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DoubleZero co-founder says faster Kalshi data remains open to all traders

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Kalshi valuation hits $22bn after $1bn Series F

DoubleZero co-founder Austin Federa has defended open access to Kalshi’s faster election-market data feed while confirming that the infrastructure remains read-only and provides no way to submit or execute trades.

Summary

  • DoubleZero Edge distributes Kalshi order-book data but does not route or execute orders.
  • Any participant can subscribe to the same feed, according to co-founder Austin Federa.
  • Dedicated fiber and multicast replace the public-internet delivery used by Kalshi’s API and WebSocket.
  • DoubleZero will publish transport benchmarks but will leave market-quality reporting to Kalshi.

Austin Federa told crypto.news that professional traders tend to compete on speed with each other, while tighter competition between market makers can produce narrower spreads and better prices for other participants.

Federa was responding to concerns that professional firms receiving faster information could gain an advantage over retail users who continue to access Kalshi through slower public-internet connections.

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“Our answer to the imbalance concern is open access: the fastest data path shouldn’t be private rails and at unreachable price-levels. By placing Kalshi election market data over DoubleZero rails, anyone, from anywhere, can subscribe to the same stream,” Federa said.

DoubleZero announced on Sep. 9 that Kalshi’s election and politics markets had become available through DoubleZero Edge ahead of the U.S. election season. The service distributes Kalshi’s full election order book, including bids, offers and completed trades, over a dedicated fiber network.

DoubleZero says open access addresses the retail gap

Although subscribers receive data faster than users relying on ordinary internet routes, Federa said access to the feed is not restricted to a selected group of trading firms.

Professional market makers may use the information to update their quotes more quickly, but Federa argued that competition among such firms can benefit other users through tighter spreads and improved prices. DoubleZero has not yet released data showing whether the Kalshi integration has changed either measure.

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Access still requires a paid subscription. According to Federa, a customer can buy the feed through DoubleZero’s website without entering a traditional sales process. The subscription is linked to a cryptographic identity and the internet address of the machine receiving the data.

Once subscribed, the customer installs a connector using a single command. Federa said the software configures the receiving machine, creates a private tunnel into DoubleZero’s network, and begins running the connection.

A status command allows the subscriber to check whether the tunnel is active and which data channels the machine has joined. The connector then converts the broadcast into JSON and serves the information locally, allowing a trading system to read live instruments, quotes, and order-book updates.

Kalshi faces an uneven legal environment across the United States even as its federally regulated markets expand. As crypto.news reported on Sep. 8, conflicting state court rulings could divide prediction-market access and liquidity between states.

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Aaron Courtney, chief compliance officer at ProphetX, said in the earlier report that the conflicting decisions could leave users in some states with access to federally regulated platforms while users elsewhere remain restricted. The dispute centers on whether federal oversight of designated contract markets prevents states from applying their own gambling laws.

Kalshi orders cannot be executed through DoubleZero Edge

While traders can feed DoubleZero’s data into their own systems, Federa stressed that the product does not provide an order-entry function.

“DoubleZero Edge is a read-only distribution platform for market data into a trader’s tech stack. DoubleZero Edge has no execution functionality.”

Participants cannot use the infrastructure to submit, route, or complete trades. Orders must still pass through Kalshi’s trading systems, leaving DoubleZero to operate solely as the transport layer between the source data and subscribers.

Federa compared the setup with two established methods for receiving exchange information. Under the public model, firms connect to Kalshi’s API or WebSocket through the open internet, request updates, and assemble their own view of the order book.

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Each company maintains its own connection, receives its own copy of the data, and manages the systems needed to turn separate responses into a usable market view. Network routes and delivery times may differ because the information passes through the public internet.

Traditional exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and CME use another model. According to Federa, they publish data once and broadcast it to subscribers over private fiber through a process known as multicast.

Kalshi’s feed applies the second model to a prediction market, he said. Data leaves Kalshi through the direct interface it provides to institutional participants, travels across DoubleZero’s dedicated fiber network and reaches subscribers through one broadcast.

Every subscriber is intended to receive the same sequenced message at the same time, reducing the work each firm must perform to collect and rebuild the order book.

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Dedicated fiber changes how Kalshi data reaches traders

Federa said DoubleZero receives information through the fastest direct interface Kalshi makes available to institutional users. From there, Edge uses dedicated fiber and multicast, while Kalshi’s existing public API and WebSocket remain dependent on public-internet routes.

DoubleZero has not supplied figures showing the exact latency difference between the services. According to Federa, the company will release benchmark data as results become available during the initial product-testing phase.

Subscribers can choose between top-of-book data, which contains the best available bid and offer, and full-depth data containing every price level. DoubleZero had already offered separate feeds for Kalshi’s sports markets and crypto perpetual futures before adding election and politics contracts.

Kalshi has continued adding products that place it within both prediction markets and regulated U.S. derivatives trading. On Sep. 4, the exchange added five crypto perpetuals tied to BNB, Cardano, Worldcoin, Aave, and Venice Token.

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The additions increased its lineup to Bitcoin and 17 altcoin perpetual contracts, according to the earlier report. Kalshi operates as a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated designated contract market, and its dollar-margined perpetuals give U.S. traders long or short price exposure without requiring them to hold the underlying tokens.

Kalshi’s event contracts and crypto derivatives remain subject to separate regulatory and legal questions. CME Group has challenged the CFTC’s treatment of Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract, arguing that the product should fall under rules for swaps instead of conventional futures.

DoubleZero will measure delivery instead of Kalshi’s markets

To assess Edge, DoubleZero will track how quickly an update moves from its source to subscribers, how consistently users receive the same sequenced order book, and how fresh the delivered information remains compared with public-internet feeds.

Federa separated those transport measures from spreads, order-book depth, and price behavior during major political events. Kalshi controls the trading venue, he said, while DoubleZero only delivers its data.

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Faster and cleaner information could help market makers adjust quotes more quickly, according to Federa, but he said DoubleZero would not use Kalshi’s spread or depth figures as performance measures for Edge.

“We will publish data on the delivery layer,” Federa said. “We will not publish venue market-quality scorecards from DoubleZero.”

Market integrity has received added attention as Kalshi expands contracts tied to politics and other real-world events. On Aug. 31, the exchange banned George Santos after its compliance department found that he had traded contracts based on whether he would attend President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address.

Kalshi said Santos earned $17,839.57 after trading both sides of the attendance market while controlling information about his plans. The exchange imposed a $71,356 penalty and permanently barred him from its platform, while a separate CFTC settlement ordered him to disgorge $17,569.98, pay a $17,500 civil penalty and stop trading on CFTC-registered venues for three years.

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According to the same report, Kalshi said it conducted more than 150 investigations in the first quarter of 2026, blocked over 100 suspected insider-trading attempts and referred 20 cases to law enforcement.

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Ant International, Visa and Mastercard team up on AI payment standard

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Ant International, Visa and Mastercard team up on AI payment standard

MasterCard and Visa cards are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on March 29, 2024.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Fintech company Ant International announced Thursday it has signed on Visa and Mastercard to collaborate on a new standard for payments made via AI agents, in a bet that they will be used more and more by consumers and businesses.

