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RSSS Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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RSSS Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

While the new sales teams are doing well, and we feel very good about that continuing in FY ’27, the upsell and renewal teams continue to need focus. We appointed a new leader to run that team, strengthen and expanded the team and realigned the structure around customer size and location. We also implemented a tool to do a better job measuring customer health and kicking off automated and manual workflows based on those results. For example, we can kick off an engagement workflow to a specific cohort of users who have not used the software or used what we know are high-value features.

We started all this in early FY ’26 and saw a nice improvement in renewal rates in Q4 of FY ’26. We expect this more to positively impact net ARR growth as we go into and through FY ’27. We did report a 14% B2B ARR growth during the year, raising our high gross margin platform revenue from 39% of total revenue last year to over 43% this year, which translated into another year of positive results in terms of operating income, net income, EBITDA and cash flow.

In addition to increased spend in sales, we made some additional investments in product development and software engineering, which helped us release 2 new key AI products in addition to increasing development velocity on our core Scite and Article Galaxy products. In addition, we made several internal changes to improve productivity and output, including using AI to help us write and test code. All these improvements drove a large increase in development productivity. In fact, in the third quarter of FY ’25, we were doing about 50 software updates a month. In June of ’26, we did 200, a 4x improvement.

Most importantly, we released 2 AI products that extend the unique capability of Scite and Article Galaxy to be accessible in ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. This is part of our intent to “be where the researchers are working,” and those products have been well received by our customers. As noted in our press release, we did about $800,000 in AI-related bookings in Q4, and we have built a strong pipeline of interest in those products that we expect we’ll close in FY ’27. I think much of what we did in FY ’27 will set us up nicely to grow the business profitably in FY ’27.

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I’d like to pass the call over to Dave to walk you through the fiscal fourth quarter and full year FY ’26 financial results in detail. And then I’ll discuss our goals in FY ’27 and wrap up with some comments and the outlook for the year ahead. Dave?

Dave Kutil: Thank you, Roy, and good afternoon, everyone. I’ll start my comments with a recap of our fourth quarter, followed by a summary of fiscal 2026 results. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 was $12.1 million compared to $12.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, as increased platform revenue was more than offset by a decrease in transaction revenue. Our platform subscription revenue was $5.3 million compared to $5.2 million in the prior year quarter. The growth was driven by an increase in B2B platform ARR due to a mix of new logo generation and upsells and cross-sells into our existing customer base, partially offset by a decline in B2C ARR.

We added 29 net new platform deployments in the quarter, bringing total deployments to 1,276 at year-end. We ended the quarter with $22.5 million in annual recurring revenue, up 7.8% year-over-year, which breaks down as approximately $16.2 million in B2B ARR and approximately $6.3 million in normalized ARR associated with sites B2C subscribers. B2B ARR grew $2 million or 14.1% versus the year ago period and included AI-related ARR of $800,000, which grew 125% sequentially from the third quarter of fiscal ’26. Please see today’s press release for how we define and use annual recurring revenue and other non-GAAP terms.

Transaction revenue for the fourth quarter was approximately $6.8 million compared to $7.3 million in the prior year quarter, a decline of approximately 6.7%. That result represents a meaningful improvement from the 11% year-over-year decline we reported in the third quarter and is consistent with the stabilization trend we discussed on last quarter’s call. Our total active customer count for the quarter was 1,323 compared to 1,338 in the same period a year ago. Gross margin for the fourth quarter was 53%, a 200 basis point improvement over the fourth quarter of 2025 and a new quarterly record for the company.

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The increase was due to the ongoing revenue mix shift towards our higher-margin platforms business which now represents 43% of our total revenue. The Platform business recorded gross margin of 87.3% compared to an all-time high of 88.5% in the prior year quarter, but still well within our target range of mid-80% gross margin. Gross margin in our Transactions business was 26% compared to 24.1% in our prior year quarter. The increase was primarily attributable to improved margins on our copyright content, reflecting favorable publisher mix and pricing partially offset by lower service fee margins.

Total operating expenses in the quarter were $5.6 million compared to $5.1 million in the prior year quarter, as increased sales and marketing expenses and upfront investments in AI were partially offset by lower general and administrative costs compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. Other expense for the quarter was $135,000 compared to income of $1.2 million in the prior year quarter. The prior year result was primarily attributable to a favorable adjustments, the final earn-out determination for sites in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. As a reminder, as of August 2, we have completed 5 quarters of earn-out payments with 3 additional payments remaining in fiscal 2027.

