Crypto World
America Is Finally Taking Extraterrestrials Seriously
There was nothing much happening in Jerome and Benno Leuer’s yard in Hamel, Minn. on August 11, 1948. It was noontime in the thick of summer and the boys, 10 and 8, were idly playing when, as they later described it, something overhead caught their eyes. They looked up and their jaws dropped.
Roughly 12 ft. up in the air was a dull gray, circular object, about 1 ft. thick and 2 ft. in diameter, slowly descending between them. They stood transfixed as the object settled onto the ground, making a clattering sound like metal hitting metal. The object rested there a moment, and then began emitting a high-pitched whistle that, to the boys, sounded like a teakettle. It spun in place once, then shot 20 ft. into the air, hovered for a moment, and ascended to 30 ft., maneuvering around tree branches and telephone wires in its path. Finally, it jetted out of sight.
Jerome and Benno ran inside and told their parents what they had seen. Their father notified the only authority he could think of: R.R. Sheridan, the local postmaster. Sheridan, in turn, called the FBI field office in St. Paul. To the family’s surprise, the bureau sent an agent. He interviewed the boys and inspected the yard.
“The spot where the alleged ‘flying saucer’ had landed was approximately 2 ft. in diameter and appeared as though a heavy object had landed there or had touched down,” read the statement in the official report. “The ground was dented and protruding rocks had been leveled.”
The boys grew up and moved on. Nothing came of their mysterious sighting, but the government preserved the report all the same, filing it away in a cache of documents it had already begun keeping, of both civilian and military accounts of flying, hovering, blinking objects that appeared in the skies, skittering about, sometimes touching down, and then vanishing back the way they came, just as Jerome’s and Benno’s object had. For 78 years, the boys’ story—and hundreds of others like it—had languished in storage. Until May 8, 2026, when President Donald Trump began a serial release of four tranches of more than 450 official reports going back to the middle of the last century, ordering that they be posted on a Department of Defense website and made available for public perusal.
After decades of secrecy, stigma, and sometimes silliness—like the conspiratorial tales about recovered spacecraft and alien remains at a place known as Area 51 in Roswell, N.M.—the government has at long last begun taking things seriously. What used to be called UFOs and now go by the more decorous handle of UAPs—or unidentified anomalous phenomena—are being given the full investigatory treatment.
Congressional hearings into the origins of the sightings were held in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established “to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest.” In December 2023, then President Joe Biden signed into law the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, requiring the collection, review, and public disclosure of all sightings and encounters.
On June 12, capturing the global hunger for answers to the UAP mystery, director Steven Spielberg—who has long had a sort of seismographic sense of the popular mood—released his latest film, Disclosure Day, in which a government cover-up of extraterrestrial visitations is exposed. The movie grossed $94 million worldwide on its opening weekend alone. At about the same time, the White House established the UAP Science Advisory Council, a body led by Harvard astrophysicist and cosmologist Avi Loeb to study the national-security risks posed by UAPs.
“I was tasked to create a panel for the White House, AARO, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and related agencies, so that all of these organizations are in contact [about UAPs],” says Loeb. “It’s clear, based on much better sensors that we have, that there are objects the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon do not, cannot figure out.”
It’s not just for the government, academia, and Hollywood to do that figuring. Last year, the nonprofit Disclosure Foundation, led by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon launched, was launched, with the aim of encouraging the release of UAP reports, promoting scientific investigation of sightings, supporting whistle-blowers, and formulating policy related to UAPs. On June 25 of this year the group convened a Capitol Hill forum in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.
The daylong event featured political figures including Representatives Eric Burlison (Republican, Missouri), Anna Paulina Luna (Republican, Florida), André Carson (Democrat, Indiana), and Suhas Subramanyam (Democrat, Virginia), and Senator Mike Rounds (Republican, South Dakota). Loeb was present, as were other well-lettered experts discussing the technological, national-security, economic, psychological, and even religious implications of UAPs. The speakers acknowledged that in some respects they were there at their peril, since publicly discussing flying saucers still carries reputational risk.
“You’re black, you’re Muslim, you represent a district in Indiana,” Carson said of himself, “and now you want to talk about UAPs?”
But it’s a measure of the growing public interest in the phenomena and the mounting evidence that something is out there that more and more serious people are willing to take that risk. Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on the topic. In a February interview, Obama was asked if extra-terrestrial life exists, and he responded, “They’re real,” hastening to add, “But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility—unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”
Obama added that he based his belief in the likelihood of extraterrestrial beings in part on the fact that “statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.” That’s a point a lot of believers make, especially since NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and other space-based and Earth-based observatories have discovered thousands of exoplanets—or planets orbiting other stars—leading astronomers to conclude that virtually every one of the trillions of stars in the sky has at least one world circling it.
As with all things in a loud, messy, pluralistic democracy, public opinion plays a role here too—and Americans are clearly ready for action. According to a poll conducted by the Disclosure Foundation just weeks before the Capitol Hill forum, 84% of respondents want more information from the government on UAPs, 69% believe UAPs are real, 59% support hearings and transparency laws, and just 21% trust the federal government to be telling the complete truth. The responses are bipartisan. A statistically meaningless 1% separates the whopping 89% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats who say they want more information on UAPs.
“You could be a single-issue candidate running in the U.S.,” says Jordan Flowers, the Disclosure Foundation’s executive director. “That single issue could be [UAP] transparency, and you could get elected just based on that.”
Unlike other single issues like taxation, immigration, or climate, which unfold indefinitely over decades, UAP transparency has a fixed end point. The government will tell all it knows, the sightings will be investigated, and their origins will be determined to be terrestrial—highly advanced military or other assets—or, epochally, extraterrestrial.
“My null hypothesis would be that these are human-made objects being operated by adversarial nations, near strategic assets of the U.S.,” says Loeb. And if they’re not? If they do come from … elsewhere? “That will be the biggest discovery ever made by humanity.”
A Question of Security
The U.S. Senate doesn’t lend out the Kennedy Caucus Room to just anybody. Opened in 1909, the room is a prepossessing place, with carved marble walls measuring 74 ft. long, 54 ft. wide, and 35 ft. high—climbing to an ornate ceiling decorated with gilded rosettes and acanthus leaves. The doors of the room open onto the Russell Building’s vaulted, marble rotunda, which rises three stories high.
The caucus room has seen a lot of history: it was the site of hearings on the sinking of the Titanic, the Teapot Dome scandal, Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and more. Both John and Robert Kennedy announced their presidential runs there. It was thus no small thing that the Disclosure Foundation was cleared to use the space to hold its June 25 summit. The 300-plus people in attendance took the event exceedingly seriously. Despite the once flaky, fringey, fantastical topic under discussion, the vibe was clearly not Burning Man, Comic Con, or South by Southwest. One attendee was decked out in a T-shirt featuring a bug-eyed alien playing electric guitar, but for everyone else in the room, business attire was the order of the day.
“Today, experts that rarely occupy the same room—physicists, historians, economists, intelligence professionals, educators, journalists, and policymakers—are gathered here in this room,” said Mellon in his opening remarks, “to discuss a subject that was, until very recently, untouchable.”
