Asset management giant Grayscale is the latest crypto firm to delay its plans to go public due to market conditions, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The Stamford-based investment firm has paused its IPO preparations, and is unlikely to restart the process until the fourth quarter at the earliest, the person said, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private.

DCG subsidiary Grayscale, one of the world’s largest crypto asset managers and the firm behind the Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO in November last year.

“Due to the SEC-mandated quiet period, we are unable to comment at this time,” a Grayscale spokesperson said in emailed comments.

Grayscale is a leading digital asset investment platform that provides investors with secure and regulated exposure to the cryptocurrency market. Through its suite of single-asset, diversified, and thematic investment products, the firm enables institutional and retail investors to access digital assets without the operational complexities of directly buying, storing, or managing crypto. Since its founding in 2013, the firm has played a central role in bridging traditional finance and the evolving digital asset ecosystem.

Crypto firms entered 2026 anticipating a breakout year for IPOs after successful public listings from companies such as Circle (CRCL) and Bullish (BLSH), the parent company of CoinDesk, helped revive investor interest in digital-asset businesses last year. Since then, however, worsening market conditions, softer trading activity and underwhelming post-listing performance from newly public firms, including BitGo (BTGO), have tempered enthusiasm for additional digital asset IPOs.

As a result, several major crypto firms, including Payward, the parent company of Kraken; Ethereum software developer Consensys; and hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, have delayed their IPO plans as they wait for market conditions to stabilize.

Still, some firms are moving ahead with their listing plans. Blockchain.com said last week that it had confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO with the SEC.

Grayscale’s Ethereum Staking Mini exchange-traded fund (ETF) ranked as the top-performing U.S. ETP for Ethereum in the first quarter of 2026, drawing $337 million in inflows as of March 31, according to Bloomberg data. Despite a broader downturn in crypto markets, the firm has moved to convert or uplist 10 digital asset investment products into exchange-traded products since the fall of 2025.

The “debasement trade” that drove strong demand for bitcoin BTC$73,497.51 and gold during recent geopolitical tensions is beginning to lose momentum, according to JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou.

In a report on Thursday, the bank argued investors have started pulling capital from both bitcoin and gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) at the same time as institutions reduced exposure in futures markets tied to both assets.

That shift signals a broader retreat from macro hedge trades that became popular earlier this year amid fears of inflation and global instability stemming from tensions in the Middle East.

Bitcoin ETFs have seen significant outflows over the past two weeks, according to data from Farside Investors, in line with gold ETFs, while positions in CME bitcoin and gold futures have weakened over the same period.

Panigirtzoglou argued that the move does not appear to reflect investors rotating from bitcoin into gold, but rather that both assets are seeing softer demand at the same time.

“Bitcoin had been the main manifestation of the debasement trade since the start of the Iran conflict,” the report said.

The debasement trade refers to investor positioning in assets viewed as stores of value during periods of inflation fears or currency weakness. Bitcoin and gold often benefit when traders expect governments and central banks to increase spending, expand debt or keep monetary policy loose.

Those concerns intensified earlier this year after renewed conflict in the Middle East pushed oil prices higher and heightened worries about inflationary pressures returning.

JPMorgan said the recent pullback may reflect growing expectations that tensions between the United States and Iran could ease.

The report suggested investors may be positioning ahead of a possible diplomatic agreement between the two countries, reducing the need for inflation and geopolitical hedges that had supported bitcoin and gold.

For years, crypto has thrived on speculative capital flows and the explosive popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens and applications.

That still holds true for rising sectors such as perpetual decentralized exchanges and prediction markets. But as Wall Street pushes deeper into tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), not all of the industry’s existing systems cater to the kinds of financial products institutions want to bring onchain.

An author of the newly finalized ERC-7943 (uRWA) token standard said that the fragmented infrastructure powering much of DeFi wasn’t designed for regulated financial assets, which often require identity frameworks and interoperability standards.

“If you want to bring regulated assets onchain, you can’t really escape regulations,” Dario Lo Buglio, co-founder and head of blockchain at tokenization platform Brickken, told Cointelegraph. 

“You can still play your pirate game on DeFi without regulated assets.”

DeFi veterans have been wary of freezing functions in tokens, but the same controls appeal to institutions. Source: ethereum.org

Existing standards don’t cover every RWA use case

Another token standard, the ERC-3643 — also known as the T-REX or Token for Regulated Exchanges — is one of the dominant frameworks used for tokenized securities on Ethereum.

The standard already includes many of the compliance-oriented features institutions require, like identity-based permissions and mechanisms that allow issuers to intervene under specific circumstances.

The framework was designed primarily around securities and does not necessarily translate across the broader range of tokenized assets now entering blockchain markets, Lo Buglio said. Thus, interoperability is increasingly difficult as more institutions experiment with bringing traditional financial products onchain.

“As tokenization becomes easier, the harder problem is making those assets work across different compliance systems, custodians, exchanges, wallets and institutional platforms,” Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO, told Cointelegraph.

