Crypto World
Digital Assets & TradFi Convergence
From 2023 to 2026, from Hong Kong to a global stage, institutions from around the world convened once again. As the next decade of digital assets unfolds, LTP looks ahead alongside the industry.
What does it feel like to observe—at close range—the front-line pulse of digital assets and traditional finance (TradFi) amid market volatility?
On Feb. 9, 2026, Liquidity 2026, the annual flagship institutional digital asset summit hosted by LTP Hong Kong, concluded successfully in Hong Kong. Now in its fourth consecutive year, the event once again brought together senior representatives from hedge funds, market makers, high-frequency trading firms, family offices, asset managers, exchanges, custodians, banks, and technology service providers, marking another milestone in the accelerating convergence of digital assets and traditional financial markets.
Throughout the full-day agenda, the summit featured keynote addresses, fireside chats, and in-depth roundtable discussions. Speakers and participants engaged in rigorous exchanges around the evolution of the global financial system, the rise of tokenization, and the rapid integration of multi-asset ecosystems—exploring what new opportunities and new paradigms may emerge as institutional adoption deepens.
As the summit drew to a close, a clear consensus emerged across diverse perspectives: at a turning point in the reshaping of the global financial landscape, infrastructure development, regulatory dialogue, and cross-institutional collaboration will be the critical variables shaping the industry’s sustainable growth.This was not merely a forum for ideas, but a defining step in the digital asset industry’s progression toward standardization, institutionalization, and mainstream relevance.
Full Agenda Highlights and Key Takeaways
At Liquidity 2026, LTP convened global experts to examine the future of institutional digital asset markets through multiple lenses—including core infrastructure, liquidity connectivity, tokenization, and emerging market paradigms.
Multi-Asset Trading and Market Convergence: Compatibility and Resilience
Participants broadly agreed that crypto assets are increasingly being redefined as a core asset class that must be integrated into institutional portfolio management frameworks, rather than treated as a standalone alternative market. Stephan Lutz, CEO of BitMEX, noted that CIOs can no longer afford to ignore this asset class. As institutions formally incorporate digital assets into allocation frameworks, the design logic of trading systems is shifting—from pursuing peak performance to enabling seamless integration within existing governance structures, API architectures, and risk controls.
System resilience was repeatedly emphasized. Tom Higgins, Founder and CEO of Gold-i, remarked during a roundtable that system design must assume failure as inevitable, with redundancy and survivability achieved through multi-venue aggregation. At a macro level, regulatory fragmentation remains a key obstacle to global market interoperability; without cross-jurisdictional alignment, genuine multi-asset convergence will remain constrained.
The New Settlement Layer: Clearing, Custody, and Interoperability
Discussions around settlement and custody pointed to a clear direction: custodians are evolving from passive asset safekeeping toward becoming a core infrastructure layer supporting clearing, settlement, and risk management. As institutional participation grows, custody is no longer viewed solely as a compliance requirement, but as a critical nexus connecting regulatory certainty with operational scalability.
The definition of trust is also evolving. Ian Loh, CEO of Ceffu, emphasized that trust must be embedded in executable on-chain mechanisms, with assets generating tangible yield through collaboration between custodians and prime brokers. The importance of mature third-party technology has become increasingly evident. Amy Zhang, Head of APAC at Fireblocks, highlighted the industry’s growing reliance on established infrastructure providers, noting that Europe is emerging as a strategic hub for institutional digital assets due to its regulatory clarity and infrastructure maturity.
Technological redundancy was widely seen as essential to mitigating systemic disruptions. As Darren Jordan, Chief Commercial Officer at Komainu, observed, the future of custody lies in asset usability—shifting the core question from whether assets are safely stored to whether they can be securely and reliably mobilized.
Rebuilding Infrastructure and the Price of Data
Johann Kerbrat, SVP and GM of Robinhood Crypto, shared how Robinhood is evolving from a crypto trading platform into a general-purpose financial infrastructure provider, leveraging blockchain to re-architect payments, settlement, and traditional asset trading—while abstracting complexity away from the end user.