Of all of the panels that appeared throughout the day, it was a morning session on the security and defense implications of UAPs that had the most gravity. The panelists discussed the repeated sightings of UAPs both by naval pilots and personnel at military bases, raising concern about the permeability of armed American airspace. If the objects’ origins were indeed found to be extraterrestrial, the technology of the alien species far eclipses any flying machines human beings have ever developed. If they are terrestrial—built and flown by rival nations—they signal an arms race that we are already losing.
Retired naval Lieutenant Ryan Graves had his first encounter with UAPs off the East Coast of the U.S. 14 years ago and more in the two years that followed. “We came back from a deployment in 2012 and began to upgrade our radar systems,” he told TIME, “and we immediately saw objects in our working area that we were not expecting. There were usually anywhere between three and six objects within the airspace off the coast of Virginia Beach. Sometimes [they were] completely stationary at very high winds, sometimes flying at 250 to 350 knots [288 to 402 m.p.h.].”
The objects, Graves said, were 5 to 15 ft. in diameter, and appeared to be a gray or black cube inside a clear sphere. They gave off no exhaust and flew in such a way—diving and soaring and suddenly changing direction—that any human passenger would be subject to potentially deadly g-forces. Sometimes they flew so close to the Navy jets that the pilots were required to file hazard reports so that other planes operating in the vicinity could be warned.
“They would be outside doing these behaviors all day,” Graves says. “It might appear that these objects are using magical physics we don’t understand.” As part of the pilots’ routine rotation, they later shifted their operations to the waters off Jacksonville, Fla. They got no peace there either. The UAPs, says Graves, “were either already down there or they had followed us down, because we had over a dozen incidents.”
The naval flyers’ Virginia and Florida encounters are by no means the only experience the military has had with UAPs. One of the most compelling is the so-called Tic Tac incident, which occurred off the coast of California in 2004. During an otherwise routine deployment that year, radar personnel repeatedly noticed the reflection of a skittering airborne object they could not explain—looping and diving, climbing and then dropping from an altitude of 80,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. To crack the mystery, a team of flyers was scrambled into the sky. Once aloft, they discovered what they estimated to be a 45-ft.-long flying machine that bore a striking resemblance to a Tic Tac breath mint.
“All four of us looked down and saw a Tic Tac object moving very abruptly over the water,” said pilot David Fravor in a 2023 appearance before a congressional committee. “There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings. As we pulled nose onto the object within about a half-mile of it, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared.” Cockpit video preserved the encounter.
Military assets on the ground have been harassed too. For 17 straight nights in December 2024, Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va. was swarmed by objects that appeared overhead 45 minutes after sundown and repeatedly flew over the base. According to one eyewitness—former astronaut Scott Kelly, who in 2022 was tapped to serve on a NASA UAP study team—the objects appeared to be 20 ft. long, flying at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 ft., at a speed of 100 m.p.h. The incursions became serious enough that Langley canceled nighttime training flights and moved its F-22 jets to another air base.
More dramatic was a reported sighting by six federal law-enforcement officers in October 2023, near what the official memorandum described as “a sensitive national security site in the western United States.” For two consecutive days, just at dusk, the witnesses reported observing “a luminous ‘mother orb’ appear[ing] to produce smaller red orbs, one after another, multiple times over a period of several hours. The ‘red orbs’ reportedly persisted for several seconds before disappearing.”
“It is clear that we have lost control of our airspace. Full stop,” says Flowers. “Whether this is some form of human intelligence, or whether it’s something else, I am not creative enough to say.”
“Many of these things are certainly not drones,” says Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence officer with the government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). “They are advanced technology from somewhere. If you’re scrambling jets off Langley, you’ve got a problem.”
Not everyone is persuaded by the reports. “Great claims require great evidence,” says Jon Kosloski, director of AARO, “and the evidence just isn’t there yet.” Kelly does not minimize the security risk posed by rogue objects but does not think they have to have an exotic origin. “In science, eyewitness testimony is kind of opinion; it’s not data,” he says. “I have never seen anything that couldn’t be explained.”
Kelly points to a sighting he made during his days as a military pilot when he was flying a Tomcat jet off the coast of Virginia. In the midst of the maneuvers, the pilot in the back seat of the plane suddenly announced, “We just passed something. It looks like a UFO.”
“What?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah, maybe it was like an alien spaceship or something. It looked really weird.”
Kelly banked the jet around in the opposite direction, looking for an object through his wind screen, and indeed saw it in the distance, though it wasn’t showing up on radar. He drew closer and closer until he was on an intercept course, and the bogey at last resolved itself.
“It was Bart Simpson,” Kelly says. “It was a balloon.”
Are We Ready For Extraterrestrial Disclosure?
If UAPs are ever confirmed to have an extraterrestrial origin it will represent what Carlos Eire, professor of history and religious studies at Yale University and a speaker at the Disclosure Forum, calls a “rupture” in human civilization.
“A rupture is something after which nothing is the same,” he says. “It’s similar to the rupture that occurred for the natives of North and South America when Europeans showed up.”
Clinical psychologist Jennice Vilhauer, a member of the advisory boards of both Loeb’s UAP Council and the Disclosure Foundation, spoke at the June 25 event, and her words were sobering. “If this news were to come out tomorrow,” she says, “we’re entirely unprepared.”
An emotional contagion like panic is always possible, but Vilhauer does not think most people would react that way even to such paradigm-shifting news as nonhuman intelligence. “There are certain communities that would look at this through a catastrophic lens, like an end-times event,” she says. “But I don’t see this being something that would spread across the entire population.”
That doesn’t mean that there would not be a psychic impact. A lot, she says, would depend on whether alien life was perceived as either benevolent, indifferent, or hostile. Even a microbe could be hostile if it posed a risk of infection—a peril about which humans have always been mindful. During the first three moon-landing missions, returning astronauts were required to spend three weeks in medical quarantine against the chance that they picked up alien germs—a practical impossibility since no microorganisms could survive on the dry, airless moon.
Also playing a role would be the question of what Vilhauer calls personal relevance—whether the news of nonhuman life affected any one person directly. The greatest emotional reaction would occur in people who perceive a high threat level and high personal relevance; the least effect would be in people who see low threat and low personal relevance. “Disclosure alone would be a huge, unprecedented event,” Vilhauer says. “Those two things together—personal relevance and threat—could create a really negative response.”
Mental health will not be the only thing that’s affected by UAP disclosure; spiritual health will be too. As long ago as the 1970s, divinity scholars established the concept of exotheology—a branch of Christian thought that includes the possibility of life in the cosmos. That can come in handy now. Eire believes that the three leading monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—will have the most work to do coming to terms with nonhuman intelligence. That’s because all three of them share the idea that there is one God, and that he created everything including human beings. Our species, we like to think, is his crowning creation—a belief that will be harder to hold onto if a cosmic species comes along that’s better, smarter, fitter than us. “The book of Genesis, which is shared in different ways by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, poses this very troubling story about human origins,” says Eire.
Christianity, Eire believes, will have a special hurdle to overcome in adjusting to the idea of off-Earth life because of its teaching that God became human. On the other hand, all three mono-theistic religions do have some practice with the idea of intelligent, nonhuman life. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims accept as a given that human beings are not alone in God’s creation,” says Eire. “There have always been angels.”