Levin said standards such as uRWA could help standardize how tokenized assets carry information tied to identity, permissions, compliance requirements and transfer rules across Ethereum-based systems.

“Done well, that makes regulated assets far easier to move, verify and integrate without every institution building its own isolated infrastructure,” he said.

Tokenized RWAs grew from roughly $6.4 billion at the start of 2025 to about $34 billion as of Thursday, according to RWA.xyz data. Standard Chartered estimates this value to pop to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, while the Boston Consulting Group projects $18.9 trillion by 2033.

In measurements that classify stablecoins as RWAs, the total market capitalization is approaching $340 billion. Source: RWA.xyz 

Related: Wall Street’s tokenization boom has a liquidity problem: Axis CEO

Levin added that institutions have largely prioritized assets with predictable cash flows, real yield and established legal structures.

“The market is tokenizing what benefits most from faster settlement, programmable collateral and lower operational friction,” he said.

Privacy as the next institutional requirement

Privacy remains another major obstacle for institutions experimenting with onchain finance, particularly for firms unwilling to expose portfolio activity or transaction flows on public blockchains.

“We don’t want BlackRock listing their entire portfolio onchain transparently to everyone, but they still want to transact onchain,” he said.

BlackRock’s institutional liquidity fund is worth about $2.5 billion. Source: RWA.xyz

Related: DeFi hacks shake institutional confidence as risks outpace yields

Lo Buglio argued that many existing tokenization frameworks were originally designed around public Ethereum-based systems and do not always translate cleanly to privacy-oriented chains, where transaction models and data structures often differ from traditional EVM environments.

Canton Network, which was launched with backing from firms including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Cboe Global Markets, was designed around privacy-preserving financial coordination between institutions.

Unlike public blockchains where transaction activity is broadly visible across the network, Canton allows data to remain visible only to relevant participants while still synchronizing settlement between institutions.

Its architecture has irked some developers who argue the network lacks key characteristics associated with public blockchains, including a globally shared state.

The debate reflects a growing divide between crypto-native DeFi infrastructure and the types of blockchain systems many large financial firms appear more willing to adopt for regulated assets.

AI agents may push RWAs beyond TradFi

Much of the current conversation around tokenized RWA has centered on banks and institutional systems. But some builders believe the infrastructure now being developed for RWAs could eventually branch out to machine-driven financial systems.

“As AI agents begin to move capital autonomously, they will need assets that exist on-chain in a form they can read and act on,” Taran Dhillon, head of digital assets at tokenization company Kula, told Cointelegraph.

According to Dhillon, many productive RWAs still remain largely disconnected from automated financial systems because they lack standardized digital infrastructure.

“The standards being built today need to work across jurisdictions and asset classes, not just within the existing corridors of established financial markets,” he said.

Lo Buglio similarly argued that ERC-7943 was designed less as a single dominant implementation and more as a framework allowing tokenized assets to move across increasingly interconnected blockchain environments.

ERC-7943 moved to the “final” stage in its Ethereum Improvement Proposal process on Wednesday, meaning developers can deploy contracts based on the standard without expecting further specification changes. The next phase will likely focus on adoption across tokenized asset platforms.

The emergence of another tokenization standard may not immediately solve the lack of standardization issue it aims to address.

Lo Buglio acknowledged that ERC-7943 was intentionally designed as a more flexible and less “opinionated” framework than some earlier standards.

Large financial institutions and blockchain developers continue to experiment with proprietary infrastructure and custom compliance systems.

Magazine: Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

May 28, 2026 – P2P.org, a blockchain infrastructure provider operating validators across 40+ proof-of-stake networks since 2018, today launched Syncro Data Stream, a real-time blockchain data stream for Sui and Hyperliquid. The product delivers on-chain transaction and order flow data directly from P2P.org’s active validator nodes, at the point of origin rather than through public endpoints, checkpoints, or shared RPC infrastructure. The data stream for Sui and Hyperliquid is available now at $2,000 per month each, with a one-week free trial for new clients.

Syncro Data Stream is part of Syncro, P2P.org’s crypto trading infrastructure product line. Syncro launched earlier this year with Syncro Sender, a Solana transaction landing service already in production with leading trading teams. Syncro Data Stream for Sui and Syncro Data Stream for Hyperliquid are the second and third products in the line.

Why a real-time blockchain data stream for SUI and Hyperliquid matters for execution-critical teams

For trading teams and market makers operating on Sui and Hyperliquid, on-chain data latency directly affects trading performance. Public APIs and shared RPC endpoints deliver transaction data only after it has propagated through the network. On chains with sub-second finality, that gap is the window in which opportunities open and close, quotes go stale, and positions shift.

P2P.org’s real-time blockchain data stream reduces that gap to a single validator-to-client hop, before data propagates to any public infrastructure.