Net income for the quarter was $666,000 or $0.02 per diluted share compared to $2.4 million or $0.09 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $1.4 million compared to $1.6 million for the fourth quarter of last year. Now let me turn to the full year fiscal 2026 results. Total revenue for fiscal 2026 was approximately $48.3 million compared to $49.1 million in fiscal 2025. Platform subscription revenue increased roughly 10% to $20.8 million. Total deployments at year-end were 1,276 and net increase of 105 the deployments from the end of fiscal 2025, and our average sales price increased 4.7% due to the upselling efforts mentioned earlier.

From an ARR perspective, we added approximately $2 million of net B2B ARR during the fiscal year, while normalized B2C ARR declined by approximately $380,000 for the full year. Transaction revenue for fiscal 2026 was $27.5 million compared to $30.1 million in the prior year, a decline of approximately 8.7% as transaction purchases for new customers were more than offset by lower volumes from a small number of large customers and the transactions-related benefits offered within our Platform subscriptions. As I noted earlier, the year-over-year trend improved as we exited the fiscal year. Gross margin for fiscal 2026 was 51.9%, a 260 basis point improvement over fiscal ’25.

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The increase is primarily related to our continued revenue shift towards our higher-margin Platform business and it drove a 3.6% increase in gross profit dollars to $25.1 million despite the lower revenue base. Total operating expenses in fiscal 2026 were $21.5 million compared to $21.7 million in the prior year. Lower general and administrative and stock compensation expense were partially offset by higher sales and marketing expenses and product development costs. Other expense for the year was $724,000 and $1.2 million in fiscal 2025. Last year included $1.7 million to reflect the adjustments made to the Scite earn-out finalization.

Net income for fiscal 2026 was $2.8 million or $0.08 per diluted share compared to $1.3 million or $0.04 per diluted share in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $5.8 million compared to $5.3 million in fiscal 2025. Turning to cash flow. Cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter was approximately $1.8 million compared to $2.3 million in the prior year quarter. For the full year, we generated approximately $5.3 million in cash flow from operations compared to approximately $7 million in fiscal 2025.

As we discussed on last quarter’s call, the year-over-year decline primarily reflects the timing of working capital payments rather than a change in the underlying earnings power of the business or the collectibility of our receivables. Turning to our balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2026, were $12.6 million compared to $12.2 million on June 30, 2025. The end of the fiscal year with a higher cash balance than a year ago, even after funding 4 quarters of Scite earn-out payments, consistent with the expectations that we laid out on last year’s fourth quarter call. There were no outstanding borrowings under our revolving line of credit.

And with a growing cash position and no debt, our current balance sheet provides the flexibility to complete the remaining Scite earn-out payments in fiscal 2027, while remaining opportunistic in regard to strategic alternatives. As we look forward to fiscal 2027, we expect continued Platform subscription growth, improving retention and further stabilization in our transactions business. Paired with disciplined expense management, we believe that we are also positioned to deliver another year of adjusted EBITDA growth and strong cash generation. I’ll now turn the call over to Josh to talk about our products. Josh?

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Josh Nicholson: Yes. Thanks, Dave, and hello, everyone. I missed the last call as my wife and I welcomed our daughter to the world, really 1 of the best things ever, but I’m happy to be back with you guys today. So today, I want to cover 3 things. What is AI actually doing to our business, what we shipped in response and why we think we are on the right side of the shift. First, the impact of AI on the business, because I know it continues to be the question on everyone’s mind and the question we get a lot.

Our answer is that AI is already reshaping how research gets read, and we can see it directly in our own data. Since we launched the Article Galaxy and Scite MCP connectors in February, AI agents have performed more than 16 million scholarly reads through Scite. Two details in that data matter for how you think about research solutions: One, in June, 4 months after launch; two, calls from AI agents overtook the number of queries in our own Scite assistant interface. Usage didn’t shrink, it moved. Researchers are still asking the same questions.

They’re increasingly asking them inside Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot instead of inside a browser tab and more corporate and academic customers are taking licenses with these tools. Our job is to recognize our differentiators, leverage them and be where the users are and where we are. Scite and Article Galaxy connectors are in the official connector directories of all 3 of these platforms. Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude. Article Galaxy is the only DocDel tool with a connector that integrates directly into LLMs. Scite is 1 of the very few scientific article search connectors, and it adds capability that platforms themselves do not have and other search tools do not have either.