In a statement, the companies cited McKinsey projections expecting AI agents will handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030. But Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, told CNBC that AI agents’ potential for hallucination meant “we need to make sure people feel safe.”

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“Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang told CNBC in an interview.

Building trust in AI payments

The new collaboration will focus on how the payment companies can “know your agent,” Ant said in the announcement, which includes building common standards that link each agent to a valid entity, assess each agent’s behavior and monitor them.

It’s an effort to increase interoperability for users of the different systems.

“If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don’t need to register again with Visa, Mastercard,” Yang said.

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In the past 12 months, Visa, Mastercard and Ant International have each announced their own systems, known as protocols, for AI agents to complete payments securely.

While U.S. credit card giants Visa and Mastercard dominate transactions in developed economies, many developing economies tend to use electronic payment systems known as e-wallets. More than 50 of these e-wallets have partnered with Ant International, which runs an “Alipay Plus” app.

These digital wallets have also started to link to credit cards and are becoming a more common way to pay than with physical cards. Digital wallets accounted for 56% of global e-commerce value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, for more than $13 trillion in spending, according to payment processing company Worldpay.

Now that technology needs to develop securely for AI-driven spending.

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“Interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale,” said Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, stressing the need for a consistent way for merchants and payment processors to recognize which AI agents they can trust.

Ant International separated nearly three years ago from Hangzhou-based Ant Group, which runs the Alipay mobile payments app in mainland China.

Alipay announced Wednesday that users can set regular requests to make Starbucks orders via one of its AI features.

Users can tell the app to “buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 a.m. every day,” which will regularly place the order at the designated time, before prompting the user to complete the payment, according to a press release.

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Users can currently also make recurring ride-hailing requests from Didi via the same Alipay AI tool.

— CNBC’s Matthew Tan contributed to this report.

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RedStone prices $170M FalconX credit vault on 3 chains

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Parsec shuts down after 5 years as crypto volatility claims another platform

RedStone has launched price feeds for a FalconX private-credit vault holding more than $170 million in exposure across Monad, Plume and MegaETH.

Summary

  • RedStone distributes the FalconX vault’s signed NAV from Ethereum to three additional networks.
  • AA_FalconXUSDC holders can use supported tokens as collateral without first redeeming their positions.
  • RedStone checks updates through signature verification, deviation limits, staleness rules, and circuit breakers.
  • Permission requirements and thin secondary liquidity could still complicate liquidations during market stress.

RedStone brings FalconX credit pricing to three chains

In a statement shared with crypto.news, RedStone said it had integrated its pricing infrastructure with Pareto’s Credit Vaults, starting with a FalconX vault carrying more than $170 million in private-credit exposure.

Through the vault, institutional investors deposit USDC to finance part of FalconX’s prime brokerage business. Depositors receive AA_FalconXUSDC, a token representing the senior tranche of their position in the underlying credit portfolio.

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Interest earned by the vault accrues within the token’s net asset value, raising its redemption value over time. M11 Credit curates the product, underwrites FalconX, and monitors the credit exposure on an ongoing basis, according to the announcement.

RedStone reads the vault’s NAV from its Ethereum contract and publishes the value through standardized feeds on Monad, Plume and MegaETH. Lending protocols on each network can then use the feed to calculate how much a holder may borrow against AA_FalconXUSDC.

Without such a feed, each protocol or network would need to establish its own connection to the source contract on Ethereum. RedStone’s system instead distributes the same valuation wherever the supported token is deployed.

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Holders can use AA_FalconXUSDC as collateral without redeeming it first, allowing the underlying position to continue earning interest while they borrow other assets. Actual access depends on which lending markets accept the token and the risk limits each protocol applies.

“Tokenization is only the first step. What comes after is what truly matters,” RedStone co-founder Marcin Kazmierczak said in the announcement.

“Pareto’s FalconX Credit Vault demonstrates how tokenized institutional credit can work in the onchain finance ecosystem beyond standard issuance.”

FalconX calculates the NAV before RedStone publishes it

Speaking to crypto.news, Kazmierczak said FalconX calculates and signs the AA_FalconXUSDC NAV off-chain based on the vault’s private-credit portfolio. RedStone delivers the reported value rather than independently valuing the underlying loans.

Once FalconX signs an update, RedStone’s oracle nodes collect it and test it against deviation thresholds and heartbeat rules. The system publishes the NAV onchain only after it passes the required checks.

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Safeguards include confirmation from multiple nodes, verification of FalconX’s signature, and checks designed to reject updates that are too old. Circuit breakers can also stop publication when a reported value moves beyond preset limits.

According to Kazmierczak, the controls protect against accidental entries and unusual updates before one incorrect value reaches several networks. They do not replace FalconX’s responsibility for determining the fair value of the credit portfolio used to calculate NAV.

All three destination chains receive the same signed value from a single source. Each network therefore refers to FalconX’s underlying valuation rather than producing a separate calculation that could diverge from the others.

A disruption can still interrupt delivery. If Ethereum experiences an outage or another supported chain becomes congested or undergoes a reorganization, the affected network continues to display the last valid signed NAV until a fresh update can be verified and delivered.

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Kazmierczak said staleness and heartbeat rules govern the treatment of delayed values. The approach avoids publishing data drawn from a reorganization or creating inconsistent NAV calculations, although prices may remain temporarily stale during an outage.

RedStone previously deployed an oracle on Stellar in March 2026 as the network developed its lending activity and tokenized-asset infrastructure. By August, Stellar held more than $3 billion in real-world assets, while slightly over $2 million sat in lending pools capable of accepting RWAs, according to a report on its DeFi gap.

FalconX vault NAV may differ from its liquidation value

Although the feed supplies a fair-value estimate, Kazmierczak said lending protocols should not treat the reported NAV as the price they are certain to recover during a forced sale.

“This isn’t an oracle question, it’s a risk parameter question for the lending protocol.”

Protocols must decide how much of the reported value they will recognize as collateral. Kazmierczak said they should apply haircuts that account for possible slippage, limit borrowing according to realistic secondary-market depth rather than the vault’s total assets, and leave a buffer between the liquidation threshold and a stressed exit price.

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RedStone can provide the feed and risk ratings through Credora, but each lending protocol or its curator remains responsible for setting collateral factors, borrowing caps and liquidation thresholds.

Liquidity has become a central issue for tokenized assets as issuance has grown faster than their use inside decentralized finance. A Sept. 4 analysis found that 89% of tokenized RWAs in a $34.6 billion market remained outside active protocol use, with about $3.79 billion deployed at the time.

FalconX has separately expanded its institutional lending activity. In August, the company and Ethena launched a $1 billion lending facility that uses part of USDe’s backing assets to finance secured, overcollateralized loans for institutional borrowers.

The facility places collateral with qualified custodians and uses a special-purpose vehicle through which FalconX originates and services the loans. Institutional lending accounted for $310 million, or 6.9%, of USDe’s backing in early July.

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For U.S. market participants, FalconX’s role links the vault to a prime broker with operations in New York, although the company says product availability depends on jurisdiction and the FalconX entity providing the service. Pareto also describes its credit products as regulatory-compliant offerings designed for professional investors, asset managers, digital-asset funds and fintech companies.