What the data stream for Sui and Hyperliquid delivers

For Sui:

• Pre-checkpoint transaction events at certificate processing, ahead of public feeds.
• Two core capabilities: real-time transaction data streaming and low-latency transaction landing.
• Secured WebSocket endpoint with isolated credentials and IP allowlisting per client.

For Hyperliquid:

• Full order flow from P2P.org’s active validator and private sentry nodes.
• Every order across every asset: open, modify, cancel, and fill, with side, price, quantity, status, order ID, and user attribution.
• Dedicated error and metrics channel, keeping operational signals out of the market data path.
• WebSocket JSON or ESP binary delivery, with per-asset subscriptions or full firehose.

Pricing and availability

The real-time blockchain data stream is available on both networks at $2,000 per month each, with monthly or annual billing. New clients receive a one-week free trial to validate integration, latency, and data quality against their existing setup. No credit card required. Provisioning typically completes within hours of IP allowlisting.

Full product details are available at p2p.org/products/syncro. Technical documentation is available at docs.p2p.org.

“Sui and Hyperliquid are attracting serious execution-critical teams, and those teams need data infrastructure that matches the speed of the chains they are trading on”, said Prash Pandit, VP of Validation at P2P.org. “Public endpoints were not built for that. Syncro Data Stream was.”

About P2P.org

P2P.org has operated blockchain infrastructure since 2018 across dozens of proof-of-stake networks, serving a broad base of institutional partners. Syncro is P2P.org’s crypto trading infrastructure product line, built on active validator nodes across Solana, Sui, and Hyperliquid. The Syncro line includes Syncro Sender for Solana transaction landing, Syncro Data Stream for Sui, and Syncro Data Stream for Hyperliquid.

Media contact:

Disclaimer. This press release is for informational purposes only. Not investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. P2P.org accepts no liability for actions taken based on it. Pricing and product details are current at the time of publication and may change.

Chipmaker Sequans has ended its Bitcoin treasury strategy, selling most of its holdings to clear debt.

French chipmaker Sequans has ended its Bitcoin treasury strategy after less than a year. The company sold part of its holdings to redeem convertible debt and refocus on its core chip business.

The unwind caps a rapid retreat from crypto. Sequans disclosed on May 28 that it fully redeemed all remaining July 2025 convertible debt, leaving roughly 658 unrestricted BTC it plans to monetise over time.

Hyperliquid’s SPACEX-USDH perpetual contract suffered a violent flash crash on Thursday afternoon, plunging from an open of $2,277 to a low of $1,254, a near-45% collapse, within a single 30-minute window before partially recovering to around $2,169. The move liquidated 405 users across 1,393 positions, wiping $1.51 million in notional value, Hyperliquid data shows.

What makes the episode particularly striking is the volume concentration. Over the past 24 hours the contract had drifted quietly, generating just $4.87 million in total trading volume across an open interest base of under $2.9 million. Then one candle absorbed what was likely the bulk of that entire figure and the market had no depth or liquidity to absorb it.

The median liquidated position held just $31 in margin, pointing to a retail-heavy user base taking on 3x leverage with minimal cushion.

The Hyperliquid SPACEX-USDH is a crypto perpetual contract for SpaceX’s market valuation. As the company is private, people cannot buy its stock ahead of its anticipated IPO. To get around this, Hyperliquid created a synthetic perpetual contract that allows investors to bet on what they think the company will be worth.

Traders aren’t buying actual shares of Elon Musk’s rocket company, nor do they get any ownership or shareholder rights.

Unlike perpetual futures on Bitcoin or Ethereum, which anchor to deep, liquid spot markets, the SPACEX contract has no public price benchmark, with SpaceX shares trading only through private secondary markets gated to accredited investors.

At settlement, the mark price of $2,132 still sat more than $220 above the oracle price of $1,908, implying the contract remained at a premium even after the carnage.

SpaceX is targeting an IPO in June.

UPDATE (May 28, 2026, 17:31 UTC): Adds additional context.

Sui network, a layer 1 blockchain developed by Mysten Labs, is experiencing a network outage on Thursday after the project said its mainnet had “stalled,” temporarily halting transaction processing.

“Sui Mainnet is currently experiencing a network stall. The Sui Core team is actively working on a solution,” the project posted on X. “Be aware that transactions may be paused at this time. Updates will be shared as soon as they are available.”

The disruption appeared to pause activity across the network, though the team had not yet disclosed the cause of the issue at press time.

The incident marks another in a series of technical disruptions for Sui. The blockchain has previously faced periods of degraded performance and outages, including one earlier this year.

Sui, which launched in 2023, is among a group of newer layer 1 blockchains competing with Ethereum and Solana by offering high-speed transactions and low fees. The network’s native SUI token is down 8% in the last 24 hours, though broader crypto market conditions were mixed.

Blockchain outages remain a closely watched issue for traders and developers, particularly for networks that market themselves as high-performance infrastructure for decentralized finance and gaming applications.

The Sui team said it would provide additional updates as the investigation continues.

Read more: Crypto for Advisors: Breaking down the Sui blockchain