The puzzle of how to marry theology and extraterrestrial life predates the current surge in UAP disclosures. In 2014, Brother Guy Consolmagno, then the director of the Vatican Observatory, coauthored the cheeky book Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?…and Other Questions From the Astronomer’s In-Box at the Vatican Observatory. When someone posed the baptism question to him directly, he famously answered “Only if she asked.”
The Likelihood of Extraterrestrial Life
Questions about UAPs and the life-forms that may or may not have sent them our way may turn in part on faith, but they also turn on physics. While exobiologists continue to explore the possibility of microbial life on Mars and on ocean moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, it is well accepted that our solar system has just one world with advanced, intelligent life, and that’s ours. That means looking for exceptional beings farther afield.
The closest star system to Earth is Proxima Centauri, a tidy 4.25 light-years—or 25 trillion miles—distant. Getting from there to here would in theory take at least 4.25 years, and only if you’re traveling at the speed of light—which Albert Einstein long ago proved can’t be done. Other star systems lie thousands and billions of light-years away, meaning that traveling the trans-Earth distance could take almost as long as the age of the universe itself.
Still, plenty of academics don’t rule out the possibility of alien visitors from the stars. “I would put the estimate of the chances that we’ve been visited—and I would define that as an exploration through our solar system, leading to them being aware that Earth has life and civilization—at maybe something like 50%,” says Jack Singal, professor of physics at the University of Richmond. He puts the odds that any of the claimed UFO or UAP sightings over the past century have actually been one of those visitations at a much lower 5%. “I think there’s just enough mundane explanations for these things,” he says.
Jonathan Miller, a program engineer for MIT’s department of mechanical engineering and the director of an academic program called Confronting Unknowns, which explores the question of UAPs, does not go as far as Singal, but he is open to the possibility that other civilizations are not as constrained by Einsteinian physics as we think they’d be. “There are the physics of traveling from point A to point B,” he says. “But there may be alternative ways to sort of bridge that gap. There’s probably an iceberg of possibilities [to explain UAPs] below the waterline.”
Some of those explanations may be straightforward—at least compared with extraterrestrials. If it’s possible that some rival power has developed advanced technology that can perform the acrobatics the UAPs do, it’s equally possible that the U.S. has as well and that witnesses are simply observing domestic hardware. The military is nothing if not secretive, and all of this work could be done in the dark—much the way the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first nuclear weapons, operated silently, invisibly, from June 1942 to August 1947.
It’s possible too that there is something even more prosaic than earthly or alien space technology at play. Miller speaks admiringly of the “mark one eyeballs of a well-trained pilot” as perhaps the most reliable sensor system on any plane—better than radar, infrared, or motion sensors. But those eyeballs can be fooled—especially given the thermal, chemical, and physical complexity of the atmosphere in which the UAPs are being seen and reported.
“The atmosphere is a crazy place,” says Singal. “You can see double, triple rainbows. You can go to some Arctic regions and see the sun appear several times at several different angles in the sky. You can have tornadoes that pick up and throw a car or impale a cow on a tree. Could it make a black triangle move across the sky for 10 seconds? I would say it could.”
“You get a lot of reports from naval officers, more so than from the Air Force,” says Kelly. “That’s because the Navy flies over water and it’s an environment that is very subject to optical illusions.”
Witnesses, of course, swear by the evidence of their eyes, and sightings like those of Graves and his fellow pilots, which involved large objects moving at close proximity between two naval jets, are hard to dismiss as just the hallucinatory interplay of light and air.
“We came within 50 ft. of the lead aircraft,” says Graves. “I think some of what we were seeing were true UAPs. What I mean by that is that these were true airborne assets that were physical in nature, that were exhibiting capabilities beyond our state of the art.”
The community of people who believe accounts like these and want to get to the bottom of them is growing. In addition to chairing the UAP Science Advisory Council, Loeb is co-directing the Harvard-based Galileo Project, which scans the skies looking for hints of extraterrestrial technology. Galileo relies on three Earth-based telescopes—in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Nevada—using infrared, visible, and radio sensors to track moving objects that seem to deviate from the performance of earthly technology. In 2018, Loeb and his colleague Shmuel Bialy, then a post-doctorate researcher, made headlines with a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, in which they entertained the idea that the cigar-shaped interstellar comet Oumuamua “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
In 2017, the object flew into our solar system, whipped around the sun like a comet, and flew back out. On that departing leg of the journey, it accelerated when it should have been slowing down due to the gravitational pull of the sun. That suggested some propulsion system was at work. It is possible, Loeb and Bialy wrote, that the object is “floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment.”
Other astronomers dismiss that idea, arguing that Oumuamua was pushed either by solar wind, the storm of charged particles forever streaming from the sun, or by solar radiation pressure, the gentle force imparted by electromagnetic energy when it contacts an object. The object has since soared back into deep space, taking the possibility of any answers with it.
Congress is staying on the UAP case—in its own dilatory way. In 2024, lawmakers took up the UAP Transparency Act, which would mandate declassification of all documents related to UAPs. The bill has not yet become law, and its potential impact has been partly mooted by the White House going ahead and releasing the four tranches of documents on its own.
For now, UAPs remain a riddle. They may be real, they may be illusion, they may simply be artifacts of human desire—something we see because we want to see them. A universe with other life-forms, after all, is a lot less lonely than one in which we are the only world with lights in the windows. The eyewitnesses, of course, would differ—knowing what they saw, believing what they saw, and remaining, in some cases, transformed by what they saw. In time—if the proof is found, if biological intelligence is discovered in the void—we may all be transformed the same way.
The BeInCrypto Stage returned to Píer Mauá for the fourth year in a row at Rio Innovation Week 2026, turning Wednesday morning into a showcase of the agenda now drawing banks, exchanges, and card issuers closer together.
Executives from companies including Binance, Visa, Nubank, BNY, Crypto.com, Mercado Bitcoin, and Bitso, among others, shared the stage to discuss stablecoins, financial superapps, prediction markets, and the infrastructure underpinning the next phase of digital assets in the country.
BeInCrypto launches “The Exodus Economy” report
BeInCrypto opened its own chapter of the day by unveiling “The Exodus Economy,” the first edition of a research effort by BeInCrypto Intelligence that maps how Latin American money finds a new financial home. The study followed 12 years of dollar flows on-chain, wallet by wallet, and audited 60 billionaire addresses against their Forbes profiles.
The report puts hard numbers behind a phenomenon usually told through headlines about departing millionaires. According to the study, Brazilians hold US$ 654 billion abroad, by their own central bank’s count, and 26.9 million Latin Americans already live outside their home countries. It also shows that roughly US$ 63.2 billion was sent home to Mexico over the last 12 months, with a crypto rail beside it already running at about half that size. One of its more counterintuitive findings is that all 14 Mexican billionaires tracked still live at home, evidence that the exodus is real but far from uniform.
The edition was reviewed alongside a Latin American Finance Council that includes Caio Fasanella, Head of Investments at Nomad, Antônia Souza, Director of Digital Currencies for Latin America and the Caribbean at Visa, Michael Rihani, Director of Crypto at Nubank, and Bruno Grossi, Head of Emerging Technologies at Banco Inter.