Permissioned tokens require approved liquidators

Transfer restrictions create another issue when private-credit tokens serve as collateral. Kazmierczak said an accurate NAV does not ensure that a liquidator can receive, move, or sell AA_FalconXUSDC after a borrower defaults.

Because the asset is permissioned, a prospective liquidator may need to appear on the issuer’s whitelist before taking custody. Even an approved party could struggle to sell the position immediately if the token has limited secondary-market liquidity.

“Reliable pricing is necessary but not sufficient,” Kazmierczak said. “Pricing solves the ‘what is it worth’ problem; execution/liquidity access is a separate problem that needs a permissioned settlement mechanism.”

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RedStone has developed Settle to address the execution stage by auctioning liquidation or redemption rights to whitelisted solvers that have completed know-your-customer checks. According to Kazmierczak, a selected solver can take control of the asset and use the issuer’s regular redemption channel rather than depend on an open secondary market.

The company introduced RedStone Settle in May 2026 as a settlement layer for restricted real-world assets used in DeFi lending. Its design separates price discovery from the legal and operational process required to transfer and redeem permissioned tokens.

Pareto reports roughly $225 million in total value locked across its tokenized private-credit products. The FalconX Credit Vault is the first Pareto product covered by the integration, with additional NAV feeds planned as Pareto deploys more vaults on other networks.

According to RedStone, its infrastructure provides data on more than 110 chains for over 200 clients, including Securitize, Morpho, Pendle, Spark, and Compound. The company also supplies pricing data for tokenized products, including BlackRock’s BUIDL, Apollo’s ACRED and Hamilton Lane’s SCOPE.

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Trezor Reports Another Security Incident: What Users Should Know

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Trezor Reports Another Security Incident: What Users Should Know

Trezor said attackers breached its third-party email provider and sent customers a phishing email disguised as a critical chip security alert, the company’s third vendor failure in four weeks.

The hardware wallet company said it took down the domain behind the campaign and is investigating how attackers reached its legitimate domain. Reportedly, wallets, keys, and recovery backups were never exposed.

Trezor’s Email Provider Breach Follows the ShipMonk Leak

An August 10 incident at ShipMonk, the partner that ships Trezor orders, started the run. A September 4 update pushed the number of exposed customers above 80,000.

That leak held names, phone numbers, and home addresses. BeInCrypto reported in August that devices stayed safe while the phishing and scam risk climbed. Customers have since reported scam calls and printed letters.

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The pattern is old. Trezor warned 66,000 users after a support portal breach in 2024, and rivals have stumbled too, with SafePal leaking nearly 40,000 records last month. The devices hold up. The partners holding customer data do not.

Why the Fake STM32 Alert Works

The email arrived as a critical security alert about an “STM32 Entropy Vulnerability.” STM32 names the family of small chips inside Trezor devices.

Entropy is the randomness a wallet uses to build a recovery phrase, the backup that controls the funds. Weak randomness would be a real danger, which makes the lure credible to a worried owner.

Our third-party e-mail provider has been breached. Please be aware that the email named ‘Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability’ is not coming from us, and it’s a phishing attempt. Do not click on any link,” the team warned.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens

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What Trezor Users Should Do Now

  • Do not click links in any unexpected Trezor email, especially one citing STM32 or entropy.
  • Never type a recovery phrase or device passcode into a website.
  • Treat unexpected phone calls and physical letters as hostile until verified.
  • Check trezor.io or the verified Trezor account on X for real notices.
  • Anyone who entered a backup on a linked page should move funds to a new wallet.

Leaked contact details paired with a genuine sender domain strip away the signals users lean on.

“There are convincing phishing emails going out right now from hardware wallet companies (have heard Trezor and Bitbox at least). It’s likely that a marketing email provider was compromised. That will mean more customer emails are leaked,” one user noted.

Indeed, BitBox, a Swiss-made Bitcoin hardware wallet also reported a similar incident, only that the phishing mail was sent out to their newsletter subscribers.

According to BitBox, the phishing attacks may have targeted Bitcoin companies sharing the same newsletter provider.

The post Trezor Reports Another Security Incident: What Users Should Know appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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3 Days of Losses: Dow, S&P, Nasdaq Slide as Yields, Oil Rise

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3 Days of Losses: Dow, S&P, Nasdaq Slide as Yields, Oil Rise

US stocks fell for a third straight session on Wednesday. Rising Treasury yields and another jump in oil prices weighed on sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 405.41 points, or 0.77%, to 52,380.66. The S&P 500 slipped 0.48% to 7,636.36. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.64% to 26,253.34.

Treasury Buyback Sends Yields Higher

The Treasury Department said it will triple its buyback of longer-dated debt to $6 billion. The move failed to stop the 10-year yield from climbing to 4.84%, its highest level since November 2023.

The 10-year Treasury Yield is inching towards 5%. Image Source: CNBC

Some traders had bet on an even bigger repurchase. Peter Boockvar of The Boock Report said Wall Street expectations ran as high as $7 billion to $8 billion.

Thomas Martin of Globalt Investments pointed to an unusual standoff in sentiment.

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“You look at equity sentiment, and it’s at an extreme. At the same time, the sentiment for higher interest rates is also at an extreme. Those two things shouldn’t be able to live together for very long.”

Martin, CNBC

Oil Extends Its Climb on Iran Tensions

Brent crude settled up 3.36% at $101.21 a barrel, its highest close since May. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained 3.25% to $96.05.

Escalating tensions between the US and Iran have stoked fears of disruption to Middle East energy supplies. The pressure builds on a strained bond market already rattled by the standoff.

Similar fears already sent Asian equity benchmarks lower earlier this month. Separate strikes had pushed oil to a multi-week high at the time.

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Martin said a move toward $120 a barrel would grab the market’s full attention. Wednesday’s run has not yet reached that level.

The losses followed the Dow’s worst single day in nearly three weeks on Tuesday. That session opened a holiday-shortened week after Monday’s Labor Day closure.

The post 3 Days of Losses: Dow, S&P, Nasdaq Slide as Yields, Oil Rise appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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MetaMask Focus and Separate Enterprise Unit

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Crypto Breaking News

Consensys Software Inc., the Ethereum-focused company best known for MetaMask, plans to split into two standalone businesses—separating its consumer-oriented MetaMask platform from its institutional infrastructure and protocol operations. The company says the restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with MetaMask led by Joe Lubin as chairman and CEO of the consumer company and Lubin also serving as executive chairman of the reorganized Consensys.

In the new structure, the remaining Consensys entity will focus on Ethereum protocols and institutional infrastructure. Its portfolio includes Linea, Besu, and Teku, and leadership will be handled by CEO Mike Kriak and President David Cunningham. The company frames the move as a response to diverging priorities between consumer products and enterprise blockchain deployment.

Key takeaways

  • Consensys will split into two independent companies by the end of 2026, separating MetaMask’s consumer business from institutional infrastructure and protocols.
  • MetaMask will stay focused on self-custody for users, while expanding into broader finance use cases such as payments, savings, and investing products.
  • The new institutional Consensys will concentrate on Ethereum infrastructure and enterprise adoption, including tokenization and stablecoin-related services.
  • Consensys says the consumer and institutional units have increasingly “different priorities,” a key justification for the corporate restructuring.

