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Citadel Securities backs LayerZero as it unveils ‘Zero’ blockchain for global markets

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Citadel Securities backs LayerZero as it unveils ‘Zero’ blockchain for global markets

LayerZero Labs on Tuesday unveiled Zero, a new blockchain aimed at powering institutional-grade financial markets, alongside a strategic investment from Citadel Securities into ZRO, the network’s native token and governance asset.

ARK Invest is also investing in LayerZero’s equity and ZRO token, with CEO Cathie Wood joining a newly formed advisory board alongside ICE executive Michael Blaugrund and former BNY Mellon digital assets head Caroline Butler, the company said in a press release. The size of the investments were not disclosed.

The announcement signals a deeper push by traditional market infrastructure players into blockchain-based trading, clearing and settlement, as scalability and performance constraints have long limited real-world adoption.

Tether Investments, the investment arm of the leading stablecoin issuer, has also made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs, it said earlier on Tuesday.

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Citadel Securities said it is working with LayerZero to evaluate how Zero’s architecture could support high-throughput workflows across trading and post-trade processes. The firm’s investment in ZRO adds to growing institutional interest in LayerZero, which is best known for operating one of crypto’s largest interoperability networks.

After years of pilot projects and cautious experimentation, large financial institutions are moving more decisively into crypto as infrastructure improves and regulatory clarity advances. Asset managers, exchanges and clearing houses are increasingly viewing blockchains not as speculative rails but as potential upgrades to legacy systems, particularly for trading, settlement and collateral management. The shift reflects a growing belief that crypto-native technology is maturing enough to support real-world financial markets at scale.

Zero is designed around LayerZero’s first-of-its-kind heterogeneous architecture, which uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to separate transaction execution from verification. The company claims the design can scale to roughly 2 million transactions per second across multiple zones, with transaction costs approaching a millionth of a dollar and effectively unlimited blockspace.

Zero-knowledge proofs let blockchains verify that a statement is true without revealing the underlying data, preserving privacy while ensuring validity.

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LayerZero said the system delivers step-change improvements across compute, storage, networking and cryptography, allowing different zones to be optimized for specific use cases rather than forcing all nodes to perform identical work.

The project is launching in collaboration with several major institutions. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) said it will explore using Zero to enhance the scalability of its tokenization and collateral initiatives, while Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is examining applications tied to 24/7 trading and tokenized collateral. Google Cloud is partnering with LayerZero to explore blockchain-based micropayments and resource trading for AI agents, reflecting growing interest in programmable money for machine-driven economies.

“Zero’s architecture moves the industry’s roadmap forward by at least a decade,” said Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs, in the release. “We believe we can actually bring the entire global economy onchain with this technology.

The blockchain is set to debut with three initial zones: a general-purpose Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a purpose-built trading venue. ZRO will anchor network governance and security, while LayerZero’s interoperability stack links Zero to more than 165 blockchains.

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Read more: Robinhood is investing in crypto trading platform Talos at $1.5 billion valuation

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Crypto PAC Fairshake leaps into first midterm Senate race with $5 million in Alabama

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Crypto PAC Fairshake leaps into first midterm Senate race with $5 million in Alabama

Crypto’s $193 million campaign-finance force, the Fairshake political action committee, is launching into congressional midterm season with a massive $5 million injection into the Republican primary campaign of Barry Moore, a U.S. congressman now running for Senate.

One of Fairshake’s affiliates, Defend American Jobs, is committing that spending to support Moore, even though the general election remains almost nine months away. That marks one of the group’s first major forays into what promises to be a high-stakes, high-spending election season.”We are proud to stand with Barry Moore, a leader who will fight for economic growth and make America the crypto capital,” Fairshake said in a Tuesday statement.

Fairshake had also recently devoted funds to Representative French Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who has led the charge on crypto legislation in the U.S., according to a representative of the PAC. Hill and his allies already managed to get a crypto market structure bill through the House of Representatives last year and are now awaiting a matching effort in the U.S. Senate.

Such crypto legislation is the central purpose of Fairshake’s giving — promoting pro-crypto candidates ready to pass friendly bills and opposing those who stand against such legislation.

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As with all the super PAC’s giving, the money for Moore will be through “independent expenditures” under federal election law, meaning the cash can buy ads for the candidate, but they can’t deal directly with the campaign. Fairshake-backed ads in the 2024 election didn’t mention crypto at all, and this broadcast ad for Moore intends to feature the candidate’s endorsement from President Donald Trump.

Moore has served five years in the House, and he’s now campaigning to replace Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican who is aiming for the governor’s mansion this year. The Alabama congressman has so far served in the House’s Agriculture Committee, where crypto legislation was on the agenda last year.

“Crypto is not a fad,” Moore wrote in a December post on social media site X. “It is part of our future. It is part of Alabama’s future.”

Moore is one of five Republican candidates who announced their participation in that primary. Early polling has so far seen Moore generally in second place behind state Attorney General Steve Marshall. Both have “A” crypto ratings from Stand With Crypto, a group that reviews the digital assets views of political figures.