In his view, TradFi’s core bottleneck remains settlement efficiency, often operating at T+1 or longer, whereas crypto-native systems offer 24/7 availability, near-instant transfers, and composability that materially reduce capital costs and counterparty risk. Within regulatory frameworks, Robinhood is advancing equity tokenization on a fully collateralized, 1:1 basis, anticipating that tokenization will expand beyond stablecoins into equities, ETFs, and private markets. The central challenge, he argued, lies not in technology, but in regulatory implementation and collective adoption.
Cory Loo, Head of APAC at Pyth Network, described market data as a structurally underappreciated industry—generating over $50 billion in annual revenue, with data costs rising more than 15-fold over the past 25 years. The true cost, he noted, stems not from information asymmetry, but from data quality, which ultimately determines whether traders achieve best execution.
Pyth Network aims to reconstruct traditional data pipelines by bringing price inputs directly from trading firms and exchanges into a shared price layer, which is then redistributed to institutions at higher quality and lower cost with millisecond-level multi-asset updates. Loo disclosed that Pyth Pro attracted over 80 subscribers within two months of launch, achieving more than $1 million in ARR in its first month. The project also plans to implement a value-capture mechanism whereby subscription revenue flows into a DAO, which repurchases tokens and builds long-term reserves.
Institutional Capital Allocation: From Speculation to Systematic Exposure
A notable shift in capital allocation is underway. Institutional capital is rotating away from narrative-driven assets toward instruments with clear demand drivers and regulatory visibility. Fabian Dori, CIO of Sygnum, observed that as metaverse narratives faded, institutions have refocused on leveraging smart contracts for value-chain integration and process automation. Risk management has increasingly displaced return speculation as the primary screening criterion.
Tokenization is widely expected to drive structural, rather than incremental, change—but scale will depend on demonstrable client demand rather than technological capability alone. Interest in index-based and structured products is rising, and Giovanni Vicioso, Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products at CME Group, noted that the future market landscape will likely be defined by the coexistence of multiple technologies and market structures.
Trading Convergence: Bridging Liquidity, Pricing, and Risk
In discussions on liquidity and risk management, participants focused on system stability during extreme market conditions. Jeremi Long, CIO of Ludisia, highlighted how infrastructure upgrades have materially improved execution quality, while emphasizing that risk management must be designed for worst-case scenarios.
Improving cross-venue capital efficiency was identified as a key solution to fragmented capital deployment. Collaborative models between exchanges and custodians—enabling shared capital pools—are increasingly being explored. In this context, transparency has become paramount. Giuseppe Giuliani, Vice President of Kraken’s Institutional team, stressed that liquidity depends on risks being clearly priced, and that exchange transparency and operational stability directly influence market-maker participation.
Building Institutional Rails for the Digital Asset Economy
At the institutional and infrastructure level, multiple case studies suggest a shift from proof-of-concept to real-world deployment. Stablecoin pilots in insurance and payments demonstrate the tangible efficiency gains of on-chain settlement. Some institutions are now exploring migrating flagship products directly on-chain to access broader global liquidity.
System stability is increasingly viewed as a form of revenue protection. Zeng Xin, Senior Web3 Solutions Architect at AWS, noted that stability functions as “income insurance,” with cloud infrastructure providing the resilience and elasticity required for digital markets. Meanwhile, traditional regulatory frameworks continue to impose structural constraints on capital allocation.
Sherry Zhu, Global Head of Digital Assets at Futu Holdings Limited for Futu Group, emphasized that trust and convenience represent core opportunities for brokerage platforms, while acknowledging the capital constraints imposed by frameworks such as Basel. Balancing compliance, privacy, and custody remains a critical threshold for institutional participation in DeFi.
Everything as Collateral: RWA, Stablecoins, and Tokenized Credit
Debates around whether tokenized assets can serve as core collateral are moving from theory to practice. Compared with traditional structures, on-chain collateral—enabled by 24/7 settlement—is better suited to meet sudden margin requirements in derivatives markets. However, legal clarity remains the determining factor.