How the split reshapes Consensys’ operating model

According to Consensys’ announcement released via Business Wire, the company’s planned separation aims to give each business line room to pursue distinct strategies. In practice, the restructuring divides what has historically been one integrated Ethereum software ecosystem into two corporate entities with separate leadership teams and clearer mandates.

Consensys says the institutional company will house its protocols and enterprise infrastructure businesses, explicitly including Linea, Besu, and Teku. The stated focus goes beyond protocol development alone, extending to helping financial institutions deploy onchain capabilities for tokenization, stablecoins, and other onchain financial services.

Meanwhile, MetaMask is positioned as the home for consumer self-custody and a widening set of products meant to interact with mainstream financial activities. The company’s framing suggests a continued push for MetaMask to operate as more than a wallet—an interface through which users can access payment and investment-like functionality—while the enterprise-focused Consensys entity advances infrastructure and institutional use cases.

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MetaMask’s expansion beyond a browser extension

MetaMask began in 2016 as an Ethereum browser extension for accessing decentralized applications and managing crypto assets, according to Consensys’ own historical account of the platform’s evolution. Over the past year, the company says MetaMask has added products that extend its role into payments, yield, and tokenized traditional assets.

One of the most notable developments described in the company’s coverage is the launch of MetaMask Money Account in June. The feature allows users to earn “up to 4% variable APY” on eligible mUSD stablecoin balances and spend those funds using the MetaMask Card. Consensys indicates that the yield is sourced from decentralized finance lending strategies rather than interest paid by MetaMask itself or by the stablecoin issuer.

In February, Consensys also pointed to MetaMask adding access to tokenized US stocks, exchange-traded funds, and commodities through Ondo Global Markets for eligible users outside the United States, referencing coverage that discussed the availability of 200 tokenized instruments. Later in February, it expanded MetaMask’s Mastercard-enabled spending card across 49 US states, building on earlier availability in other regions including Europe, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

Taken together, these product moves help explain why Consensys’ leadership appears to be treating the consumer business as something that increasingly looks like a retail financial application layered over Ethereum infrastructure, rather than a pure crypto tooling product.

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Why Consensys says the separation makes sense now

Consensys states that the restructuring reflects increasingly different priorities between its consumer and institutional businesses. While the announcement is explicit about what each company will contain and what each will pursue, the underlying implication for investors and industry observers is that the risks, regulatory pressures, and product timelines for consumer finance features may differ sharply from those tied to enterprise protocol infrastructure.

The institutional unit’s focus—helping financial institutions deploy blockchain technology for tokenization and stablecoins—suggests a nearer-term path centered on integrations, enterprise adoption cycles, and infrastructure reliability. By contrast, MetaMask’s consumer roadmap described in the company’s rollout includes yield-bearing stablecoin access and card-based spending, areas that typically demand a strong user experience and careful alignment with payment rails and consumer-facing compliance expectations.

Separating the companies could therefore reduce internal tradeoffs: product teams can pursue roadmaps optimized for their user segments without competing for shared corporate bandwidth. It also creates a more straightforward way to evaluate each business line independently once the split is completed at the end of 2026.

What to watch as the companies operate independently

With completion targeted for the end of 2026, the most immediate question for users and builders is how the split affects product continuity—especially for MetaMask features that rely on Ethereum infrastructure and for institutional tools such as Linea, Besu, and Teku.

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For the consumer side, attention will likely focus on whether MetaMask’s card, savings/yield functionality, and access to tokenized traditional assets continue expanding on a timeline comparable to the past year’s rollouts. For the enterprise side, the market will watch whether the reorganized Consensys institution continues to accelerate its work on deploying Ethereum infrastructure for tokenization and stablecoin use cases in collaboration with financial institutions.

In the months ahead, readers should look for clarifications from Consensys on how assets, roadmaps, and leadership responsibilities will transition through the separation process—because the core operational details will determine how smoothly both MetaMask’s consumer ambitions and the institutional unit’s infrastructure focus can scale after the split.

Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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Iceland Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Trump’s Expansionist Map

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Iceland Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Trump’s Expansionist Map

How Iceland responded to Trump’s U.S. takeover map

Iceland’s foreign ministry said Tuesday that Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir had summoned Long to “convey a clear message that the image was wholly inappropriate.”

Gunnarsdóttir told reporters that “people within the U.S. administration” had advised her to “not take the current U.S. President literally.”

“But we should take him seriously,” she added. “That is exactly what we are doing, and we are stressing that Iceland is a sovereign, independent state that is responsible for its own future.”

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Long had previously joked about an American takeover of Iceland. In January, he was overheard telling lawmakers on the House floor that Iceland could become the 52nd state with him as the governor. At the time, Iceland’s foreign ministry said it was investigating the matter.

Long later apologized, telling news site Arctic Today that “there was nothing serious about that, I was with some people, who I hadn’t met for three years, and they were kidding about [U.S. special envoy to Greenland] Jeff Landry being governor of Greenland and they started joking about me and if anyone took offense to it, then I apologize.”

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Pi Network ships Protocol 27 on a network with 14 million users and zero DeFi

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Pi Network's pivot to AI and identity infrastructure

The September 15 upgrade brings smart contracts, an AMM DEX, and RPC infrastructure to a chain that has never processed a single swap. Seven years of mobile mining come down to whether anyone builds on the other side.

Summary

  • Protocol 27 activates on Pi mainnet September 15, delivering smart contract authentication, an AMM DEX module, and public RPC server infrastructure to a chain whose total DeFi TVL is currently zero dollars.
  • Only 16.6 million of Pi’s 60 million engaged Pioneers have completed migration to mainnet, a 27.6% conversion rate that leaves nearly three quarters of the network’s claimed user base locked out of every Protocol 27 feature.
  • Pi trades at $0.098 with a market cap of $1.09 billion, down 96.7% from its $2.99 all-time high, on daily volume of just $7.85 million, a liquidity profile thinner than most top-200 tokens.
  • The Pi Launchpad testnet trial drew 242,000 participants and 15.92 million Test-Pi in commitments for its first project SLICE, but no mainnet launch date has been announced and testnet participation does not guarantee real capital deployment.
  • SocialChain Inc. has quietly repositioned Pi’s 1.09 million KYC validators and their 526 million completed verification tasks as “human infrastructure for AI,” a pivot toward AI training data production that no competitor is covering but that reframes the entire economic thesis of the network.

The most interesting thing about Pi Network is not the protocol upgrade scheduled for September 15. It is the gap between what Pi says it has built and what anyone can actually use.

Protocol 27 will activate smart contract authentication, an automated market maker DEX, and RPC server infrastructure on a mainnet that currently supports none of those things. On paper, this is the moment Pi transitions from a token distribution experiment to a functional Layer 1. In practice, the upgrade lands on a network where the DEX has only ever run on testnet, where 73% of claimed users have not migrated, and where daily trading volume would not fill a mid-tier Uniswap pool. The next ten days will answer a question that seven years of mobile mining have deferred: is there anything on the other side of the tap?

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This piece maps the technical payload of Protocol 27, stress-tests the migration and liquidity numbers, examines the AI pivot that SocialChain has been building in plain sight, and measures the gap between Pi’s infrastructure claims and their on-chain evidence.