Binance unveils its first Brazil-only yield product on stage
The tone was set in the opening keynote. Thiago Sarandy, general manager of Binance in Brazil, took the stage to announce Binance Rende+, the platform’s first yield product built exclusively for the Brazilian market. It is a real-denominated investment yielding 120% of the CDI, backed by Treasury bonds, allowing deposits of up to R$ 100,000 and delivering daily returns that include Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.
“Binance Rende+ combines features Brazilians already know, such as CDI-linked yield, with the advantages of digital assets, like earning 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, with the ability to redeem at any time. This significantly improves the potential of investors’ portfolios. People’s money can no longer be limited to business hours,” Sarandy said during the keynote “Everything Your Money Wants to Be: The Financial Superapps.”
The executive used the stage to reveal another line of expansion. Still in August, Binance will launch a tool in the Brazilian market that will let users buy stocks listed in the United States directly from the platform’s app, with access to more than 7,000 shares of U.S. companies.
According to Sarandy, the move consolidates Binance’s evolution beyond the crypto market, gathering into a single ecosystem solutions such as Binance Card, Pix integration, the new Binance Rende+ and, soon, investment in foreign equities.
The global figures he presented helped frame the scale behind the strategy. Binance today counts more than 325 million users, moved over US$ 34 trillion in trading volume throughout 2025, holds roughly US$ 160 billion in assets under custody, and can process up to 4.4 million transactions per second.
Sarandy also stressed that the company is currently the crypto platform with the largest number of regulatory licenses across different jurisdictions worldwide. Those interested in Binance Rende+ can already sign up for the pre-launch list on the company’s website.
Stablecoins and the tension between access and protection
If the Binance keynote placed the financial superapp at the center of the conversation, the panel “Money Never Sleeps Again: Stablecoins and the New Global Financial Infrastructure” brought the regulatory temperature into the debate. The table gathered Nelson Leite, from Binance, Eduardo Abreu, vice president of Visa in Brazil, and Sabrina Zaparroli, Public Policy Senior Expert at Nubank, moderated by Luís de Magalhães, BeInCrypto’s Latin America lead.
Sabrina Zaparroli, from Nubank, offered one of the morning’s densest reflections when she addressed the supposed democratization of the dollar through stablecoins. For her, ease of access cannot be confused with the absence of risk.
“I see this democratization as an important reduction of barriers. For many people, especially in lower-value international transactions, the possibility of accessing a virtual asset referenced to a strong currency and moving it at any time can mean more predictability, more speed and less friction. But it is important not to confuse access with the absence of risk,” she said.
Zaparroli argued that democratizing access also means democratizing information and protection. She contended that a stablecoin does not automatically become equivalent to a dollar in a bank account merely because it maintains a value reference, and that users need to understand the issuer’s obligations, how reserves are held, and what protection exists in the event of a failure.
“The simplicity of the interface cannot hide the nature of the product. We need to combine innovation with transparency, controls proportional to risk and communication that allows the client to make an informed decision,” she added.
The executive said she prefers to speak of more efficient access to dollar-denominated services, rather than an automatic replacement of the local currency.
Eduardo Abreu, from Visa, highlighted the collaborative nature of the debate, which brought together companies from different links of the chain.
“It was a great experience to be in a place where you see innovation, content and networking with high-level people. And to be on a panel with companies from different sectors, right? Us as Visa, the bank as issuer, Binance as exchange. It is really cool and it shows how this world has to be collaborative,” said the vice president.
BNY and the infrastructure argument
The institutional view gained reinforcement in the remarks of Carlos Xirau, Head of Latin America at BNY, who tied the debate to the idea that mass adoption depends less on technology and more on solid foundations.
“We are living through the convergence between traditional finance and the digital economy. The mass adoption of digital assets will depend less on technology and more on the ability to create a robust and reliable infrastructure, capable of meeting the demands of investors, companies and financial institutions. That is the path to changing the market’s scalability,” Xirau said.
Prediction markets enter the agenda
Another block that energized the stage was the one dedicated to prediction markets, a theme gaining ground in discussions about new financial primitives. The CEO of Rain Protocol summed up the stance he believes the sector must adopt toward a tool still under construction.
“Prediction markets are a new frontier. We need to understand how they work before jumping in. There are new and exciting possibilities ahead. To block this new tool is not the answer, to understand is,” the executive said.
He described prediction markets as a completely new market primitive, in which probabilities themselves become tradable assets, unlocking entirely new ways to price risk, coordinate information, and build financial products.
For the Rain Protocol CEO, Brazil embraced innovation throughout the event and holds the talent, curiosity, and entrepreneurial spirit to become one of the global leaders in shaping the future of the sector.
“The quality of the discussion reflected the energy and openness of the Brazilian ecosystem,” he noted.
An agenda that cements the convergence
The fourth edition of the BeInCrypto Stage at Rio Innovation Week confirmed the movement running through every panel: the border between traditional finance and digital assets is growing ever thinner. On one side, exchanges such as Binance are advancing into fixed-income products and equities. On the other hand, banks and issuers like Nubank and Visa are folding stablecoins and onchain rails into their operations, while institutions such as BNY defend infrastructure as the precondition for scale.
To read “The Exodus Economy” report, click here.
The message that emerged from Píer Mauá is that the conversation is no longer about whether convergence will happen, but about how to build it with transparency, user protection, and rules proportional to risk.
The post BeInCrypto Stage at Rio Innovation Week: Where TradFi and Crypto Meet appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Boerse Stuttgart Digital and institutional crypto trading firm Tradias have officially completed their merger, forming a combined digital-asset infrastructure business with roughly 300 employees. The deal follows the clearance of an ownership control process, clearing the final regulatory hurdle needed to proceed with the combination.
The merger was originally announced in February, when the two companies said they would unite their regulated crypto operations and broaden services for banks, brokers, and other financial institutions across Europe. With the transaction now closed, the combined entity will aim to deepen its platform of trading and custody-related offerings under a single corporate structure.
Key takeaways
- Boerse Stuttgart Digital and Tradias have completed their merger after clearing the required ownership control procedure.
- The combined company will operate under the Boerse Stuttgart Digital name, while Tradias remains the brand for trading services.
- The unit will offer trading, custody, staking, and tokenization, targeting institutional clients across multiple regions.
- Co-CEOs will be Tradias founder Christopher Beck and Boerse Stuttgart Digital managing director Ulli Spankowski.
- The firms’ infrastructure will be headquartered in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, with additional offices in several European and Middle Eastern locations.
Merger closes after ownership control step
According to the companies’ announcement, Boerse Stuttgart Digital and Tradias finalized the merger after completing the ownership control procedure required for the transaction. The closing marks a shift from dealmaking to execution—an important distinction for institutions that often require stability and regulatory certainty before committing new capital or operational workflows.
Earlier coverage of the planned combination noted that the companies intended to consolidate their regulated crypto businesses to build what they described as a European crypto hub. The close of the merger suggests that the integration can now proceed without further corporate-structure uncertainty, allowing customers to plan around a single provider for multiple components of institutional digital-asset operations.
How the merged business will be structured
Under the terms communicated at the time of closing, the merged operation will use the Boerse Stuttgart Digital name. However, Tradias will continue to be used as the brand for the trading services. This dual-brand approach may be designed to preserve existing market recognition for trading while aligning other infrastructure services under the Boerse Stuttgart Digital umbrella.