Chetan Karkhanis, SVP at Franklin Templeton, emphasized the importance of choosing natively on-chain asset structures rather than digital replicas, ensuring a single source of legal truth. Regulatory classification and its impact on capital requirements are equally critical. Institutions evaluating tokenized collateral tend to focus on four dimensions: legal ownership, operational risk, custody arrangements, and liquidity depth.
Beyond the Hype: Where the Industry Goes Next
As the summit concluded, participants converged on a shared view: tokenization alone does not constitute a competitive advantage. The true differentiator lies in whether it delivers measurable improvements across reserves, trading, or settlement.
Erkan Kaya, CEO of ABEX, suggested that tokenization has the potential to fully absorb traditional finance into crypto-native systems, with a tipping point likely to emerge over the next decade. As regulatory credentials, system stability, and user experience become decisive factors, the evolution of financial infrastructure appears irreversible. Digital assets are no longer a peripheral complement to TradFi, but a force increasingly capable of reshaping its operating logic and power structures.Moses Lee, Head of APAC at Anchorage Digital, summarized the sentiment succinctly: tokenization does not equal success—its value depends on delivering clear functional advantages in reserves, trading, or settlement.
Closing Thoughts
For LTP, the industry’s transition into a more mature phase—marked by the fading of hype—also represents the optimal moment for infrastructure, compliance, and sustainable innovation to take root. We remain firmly convinced that lasting value creation resides in the foundational systems that quietly support market operations.
From 2023 to 2026, from regional markets to a global perspective, LTP has remained committed to observing, documenting, and actively participating in the structural, institutional, and regulatory evolution of the digital asset industry. The successful conclusion of Liquidity 2026 marks another meaningful milestone in our long-term effort to advance the integration of digital assets and TradFi.
Looking ahead, LTP will continue to invest heavily in ecosystem development—championing more resilient infrastructure and more open collaboration—to help shape the next decade of digital assets.
With infrastructure build-out, regulatory engagement, and cross-institutional collaboration converging, a healthier, more professional, and increasingly mainstream digital asset era is taking shape.
While Liquidity 2026 has just concluded, the marathon toward deep digital asset–TradFi integration is only entering its second half. As a long-term participant and observer, LTP will continue to dedicate resources to ecosystem building and industry dialogue, helping to usher in the next decade of digital assets.
A full post-event report, including detailed roundtable highlights and key speaker insights, will be released shortly. Stay tuned.
About LTP
LTP is a global institutional prime broker, purpose-built to meet the evolving needs of digital asset market participants. By applying traditional financial standards to blockchain innovation, LTP provides end-to-end prime services spanning trade execution, clearing, settlement, custody, and financing. Its offerings further extend to institutional asset management, regulated OTC block trading, and compliant on/off-ramp solutions — delivering a secure and scalable foundation for institutions across the digital asset ecosystem.
LiquidityTech Limited is HK SFC licensed for Type 1, 2, 4, 5, and 9 regulated activities.
Liquidity Technology Limited is BVI FSC licensed to act as a Virtual Asset Service Provider and licensed under SIBA for Dealing in Investments activities.
Liquidity Technology S.L. is registered with Bank of Spain as a Virtual Asset Service Provider.
Liquidity Fintech Pty Ltd AUSTRAC registered for digital currency exchange, remittance, and foreign exchange service provider activities.
Liquidity Fintech Investment Limited is BVI FSC licensed to provide investment management services.
Neutrium Trust Limited is registered as a Trust Company under the Trustee Ordinance and licensed as a Trust or Company Service Provider under AMLO.
Liquidity Fintech FZE, granted In-Principle Approval (IPA) by the Dubai VARA for a VASP licence (note: IPA does not permit regulated activities).
Disclaimer: All regulated activities are performed exclusively by the relevant entities that are duly licensed or registered, and strictly within the boundaries of their respective regulatory approvals and jurisdictions.
More details: https://www.liquiditytech.com
Solana is holding its breath, trading at the $84 price level, it is barely moving with just 1% gain in the last 24 hours, as opposed to BTC 2.4% gain and ETH 4.5%, even with bullish catalysts that bring a good prediction. Institutional heavyweights Interactive Brokers and Galaxy Digital signal a deepening commitment to the network, and could force a directional move soon.