What Protocol 27 actually ships

The upgrade arriving September 15 is the second major protocol activation in less than two months. Protocol 27 bundles three components that collectively turn Pi from a transfer-only chain into something that could theoretically support decentralized applications.

First, smart contract authentication. Pi’s mainnet has operated without programmable contract deployment since its February 2022 launch. Protocol 27 introduces an authentication layer that gates which contracts can execute on-chain, a design choice that preserves SocialChain’s control over what gets deployed while technically enabling third-party code.

Second, an AMM DEX. The decentralized exchange module has lived on Pi’s testnet since early 2026 but has never processed a mainnet transaction. Protocol 27 migrates it to production. The critical unknown is whether the DEX will launch with open trading pairs or remain restricted to SocialChain-approved assets.

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Third, RPC server infrastructure. Without public RPC endpoints, external developers cannot query the chain, index data, or build interfaces that interact with Pi without running a full node. Protocol 27 adds this plumbing.

The foundation was laid by Protocol v25, which activated July 22 and introduced BN254 elliptic curve cryptography, Poseidon hashing, and zero-knowledge proof support. Those are prerequisites for the contract verification system that Protocol 27 depends on. The two upgrades are sequential, not independent.

What is missing from the Protocol 27 changelog matters as much as what is included. There is no mention of permissionless contract deployment. There is no timeline for removing the authentication gate. The DEX module ships, but SocialChain has not published fee structures, liquidity provider incentives, or market-making parameters. These are not minor details. They determine whether Protocol 27 produces a functioning DeFi ecosystem or a controlled demonstration environment.

The migration wall

Pi claims 60 million engaged Pioneers. Only 16.6 million have completed mainnet migration. That 27.6% conversion rate is the single most important number in Pi’s ecosystem, and it is rarely discussed with the seriousness it deserves.

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Migration requires KYC verification, wallet creation, and an active confirmation step. Pi has built an internal KYC network of 1,094,680 human validators who have processed over 526 million verification tasks. The infrastructure exists. The bottleneck is not capacity. It is willingness.

Three explanations compete for why 43.4 million Pioneers have not migrated. The charitable reading: many are casual users who downloaded the app, tapped the mining button a few times, and moved on. The critical reading: migration requires identity verification that some users in Pi’s global base cannot or will not complete. The structural reading: users who mined Pi for years watched it lose 96.7% of its value after exchange listings and decided the migration effort was not worth the outcome.

Whatever the cause, the effect is concrete. Protocol 27’s smart contracts, DEX, and developer tools arrive on a network where nearly three quarters of the claimed user base cannot interact with them. The 16.6 million migrated wallets represent the actual addressable market for anything built on Pi after September 15.

For context, Solana has roughly 1.8 million daily active addresses. Polygon has about 400,000. Raw wallet counts and active usage are different metrics, and Pi has not published daily active address data. The 16.6 million figure counts wallets that exist, not wallets that transact.

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A DEX with no volume and a launchpad with no launch

The AMM DEX that Protocol 27 brings to mainnet has a testnet history and a mainnet void. No swap has ever been executed on Pi’s production chain. No liquidity pool has ever held real Pi tokens. The DEX module arrives with zero proven demand.

On testnet, the Pi Launchpad ran its first trial with SLICE, attracting 242,000 participants who committed 15.92 million Test-Pi. Those numbers sound encouraging until you remember that testnet tokens are free. Committing Test-Pi costs nothing and proves nothing about real capital deployment. The jump from testnet participation to mainnet liquidity provision has killed more DeFi launches than bad tokenomics.

Pi’s mainnet trading volume tells the liquidity story more directly. At $7.85 million in daily volume across Kraken, OKX, and smaller venues, Pi moves less capital per day than tokens ranked in the 300s by market cap. The token unlock schedule compounds this: approximately 1.21 billion Pi tokens are set to unlock through 2026, roughly 6.5 million per day. That is a constant sell pressure of about $637,000 daily at current prices, absorbed by a market that trades under $8 million.

The DEX needs to solve a bootstrapping problem that every new chain faces, but with a specific handicap. Pi’s user base was built on mobile mining, an activity that required no capital outlay and no DeFi literacy. Converting tap-to-mine users into liquidity providers who understand impermanent loss, yield farming, and AMM mechanics is a different kind of migration, and there is no KYC validator network to help with it.

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OpenPay, Pi’s payment protocol, shifted from testnet to mainnet on August 27. That is a real deployment with real transaction capability. But payments and DeFi serve different markets. OpenPay lets merchants accept Pi. The DEX needs traders who will provide liquidity, arbitrage price discrepancies, and maintain efficient markets. Those are different users with different motivations, and Pi has spent seven years cultivating the former while doing almost nothing to attract the latter.

The price tells a story the community does not want to hear

Pi trades at $0.098. Its market cap sits at $1.09 billion, ranking it 72nd. It has fallen 96.7% from its $2.99 all-time high.

The listing trajectory looked promising early. Kraken and OKX both added Pi in 2026, giving the token access to two of crypto’s largest order books. The listings did not arrest the decline. The pattern is familiar across crypto: exchange access creates a one-time price event, then fundamentals take over. Pi’s fundamentals are a 6.5 million token daily unlock against $7.85 million in volume.

The community response to the price collapse has followed a predictable arc. Early frustration gave way to narrative pivots. The current thesis circulating in Pi forums holds that Protocol 27 will catalyze a DeFi ecosystem that drives organic demand for the token, absorbing unlock pressure through staking, liquidity provision, and application usage. This thesis requires every link in a long chain to hold: the DEX must launch with sufficient liquidity, developers must build applications that generate transaction demand, users must transition from passive mining to active DeFi participation, and all of this must happen faster than 6.5 million new tokens enter circulation each day.

No chain in crypto history has executed that sequence starting from zero DeFi TVL while simultaneously running a major token unlock program. That does not mean Pi cannot be the first. It means the base rate for this outcome is zero.

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526 million tasks and the quiet AI pivot

Here is the section that matters and that nobody is writing about.

SocialChain has been building something underneath the KYC verification network that extends well beyond identity checking. The company’s 1.09 million human validators have completed 526 million discrete tasks. Those tasks involve reviewing documents, matching faces to IDs, making judgment calls about verification quality, and flagging anomalies. This is, by any functional definition, a distributed data labeling workforce.

In 2026, SocialChain began explicitly framing this capability as “human infrastructure for AI.” The positioning is not subtle. At Pi2Day on June 28, the network introduced PiVerify and Pi Sign-in alongside SoloHost’s catalog of 110 applications. PiVerify extends the KYC infrastructure into a general-purpose human verification layer. Pi Sign-in creates an authentication primitive tied to verified human identity.

The AI training data market is projected to reach $30 billion by 2030. The bottleneck is not compute or algorithms. It is high-quality labeled data produced by verified humans. Companies like Scale AI and Appen built billion-dollar businesses on workforces that are smaller, more expensive, and less globally distributed than what Pi has assembled almost as a byproduct of its mining verification system.

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Pi’s validators are KYC-verified, geographically distributed across 230 countries, and already trained on classification tasks. They work for Pi token rewards, not dollars. If SocialChain can redirect even a fraction of this workforce toward commercial AI data labeling, the economic model for Pi shifts from “speculative token with no utility” to “token that backs a labor marketplace with paying enterprise customers.”