The announcement also details the leadership appointments. Tradias founder Christopher Beck and Boerse Stuttgart Digital managing director Ulli Spankowski will serve as co-CEOs, reflecting a shared governance model rather than a full leadership replacement. For institutional clients, continuity at the executive level can matter as processes related to market-making, custody operations, and settlement workflows are integrated.
Services and footprint: trading, custody, staking, tokenization
The combined unit will provide a broad suite of digital-asset services, including trading, custody, staking, and tokenization. This menu targets core institutional needs that frequently sit behind larger on-chain or tokenization strategies—where organizations require regulated access, operational controls, and well-established service delivery.
Geographically, the business will be headquartered in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, and will also maintain locations in Athens, Beirut, Berlin, Dubai, Madrid, Milan, and Ljubljana. That footprint indicates an effort to support clients across different jurisdictions and market environments, particularly as banks and investment firms look for providers capable of operating in multiple regulatory contexts.
Institutional client base and market coverage
Boerse Stuttgart Digital lists a number of established institutional clients, including DZ Bank, DekaBank, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Société Générale-FORGE. Tradias, for its part, supports clients including flatexDEGIRO, dwpbank, and European government institutions, according to the merger announcement.
On the market side, Tradias provides trading and market-making services for more than 150 cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed. While the lack of deal pricing limits how outsiders can assess valuation, the operational details—service scope, leadership, and footprint—offer a clearer picture of what the combined company intends to deliver after the integration.
Importantly for market participants, scale in market-making and asset coverage can influence how institutional clients access liquidity across many tokens, especially for firms that need both execution and ongoing custody or settlement support. The merged structure—pairing trading capability with custody and additional services—could streamline workflows for institutions that previously had to coordinate across separate providers.
What to watch next
With the merger closed and leadership in place, customers and investors should watch how the companies integrate operations across trading, custody, staking, and tokenization—and whether the combined footprint and branding accelerate uptake among banks and brokers across Europe. The key open question is how quickly service delivery and coverage will unify under the new structure without disrupting existing client operations.
Tether, best known for issuing USDT, the world’s most widely used stablecoin, is expanding its push into real-world asset tokenization to bring institutional-grade real estate asset onchain in Saudi Arabia.
The company said Thursday that its tokenization platform, dubbed Hadron, will provide the technology to issue and manage tokenized real estate assets for institutional investors in the country. Tether is teaming up with Saudi partners First Data and fintech company BKN301 on the effort.
The operating model could later expand beyond real estate into energy, infrastructure finance and other real-world assets, the firms said.
The announcement marks Tether’s latest effort to expand beyond stablecoins into tokenization, a fast-growing application of blockchain rails in finance. The firm launched Hadron in 2024 to simplify asset tokenization and is also the issuer of the largest tokenized gold offering, the $2.6 billion XAUT.
Banks and asset managers have increasingly turned to tokenization to represent traditional assets such as money market funds, private credit, real estate and equities on blockchains, arguing the technology can streamline settlement, broaden investor access and improve capital efficiency. Citi projected that the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
Bitcoin’s institutional footprint appears to be shrinking again, with on-chain and market metrics pointing to weaker demand from the category of holders that typically amplifies price through financial engineering and “treasury” models. According to data compiled by CryptoQuant, combined exposure across institutional Bitcoin vehicles has dropped from 1.33 million BTC to 1.20 million BTC over the past three months—an approximate 10% reduction since May.
The pullback is occurring alongside a prolonged dislocation in exchange pricing. CryptoQuant also highlights a Coinbase Premium streak that has turned persistently negative for a record 93 days, a pattern analysts often associate with muted institutional buying—particularly from U.S. participants—until the premium meaningfully improves.
Key takeaways
- CryptoQuant data shows combined holdings across institutional Bitcoin vehicles fell from 1.33 million BTC to 1.20 million BTC over three months (about 10%).
- CryptoQuant links the broader decline to pressure on “Bitcoin treasury” companies when their equity trades below the value of their BTC holdings.
- Strategy, the largest publicly held Bitcoin treasury company, reportedly sold 1,638 BTC last week.
- The Coinbase Premium index has remained negative for 93 days, reaching a record streak since early May.
Institutional exposure declines as treasury models weaken
CryptoQuant’s analysis attributes part of the institutional drawdown to the changing economics of Bitcoin treasury companies—public firms that hold significant BTC and often rely on their market valuations to finance additional purchases. In CryptoQuant’s framing, when those firms’ share prices trade above the net asset value (NAV) of their Bitcoin holdings, the market can function like a “reflexive” loop: companies issue equity or debt, buy more Bitcoin, and reinforce the premium.
That loop, however, weakens when market capitalisations fall below NAV and new financing becomes dilutive. As Novaque Research put it, the mechanism “weakens when market capitalisations fall below net asset value, and financing becomes dilutive.” In that environment, the treasury story can shift from growth-by-capital-market access to a more constrained model where additional BTC purchases become harder to justify.
CryptoQuant notes that on-chain evidence supports a loss of institutional demand, though it also cautions that the data cannot directly isolate treasury companies as the sole driver. Still, the company points to the valuation pressure facing several Bitcoin treasury names that trade at a discount to the NAV of their BTC holdings.
Strategy’s recent BTC sale spotlights the discount dilemma
The drawdown theme is reinforced by recent activity from Strategy. Business intelligence software company Strategy, which holds the largest Bitcoin treasury among public corporations, sold 1,638 BTC last week, according to earlier reporting.
CryptoQuant’s discussion centers on how market valuation discounts can distort the treasury thesis. It highlights that in Strategy’s case, a discount disappears depending on the valuation methodology used. CryptoQuant provides an additional view: on a basic share-count basis, the discount is 0.7 as of Thursday. But after taking into account Strategy’s $8 billion debt and the liquidation preference tied to its STRC preferred stock, CryptoQuant reports an mNAV of 1.03.
In practical terms, this kind of accounting sensitivity matters because treasury strategies often rely on the market’s willingness to value the BTC pile at or above the company’s implied “Bitcoin NAV.” When that valuation wobbles—or flips into a discount—capital-market support can weaken, which can show up in reduced net accumulation.
Coinbase Premium hits a record negative streak
The institutional exposure slide is happening at the same time as a separate market signal: Coinbase Premium. CryptoQuant states that the index has recorded a record 93 days of negative readings.
The Coinbase Premium measures the difference in price between Coinbase and Binance for BTC/USDT pairs. A negative reading implies Coinbase’s pricing is lower relative to Binance’s, a divergence that often aligns with lower U.S.-centric demand and/or constraints in how quickly capital moves into regulated venues.
Cointelegraph previously reported that the premium has been negative since the start of May, and that this period represents the longest run of negative readings in its observed history. A visual on CryptoQuant’s charts accompanies the analysis in the current report, showing the prolonged downside drift.
For some analysts, the record streak is more consistent with a demand shortage than with heavy, persistent selling pressure. In a post shared via X, Web3 marketing platform FOUR argued that the genesis of the months-long negative reading “did not lie in blanket US selling pressure,” adding that as long as the premium stays negative, institutional buying from U.S. investors appears muted. FOUR’s message, as captured in the reporting, is that the market should watch for when the premium flips positive as a potential prerequisite for a stronger recovery.