— Solana Daily (@solana_daily) March 31, 2026
Interactive Brokers (@IBKR), one of the world's largest brokers, launches crypto trading for 450M people across Europe, including $SOL. pic.twitter.com/mOvB1kVSxd
Institutional pressure is building on both sides of the trade. Galaxy’s continued positioning in SOL infrastructure and Interactive Brokers’ expanded support for the asset add credibility to the bull thesis, even as the broader market sits in near-extreme fear.
The macro headwinds are real. But so is the on-chain growth underpinning SOL’s longer-term case. ETF inflows into Solana products remain a live catalyst that institutional desks are watching closely.
Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with
Solana Price Prediction: $95 or $75 Next?
SOL has been compressing in a tightening range under $90, a setup that can resolved with a sharp move in either direction. At $84 with a 1.5% single-day decline, the immediate picture looks defensive, but RSI sits at 46, a technical buy signal that suggests sellers haven’t fully taken control yet.
Resistance is stacked. Immediate ceiling at $88, then the $90.50–$91 zone, with $95 acting as the breakout trigger that unlocks the bull case. Above that level, we can safely target $115–$125.
But a breakdown below the $75 support zone opens the door to deeper downside. The setup is binary. Position sizing accordingly.
Discover: The best pre-launch token sales
Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as Solana Tests Key Levels
SOL at $84 with a $95 breakout requirement means most of the easy money on this trade has already been made. For traders calculating risk-reward on a market-cap-weighted basis, the upside from here demands patience and assumes macro conditions cooperate. That’s where early-stage positioning starts looking different on a spreadsheet.
Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is an Ethereum-based meme token built around a 240-lb canine juggernaut and a 1000x leverage trading mentality, genuinely unhinged energy, deliberately so.
The project has raised more than $4,7 million at a current price of $0.00028, with 66% staking APY bonus available for holders. Features include holder-only trading competitions with leaderboard rewards, a Maxi Fund treasury for liquidity and partnerships, and meme-first marketing built on viral gym-bro humor.
Research Maxi Doge and join the army.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Crypto assets are highly volatile. Always do your own research before investing.
The post Solana Price Prediction: Interactive Brokers Supports SOL, Galaxy Doubles Down appeared first on Cryptonews.
Strategy, the world’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder, has held the 11.5% dividend rate on its perpetual preferred stock, Stretch (STRC). This marks the first time the product has not seen a dividend increase since the product launched in July 2025.
STRC debuted in July 2025 with a 9% dividend and has since undergone seven dividend increases. The company was able to maintain the current rate after the volume weighted average price (VWAP) for the month reached $99.95, keeping the shares close enough to their $100 par value.
Strategy positions STRC as a short duration, high yield savings alternative. The perpetual preferred stock pays monthly cash distributions, with the dividend rate adjusted each month to support trading near par and limit price volatility.
During Tuesday’s session, STRC held close to par for most of the day. The company is estimated to have purchased over 1,000 BTC, and it took 12 days for STRC to recover back to par following the ex dividend date. It is likely the shares will continue trading near par over the next two weeks, leading up to the April 14 ex dividend date.
Meanwhile, Strive (ASST), the bitcoin treasury asset manager, saw its own perpetual preferred product, SATA, reach $100 par for the first time. This enabled the company to issue shares through its at the market (ATM) program to fund additional bitcoin purchases. SATA currently offers a dividend rate of 12.7%.
Announced at EthCC in Cannes, the upgrade enables institution-specific borrowing environments, structured credit products, and RWA-backed lending within a unified liquidity system.
Crypto World
Australia passes crypto regulation requiring exchanges to obtain financial services licenses
Australia passed legislation on Wednesday, creating its first comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets that requires crypto exchanges and custody providers to obtain financial services licenses.
The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 cleared both houses on April 1, bringing firms that hold digital assets on behalf of customers into the existing Australian Financial Services Licence regime.
