TLDR

• Consensys has delayed its planned U.S. initial public offering until at least the fall.
• The company had aimed to file a confidential draft S-1 with the SEC in late February.
• Weak crypto market conditions led the firm to pause its IPO timeline.
• Consensys engaged JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to lead the potential offering.
• Bitcoin ETF outflows and falling token prices contributed to market pressure.

Consensys has postponed its planned U.S. initial public offering until at least fall due to weak market conditions. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed the delay and cited recent volatility in crypto markets. The Ethereum software firm had prepared to begin formal filing steps earlier this year.

Consensys Halts IPO Filing Plans

Consensys had targeted a confidential draft S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by late February. However, worsening market trends led the company to pause those plans. Two people with direct knowledge confirmed the revised timeline.

The company engaged bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs last year to manage the offering process. It aimed to move forward while regulatory clarity improved for digital asset companies. Yet market performance shifted sharply at the start of 2026.

Crypto markets declined in February as traders reduced exposure to risk assets. Bitcoin ETFs recorded heavy outflows, and prices across tokens fell. As a result, leveraged liquidations spread across digital assets.

Macroeconomic concerns and tariff discussions also weighed on sentiment. Expectations for interest rate cuts slowed during the same period. Those factors combined to pressure equity and crypto valuations.

A Consensys spokeswoman declined to comment on specific IPO timing. She stated, “As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on market speculation.” The company has not announced a new filing date.

Market Conditions Pressure Crypto Listings

Several crypto firms outlined public listing plans earlier this year after clearer U.S. regulatory guidance. However, weaker market performance forced many companies to reassess their schedules. Large firms such as Kraken and Ledger paused their IPO plans.

BitGo, operating under ticker BTGO, completed the only crypto-native IPO in 2026. The company raised about $213 million in January. It priced shares at $18, which exceeded the marketed range.

Shares rose more than 20% during the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange. However, the rally faded in subsequent weeks. The stock now trades about 36% below its IPO price.

The price decline reflected ongoing volatility in digital asset equities. Crypto-linked stocks have tracked broader movements in token prices. Therefore, companies have adjusted capital raising strategies.

Consensys previously secured $450 million in a Series D funding round in early 2022. That round valued the firm at $7 billion. The company has not disclosed updated valuation figures since then.

Joe Lubin leads Consensys and oversees products including the MetaMask wallet. The firm continues to operate its Ethereum development services. For now, it has shifted its IPO consideration to the fall timeframe.

TLDR

• Jupiter has partnered with Bitwise to launch an isolated USDe lending market on Solana.
• Bitwise will curate the dedicated USDe pool within Jupiter Lend for institutional participants.
• The USDe market will operate separately from Jupiter Lend’s main liquidity layer.
• The structure aims to manage risk and support institutional capital participation.
• Fluid protocol will provide collateral and lending infrastructure for the isolated pool.

Jupiter has partnered with Bitwise to launch an isolated USDe lending market on Solana. The firms announced the initiative on Wednesday and confirmed institutional access. The structure separates USDe liquidity and integrates Fluid for lending infrastructure support.

Bitwise and Jupiter Launch Isolated USDe Market on Solana

Jupiter confirmed that Bitwise will curate a dedicated USDe market on Jupiter Lend. The platform will isolate this market from its main liquidity layer to manage risk. The firms said the structure aims to support institutional capital with controlled exposure.

Bitwise will oversee market parameters while Jupiter provides the lending framework. The setup marks the first time an institutional asset manager curates a market on Jupiter Lend. The companies stated that this approach strengthens risk management and capital efficiency.

The isolated pool will function independently from other lending markets on the platform. As a result, liquidity risks from other assets will not affect the USDe market. The partners said this design aligns with institutional compliance standards.

Jonathan Man, Head of DeFi Strategies at Bitwise, addressed the launch. He said, “Jupiter and Fluid have built unique infrastructure for efficient lending markets.” He added that the design provides deep liquidity and risk-mitigating features.

USDe Gains Dedicated Lending Support Through Fluid Integration

The initiative integrates Fluid protocol to supply collateral and lending infrastructure. Fluid will support collateral management and borrowing operations within the isolated pool. The firms confirmed that this integration enhances operational efficiency.

The new market allows users to earn yield on USDe within Jupiter Lend. USDe functions as a synthetic asset that maintains a stable value target. Ethena Labs issues the token and oversees its underlying structure.

Guy Young, CEO of Ethena Labs, commented on the development. He said, “USDe is an institutional-grade savings product, built for scale.” He added that the combined infrastructure creates an efficient USDe market ready for DeFi adoption.

USDe launched in early 2024 and expanded rapidly across crypto markets. By mid-2025, it ranked as the third-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. The asset attracted institutional participation during its early growth phase.

However, USDe later declined in market rankings after volatility pressures. A crypto market crash on Oct. 10 exposed decoupling risks linked to the asset. Market data showed fluctuations in USDe’s price stability during that period.

Jupiter and Bitwise did not disclose specific yield rates for the market. They confirmed that the structure will operate under defined collateral parameters. The companies stated that the market is now live on Solana.