Why the premium, treasury valuations, and ETF flows are linked
Although the on-chain holding changes and the Coinbase Premium signal don’t automatically prove a single cause, they point in the same direction: institutional behavior appears less supportive than it was earlier in the year. Reuters previously reported on Citi’s view that ETF flows are an “important driver of prices,” and that the bank had cut its BTC price forecast to $53,000 through 2027 while ETF flow dynamics turned less favorable.
That matters because ETFs and other regulated U.S. access points are often central to institutional participation narratives. If ETF flows weaken, the pressure can show up first in exchange-relative indicators like Coinbase Premium. Then, as treasury companies face less supportive market pricing versus NAV, their ability—or willingness—to add BTC via equity and debt financing can become more limited. The result may be exactly what CryptoQuant is observing: institutional exposure falling across trusts, ETFs, and closed-end vehicles.
At the same time, CryptoQuant’s analysis is careful about causality. It states that the on-chain evidence supports a loss of institutional demand but cannot directly isolate the role of treasury companies. That uncertainty is important for readers: the data suggests direction and correlation, but investors should avoid assuming a single entity or single mechanism is responsible for the full change.
Going forward, the key watch-items are straightforward: whether Coinbase Premium eventually turns positive after the 93-day negative streak, whether institutional vehicles stabilize their BTC holdings after the approximate 10% decline since May, and whether treasury companies return to a valuation environment that makes incremental financing less dilutive. Those signals together can help clarify if the current institutional cooling is temporary or part of a longer reset in how Bitcoin is funded and accumulated.
Physical theft targeting crypto holders is escalating, according to a new Chainalysis report that tracks “wrench attacks” — kidnappings, home invasions, and hostage scenarios designed to force victims to hand over digital assets. In the first half of this year, criminals stole more than $30 million through these violent robberies, putting 2026 on course to exceed the $58 million record reported for 2025.
Chainalysis said it documented 46 violent crypto-related incidents globally through late June, up from 40 during the same period in 2025. The report highlights a key shift for crypto security: the risk is no longer limited to custody and account access, but increasingly extends to victims’ homes, families, and personal safety.
Key takeaways
- $30M+ was reportedly stolen in wrench attacks in the first half of 2026, suggesting the year could surpass $58M stolen in all of 2025.
- 46 incidents were recorded worldwide through late June, up from 40 in the same period of 2025.
- Payment outcomes remain limited: only 12 of 46 attacks led to a payment, for a 26% success rate.
- Success appears down: the reported payment rate fell from 49% in 2025.
- France is a hotspot: the report lists 30 public incidents by midyear, versus 19 across all of 2025.
A rise in violence, even as payment rates fall
Chainalysis’ figures point to wrench attacks becoming more frequent, even though the percentage of cases that result in payments has declined. In its analysis, the firm found that just 12 of the 46 documented incidents through late June ended in attackers receiving payment, translating to a 26% success rate.
That rate is lower than in 2025, when Chainalysis reported a 49% success rate for similar incidents. The discrepancy matters for investors and users because it implies criminals may be scaling up the number of attempts to offset lower yields, increasing aggregate harm even if individual attacks are less likely to pay out.
At the same time, Chainalysis cautioned that the real scale is likely understated. The firm noted that many attacks may go unreported, meaning the measured success rate could be distorted by incomplete visibility into outcomes.
The report also describes a troubling operating model: “tradecraft tends to be amateur at the point of violence, but professional at both ends.” In other words, some attackers executing the physical threat appear less sophisticated, while the selection and planning of targets may be more systematic — often involving victims identified through data leaks, social media, or insider information.
France’s surge and the role of leaked or misused data
While wrench attacks are global, the report indicates a particularly sharp concentration in France. Chainalysis said France logged 30 publicly known incidents by midyear, compared with 19 throughout 2025. Crucially, Chainalysis also pointed to the possibility that the visible number is a fraction of the true total: French authorities have reportedly counted more than 70 incidents.
In July, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez put the first-half figure at 77 kidnappings, extortions, or attempted extortions — up from 45 for all of 2025. (Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted the government’s response alongside those figures.) Spain arrests suspect in 2025 kidnapping of Ledger co-founder is unrelated to the French count, but it underscores how reported incidents are being closely followed across jurisdictions.
The French government response, according to the report, includes a rapid-alert and protection system, with promises of expanded intelligence-sharing and coordination with the crypto industry. The implied investor takeaway is that regulators and law enforcement are treating physical targeting as a broader security issue, not merely an isolated criminal pattern.
Chainalysis also identified what it called the likeliest driver of the surge: alleged misuse of French tax records. The report describes an allegation that a French tax official accessed and sold information about crypto investors to criminals. In addition, it reports a separate breach at crypto tax-reporting company Waltio that reportedly exposed data for about 50,000 users.
For crypto holders, these details emphasize why personal data hygiene and source integrity are increasingly relevant to safety. If criminals can identify likely crypto owners with prior knowledge, the attack risk can rise regardless of whether a victim’s coins are securely held in a formal wallet setup.
How stolen funds move after the violence
The Chainalysis report also examined what happens after the physical threat — specifically, how attackers convert coercion into onchain value. The firm said tactics varied across cases.
In some incidents, attackers allegedly sent stolen funds directly to centralized exchanges. Other attackers reportedly used a sequence of tools and venues, including bridges, decentralized exchanges, and laundering services. Chainalysis noted that the most advanced cases showed links to broader criminal networks, suggesting that violence is only one part of an ecosystem that may include professional financial facilitation.
That multi-stage behavior is important for readers trying to understand both risk and recovery. Even when the physical incident does not end in payment, the attempt itself can still be informed by data gathering and may be followed by financial workflows designed to reduce traceability.
Earlier editorial conversations in the ecosystem have also focused on how hardware wallet compromises and operational security failures can expose holders to theft. However, Chainalysis’ wrench attack analysis is distinct: it centers on physical coercion and the data pathways used to identify victims, not on whether a particular device type is broadly insecure.
For those tracking broader security trends, the wrench attack pattern may be best understood as an extension of cybercrime into real-world harm — where leaks and compromised records help criminals select targets, and where execution ranges from amateur violence to more professional money movement.
What to watch next
As reporting continues and law enforcement in high-incidence regions refines alerts, protection, and data-sharing efforts, the key unknown will be whether the decline in payment success rates translates into fewer total victims—or whether attackers will keep increasing attempts to maintain revenue. Crypto holders should also watch for further disclosures about data exposure pathways, particularly involving personal records that could make individuals easier to target.
In 2021, during the height of NFT-mania, an angel investor and macroeconomist named Tascha Che (aka Tascha Labs) announced her plan to buy a $5,000 diamond, create an NFT of it, then smash it to pieces.
The stunt, intended to prove that, while physical objects can be destroyed, digital footprints can forever retain value, was widely criticized by most outside of cryptocurrency and NFT circles.
But since the complete collapse of the NFT markets and liquidity falling to near all-time lows, how has the shattered diamond NFT performed?
Diamond background
Che came up with the idea after posting a hypothesis to Twitter:
Once the tweet got enough traction, she pursued the concept. In August of 2021 she purchased a 1.3 carat diamond online, had it delivered, and then started to work on ways she could destroy it.