Australia’s bill creates two new regulated categories under the Corporations Act: digital asset platforms, which hold crypto on behalf of users, and tokenized custody platforms, which hold real-world assets and issue a corresponding digital token.
Operators of both must obtain an Australian Financial Services License from ASIC, bringing them under the same core rules as brokers or fund managers, including requirements to safeguard client assets, provide standardized disclosures, avoid misleading conduct, and maintain dispute resolution and compensation systems.
Instead of regulating crypto itself, the law targets the companies in the middle that control customer funds, aiming to reduce risks like commingling, insolvency, and misuse of assets that have caused losses in past crypto failures.
Research from the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Center and industry groups estimates Australia could generate as much as A$24 billion annually from tokenized markets, payments, and digital assets, roughly 1% of GDP. Under the previous regulatory path, the country was on track to capture just A$1 Billion of that by 2030.
A Kraken spokesperson said the law provides a “top-down signal” that Australia is serious about digital assets, adding that clearer rules would give firms confidence to invest and expand locally.
Kate Cooper, CEO of OKX Australia and co-chair of the Digital Economy Council of Australia, called the bill a “pivotal moment,” saying it establishes a foundation for institutional participation and long-term capital allocation.
Almonty’s tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, in March 2026.
Almonty
BEIJING — The Iran war is squeezing a global commodities market already pressured by China’s export controls and stockpiling efforts.
Prices of three niche elements — tungsten, sulfur and helium — have climbed sharply in recent weeks.
While none of the commodities are traded as widely as oil, the surge indicates how ripple effects from the Middle East conflict could end up restricting production of the semiconductors that power artificial intelligence advances.
Tungsten, a metal nearly as hard as a diamond, creates the electrical connection in the core of a semiconductor chip. Sulfuric acid, a byproduct of sulfur, cleans chip wafers. Helium enables smooth production of semiconductors since the gas prevents unwanted chemical reactions in the manufacturing process.
Those are just some of the ways in which the three elements have become critical for modern manufacturing, including for defense.
Beijing started to ramp up its control over the critical supplies even before the Iran war started on Feb. 28, partly as tensions with the U.S. escalated over the last few years.
China started restricting tungsten exports just over a year ago, and in December called for tighter limits on sulfuric acid exports. Helium, a gas that’s difficult to store, saw the volume of Chinese imports rise by 15.7% in 2025, after a nearly 65% surge in 2024, according to Wind Information.
The Iran war and the ensuing constraints on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Middle East shipping route for energy and chemicals, has tipped some oversupply situations into undersupply, while exacerbating existing shortages.
Prices of the three commodities have jumped in some cases by more than oil. The widely used fossil fuel has climbed by more than 50% in March, putting Brent on track for a record month.
“While the Chinese supply chain is being viewed as more resilient than many peers, the risk of disruption in chemicals as raw materials for manufacturers in selected segments is higher than expected based on the feedback,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report late last week, citing nearly 40 commodity-related meetings and site visits in China.
Tungsten
Tungsten hit a record high of over $3,000 late last week, marking a surge of well over 50% for the month and more than tripling in price since late December. That’s based on the industry benchmark called “ammonium para tungstate (APT)” in metric ton units, or MTU, from Fastmarket, as quoted by tungsten miner Almonty.
Almonty officially reopened a large tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, earlier this month, and plans to start producing some tungsten this year at a project in the U.S. state of Montana.
The company’s CEO Lewis Black told CNBC that defense sector demand for tungsten has been “extremely strong” since the beginning of last year, but that there’s been no notable change despite the Iran war.
“There’s no material to stockpile. That’s probably the biggest change,” he said.
Sulfur
The price of sulfuric acid in Africa is now at least 30% higher than it was prior to the war, and is still rising, the Goldman Sachs analysts said, citing a local Chinese miner in Africa.
Other assessments point to a milder rise in prices.
China sulfur prices, including cost and freight, climbed by about 13% from early March to $621 per tonne as of March 26, according to S&P Global Platts.
