Near Protocol’s native token surged nearly 80% over the past week, outpacing the wider crypto market as the network expanded its privacy-focused trading services.

On Monday, NEAR traded around $4.29, up about 78.2% over seven days and 22% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Total cryptocurrency market capitalization rose about 6% over the same seven-day period.

On Thursday, Near Protocol said deposits and withdrawals for perpetual futures trading through near.com were now confidential by default. Near said the feature obscures the link between a trader’s funding wallet and a dedicated Hyperliquid trading account.

On the same day, Near said near.com’s confidential total value locked (TVL) had crossed $70 million, triggering the first snapshot under its NEAR@3.33 incentive program. The program allocated 333,333 milestone tokens for the first distribution. Under the program’s rules, those tokens unlock and convert to NEAR when its three-day volume-weighted average price reaches at least $3.33.

NEAR Intents reaches $29.3 billion in cumulative volume 

NEAR Intents lets users request cross-chain swaps, with market makers competing to execute them.

The NEAR Intents Explorer showed about $29.3 billion in cumulative volume and $842 million over the past seven days on Monday. Privacy-focused Zcash wallet ZODL was its third-largest referral source by volume over the preceding 24 hours, generating about $3.8 million across 458 transactions. 

A swap involving roughly $613,000 worth of ZEC was also among the largest transactions displayed by the explorer for the preceding 24 hours.

Related: Grayscale’s Zcash ETF files for 3-for-1 forward share split

Bitwise research analyst Camran Khosravi said Near and Zcash are “complements,” arguing that Near gives ZEC holders confidential cross-chain infrastructure and access to liquidity. 

He also cautioned that NEAR Intents’ TVL can rise when the price of ZEC already held within the system increases, even without new deposits.

Near has also extended its privacy focus beyond trading. In July, NEAR AI introduced staking-based payments that let users stake NEAR to receive credits for confidential AI inference and agent hosting while retaining ownership of the underlying tokens.

Magazine: Who needs CLARITY anyway? ARB could see 70X increase: Hodler’s Digest

Google and Apple are seeking employees with expertise in digital assets, adding to signs that Big Tech firms are preparing for a larger role for stablecoins, tokenization and blockchain-based payments.

Google Cloud is hiring an Industry Principal Architect in Hong Kong to work with protocol foundations, exchanges, custodians and financial institutions to tokenize real-world assets across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

The role calls for experience with blockchain networks, smart contracts, stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized deposits and custody technologies. Google said the hire would advise executives and help shape its Web3 product roadmap as it seeks to become the preferred cloud provider for digital-asset builders and institutional adopters.

Apple is also expanding into digital assets. It is looking for an Apple Pay Financial Product Strategy Lead based in Cupertino, California or New York.

The listings do not confirm that either company is launching a new crypto product, but it does show that stablecoins and tokenized deposits are becoming relevant expertise inside two of the world’s largest tech and payments ecosystems, rather than remaining the preserve of crypto-native firms.

Quick Read

• Azure grew 43% and AWS posted its fastest pace in 18 quarters, but both hyperscalers must now defend their AI stacks after Hugging Face.

• Microsoft hedges model risk with 11,000+ catalog models and MAI Thinking 1, while Amazon bets on Bedrock and a coming proprietary frontier model.

• Microsoft’s 46.8% operating margin and Copilot seat velocity offer more cushion than Amazon if security jitters slow enterprise AI buying.

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Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) just posted blockbuster cloud quarters, then found themselves at the center of the Hugging Face incident. The compromise originated from OpenAI models escaping evaluation sandboxes, while Hugging Face leans on AWS for production infrastructure. Both hyperscalers now have to defend their AI stacks in front of skittish enterprise buyers.

Azure Sprints, AWS Posts Its Fastest Quarter in Years

Microsoft’s fiscal Q4 2026 pulled in $90.01 billion in revenue, with Azure growing 43% and full-year Azure crossing $100 billion. Microsoft 365 Copilot passed 30 million paid seats, and commercial RPO ballooned to $678 billion, up 84%. Satya Nadella’s tone was measured, insisting “demand continues to exceed available supply”.

Amazon’s Q2 2026 was arguably louder. Revenue hit $200.61 billion, and AWS grew 37% to $42.23 billion, its fastest pace in 18 quarters, at a 39.4% operating margin. Andy Jassy leaned into custom silicon, noting Anthropic and OpenAI have made multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments to Trainium. Advertising also chipped in $19.81 billion, up 26%, which Microsoft cannot match.

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Different Answers to the Same Model-Risk Problem

Hugging Face exposed a real vulnerability: “you can’t sort of depend on any one model,” Nadella said on the call. Microsoft’s response is a portfolio hedge with more than 11,000 models in its catalog and a first internal reasoning model, MAI Thinking 1. Amazon’s is architectural: Bedrock as a multi-model marketplace, plus a coming Amazon frontier model to reduce reliance on partners.

Trust and Capacity Will Decide the Next Two Quarters

I will be watching whether Microsoft can convince security officers that Azure OpenAI guardrails held, especially with Purview auditing more than 15 billion Copilot interactions, up nearly 360%. For Amazon, the question is whether the AWS backlog of $496 billion converts before free cash flow deteriorates further. You should also track the Q3 guide of $197 to $202 billion, which carries an 80 basis point FX drag. The buildout underneath all of this, power, cooling, networking, is a separate trade worth its own homework, and we mapped seven suppliers riding it in a free report here.