I can tell you whether a claim has been supported or contradicted by later research because we have classified over 1.6 billion citations statements from the full text of the literature. It can also search inside Paywalled full text through our publisher agreement. The second point roughly 43% of what AI agents reach for sits behind a Paywall, that is the unique value that AI and research solutions can deliver together. An agent finds a paper in Scite and about 4 times in 10, it cannot read the full text. Article Galaxy is a compliant rights cleared way to get it. 20 years of publisher relationships and right settlement do not get disrupted by a language model.

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It becomes the thing that the language model needs. So the honest answer on AI is this. Legacy per article volume is under pressure, and Dave walked you through the transaction numbers, but the same force that pressures document delivery is creating demand for verified search, verification and rights cleared access, and that demand is landing on our recurring platform business. Second, I want to talk about what we shipped. In fiscal 2026, we put 3 major things into production. The Gateway, MCP access to Scite and Article Galaxy with admin controls, purchasing and ordering and coverage that now extends beyond papers to patent grant clinical trials and drug and device data.

The Meter, metered billing on agent usage, Pro and Teams plans on Scite and pooled usage across an organization. So that the agentic access is something we price for rather than give away. Today, roughly 3/4 of MCP usage comes from paid plans, not free ones. And then self-serve and API console launched in August, so a developer or a pharma data science team or an agent can get started ASAP. Third, why is this working commercially? MCP is behaving as an expansion engine. MCP deals that we closed this year were almost entirely upsells to existing Scite customers, and on average, adding agentic access roughly doubled the contract.

The first article Galaxy MCP deals landed as new logos, a large pipeline Roy continues to grow and the mix is shifting towards larger corporate deals. That shows up in deal size. The average value of new opportunities we create each quarter has nearly doubled over the past 2 years, with the sharpest step-up in the 2 quarters since the MCP launch. It also shows up in retention. Customers who adopt MCP retain at far higher rates than those who do not. The part of the retention fix and the AI strategy are the same work, get customers using agentic access early and they stay. The last piece is the supply side.

We launched a publisher MCP Gateway that makes a publisher’s content discoverable to AI agents while keeping Paywalled full text protected and that gives the publisher a clean read on what AI demand for their catalog looks like. Around 40 publishers are indexed and the first 2 Gateway agreements are signed. Every publisher that joins makes the corporate product more valuable, and every corporate customer makes the Gateway more valuable to publishers. To close, the way research is distributed has shifted twice from print to online and now from online to AI, each time a new layer formed between the content and the reader, and that layer captured the growth. We built the layer this year.

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It’s live, it’s metered, and it’s in the base of what we sell. Fiscal 2027 is about scaling it. Back to you, Roy.

Roy Olivier: Thanks, Josh. I think Josh and Dave did a great job framing our results and what we’ve done to lay the groundwork for the future. I want to close covering a few items. First, let’s talk about how I think about FY ’27. It will continue to be a year of change in our industry as we continue to see mass adoption of AI. We have deep vertical market expertise and research, where being 100% correct is required. I think of us as filling the gap between what an LLM can do and what a research-intensive organization expects. What is changing is how researchers start the research journey and what tools they use daily.

What is not changing is that the business is driven by rights management and the costs to do research. What we have always done, we will continue to do, produce tools that researchers can use where they are working in a copyright compliant and cost-efficient way, managing entitlements, company IP, rights, billing and reporting, along with access to almost 160 million journal articles from 1,800 publishers and societies is what is required in enterprise research.

Scite’s access to behind the Paywall information, the unique Scite badge that shows the quality of the article a researcher is looking at and all the supporting business intelligence to help publishers sell AI rights to researchers based on usage data to improve the LLM experience exponentially for both the enterprise and the publisher. When you add that to the fact that we have multiyear customer relationships with over 1,000 enterprises around the world, we believe we’re well positioned to be part of the AI growth story going forward. So what does that mean for FY ’27 results?