Her initial plan — to hit the diamond with a hammer — failed miserably, but she was eventually able to go to a mechanic who used some type of drill to obliterate it for free.
The next step was to mint the now-destroyed gem on an NFT marketplace so that people could bid on it.
This proved to be successful.
In September of 2021 a user purchased the NFT for 5.5 ETH, valued at +$17,000 at the time and over three times the price Che paid for the diamond.
While Che instantly took to social media to proclaim that her hypothesis had been proved correct, the reality was that a single sale couldn’t possibly prove that all digitized assets could retain value in spite of their destruction.
Read more: NFT firm founder indicted for using treasury to support ‘DJ hobby’
Diamond hands
After purchasing the NFT, Ivan Zhang, a decentralized finance proponent and investor, held it until finally selling in October of 2025 — for an astounding 11 ETH, or $43,000 at the time.
The destroyed diamond NFT had once again nearly tripled in value, despite one carat diamond prices plummeting in value nearly 40% over that same time period.
So, was Che’s hypothesis correct after all?
Not at all.
Not value retention, an internet artifact
As admitted to by Zhang when posting about the sale, diamond prices will continue to go down as synthetics become easier to make and demand from retail dries up.
But somehow the NFT has continued to gain value.
If the NFT was simply designed to retain the value of a destroyed physical good, one would expect to see an equal rise or decline in value.
However, a similar 1.3 carat diamond available for purchase on the same website that Che purchased hers from is now worth between $3,500-$4,000, a decline of over 20%.
Over that time period, the destroyed diamond’s value has ballooned to $43,000, or an increase of 760%.
If anything, Che’s experiment has proven positively that there’s little to no expectation of value retention of real world, physical goods that are digitized and made into an NFT. One just has to be lucky and hope that their idea goes viral.
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Katherine Wu, chief operating officer of ENS Labs, posted an executable draft Thursday of the proposal to establish an ENS Foundation, dropping a plan to shift the DAO's operational wallet to the new entity after weeks of delegate opposition to an earlier version of the plan. The draft, "[Draft]… Read the full story at The Defiant
Trump has yet to publicly respond to Carney referencing the teleprompter incident, but he did continue his criticism of Canada during his own speech on Wednesday afternoon.
Addressing a crowd at the Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, Trump touted his economic and immigration policies ahead of the crucial November midterm elections.
Referencing his controversial approach to tariffs, Trump said: “I love tariffs, right? Because we’ve been screwed by tariffs used against us for years. By China, by Japan, by South Korea, by Germany, by everybody, by Canada.”
Going on to insult his northern neighbors, the President continued: “Canada’s nasty. They are, they’re nasty. I love the people, but they’re nasty, nasty leadership.”
This is the latest example of the rift between Trump and Carney and, beyond that, the U.S. and Canada.
Since Trump returned to the Oval Office for a second term, relations between the two countries have become increasingly strained, partly due to a long-standing row over trade.
A reported $3.58 million outflow from the Bitwise XRP ETF drew attention on Aug. 6 after social media accounts described the move as an unusual sale by the asset manager.
Summary
- Bitwise’s XRP ETF reportedly recorded $3.58 million in net redemptions during Wednesday’s U.S. trading session.
- Official Bitwise data showed 293.9 million XRP held by the trust through August 4, 2026.
- ETF outflows reflect shareholder redemptions and do not establish a discretionary bearish decision by Bitwise.
- The trust may distribute XRP in kind or sell tokens to satisfy cash redemption orders.
- XRP traded near $1.07, remaining roughly 70% below its July 2025 record high of $3.65.
The available evidence supports a narrower conclusion: the fund reportedly experienced a net redemption during the Aug. 5 U.S. session.
No public transaction details show that Bitwise made a discretionary market call against XRP. The distinction matters because the fund is a trust holding XRP for shareholders. Bitwise Investment Advisers sponsors the product, while authorized financial firms handle share creation and redemption orders under the trust’s operating documents.
Bitwise XRP ETF outflow is a shareholder redemption
The Bitwise XRP ETF creates and redeems shares in blocks of 10,000 through authorized participants. A net outflow therefore indicates that more fund shares were redeemed than created. It does not, by itself, reveal why investors reduced exposure or show that Bitwise changed its view of XRP.
The trust can settle a redemption in two ways. For an in-kind redemption, it transfers the corresponding XRP to an authorized participant or its designee. For a cash redemption, the sponsor arranges for the required XRP to be sold and sends the cash proceeds. A redemption can therefore involve an XRP sale, but it remains part of the fund mechanism rather than a proprietary trade by Bitwise.
Moreover, Bitwise’s official page showed 293.93 million XRP in the trust as of Aug. 4, valued at $314.39 million. It also listed 26.31 million shares outstanding, net assets of about $314.37 million and an $11.95 net asset value per share. The page had not advanced to Aug. 5 holdings when checked.
That timing prevents the public holdings page from confirming the reported $3.58 million reduction. The post behind the claim also did not provide a transaction hash, wallet address or identified counterparty. Calling the report “onchain data” does not establish whether XRP was sold for cash, transferred in kind or reflected through a change in fund shares.
Redemptions are already part of the fund’s operations
The fund’s March 31 quarterly filing shows that redemptions have occurred before without proving a change in Bitwise’s XRP thesis. During the first quarter, the trust sold about 9.73 million XRP for share redemptions and delivered another 2.69 million XRP through in-kind redemptions. It still ended March with 194.90 million XRP, up from 131.22 million at year-end.
By Aug. 4, the official holdings total had climbed to 293.93 million XRP. That increase places a reported $3.58 million daily outflow in a broader context. As previously reported inearlier fund-flow coverage, Bitwise said its U.S. and European XRP products had attracted more than $200 million during 2026 by late June.
The claim that Bitwise made a “bearish” XRP sale remains unproven.
A single redemption can reflect portfolio rebalancing, liquidity needs, arbitrage or a client’s risk decision. It does not identify the beneficial investor behind the order. It also does not show whether Bitwise executives expect XRP to fall.
XRP weakness keeps ETF flows in focus
XRP traded near $1.07 on Aug. 6, with CoinGecko placing its 24-hour range between $1.05 and $1.08. The token remained around 70% below its July 2025 record of $3.65, while its market capitalization stood near $67 billion.
The Bitwise product has also absorbed the decline. Its official page showed a year-to-date NAV return of minus 41.70% through July 30. The fund’s NAV fell 0.76% on Aug. 4, while its market price declined 0.91%. Those figures help explain why redemptions attract attention, but they do not prove that one day’s flow drove XRP’s price.
In related institutional-demand coverage, U.S. spot XRP funds recorded $25.8 million in combined inflows on May 11, including $7.6 million for Bitwise. More recent market analysis also documented weaker ETF flows and fading whale activity as XRP approached the $1 support area.
What happens next for the Bitwise XRP fund
The next confirmation should come from Bitwise’s daily holdings data. Changes in XRP held, shares outstanding and net assets can show whether the Aug. 5 report represented a completed redemption. A later quarterly SEC filing will provide more detail on XRP sold for cash, XRP transferred in kind and shares redeemed during the reporting period.
Until those records are available, the defensible description is a reported $3.58 million ETF outflow. Describing it as Bitwise becoming bearish goes beyond the evidence. The market should also separate the fund sponsor’s role from redemption decisions initiated through authorized participants and their clients.