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Interactive Brokers Taps Coinbase for ‘Perpetual-Style’ Crypto Futures

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Monthly Perp Volume & Open Interest - DeFiLlama

Global brokerage IBKR now offers traditional and perpetual-style BTC and ETH futures trading to its clients.

Interactive Brokers (IBKR), a leading global brokerage with more than 4.5 million clients, rolled out small-sized nano BTC and ETH futures contracts today.

The contracts leverage Coinbase Derivatives’ traditional futures offerings, which have monthly expirations, and its “perpetual-style futures,” making IBKR the latest traditional brokerage to offer perpetuals.

The move is IBKR’s latest into crypto, after enabling stablecoin deposits in December.

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Perpetual derivatives exploded in 2025, driven by the success of platforms such as Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster. Nearly $8 trillion in decentralized perpetuals trading occurred in 2025, according to DeFiLlama, compared with $2.55 trillion in 2024 and just $690 billion in 2023.

Monthly Perp Volume & Open Interest - DeFiLlama
Monthly Perp Volume & Open Interest – DeFiLlama

Traditional financial institutions continue to expand their crypto trading offerings, as evidenced by the CME Group adding new altcoin futures yesterday and even teasing its own native tokenized cash during its latest earnings call.

Unlike in previous crypto cycles, when traditional players slowly stepped away as prices dropped, leading institutions such as CME and IBKR continue to dive headfirst into the space, despite Bitcoin falling more than 50% from its October peak. However, it remains unclear whether TradFi’s focus on broadening trading access will meaningfully affect crypto prices.

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Alphabet set to raise over $30 billion in global debt sale: sources

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Alphabet to raise over $30B with global bond sale, sources

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet’s debt sale keeps getting bigger.

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The company is close to finalizing a global bond issuance in excess of $30 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal, an increase from the $20 billion it raised on Monday.

On Tuesday morning, Alphabet went to the European market to raise roughly $11 billion in sterling and Swiss francs, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are private. Bloomberg reported earlier that Alphabet raised almost $32 billion.

Investors are showing heightened demand for high-quality paper from tech heavyweights that are leading the charge in artificial intelligence, one source said.

In its earnings report last week, Alphabet said it expects to shell out up to $185 billion in capital expenditures this year, more than double its 2025 capex. The group of hyperscalers, which also includes Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, are projected to collectively spend close to $700 billion in 2026. With tech companies pouring money into high-priced chips, large facilities and networking technology, analysts expect free cash flow to plummet this year.

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Oracle was the first large tech company to test the debt market in 2026, with its $25 billion dollar offering last week. Meta is preparing a large debt offering in first part of this year, as it looks to accelerate its data center push across the U.S., the sources said.

Alphabet held a $25 billion bond sale in November. Its long-term debt quadrupled in 2025 to $46.5 billion. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said on last week’s earnings call that as the company considers its total investment, “we want to make sure we do it in a fiscally responsible way, and that we invest appropriately, but we do it in a way that maintains a very healthy financial position for the organization.”

Alphabet didn’t respond to a request for comment.

— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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Alphabet to raise over $30B with global bond sale, sources

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Vatican Bank makes first foray into equity indexes, setting stage for potential ETF launches

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Vatican Bank makes first foray into equity indexes, setting stage for potential ETF launches

Gabriel Bouys | AFP | Getty Images

The Vatican Bank Tuesday launched two equity indexes tracking stocks that align with Catholic values. Its first foray into thematic investment products sets the bank up to potentially roll out other financial products, including ETFs in the future.  

The bank, which reports to the Committee of Cardinals and the Pope, said Tuesday in a statement that the Morningstar IOR Eurozone Catholic Principles Index and the Morningstar IOR U.S. Catholic Principles Index include 50 medium and large-cap firms deemed to be consistent with Catholic ethical criteria, including prioritizing human bonds and social justice. 

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“Having benchmarks built in accordance with recognized Catholic ethical criteria allows us to make our performance assessment and reporting processes even more rigorous and transparent,” Giovanni Boscia, Vatican Bank deputy director general and CFO, said in the statement. “This initiative reaffirms our commitment as a financial institution serving the Church, further strengthening the role of the [Vatican Bank] as a reference point for the Catholic world.”

The Eurozone fund counts semiconductor supplier ASML Holding and telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom among its top holdings, while the US-based index’s largest holdings include Meta Platforms and Amazon

Their rollouts also open up the possiblity the indexes could be licensed for use in an exchange traded fund.  

The debut comes as investors’ appetite for ETFs and other thematic investment products grows. The global ETF market increased nearly 30% to top $14 trillion in 2024, per PricewaterhouseCoopers. And, the combined value of those funds could hit as much as $30 trillion by 2029, according to a PwC report dated March 2025.

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Meanwhile, investment products rooted in social responsibility and other themes are appealing to certain slice of investors. The Ave Maria Mutual Funds, a fund family that allocates capital in accordance with Catholic teachings, said it had $3.8 billion in assets under management as of last year, per its website.  

