthcoming rule Sept. 26, saying the new standards would “take the waste out of building cars in America.”
“That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The claim that the revisions will pass down cost savings to American buyers, however, relies on several factors, including automakers’ pricing decisions, fuel costs, and broader economic conditions.
What changes under Trump’s new fuel economy rule?
Former President Joe Biden’s regulations were put in place in 2024 to reduce car-based greenhouse gas emissions, decrease dependence on fossil fuels, and spur a transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. The Trump Administration has claimed that its revisions are more focused on bolstering the auto industry and making safer, newer cars more accessible.
Crypto
The restaking gold rush is over, and top protocols are barely making a profit
EigenLayer held $19.7 billion at its peak and liquid restaking tokens grew more than 1,000% in the first six weeks of 2024. But the services buying security never paid enough to cover both the base staking yield and a premium on top, so the second yield restaking promised never materialized.
On Sept. 8, DefiLlama’s restaking category held $10.02 billion and generated $99,977 in fees over the prior week. The liquid staking category, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million. Per dollar secured, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more.

Two developments then removed what was left of the incentive to restake. Points programs subsidizing deposits wound down through 2025, and slashing went live in April 2025. Slashing is the penalty that confiscates part of an operator’s staked ETH when it misbehaves, by going offline or signing conflicting messages, for example. So restaking suddenly carried a real, priced downside where before the risk had been theoretical. There was no extra yield to compensate.
Set ether.fi aside and the rest of the sector is small. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made $953,350 in combined gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the same five made $2.18 million. Puffer, which raised $23 million, recorded $21,590 for the quarter. Swell recorded $22,370.

The income statements also show which part of these businesses was ever profitable, and it was not the restaking. On Kelp’s books, EIGEN token rewards appear at $460,600 in gross revenue and $460,600 in cost of revenue: they arrive and pass straight to depositors, leaving nothing with the protocol. Puffer and Swell book staking rewards the same way. Whatever profit these companies made came from the orinary staking fees charged underneath the restaking layer.
-
Fashion4 days agoWeekend Open Thread: J.McLaughlin – Corporette.com
-
Crypto6 days agoGoldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank Agree: The S&P 500 Rally Isn't Over
-
Tech & AI1 day agoAnthropic turns Claude into an AI marketplace with 2,000+ plugins and connectors
-
Tech & AI1 day agoOpenAI is preparing “o,” an always-on ChatGPT assistant that could handle email
-
Fashion5 days ago8 iPhone Accessories That Add Personality
-
Entertainment6 days agoThese 17 Fall Amazon Dresses Seriously Look Like Anthropologie
-
Tech & AI6 days agoReolink’s solar 4K security camera falls to its lowest price in months
-
Crypto7 days agoTrump-Xi Polymarket Odds for Handshake Hit 50%
-
Crypto6 days agoThis Bearish Netflix Stock Trade Can Cash In On Video Streaming Giant’s Woes
-
Crypto6 days agoBitGo says Bitcoin absorbed Fed hike, CLARITY failure
-
Crypto5 days agoBitcoin price tests $83,600 Supertrend support after $87K rejection
-
Crypto5 days agoCrude Oil Prices Pressured by Diplomatic Hopes in the Middle East
-
Business & Hussles6 days agoOil Price Today (September 23): Crude oil below $100 on hopes of US-Iran talks. What did Trump say?
-
Crypto5 days agoBitcoin Threatens Sub-$84,000 Breakdown as Long Liquidations Spike
-
Crypto6 days agoDid Jim Cramer Just Give GameStop Stock the Kiss of Death When He Said the Turnaround Is Working?
-
Tech & AI6 days agoUiPath’s Dines says AI needs a manual and launches Cartographer to write it
-
Crypto5 days agoAs Amazon Stock Prospers, Traders Might Consider This Option Play
-
Crypto5 days agoStrategy resumed Bitcoin buying, but Strive gained more BTC per share
-
Tech & AI7 days agoSega nearly killed Sonic before the movies revived the franchise
-
Business & Hussles11 hours ago
Perpetua Resources at Mining Forum Americas 2026: shift to construction

You must be logged in to post a comment Login