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While we do not give guidance, I expect to see strong corporate and academic B2B sales in FY ’27 based on our larger and more experienced sales teams and new AI solutions. We have seen and we expect to continue to see improved renewal and upsells based on a larger and more focused team, better tools monitoring leading indicators earlier in the ownership cycle and AI tools that when installed directly translate to higher renewal rates. As noted in our press release and above, we’ve seen a large increase in AI-related product sales and have a strong pipeline going into FY ’27. I do believe it will be a strong year in that regard.

I expect B2C to continue to be a challenging environment as increased competition chases the same individual researcher. I do think our unique value works here as well, but we are typically serving academic researchers in this segment that are very cost sensitive. What we are losing to “try something else,” we are gaining in higher retention, higher monthly payments using MCP with their LLM of choice. Our ASP lifetime value and renewal rates in this segment are going up. The challenge would be to drive any material growth that is acceptable at and acceptable customer acquisition costs. In short, I think this is a flat business for the year.

I do expect to see continued headwinds on transactions or DocDel sales resulting in a low single-digit year-over-year decline as it’s a 5-year — versus its 5-year CAGR of about 1% growth. It’s an important business and will continue to be 1 in the new AI world. Our tools help customers find and acquire what they need in a cost-efficient and copyright compliant way. That’s not going to change. While I don’t have a top line growth number to tell you, I can say that I expect the output of all of this to be improved EBITDA and cash flows in FY ’27. We have almost $13 million in cash, no debt and are generating cash.

While we continue to look at acquisitions that will help us accelerate growth and add unique or strategic capability, we do not have anything lined up in the short term. We do recognize that our stock price is far below where we think it should be and are evaluating all options to increase shareholder value, including stock buybacks or other ways to use the cash to directly impact that. With now — with that, I will now turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A. Operator?

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Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Jacob Stephan: I appreciate you taking the questions and appreciate all the color as well. The AI-related ARR number, that’s the first time you guys have broken that out. How much of that is genuinely incremental customer spend versus kind of like repricing and rebundling of existing subscriptions at renewal? And maybe if as a part B, you can kind of comment on attach rate with FY ’26 renewable?

Roy Olivier: That’s a net ARR growth number of AI-related products that could be an upsell or could be a new sale. I don’t think we did that math and certainly haven’t disclosed it. We will disclose an AI-related revenue number going forward, but I don’t think we’ll split it up across what’s upsell and what’s new. I guess we could, but I’d have to give that some thought. And that’s — I think we said this, but that’s up — that’s compared to near 0 a year ago.

So the point is the MCP, the AI products are starting to generate traction, because that $800,000 number is out of a net ARR growth for the year of, I think, $1.8 million or $1.9 million. Dave, correct me if I’m wrong.

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Dave Kutil: Correct. Yes.

Jacob Stephan: Okay. Got it. Maybe if you could comment on pricing a little bit. It seems like a lot of the industry is shifting towards kind of a usage-based model. How are you guys pricing this? Is this more of a per seat basis? Is there some usage component to it? Any color there would be helpful.

Roy Olivier: We do run some pricing models around usage, but typically, the price that’s put in front of the customer is — if it’s not seats, it’s an enterprise, but it has caps for usage and above that, they have to buy additional usage.

Jacob Stephan: Okay. So very similar to kind of how Anthropic and OpenAI are currently working as well.

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Roy Olivier: Yes.

Jacob Stephan: Maybe just last 1 for me then. On Scite MCP and Article Galaxy MCP. So if a researcher gets your information or data inside of 1 of those 2, I guess, what keeps them from paying for either Scite or Article Galaxy? Is the MCP kind of a pull-through channel that you guys are using and driving transaction orders? Or is there some kind of intermediary in there?

Roy Olivier: Today, if you want to run MCP, you have to have the corresponding products. So you have to have an AG license to run MCP for AG. You have to have a Scite license to run MCP for Scite. However, we are experimenting with some new models where that won’t necessarily be required. On the AG side, it’s really hard to separate those 2. On the Scite side, it would be easier to separate those 2, and we’re looking at that.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Derek Greenberg with Maxim Group.

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Derek Greenberg: Just continuing off the last question. I was wondering for the MCP product, you had mentioned that, that’s primarily been an upsell from current customers. I was wondering how usage is tracking on MCP versus the traditional products? If you were to break those out separately, do you see a drop-off in traditional versus the MCP or how you view that dynamic?

Roy Olivier: Do you want to take that one, Josh?