The Vatican Bank has been working to reform its image after a series of scandals. The Holy See-linked financial institution has faced several allegations of money laundering and ties with organized crime, particularly after the collapse of Milan-based Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. In 2021, former Vatican Bank president Angelo Caloia was found guilty of money laundering and embezzling millions of euros in connection with his role at the institution. 

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Miner Offloads $305M Bitcoin as Network Difficulty Sees Sharp Decline

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Bitcoin Miner Activity Hits Highest Level Since 2024 with 90K BTC Sent to Binance


Bitcoin mining stress deepened as difficulty fell 14% and Puell dipped below 0.8, even as Cango sold $305M in BTC.

Bitcoin mining conditions tightened sharply in late January and early February after network difficulty fell 14% over three weeks and publicly traded miner Cango disclosed a $305 million BTC sale over the weekend.

The combination of falling profitability metrics and selective balance sheet sales shows pressure spreading across the mining sector, even as broader on-chain data shows no signs of disorderly selling.

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Difficulty Drops as Miners Cut Capacity

According to a February 10 brief published by on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr., Bitcoin’s network difficulty dropped by a combined 14.1% between January 22 and February 6, following two consecutive downward adjustments of 3.3% and 11.2%. Such back-to-back cuts usually occur when less efficient mining equipment is taken offline, often during periods of weak price action.

During the same window, the price of BTC fell about 25%, briefly touching $60,000 before rebounding toward $70,000. At the time of writing, the flagship cryptocurrency was trading at around $69,000, down nearly 1% in the last 24 hours and more than 12% over the past week, based on CoinGecko data.

The asset has also lost 24% of its value over the past month and about 29% year over year, underperforming earlier-cycle expectations and keeping mining margins tight.

Against this backdrop, Cango confirmed it sold 4,451 BTC for approximately $305 million, citing balance sheet strengthening. The sale, approved by the company’s board, drew an immediate reaction from equity investors, with Cango shares closing 8% lower on the first trading day after the disclosure.

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Adler described the transaction as a point event rather than evidence of widespread forced liquidation, noting that aggregate miner flows to exchanges are still holding steady.

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Data from miner exchange inflows supports that view, with the 30-day moving average of daily miner transfers hovering near 82 BTC, only slightly lower than mid-January levels and well within recent norms, according to the market watcher. Furthermore, he reported that there have been no sustained spikes that would suggest broad reserve dumping.

Profitability Pressure and What Comes Next

Profitability metrics still point to strain. For instance, Adler pointed out in his brief that the Puell Multiple, which compares daily miner revenue to its annual average, slipped to a 30-day average of 0.77 in early February, down from 0.86 in mid-January. He added that spot readings briefly fell to around 0.61, levels historically associated with miner stress and capacity exits.

The analyst noted that miners earning below their annual average tend to prioritize liquidity, increasing the chance of selective reserve sales rather than aggressive expansion. According to him, completion of this stress phase typically requires a reversal in difficulty adjustments and a recovery in the Puell Multiple toward the 0.85 to 0.90 range.

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For now, the data suggests the adjustment is playing out mainly through hashrate reductions instead of heavy selling. The risk, in Adler’s opinion, is a renewed price drop below $60,000, which could push profitability metrics lower and prompt similar sales from other public miners.

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Crypto Miner Canaan Shares Sink 7% Despite Strong Q4

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Crypto Miner Canaan Shares Sink 7% Despite Strong Q4

Crypto miner and manufacturer Canaan fell 6.9% on the Nasdaq on Tuesday despite reporting a 121.1% year-on-year increase in revenue to $196.3 million in the fourth quarter, driven by an increase in hardware sales and stronger mining performance.

Canaan reported that its Bitcoin (BTC) mining revenue rose 98.5% year-on-year to $30.4 million, helping boost its Bitcoin treasury to a record 1,750 BTC, valued at nearly $120 million, while the company also increased its Ether (ETH) holdings to 3,950 ETH, worth $7.9 million.

The revenue figure is Canaan’s highest quarterly posting in three years, and was also driven by Bitcoin mining machine sales, with the company shipping a record 14.6 exahashes per second (EH/s) of computing power during the quarter.

Canaan’s 2025 performance snapshot following its Q4 financial report. Source: Canaan

Canaan said computing power sales were supported by a “milestone order” from a US-based institutional miner, helping it set a new quarterly record for computing power sales and achieve a 60% year-on-year increase.

On the mining front, the Singapore-based company said it expanded its installed hashrate to 9.91 EH/s, with 7.65 EH/s operational during the quarter.

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Bitcoin network hashrate has fallen from a record 1,150 EH/s in mid-October to 980 EH/s as miners continue to unplug unprofitable machines and pivot to AI and high-performance computing.

Despite the strong Q4 performance, Canaan (CAN) shares tanked another 6.87% to $0.56, Google Finance data shows, making it one of the lowest performers among the 15 largest Bitcoin miners by market cap.

Canaan’s change in share price over the last 12 months. Source: Google Finance

Canaan’s risk of Nasdaq delisting worsens

At its current price of $0.56, the company is now down 18.1% year-to-date and 70.2% over the last 12 months.