Brazil’s B3 stock exchange made headlines last month when its tokenized cows went viral.
A farmer in southern Brazil was able to use 10 cows as collateral for a 100,000 Brazilian real ($19,600) loan by virtually herding them into a blockchain based holding pen, demonstrating how farmers can literally milk their assets to access credit.
And it raises an obvious question: if cows can be tokenized, what can’t be?
From dairy cows to a year’s worth of farts, here are 10 of the strangest things to be tokenized onchain.
1. A year’s worth of farts
When BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink said every asset will eventually be tokenized, he probably wasn’t thinking about flatulence. Yet, that’s exactly what happened here.
Every bit as appealing as, well, a year’s worth of farts, it has to be a contender for the strangest thingever to make it onchain.
It was during the pandemic, when most people were baking bread or leveling up on Duolingo, that filmmaker Alex Ramírez-Mallis recorded his own farts and minted each one as a nonfungible token (NFT).
They say farts are like children, and you only love your own. But the novelty factor meant that Ramírez-Mallis was able to sell his for 0.05 ETH each (about $85 at the time), proving that every asset has its price.
2. Cows
Better known as a prime source of protein in Bitcoin circles, the idea of turning 10 Brazilian cows into tokenized cattle… er, tokenized collateral, is not the most obvious use case.
The deal was structured by Brazilian investment fund Target FIDC, giving each cow a unique digital token linked to an encrypted digital identity.
Larry Fink says every asset can be tokenized. Source: BlackRock
The first loan may have been worth just $19,600, but it was a proof of concept that shows the potential to eventually support around $80 million in livestock-backed financing across its farms.
While it sounds somewhat bizarre on first glance, the agriculture industry generated around $4 trillion in global value added in 2023, so watch out for tokenized sheep, goats and chickens as collateral next.
3. Whiskey barrels
When you think of sharing a whiskey, you probably have the liquid gold kind in mind, but whiskey barrels are a natural candidate for tokenization.
Related: Tokenized RWAs get an agent-ready research layer with a new protocol
That’s because, like high-end art and collectibles, Scotch whisky typically increases in value as it matures — talk about lifting your spirits!
Several projects are experimenting with putting whisky casks onchain so investors can buy whole units or fractional ownership of tokenized whisky stored in bonded warehouses.
Just remember that if the market crashes, you can’t actually drink a digital JPEG of a barrel.
4. Racehorses
Racehorse ownership has long been reserved for the ultra-wealthy, those with deep enough pockets to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in breeding, training and upkeep, and a fancy hat to wear at the racetrack.
But tokenization is beginning to chip away at those elitist barriers, dividing ownership of real thoroughbred racehorses into digital shares.
Investors can buy a stake in an animal and share in any prize money, breeding income, or future sale proceeds, without purchasing an entire horse.
Own part of a racehorse. Source: Stablemans
A word of caution for would-be investors in this style of asset, though, whether its watches or whiskeys or large four legged animals, from Chris Turner, co-founder of impact investment firm KULA:
“Putting a collectible or luxury item on a blockchain doesn’t automatically make it more liquid or valuable if the legal rights, transfer process, and market structure remain unchanged.”
5. Uranium
If your mind turns to treasuries and private credit when thinking about tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), it might be a shift to consider uranium, the radioactive metal better known for its role in nuclear power.
But that’s what Tezos-backed metals.io is doing. Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman says blockchain technology excels at building “reliable, auditable and cost-efficient financial rails for any asset,” but is particularly aligned with “technology-flavored commodities” like uranium.
Breitman says trading volume between November 2024 and July 2026 was $21.5 million over approximately 18,200 trades and around 7,400 unique wallets.
Related: RWAs become Hyperliquid’s largest trading category
He acknowledges that growth remains modest, telling Magazine that institutional players have shown interest but are “still shy about tokenized rails.”
6. Fishy revenue
One of the most unusual proposals tokenization platform Brickken received came from a Chilean fish-processing company that wanted to issue tokenized debt with returns tied to the value of the fish it sold.
“The token represented the lender’s contractual claim, while the interest payable adjusted according to the company’s verified sales performance. In effect, it was a tokenized, revenue-linked debt instrument,” explains Edwin Mata, chief executive of Brickken.
Mata argues that the idea highlights an important principle:
“Almost any cash flow can support a tokenized financial instrument, provided the underlying rights and data can be independently verified.”
In the end, the fish never made it onchain. The underlying fish sales still relied on audits, commercial reporting and legal agreements that couldn’t yet be automated, proving that, sometimes, the biggest obstacle to tokenization isn’t the blockchain; it’s the real world.
7. Music royalties
Music royalties have also found their way onchain, with one of the earliest high-profile examples in 2021, when DJ and producer 3LAU gave fans 50% of the streaming rights to his single Worst Case through his blockchain platform Royal.
Then, in 2022, rapper Nas used Royal to sell streaming royalty rights to two of his songs, Ultra Black and Rare.
While the idea of onchain royalties gained traction during the NFT boom, tokenized music royalties have yet to become a mainstream asset class. Maybe that’s because the streaming platforms pay peanuts.
Nothing says “financial freedom” quite like owning 0.001% of a track and realizing it needs to be played five million times just to buy a cup of coffee.
8. Human Skin
If tokenizing farts and cattle wasn’t weird enough, what about parts of your own body? That’s exactly what Croatian tennis player Oleksandra Oliynykova did in 2021, when she auctioned the advertising rights to a 15-by-18-centimeter patch of skin on her right arm as an NFT.
The winning bidder paid 3 Ether (around $5,400 at the time) for the right to choose which tattoo she would wear during tournaments for a year.
Athletes have long sold sponsorship space on shirts, helmets and race cars. Oliynykova just took the idea one step further, giving a whole new meaning to having skin in the game.
9. A Burned Banksy
Most art collectors try to preserve masterpieces; crypto collectors set them on fire to make a point about “digital ownership.” In 2021, a group calling itself Burnt Banksy bought a Banksy print titled Morons (White) for around $95,000. They livestreamed themselves burning it, and then minted the destruction.
If that leaves you scratching your head, there was method in the madness; the idea was that while the physical artwork no longer existed, ownership would live on forever through the blockchain.
The NFT sold for around $382,000, sparking fierce debate over whether the group had destroyed a valuable work of art or simply transformed it into a new one. It was probably the first time in history someone made a 300% profit from a “fire sale.”
10. The first tweet
Also in the year of our NFT Lord, 2021, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tokenized his first-ever tweet — “just setting up my twttr” — and sold it as an NFT to crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for $2.9 million, quickly becoming a symbol of the NFT boom.
The first-ever tweet sold for $2.9 million. Source: Jack Dorsey
One year later, Estavi tried to resell it for $48 million, but only received bids worth a tiny fraction of the asking price, with the highest reported offer coming in at just $6,800.
While anyone can still read the tweet on X, only one person owns the blockchain certificate tied to it. Whether that’s valuable or not remains an open question. As Mata says:
“Tokenization can improve access, administration, settlement and transferability, but it cannot transform a poor investment into a good one.”
Magazine: The 100x obsession: Fundamentals grow in importance as crypto matures
Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn a commission. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial conclusions. Content published in here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence.
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