This is not a guaranteed outcome. SocialChain has not announced enterprise partnerships for data labeling. The quality of Pi validator work product has not been independently benchmarked against Scale AI or Toloka standards. The compensation model, paying in Pi tokens that are down 96.7%, creates retention risk if validators decide the reward is not worth the effort.

But the structural asset is real. A million verified humans doing classification work at scale is something that money alone cannot replicate quickly. Pi’s Consensus 2026 sponsorship suggests SocialChain is actively marketing this capability to institutional audiences. Whether the market recognizes the asset before or after Protocol 27 will shape how the next chapter reads.

The centralization question that never goes away

SocialChain Inc., founded by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan at Stanford, controls the Pi protocol. This is not disputed. It is architectural.

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SocialChain decides when protocol upgrades activate. SocialChain determines which contracts pass the authentication gate in Protocol 27. SocialChain operates the core infrastructure. SocialChain controls the migration pipeline. In a crypto ecosystem that treats decentralization as a first principle, Pi operates closer to a corporate software platform than a public blockchain.

The network runs 420,000 Pi Node operators, a number that sounds decentralized until you examine what those nodes actually do. Pi nodes participate in consensus, but the protocol parameters, upgrade schedule, and governance decisions flow from SocialChain. Node operators execute; they do not decide. This is closer to Ripple’s relationship with XRP Ledger validators than to Ethereum’s relationship with its node operators.

The mining model draws the sharpest criticism. Pi “mining” involves opening an app and tapping a button every 24 hours. No proof of work is performed. No energy is expended. No computational resources are contributed. The referral system awards a 25% mining rate bonus for each invited user, a structure that critics characterize as multi-level marketing mechanics applied to token distribution.

Whether this matters depends on what you think blockchains are for. If decentralization is a prerequisite for a credible Layer 1, Pi fails the test and Protocol 27 does not change that. If you view Pi as a distribution mechanism that used mobile gaming mechanics to build a massive verified user base, and that user base is the actual product, then centralization is a feature that enabled scale.

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The honest answer is that both framings contain truth, and the tension between them is unresolved.

The developer gap

SocialChain published new developer documentation at docs.minepi.com on September 4, eleven days before Protocol 27 activates. The timing is telling.

A healthy developer ecosystem is not built in eleven days. Ethereum had years of developer tooling, hackathons, grants, and documentation before its DeFi ecosystem found product-market fit. Solana invested heavily in developer relations and tooling before its breakout year. Pi is shipping the infrastructure and the developer documentation in the same two-week window.

The 110 apps showcased through SoloHost at Pi2Day represent the current state of Pi development. Most are simple utilities, merchant tools, and social features built on Pi’s existing transfer-only functionality. None of them require smart contracts because smart contracts did not exist on Pi mainnet until now. Protocol 27 theoretically expands the design space, but the developers who would fill that space have had no production environment to work in and no mainnet documentation to work from until September 4.

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The counter-argument is that Pi’s developer community has been building on testnet for months. The SLICE launchpad trial, the DEX testing, and the various SoloHost applications represent real development activity. When Protocol 27 activates the mainnet smart contract layer, these developers will not be starting from zero. They will be deploying code that has been tested, revised, and stress-tested in a sandbox environment.

The question is scale. Testnet developers are a necessary but insufficient condition for a functioning ecosystem. Pi needs not just its existing builders but a wave of new developers who choose Pi over Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and every other chain competing for smart contract deployment. The developer documentation dropped eleven days before the upgrade. That is not a timeline that suggests confidence in organic developer migration.

What Pi2Day revealed about the real roadmap

The June 28 Pi2Day event is underexamined as a signal of where SocialChain is actually heading. Three announcements from that day matter more than Protocol 27 itself.

SoloHost launched with 110 applications, making it the first curated app marketplace on Pi. This is a platform play, not a protocol play. SocialChain is positioning itself as the distribution layer for Pi-native applications, taking on a role closer to Apple’s App Store than to Ethereum’s permissionless deployment model.

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Pi Sign-in introduced human-verified authentication as a service. Any application, on Pi or off it, could theoretically use Pi Sign-in to verify that a user is a real, KYC-checked human. In a digital environment increasingly flooded with bots and synthetic identities, verified humanness has value independent of blockchain.

PiVerify extended this further, creating an API-accessible verification layer. The combination of Pi Sign-in and PiVerify positions Pi’s identity infrastructure as a product that can generate revenue from external platforms, not just from the Pi ecosystem.

These three products share a common thread: they monetize Pi’s user base and verification infrastructure rather than the blockchain itself. Protocol 27 adds DeFi capability to the chain, but Pi2Day suggests SocialChain’s long-term revenue model may run through identity services and the human-for-AI labor marketplace rather than through transaction fees and DEX volume.

What to watch

  • DEX liquidity in the first 72 hours after Protocol 27. If total value locked does not reach $1 million within three days of the September 15 activation, the bootstrapping problem is real and the DeFi thesis needs revision.
  • Migration acceleration after the upgrade. Protocol 27 gives unmigrated Pioneers a concrete reason to complete KYC and move to mainnet. Watch whether the migration rate, currently stuck at 27.6%, accelerates meaningfully in the two weeks after September 15.
  • Enterprise announcements tied to the AI data labeling pivot. SocialChain needs to convert the “human infrastructure for AI” narrative into a signed contract with a recognizable enterprise customer. Consensus 2026 is the likely venue. No announcement by Q4 means the pivot is still aspirational.
  • Daily token unlock absorption. Track whether DEX staking, liquidity provision, and application usage create enough demand to offset the 6.5 million daily token unlocks without continued price erosion. The math is simple and publicly observable.
  • Developer deployment velocity post-Protocol 27. Count the number of unique smart contracts deployed to mainnet in the first 30 days. Fewer than 50 suggests the developer ecosystem is not ready. Fewer than 10 confirms it.

What is Protocol 27 and when does it activate?

Protocol 27 is a major Pi Network mainnet upgrade scheduled for September 15, 2026. It introduces smart contract authentication, an automated market maker decentralized exchange, and public RPC server infrastructure. These features collectively enable decentralized application development and DeFi functionality on Pi for the first time.

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What was Protocol v25 and how does it relate to Protocol 27?

Protocol v25 activated on July 22, 2026 and introduced BN254 elliptic curve cryptography, Poseidon hashing, and zero-knowledge proof support. These cryptographic primitives are prerequisites for Protocol 27’s smart contract authentication system. The two upgrades are sequential, with v25 laying the mathematical foundation that Protocol 27 builds on.

How many Pi users have migrated to mainnet?

As of September 2026, approximately 16.6 million of Pi’s 60 million engaged Pioneers have completed mainnet migration, representing a 27.6% conversion rate. Migration requires KYC verification, wallet creation, and an active confirmation step. Only migrated users will be able to interact with Protocol 27 features.

What is Pi’s current price and market position?

Pi trades at approximately $0.098 with a market capitalization of $1.09 billion, ranking it 72nd among cryptocurrencies. The token is down 96.7% from its all-time high of $2.99. Daily trading volume sits at approximately $7.85 million across exchanges including Kraken and OKX.