Why I Lean Microsoft After the Hugging Face Fallout

Personally, I lean toward Microsoft here. The stock has been a laggard, down 2.08% over one year against Amazon’s 9.72% gain, but the 46.8% operating margin and Copilot seat velocity give it more cushion if enterprise AI buying slows on security jitters. Amazon fits a growth investor better: AWS acceleration is real, and Jassy openly frames AWS as a possible “trillion dollar annual revenue business”. Both setups hinge on capex easing relative to free cash flow into 2027.

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The European Central Bank has launched Pontes to settle blockchain based wholesale transactions in central bank money while preparing to invest part of its €23 billion own funds portfolio in digital securities.

According to the European Central Bank, the new service connects distributed ledger technology platforms used by financial market participants with the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services, allowing transactions involving tokenized assets to settle in central bank euros.

Deutsche Bank, Santander and securities clearing group Clearstream are among the first institutions to complete onboarding and gain access to the platform. Pontes will initially operate between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. CET on business days, with the ECB planning to extend its operating hours and functions over time.

The launch puts into operation a project that the central bank has been developing as financial institutions experiment with issuing, trading and settling securities through distributed ledgers. Unlike settlement through privately issued stablecoins or other forms of commercial money, Pontes gives participating institutions access to central bank money for the cash side of blockchain based transactions.

crypto.news previously reported in March that the ECB viewed central bank money as a settlement anchor for tokenized securities, deposits and stablecoins. Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said at the time that sellers of tokenized securities could otherwise receive assets exposed to price volatility or credit risk.

Pontes brings central bank euros to blockchain markets

Pontes is designed to link market DLT platforms with the Eurosystem’s existing TARGET infrastructure instead of requiring securities transactions to move entirely onto a single blockchain network.

At launch, legal settlement finality for the cash side remains anchored in the Eurosystem’s TARGET2 system. The ECB has said later versions are expected to bring settlement finality onto a Eurosystem operated DLT platform and introduce smart contract functionality.

The central bank said blockchain technology could make financial transactions faster and more efficient by combining several stages of an asset’s lifecycle and allowing some processes to be automated.

Pontes builds on earlier Eurosystem experiments with wholesale central bank money settlement. Those tests examined ways for transactions recorded on distributed ledgers to settle against central bank funds while retaining the settlement protections used in conventional financial infrastructure.

The service is expected to expand after its initial rollout. ECB plans published before launch called for operating hours to eventually reach 22.5 hours per business day, followed by round the clock availability and expanded programmability from mid 2028.

Work on the platform runs alongside Appia, the ECB’s longer term program for developing an integrated European tokenized financial system. In August, the Eurosystem selected 61 financial market participants and public institutions for an Appia contact group that will provide input on Pontes and the architecture of tokenized markets.

European financial institutions have been building their own infrastructure in parallel. Boerse Stuttgart’s Seturion network expanded its settlement network in May by adding Societe Generale, SG FORGE and flatexDEGIRO, with the platform designed to handle tokenized securities across public and private blockchains.

ECB plans investments in blockchain based bonds

The ECB is taking a separate step as an investor by preparing to allocate a small portion of its €23 billion own funds portfolio to blockchain based securities.

Investments will initially focus on highly rated euro denominated debt issued by public institutions, keeping the exposure within the type of assets used for the central bank’s own portfolio while changing the technology through which the securities are issued.

No amount has been disclosed for the planned allocation, although the ECB described it as a tiny portion of its own funds.

The decision follows changes to the Eurosystem collateral framework earlier this year. From March 30, marketable securities issued through DLT based services at central securities depositories became eligible as collateral for Eurosystem credit operations when they meet existing eligibility and settlement requirements.

The tokenized collateral framework applies the same underlying collateral requirements used for conventional marketable assets, including eligibility checks and applicable haircuts. The Eurosystem has continued studying whether assets issued and settled entirely through DLT networks could qualify in the future.

ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel called for central banks to “go on-chain” in August, arguing that public institutions should participate directly as tokenization develops in wholesale finance.

She said tokenization could combine transaction stages and allow programmable conditions to operate across the lifecycle of a financial instrument. The ECB has identified atomic settlement and programmability among the potential benefits, while noting that conventional European settlement infrastructure already provides some comparable functions.

European central banks expand tokenization work

The ECB’s launch comes as central banks and major financial institutions test different models for bringing traditional securities and money onto distributed ledgers.

Switzerland has used Project Helvetia to explore settlement of tokenized securities with wholesale central bank digital currency. The Bank of England has pursued similar work through its Digital Securities Sandbox, where firms can test DLT based trading and settlement under a regulated framework.

Private financial institutions have moved into the same market. Broadridge processed trillions of dollars through its blockchain based repo platform in July, while European institutions have tested tokenized government bonds, structured securities and other financial instruments across several distributed ledger networks.

For the ECB, wholesale tokenization remains separate from its work on a digital euro intended for consumers.

The central bank is preparing a 12 month retail digital euro pilot for the second half of 2027, involving merchants, national central banks, banks and payment service providers. An invitation issued this month asked ecommerce and mobile commerce businesses across the euro area to participate in digital euro payment tests.

The pilot currency will not be legal tender and will operate within a controlled testing environment. Tests are expected to cover online, mobile, in store and person to person payments as the ECB evaluates the technology and operating processes needed for a potential retail system.

The ECB is targeting readiness for possible issuance of the digital euro in 2029, subject to the necessary European Union legislation and a separate decision by its Governing Council. The project is intended to provide a public digital payment option alongside cash and bank deposits while reducing Europe’s dependence on foreign payment providers.