“A 2-3 month effective blockade would likely become a severe supply shock, especially as freight/insurance stay elevated and Middle East-origin cargoes become harder to execute,” Pan Yuya, lead analyst for sulfur and phosphate raw materials at S&P Global Energy, and Isaac Zhao, senior principal analyst, China fertilizers at S&P Global Energy, said in a March 20 note.
The S&P analysts said that around 56% of China’s sulfur imports came from the Middle East in 2025.
“Even prior to the Middle East conflict, sulfur prices were rising sharply as the market tightened. With sulfur prices now at fresh record highs, the ‘super squeeze’ in this rather obscure commodity in supply warrants further examination,” HSBC analysts said in a March 16 report.
Helium
Helium prices have roughly doubled since the Iran war began, according to Fitch Ratings.
As most trading occurs through long-term private contracts between industrial gas suppliers and manufacturers, it is difficult to pinpoint industry-wide prices, said Shelley Jang, Fitch’s director of Asia-Pacific corporate ratings.
Iranian missile attacks this month crippled a key industrial center in Qatar, which produces about one-third of the world’s helium.
That implies helium supply won’t be restored anytime soon, pointed out Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.
In one indication of further market tightness, prices of helium in China’s Henan province have reversed a downturn this year to climb from a Feb. 28 low of 545 yuan ($78.85) a bottle to 600 yuan ($86.81), according to Wind Information.
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Shortages caused by the Iran war are the latest supply chain disruption to rock global markets, which faced similar shocks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s pushed companies to diversify, and countries such as China to ramp up stockpiling plans.
“Access to supplies of certain physical materials where production and processing is concentrated in China will become more frequent topics of negotiations with Beijing,” Rhodium Group said in a March 24 report.
Limited price transparency also means the shortage could be worse than available numbers suggest.
Tungsten and helium prices have been surging, “but you don’t have anyone on the buy side saying, ‘oh my goodness, we don’t have enough product,’” Ecclestone said. “Defense contractors should have warehouses of tungsten, but they don’t.”
“The world has got lazy. It thinks life is like a supermarket, the product is a pack of cornflakes or a few tons of sulfuric acid,” he said. “The supermarket of commodities has had a few of the aisles chopped down.”
The ex-Blackstone team wants to move beyond crypto-collateralized loans and into ‘real economy credit’ as the tokenized RWA sector continues to grow.
Bitcoin has declined by about 50% this market cycle, far less than in previous cycles, Fidelity Digital Assets said, adding this trend could continue over time.
Bitcoin’s post-all-time-high drawdowns have historically been steep, at about 80% to 90%, but this cycle has been about 50%, Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Zack Wainwright said Tuesday.
One can see the “diminishing returns” that have developed from cycle to cycle when looking at Bitcoin’s price performance from the perspective of the previous all-time high, he said.
“Each cycle has been less dramatic to the upside than the previous,” he said. “Downside risk has been less dramatic in 2026, the current cycle, as well,” he added.
Bitcoin’s price hit its current cycle low of just over $60,000 on Feb. 6, a decline of 52% from its Oct. 6 all-time high of about $126,000, according to TradingView. It is currently down 46% from its peak six months ago.
The previous cycle saw a much larger decline of 77%, from the 2021 all-time high of $69,000 to a bear market low just below $16,000 in November 2022.
Bitcoin may bottom in late September
Fidelity’s assessment that this Bitcoin cycle is notably shallower than prior cycles “indicates a maturing market with reduced volatility and stronger institutional confidence,” Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, told Cointelegraph on Wednesday.
“This shift signals that Bitcoin is changing from a speculative asset toward a more stable store of value, potentially paving the way for greater adoption in the future.”
Related: Bitcoin’s $10K range expected to hold until spot traders show up: Data
Meanwhile, Alphractal founder Joao Wedson observed Tuesday that Bitcoin’s top occurred 534 days after the last halving, a shorter span than in the previous cycle.
This “decaying pattern” across cycles suggests the historical bottom may occur between 912 and 922 days after the halving, which “points to a bottom in late September or early October 2026,” he said.
BTC is below key daily moving averages
Bitcoin remains below the key 50-day and 200-day exponential moving averages, two long-term trend indicators.