This week’s U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing to consider edits to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act has dozens of amendments to weigh, though it’s likely that almost all of them won’t survive the process of Thursday’s event.

Lawmakers have pushed forward a range of proposed changes for the market structure bill as it approaches the hearing known as a “markup,” from amendments that would establish government-ethics rules to others setting safe harbors for developers to one that would cut out a must-have protection for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, plus a number of other smaller, technical adjustments.

The list is particularly dominated by a few lawmakers’ names, including Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed. Their items are expected to be a rhetorical wish list as other members of the committee — mostly Republicans — seek to advance the bill without significant overhauls.

Each amendment will be discussed during the hearing and will eventually receive a vote, unless they’re withdrawn. A simple majority will be needed to adopt or reject an amendment. Eventually, the Banking Committee will vote to advance the bill itself.

Here are some highlights, according to a list of the proposals circulated ahead of the hearing:

• Senator Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, wants to adopt some of the requests from bank lobbyists to further restrict stablecoin yields, according to one of his 18 amendments.
• He would also entirely scrap the section known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which shields software developers that don’t control people’s money from being regulated as money transmitters.
• On the same topic, Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, a Nevada Democrat, wants to “protect software developers by creating a safe harbor from criminal liability for not registering as a money transmitter at the state or federal level.”
• Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, is pushing eight amendments, including one that would institute a major Democratic request: banning the president and other senior government officials from “owning, promoting or affiliating with” digital assets businesses.
• Senator Warren would more specifically “prohibit political corruption in banking applications and presidential bank ownership,” seeming to directly target the effort from World Liberty Financial — a company tied to President Donald Trump and his family — to obtain a U.S. banking charter.
• Warren, who is also seeking to cut out whole swaths of the current bill regarding the oversight of digital commodities, went farther afield with some amendments, trying to cap credit card interest rates and calling for bank supervisory records involving “Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators.” (The bill itself does include some non-crypto provisions, including legislation targeted at housing championed by Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican.)
• Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who has been at the center of illicit-finance negotiations involving DeFi, is proposing “a control test to determine when persons operating non-decentralized finance trading protocols are subject to” Bank Secrecy Act anti-money laundering obligations.
• On the Republican side of the committee, Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee is seeking a ban of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) issued by the U.S. Federal Reserve. CBDC bans have already been pushed in various other bills by lawmakers, most recently in the House of Representatives’ bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Thursday’s session to consider advancing the Clarity Act is likely already well planned for what the Republican majority will allow into the legislation. The last time the Clarity Act was on final approach to a markup in this same committee, it made it to this stage in which some 75 amendments were offered, though that hearing was postponed shortly after.

Previous wrinkles in the negotiation have since been ironed out over four months of talks, clearing a path for committee approval this week. Once that happens, this bill can be merged with the parallel effort that already cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee.

However, some significant changes are still expected after this week, including the effort to resolve the Democrats’ demand for a conflict-of-interest provision on cutting ties between government officials and the crypto sector, most notably seen with the president and his family. A meeting earlier this week on that ethics provision reportedly remained contentious, and Democrats including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have said the Clarity Act will not get approved in the Senate without it.

Clarity’s advocates need to secure a number of Democratic supporters for the bill if it’s going to clear the 60-vote hurdle that’s standard in the Senate. Then the bill needs to get another approval from the U.S. House, which had already passed a similar bill last year.

In a Wednesday posting on social media site X, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called the bill “strong” and said it “will benefit the American people by making the US financial system faster, cheaper and more accessible.”

“Mark it up,” he said.

Read More: Clarity Act, in the flesh, unveiled by U.S. Senate Banking Committee before hearing

Fidelity International, a global asset manager with about $1 trillion in client assets, has launched a tokenized liquidity fund assessed by Moody’s Ratings.

The new Fidelity USD Digital Liquidity Fund (FILQ) is issued on blockchain infrastructure linked to Chainlink and was launched through Sygnum Bank’s tokenization platform.

According to Sygnum, the fund received a AAA-mf assessment from Moody’s Ratings, a designation used for money market funds that signals strong credit quality and liquidity.

“This marks an important milestone in the evolution of capital markets, demonstrating how tokenized liquidity products can bring high-quality, yield-bearing liquidity on-chain in a regulated and scalable way,” said Fatmire Bekiri, Sygnum’s head of tokenization.

Cointelegraph approached Fidelity International for comment regarding the news but did not receive a response at the time of publication. Bermuda-based Fidelity International and US-based Fidelity Investments are separate companies that operate in different jurisdictions through their subsidiaries and affiliates.

Chainlink expands role in real-world assets

Fidelity International’s FILQ adds to Chainlink’s growing presence in the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) sector, as the platform is focused on connecting blockchain applications with external real-world data that cannot be accessed natively onchain.

As part of the collaboration, Chainlink will provide onchain net asset value (NAV) and distribution data for the fund, allowing international investors to track fund value and payouts in near real time.