What is the Pi token unlock schedule?

Approximately 1.21 billion Pi tokens are scheduled to unlock throughout 2026, averaging roughly 6.5 million tokens per day. At current prices, this represents about $637,000 in daily potential sell pressure. The unlock schedule is a significant factor in Pi’s price dynamics and will interact directly with any demand generated by Protocol 27’s DeFi features.

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What is SocialChain’s human infrastructure for AI initiative?

SocialChain has repositioned Pi’s network of 1.09 million KYC validators, who have completed over 526 million verification tasks, as a distributed workforce for AI training data production. The validators are already experienced in classification and verification tasks, making them potential candidates for commercial data labeling work. No enterprise contracts have been publicly announced.

Who controls the Pi Network protocol?

SocialChain Inc., co-founded by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, controls Pi Network’s protocol development, upgrade schedule, and governance decisions. The network operates 420,000 Pi Node operators who participate in consensus but do not control protocol parameters. Protocol 27’s smart contract authentication gate means SocialChain will also determine which contracts can deploy to mainnet.

Is Pi Network a good investment?

This article examines Protocol 27’s technical features, the migration and liquidity data, and the strategic positioning of SocialChain’s human verification infrastructure. The token has declined 96.7% from its all-time high and faces ongoing dilution from daily token unlocks. Protocol 27 introduces functionality that could generate organic demand, but no mainnet DeFi activity exists to date. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions. Published September 9, 2026.

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Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Defends Stock Tokens After AMC Criticism

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Jim Cramer Names 5 Top AI Spending Cycle Stocks

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev defended his company’s tokenized stock products on CNBC, offering his first televised comments since AMC Entertainment chief Adam Aron went public with his objections.

Aron has accused Robinhood of issuing unregistered tokens tied to AMC stock in violation of U.S. securities law, and threatened to bring in outside counsel and the SEC.

A Public Feud Over Stock Tokens

The dispute began after Robinhood extended its tokenized stock offering to cover AMC and more than 190 other companies through Robinhood Assets Limited, without those firms directly signing on.

Aron reacted furiously on X, arguing the products let Robinhood create exposure to AMC stock without the company’s involvement, undermining the usual relationship between a company and its shareholders.

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“I find this practice to be contemptible, outrageous, disgusting, detestable, inexcusable, vile. How can it possibly be legal? We have no connection to this at all, and do not condone it in any way.”
Aron

AMC’s stock jumped as much as 15% in premarket trading when the public row first broke out, with traders piling into both the shares and related tokens.

Tenev Says Issuers Cannot Control Everything

On Wednesday, Tenev told CNBC that a public company cannot dictate every financial product built once its shares start trading.

He described Robinhood’s tokens as debt securities backed one to one by the underlying shares held as collateral. Token holders get economic exposure to the stock but no voting rights in the company itself.

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Robinhood’s chief legal officer, former SEC commissioner Dan Gallagher, also pushed back publicly, defending the company’s reading of U.S. securities law.

The clash raises a genuinely open question for regulators, namely whether a brokerage can wrap any public company’s stock into a tradable token without that company’s consent. AMC’s threatened SEC complaint could be the first real test of where that line sits.

The post Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Defends Stock Tokens After AMC Criticism appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Bitcoin price risks $70K if $78K neckline breaks

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Bitcoin 4-hour chart shows BTC near $78,522 below the Bollinger midpoint at $79,079, with RSI weakening to 43.58.

Bitcoin price remained under pressure near $78,500 after a retreat from its Sept. 3 peak of $82,283, while weakening momentum and a possible head-and-shoulders pattern raised the risk of a deeper correction.

Summary

  • Bitcoin price fell about 4.6% from $82,283 to trade near $78,500.
  • The 4-hour RSI stood at 43.58, showing that sellers retained a modest advantage.
  • A possible head-and-shoulders pattern places $78,000–$79,000 at the key neckline.
  • Liquidation clusters sit near $80,000 above price and $77,500 below it.

Bitcoin price action today

According to data from crypto.news, Bitcoin (BTC) price traded near $78,500 late on Sept. 9 after moving between approximately $78,060 and $79,760 during the daily session. The price has lost about 4.6% since reaching $82,283 on Sept. 3.

The latest decline extended a sequence of lower highs visible on the 4-hour chart. Buyers defended the area near $78,000 several times, but each rebound struggled to regain the psychological $80,000 level.

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Bitcoin 4-hour chart shows BTC near $78,522 below the Bollinger midpoint at $79,079, with RSI weakening to 43.58.
Bitcoin price 4-hour chart — Sep. 10 | Source: crypto.news

Bitcoin’s position inside the 4-hour Bollinger Bands also showed fading short-term strength. The asset traded at about $78,522, below the middle band at $79,079 and only slightly above the lower band at $78,015.

A move close to the lower Bollinger Band can indicate growing selling pressure, although the nearby support may also produce a short-term rebound. Bitcoin would need to recover above the middle band to weaken the immediate bearish setup.

The upper Bollinger Band stood near $80,144, making the $80,000–$80,150 region the first major resistance area. A close above that zone would give buyers another opportunity to challenge the recent highs around $81,500 and $82,300.

Oil and Treasury yields pressure risk assets

Bitcoin’s pullback came as escalating Middle East conflict pushed Brent crude toward $100 per barrel, reviving concerns that higher energy costs could keep inflation elevated. Brent reached $99.22 on Sept. 9, while West Texas Intermediate rose to $94.13.

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Rising inflation concerns matter for US crypto investors because they can affect expectations for Federal Reserve interest rates. Higher rates and bond yields increase the returns available from lower-risk assets, creating competition for Bitcoin and other assets that do not generate interest.

Pressure also came from the US Treasury market. The benchmark 10-year yield climbed above 4.85% after the Treasury announced a $6 billion buyback operation targeting older bonds with maturities of 10 to 20 years.

The 30-year yield also reached its highest level since 2007. Rising Treasury yields can tighten financial conditions by increasing borrowing costs and reducing investors’ willingness to hold volatile assets.

Bitcoin’s decline therefore coincided with a wider reassessment of US inflation and interest-rate risks ahead of the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 15–16 policy meeting. Traders will watch incoming inflation data and oil prices for signs that the central bank may keep monetary policy restrictive.

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Bitcoin technicals put $78K support in focus

The 4-hour relative strength index stood at 43.58, below both the neutral 50 mark and its signal average of 44.71. The reading showed bearish momentum without placing Bitcoin in oversold territory.

Daily indicators were less bearish. Bitcoin remained above the daily Supertrend support at $72,786, meaning the broader recovery structure had not yet been invalidated despite the latest decline.

Bitcoin daily chart shows BTC near $78,510, holding above Supertrend support at $72,786 as Aroon readings remain closely balanced.
Bitcoin price daily chart — Sep. 9 | Source: crypto.news

The daily Aroon readings were also closely matched, with one line at 57.14% and the other at 50%. The narrow difference showed that neither buyers nor sellers had established strong control on the higher timeframe.

Crypto analyst Gerla identified a possible head-and-shoulders structure, with the first shoulder near the late-August highs, the head around the Sept. 3 peak, and the right shoulder potentially forming during the latest rebound.