It is hovering at the 200-week EMA, around $68,000, which has served as a key level of support during previous market downturns.
Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work
Consumers browse Huawei phones in a shopping mall in Yantai, Shandong Province, China on March 8, 2026.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Huawei’s push to develop its own artificial intelligence chip has yet to drive the double-digit revenue gains of its peers, as Chinese companies strive to narrow the gap with the U.S. on AI.
Cloud computing revenue from external customers fell by 3.5% in 2025 to 32.16 billion yuan ($4.6 billion), Huawei said. The company is the second-largest cloud provider in mainland China.
While overall cloud revenue including internal customers rose by 4.8% to 72.8 billion yuan, the main ICT infrastructure segment reported revenue growth that slowed to 2.6%, down from 4.9% in 2024.
That’s the segment that would include Huawei’s self-developed Ascend AI chip solutions, meant to rival Nvidia. Huawei’s total ICT revenue for 2025 was 375.01 billion yuan.
The U.S. has restricted Chinese companies’ access to the most advanced Nvidia chips, while Beijing has urged tech self sufficiency at home.
Huawei’s decline in cloud revenue to external customers comes as ByteDance has rapidly grown its AI cloud business in China in the last several months, albeit from a small base.
The TikTok owner is reportedly ramping up access to high-end Nvidia chips in a partnership deal with a planned Malaysia data center. ByteDance and Alibaba also plan to place orders of Huawei’s new AI chip, Reuters reported last week, citing sources. ByteDance declined to comment. The two other Chinese companies did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
U.S.-developed AI tools are generally considered the most capable in the world, although some Chinese models have shown an edge in video generation. Not all U.S. AI models are officially accessible in mainland China.
Huawei’s modest cloud growth figures come amid rapid industry expansion worldwide and slower economic growth in China.
Globally, spending on cloud infrastructure services rose by 29% in the fourth quarter in a sixth-straight quarter of market expansion of more than 20%, according to Omdia. The firm predicts 27% cloud growth in 2026.
Earlier this month, Alibaba, the largest cloud computing company by market share in mainland China, reported a 36% increase in segment revenue to 43.28 billion yuan in 2025. Tencent said increased cloud service revenues domestically and internationally helped drive a 22% year-on-year increase in business services revenue in 2025.
Local promotions this month in China for AI tool OpenClaw have also encouraged many locals to download the agent and pay for related cloud and AI model services. China’s consumer spending has remained tepid since the pandemic.
Consumer revenue slows
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Huawei smartphones ranked first in China last year by shipments, up by 1.7%, according to Counterpoint. But the Chinese company lost ground to Apple toward the end of 2025 after the iPhone 17’s release.
For 2025 overall, the telecommunication giant reported revenue of 880.9 billion yuan, up 2%, on net profit of 68 billion, up around 8% from a year ago.
The company spent a record 192.3 billion yuan in research and development, or 21.8% of revenue.
“In 2025, Huawei’s overall performance remained steady,” Sabrina Meng, Huawei’s rotating chairwoman, said in a brief statement, which also expressed gratitude to customers, partners and employees.
The intelligent automotive solutions unit saw revenue of 45.02 billion yuan, with growth slowing to 72% year-on-year, down from a whopping 474.4% in 2024, as the autos business captured an initial surge in electric vehicles. Huawei partners with several automobile manufacturers for in-car software and driver-assist technology.
Bitcoin held gains above $68,000 as investors leaned into news that the US and Iran were ideating ways to end the war. Will markets hold their newfound bullishness?
Bitcoin (BTC) briefly jumped to $68,589, and US stock markets rallied as investors reacted to US President Donald Trump’s statements on considering options for ending the US and Israel-Iran war. Separate, unconfirmed comments attributed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also suggested that Iran may be looking for ways to end the war.
On Tuesday, reporting from The Wall Street Journal said that President Trump told his aides that he could consider ending the war in Iran, with the Straight of Hormuz remaining partially closed, but an official statement has not been given.