Source: Chainlink

“By adopting Chainlink’s industry-standard platform to deliver verifiable, real-time NAV and distribution metrics, FILQ utilizes the tamper-proof transparency required to securely bridge traditional finance with the onchain economy,” said Fernando Vazquez, president of capital markets at Chainlink Labs.

JPMorgan will provide approved daily NAV data for the fund, Chainlink mentioned.

Related: DTCC to use Chainlink to power 24/7 collateral management network

Chainlink previously collaborated with both Sygnum Bank and Fidelity International for onchain NAV data integration in 2024, marking an earlier production use case for tokenized assets tied to the latter’s Institutional Liquidity Fund.

Tokenized funds expand across markets

The launch comes as large asset managers continue moving traditional cash and treasury products onto blockchain networks. Firms from BlackRock to Franklin Templeton have already debuted tokenized money market funds aimed at bringing short-term yield products onchain.

On Tuesday, JPMorgan filed with the US securities regulator to launch a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, allowing stablecoin issuers to hold reserves backing their stablecoins.

Boston, Massachusetts-based Fidelity Investments also previously issued the Fidelity Digital Interest Token (FDIT), a tokenized money market fund in which Ondo Finance’s OUSG fund serves as the primary anchor investor and accounts for the vast majority of its assets.

Magazine: eToro founder timed Bitcoin top perfectly due to belief in 4 year cycles

Monthly trading volume on the Polymarket prediction market fell by about 8.9% in April, the first decline in month-to-month activity since August as rivals like Kalshi increased their market share.

Polymarket and its US-based trading application collectively generated more than $10.2 billion in volume in April, compared to more than $11.2 billion in March, according to data from Dune Analytics.

However, rival Kalshi’s April trading volume surged by about 13%, climbing to about $14.8 billion, Dune data shows. 

The total monthly trading volume for prediction markets also increased to about $29.8 billion in April from about $26.5 billion in March, an increase of about 12.4%.

Monthly volume figures for prediction markets. Source: Dune

Polymarket’s volume drop came as the company attempts to fully integrate US markets again, amid increased legal and regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets by US lawmakers after the sector experienced a meteoric growth during the 2024 elections.

To be sure, prediction markets are proving to be attractive to a slew of new competitors.

Prophet, an AI-native prediction market platform, last week launched its first live trading tranche, introducing a system where an AI model acts as the counterparty using real capital. Earlier this week, financial technology company MoonPay debuted an AI technology tool for trading strategies on prediction markets.

Related: Dutch users still access prediction markets despite Polymarket ban

Polymarket eyes US expansion as prediction markets come under fire

Polymarket is seeking to expand its presence in the US after exiting in 2022 as part of a settlement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which barred the platform from allowing US residents on its main, global exchange.

In a bid to regain a foothold, the company launched a dedicated app for US customers in December 2025, albeit a platform that is siloed off from the Polymarket’s global platform and its liquidity.

Several US lawmakers and regulatory officials have raised concerns about insider trading on prediction markets, particularly in markets related to war, energy prices, and other geopolitically sensitive issues.

A letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren and other US lawmakers asks the CFTC to crack down on insider trading. Source: Senator Elizabeth Warren

In March, Senator Elizabeth Warren and more than 40 Congressional representatives wrote to the CFTC demanding a ban on government insiders using prediction market platforms to profit while in office or serving in an official capacity. 

“The CFTC maintains that event contracts are a type of swap subject to its jurisdiction, and, therefore, it should ensure that federal employees understand existing restrictions on prediction market insider trading,” the lawmakers said.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul also filed lawsuits against Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets in April, accusing the platforms of violating state sports betting laws.

Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?

KDDI, one of Japan’s largest telecom companies, is set to hold a 14.9% stake in local crypto exchange operator Coincheck Group (CNCK) after agreeing to a $65 million deal.

The telecom giant will subscribe for 28.5 million newly issued Coincheck Group shares at $2.28 each, Coincheck said on Wednesday. The deal is expected to close in June.

Coincheck and KDDI also signed what both firms called a business alliance covering customer referrals, revenue sharing and referral fees. The companies said the partnership is aimed at expanding crypto access in Japan through KDDI’s consumer channels and Coincheck’s trading, custody, staking and asset-management services.

KDDI has been building around crypto and Web3 since at least 2023, when it launched αU, a metaverse and Web3 service with a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace and crypto wallet.

The company deepened that push through a capital and business alliance with HashPort, a Japanese Web3 wallet developer. The deal was tied to plans allowing users to convert Ponta loyalty points into stablecoins and crypto, and convert those assets into au PAY gift cards.

KDDI will receive registration rights for the shares and the right to nominate one non-executive director to Coincheck Group’s board at its next annual general meeting, expected in September.

Coincheck’s Dutch parent listed on Nasdaq in late 2024 under the ticker CNCK, after a delayed plan to go public through a SPAC deal. The company has since pushed into institutional crypto services, including through its acquisition of digital asset prime broker Aplo.

KDDI, as of December 2025, had over 72 million mobile subscriptions. J.P. Morgan advised Coincheck Group on the deal. De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett acted as legal counsel.