“$78K–$79K is the line in the sand. Lose that and $70K could come pretty quick,” Gerla said in a Sept. 9 post on X.

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The pattern remains unconfirmed while Bitcoin holds its neckline. A decisive daily close below $78,000 would strengthen the setup and expose $76,000–$77,000 before the larger downside target near $70,000.

Liquidation heatmap shows pressure on both sides

CoinGlass’s three-day liquidation heatmap showed large concentrations of leveraged positions above Bitcoin’s current price. The strongest nearby liquidity appeared between approximately $79,700 and $80,200, with additional clusters extending toward $82,000.

Bitcoin three-day liquidation heatmap shows major liquidity clusters near $80,000 above price and between $77,500 and $78,000 below.
Bitcoin liquidation chart | Source: CoinGlass

Such concentrations can attract price during periods of high leverage, although they do not guarantee that Bitcoin will move toward them. A recovery through $79,100 could trigger liquidations of short positions and help drive a test of the $80,000 cluster.

Downside liquidity was concentrated near $78,000 and between roughly $77,500 and $77,800. Losing the current support could therefore accelerate volatility as leveraged long positions are closed.

Further liquidity appeared around $76,000, broadly matching the next technical support area visible beneath the proposed neckline. The heatmap suggests that either a break above $80,000 or a loss of $78,000 could produce a sharper move as liquidations add to spot-market pressure.

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Key Bitcoin levels to watch

Bitcoin’s immediate range sits between the lower Bollinger Band near $78,015 and the middle band around $79,079. Holding $78,000 would keep open the possibility of a relief move toward $79,700–$80,150.

A sustained break above $80,150 would weaken the short-term bearish structure and place $81,500 and $82,283 back in focus. Buyers would need to clear the September peak to confirm a renewed upward move.

A close below $78,000 would confirm greater weakness and shift attention to $77,500, followed by the wider $76,000–$77,000 support zone. The head-and-shoulders interpretation would gain credibility below the neckline, although the daily Supertrend near $72,786 remains an important barrier before the analyst’s $70,000 scenario can develop.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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Consensys to Separate MetaMask and Launch Institutional Blockchain Unit

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Crypto Breaking News

Consensys Software Inc., the Ethereum-focused firm behind MetaMask, plans to restructure by splitting its consumer-oriented business from its institutional blockchain infrastructure operations. The company says the separation is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, creating two independent companies with distinct leadership and strategic priorities.

According to a Business Wire announcement, Joe Lubin will serve as chairman and CEO of MetaMask while also taking the role of executive chairman of the new Consensys. The institutional business—focused on Ethereum protocols and infrastructure—will be led by Mike Kriak as CEO, with David Cunningham as president.

Key takeaways

  • Consensys will separate into two independent firms by the end of 2026: MetaMask (consumer self-custody) and a new Consensys (Ethereum protocols and institutional infrastructure).
  • The new Consensys will house Consensys’ protocol and infrastructure portfolio, including Linea, Besu, and Teku.
  • MetaMask is positioned to broaden beyond a wallet into payments, savings, investing, and other traditional financial products.
  • Consensys says MetaMask has surpassed 100 million downloads across about 190 countries and supported “trillions of dollars” in transaction volume.

From one umbrella to two focused companies

The planned reorganization reflects what the company describes as increasingly different objectives between its consumer-facing and institutional-facing teams. In the announcement, Consensys frames the split as a way to allow each business to pursue its own roadmap without competing for shared priorities.

Under the new structure, MetaMask will remain the centerpiece of the consumer division, with an emphasis on self-custody. Consensys also outlined that MetaMask’s expansion is not limited to crypto holdings and decentralized app access; it is intended to extend into areas such as payments, savings, and investing, as well as “traditional financial products.”

Meanwhile, the institutional infrastructure company will consolidate Consensys’ Ethereum protocol and infrastructure activities. The company says this entity will focus on Ethereum infrastructure while supporting financial institutions looking to deploy blockchain technology for tokenization, stablecoins, and other onchain financial services.

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What will live under “MetaMask” vs. “the new Consensys”

Consensys’ announcement is explicit about the portfolio split. The new Consensys entity will house the company’s protocols and institutional infrastructure businesses, including Linea, Besu, and Teku.

While the announcement does not detail whether these products will change in scope after the separation, the strategic direction is clear: an infrastructure-first company designed to work with institutions, where the customer is more likely to value deployment, reliability, and enterprise integration over consumer growth metrics.

In contrast, MetaMask’s mandate centers on consumer self-custody and product-led expansion into finance-adjacent services. The company’s messaging suggests that the consumer operation will continue to evolve from a browser extension into a broader interface for onchain and finance-related experiences, including functionality connected to stablecoins and yield strategies—while remaining within a self-custody framework.

Consensys says MetaMask has been downloaded more than 100 million times across roughly 190 countries and facilitated trillions of dollars in transaction volume.

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MetaMask’s push into consumer finance features

Part of the logic behind the split appears tied to how MetaMask has expanded beyond its original “wallet for decentralized applications” role. Launched in 2016 as an Ethereum browser extension, MetaMask has added new product lines over the past year, including tools associated with payments, yield, and access to tokenized real-world assets.

In June, Consensys said MetaMask launched Money Account, which it describes as allowing users to earn up to 4% variable APY on eligible mUSD stablecoin balances. The company also stated that the yield is generated through decentralized finance lending strategies rather than interest paid by MetaMask or by the stablecoin issuer.

Earlier in the year, MetaMask added access to tokenized financial products for certain users. In February, Consensys reported support for 200 tokenized US stocks, exchange-traded funds, and commodities via Ondo Global Markets, limited to eligible users outside the United States.

That same month, MetaMask rolled out a Mastercard-enabled spending card across 49 US states. Consensys said the card expanded a previously available product that had already reached markets including Europe, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

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Taken together, these updates help explain why a consumer-first business might benefit from separation: MetaMask’s expanding feature set increasingly resembles a consumer finance platform—while the institutional protocols business is oriented toward deployment infrastructure for enterprise and regulated use cases.

Why the split matters for builders and investors

Restructuring a major Ethereum software provider can matter beyond internal operations, because it shapes where resources and attention flow. A dedicated institutional infrastructure unit may allow teams behind Linea, Besu, and Teku to focus more narrowly on scaling, tooling, and integration work relevant to financial institutions and enterprise networks.

For investors and market participants, the split also provides clearer lines of accountability: MetaMask’s leadership and product execution can be assessed primarily through consumer adoption and the rollout of finance features, while the new Consensys can be evaluated on the delivery of Ethereum infrastructure services and institutional deployment outcomes.

At the same time, Consensys’ own framing highlights that the separation is not simply organizational—it is strategic. The company says the consumer and institutional businesses have “increasingly different priorities,” and the timeline suggests it expects those differences to become more consequential as each unit pursues its own growth and partnerships.

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Readers should watch how Consensys handles continuity during the transition, especially how MetaMask’s expanded financial features and the institutional protocols roadmap will evolve up to the end-of-2026 completion target.

With the split planned but not yet finalized, the key near-term question is whether the product lines will remain consistent for users while each company sharpens its focus—particularly as MetaMask continues moving into payments and tokenized asset access, and the institutional unit deepens its work supporting stablecoin and tokenization initiatives.

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