Unconfirmed reports also suggest that Iran’s president is looking for a way to exit the conflict with certain assurances being made by the US and Israel. Regardless of the accuracy of the statements from either president, the DOW gained more than 1,125 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained 2.91% and 3.83%, respectively.
Despite the strong performance seen across markets, Cointelegraph reported that crypto traders are skeptical of Bitcoin holding its current gains. Analysts suggested that a daily close above the 50-day moving average and $68,879 are key to establishing an early trend change and potentially clearing overhead short liquidity, which could trigger a liquidation-driven rally to $82,000.
Related: Bitcoin hits $68K but BTC futures, macro data show traders remain bearish
A lack of confidence is the current culprit
Beyond US macroeconomic conditions and the forecasted longer-term negative impact of the US and Israel-Iran war on energy, goods and services costs, the weakness of spot demand in the Bitcoin market continues to cap most price breakouts.
As shown in the chart below, open interest in the Bitcoin futures market, along with spot demand have remained relatively flat since the Feb. 6 sell-off below $60,000. This suggests that a majority of the price action is driven by news headlines, equities and perpetual futures markets, as the absence of investors making sustained directional bets in each market (futures and spot) leaves BTC price range-bound.
Earlier reporting from Cointelegraph also highlighted short-term traders holding positions below their cost basis ($85,800) and stablecoin inflows to crypto exchanges near a two-year low, further evidence that traders remain extremely cautious and are electing not to take strong directional bets in the market.
This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research before making any decisions. Cointelegraph makes no guarantees regarding the accuracy or completeness of the information presented, including forward-looking statements, and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from reliance on this content.
Key takeaways:
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Solana outperforms Ethereum in high-revenue DApps, providing a fundamental cushion against recent price drops.
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Rising Ethereum Layer-2 dominance challenges SOL as traders monitor the critical $80 support level for a retest.
Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), faced an 11% correction following a rejection at $93 on last Wednesday. SOL has lagged the broader cryptocurrency market over the past week, testing the $80 support on multiple occasions. Solana network fees have also declined over the past two months, leading traders to fear a potential retest of the $75 level.
The total value locked (TVL) on Solana stood at $6.3 billion, though the gap remains wide compared to Ethereum’s $54.1 billion. However, Solana amassed 80% more network fees than its main competitor over the last 30 days. This difference is largely due to Ethereum’s incentives for layer-2 rollups, which utilize temporary data blobs to lower costs.
Network fees on Solana dropped to $18.5 million in March, a 42% decrease from January’s $30 million level. Most of this decline stems from lower activity in decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes. Despite maintaining leadership in absolute terms, Solana DEX volumes plummeted to $55.5 billion, their lowest levels since September 2024, according to DefiLlama data.
In comparison, Ethereum DEX volumes totaled $41 billion in March, down 23% from two months prior. More importantly, when aggregating Ethereum layer-2 blockchains like Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism, Ethereum’s DEX market share jumped to 42% in March from 33% in January. Solana’s dominance is gradually being challenged, which partially explains SOL’s current bearish momentum.
Solana DApps revenue could solidify SOL’s $80 support level
While DEX volumes on Solana are declining, no other network matches its number of DApps earning $1 million or more in 30 days. This data serves as a strong incentive for developers to join Solana, creating opportunities for user returns through protocols like Pump, Helium Network and ORE Protocol. Since protocol revenues drive investor attention, a healthy ecosystem remains extremely important for SOL’s upside.
Related: Solana lands Mastercard, Western Union on new dev platform
Solana leads the pack with 13 DApps ranking $1 million or more in revenue over the past 30 days. As a comparison, the runner-up Ethereum had 11 DApps, while BNB Chain and Base totaled 4 DApps each with $1 million or higher in monthly revenue. Thus, there is little evidence that the SOL price is bound to retest $75 solely because of lower network fees driven by weak DEX volumes.
DEX activity is a major driver of network fees, but the sustainability of protocols within the Solana ecosystem demonstrates that SOL is far from abandoned by investors.
This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research before making any decisions. Cointelegraph makes no guarantees regarding the accuracy or completeness of the information presented, including forward-looking statements, and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from reliance on this content.
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