Josh Nicholson: Yes. I discussed this a little bit, and I’ll talk maybe first about the Scite MCP. So if you look at usage in assistant or search compared to MCP, really the users are moving over to MCP. And so assistant usage is declining and MCP is actually really skyrocketing. And so we have over 18 million AI reads. And if you look at the growth of that, which we publish on the Scite, you can see it ticking up even this last week, 1 million reads over that. And so we’re seeing a lot, and this goes to the thesis going to where the users are. And so we’re seeing better retention and more usage through MCP.

For Article Galaxy, we’ve been a bit more conservative on how we roll that out. We are discussing different ways of deploying that. We do see usage across the customer base, and that usage is interesting, but I would say it’s still pretty early. And what we’re tracking there is really looking at the article — purchase to article use. How does that compare platform versus MCP. And in both of those cases, everything is basically plain language, so instead of clicking a button here or there, you’re telling the tool to do this or to search that.

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And so I think it really facilitates the use of both core differentiators of the product in where users are starting to live including a lot of our own researchers and developers on the team. More and more of us are daily users of Claude, not just in software development, but really across the org. And we ourselves use MCPs from some of our tools such as our sales CRM and analytics and things like that.

Derek Greenberg: Okay. Got it. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the Gateway products and maybe the economics there on both the supply and the demand side and just how the traction look on that?

Josh Nicholson: Yes. On that, that’s pretty early, but I think there’s very large demand. I think what publishers are trying to figure out is how does their content exist in this world of AI. And so again, as I mentioned, we’re trying to help bring content into AI just as hosting platforms brought content online. I think where we’ll start to see some of that is that we provide subscription-based access to their subscribers. And so we get value to our product, which we’re charging for, they get value to their subscribers and they get usage data for that. I think this is going to evolve over time.

And I think we ultimately serve a variety of different kind of mechanisms and paths to serve the AI licensing. But I think it’s still early, and there hasn’t been much traction across anyone kind of in the space. But there is demand, and I think we are seeing good interest from some publishers in exploring this with us.

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Derek Greenberg: Got it. And then just last 1 for me. I was wondering for the pipeline you mentioned it was growing nicely. I was wondering, last quarter, you provided us over $1 million on the AI products. I was wondering if there’s any more detail you could provide in terms of what that pipeline may look like today?

Roy Olivier: It’s well over that today, but I don’t have an exact number.

Operator: I’m showing no additional questions at this time. I’d like to now turn the call back to Roy Olivier for any additional closing remarks.

Roy Olivier: Thank you, and thanks, everyone, for joining us on our call today. As a reminder, we’ll be participating at the Lake Street Conference tomorrow in New York City. We look forward to speaking with you in November to discuss the first quarter FY ’27 results. Have a great day.

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Josh Nicholson: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. This brings us into today’s meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company’s SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

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RSSS Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

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The year’s second-largest XRP hack is spilling over to Bitcoin and Ethereum

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Analysts see 10-year Treasury yield hitting 6%. Bitcoin bulls shouldn’t panic

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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.

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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.



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China has three new criteria for humanoid robot IPOs. Few, if any, meet them

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A SpaceX Starship Rocket Officially Reached Orbit. Why That’s So Significant

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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. 



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Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI

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30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.

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.

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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.

30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%.
30-Year Yield is pushing beyond 5%. Image Source: CNBC

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

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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.

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“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.

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BTC, ETH price news: Bitcoin slips to $83,000 as ZEC drops 12% and oil climbs again

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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.

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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.



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Tether is a ‘lifeline’ for Iranian regime, Senate Dems say in new report

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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.

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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.”



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Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event

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Ripple price prediction: Elon Musk's Grok AI predicts that XRP could reach $40 by 2027 if a wild announcement is made in Q4

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.

Ripple price prediction: Elon Musk's Grok AI predicts that XRP could reach $40 by 2027 if a wild announcement is made in Q4
SOURCE: Grok AI Predicts XRP Price

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

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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.

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Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out 3.7X on Polymarket

Technical Analysis Supporting the Insane Grok AI XRP Price Prediction

Xrp (XRP)
24h7d30d1yAll time

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Trump Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards. Will Cars Really Get Cheaper?

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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.

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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. 



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The restaking gold rush is over, and top protocols are barely making a profit

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Restaking earns almost nothing (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

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.

Restaking earns almost nothing (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

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.

What is left of liquid restaking, excludiing ether.fi (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)

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.



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