Private credit giant Apollo Global Management capped withdrawals on Monday. As a group, retail investors were able to take out just 45% of the money they’d originally asked to withdraw. 

Escalating a well-publicized crisis in private equity and credit, Apollo is the sixth major asset manager this year to tell investors they need to slow down their withdrawal requests.

Apollo Debt Solutions, a non-publicly traded credit company with a net asset value of about $15 billion, received redemption requests exceeding 11% of its outstanding shares in the first quarter.

The fund enforced a 5% quarterly cap and returned roughly $730 million of the more than $1.5 billion in requests it received. Redeeming investors received less than half of the full disbursements they requested.

Private credit peers Blackstone and Blue Owl have also been restructuring their withdrawal policies under pressure. Apollo held its 5% withdrawal limit.

Apollo joins Blackstone, BlackRock, Blue Owl Capital, Morgan Stanley, and Cliffwater in gating investor withdrawals this quarter.

The industry sold these funds to individuals as a path to “democratization” of institutional-grade yields.

In fact, private equity (PE) and private credit companies merely democratized purchases by regular people who often didn’t understand that PE managers can choose the valuations of their assets with far less oversight and regulatory obligations than public fund managers.

Because the valuations of these assets occur privately, there’s no real-time price-seeking mechanism to determine the proper valuation of these assets. 

As such, PE managers typically mark-up their assets consistently, quarter after quarter, until they suddenly plunge in value during a crisis or liquidity crunch, such as the current Iran war or AI-induced layoffs.

Because it’s impossible to sell out of these credit and equity instruments on secondary exchanges, investors may only request redemptions quarterly.

However, funds typically cap total withdrawals at 5% of their net asset value per quarter. If more people want out than the cap allows, everyone gets a haircut on their redemption request.

The problem, therefore, is structural. The underlying loans are illiquid and artificially marked-up. The quarterly redemption window created an illusion of liquidity for a small number of withdrawal requests that doesn’t match the immense size of the assets.

This is seen particularly during any type of bank run-type scenario where withdrawal requests arrive en masse.

About 80% of traditional private credit investors are institutions, according to JP Morgan, yet many retail investors have joined them in recent years.

Main Street investors, who piled in chasing yields of 8% to 10%, have far less patience. 

PE giant Blue Owl, for example, drew roughly 40% of its over $300 billion in assets from individuals, according to Fortune.

Blackstone’s Private Credit Fund recorded a record 7.9% redemption request totaling nearly $4 billion. Blackstone actually raised its quarterly cap to 7% and injected $400 million of its own capital to help calm some of that panic. 

Equally alarming, BlackRock’s $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund received $1.2 billion in withdrawal requests, or 9.3% of assets, and paid out $620 million. 

Morgan Stanley’s North Haven Private Income Fund received requests for over 10% of shares and capped payouts at 5%.

Cliffwater’s $33 billion flagship fund saw the worst of it. Investors demanded 14% of shares back. The firm slashed that in half to a 7% limit.

Blue Owl nearly went off the deep end. In February, the firm permanently halted quarterly redemptions from its retail-focused Blue Owl Capital Corp II. 

TLDR

• Ledger completed a $50 million secondary share sale in the fourth quarter of last year.
• An existing investor sold shares, and the company did not raise new capital from the transaction.
• CEO Pascal Gauthier led the deal and said Ledger is preparing for all eventualities.
• Gauthier stated that the company could remain private or pursue a public offering based on market conditions.
• Earlier reports indicated that Ledger explored a potential U.S. IPO at a valuation above $4 billion.

Ledger disclosed a $50 million secondary share sale completed in the fourth quarter of last year. The company confirmed that an existing investor sold shares to provide liquidity. However, CEO Pascal Gauthier said Ledger will keep its public listing options open.

The company structured the deal as a secondary transaction rather than a primary capital raise. As a result, Ledger did not issue new shares or raise fresh funds. Instead, an early investor sold their stake, according to a Bloomberg report. A company spokesperson confirmed the details to The Block.

Gauthier led the transaction and coordinated with the selling shareholder. He told Bloomberg, “My job is to prepare the company for all eventualities.” He added that Ledger could remain private or pursue a public offering depending on market conditions.

Ledger completes $50 million secondary sale in Q4

Ledger executed the $50 million secondary sale during the fourth quarter. The transaction allowed one early investor to exit without affecting the company’s capital structure. The company confirmed that it did not receive proceeds from the share sale.

Bloomberg reported that Gauthier led the deal with the existing shareholder. A Ledger spokesperson later confirmed the transaction details publicly. However, the company did not disclose the identity of the selling investor.

Earlier reports stated that Ledger explored a potential U.S. IPO. Those reports suggested a valuation above $4 billion if the company proceeds. Still, Ledger has not finalized any listing plans.

Ledger last raised primary capital in 2023. That funding round valued the company at about $1.5 billion. The company has not announced a new primary funding round since then.

Ledger expands U.S. presence and product suite

Ledger has increased its focus on the United States in recent months. The company opened a new office in New York to support institutional outreach. It also appointed former Circle executive John Andrews as chief financial officer.

The company stated that the New York office will strengthen ties with banks and asset managers. It also aims to build relationships with other institutional clients. The CFO appointment supports this expansion strategy.

Over the past six months, Ledger has expanded beyond its hardware base. The company launched a next-generation Nano device for retail users. It also rebranded Ledger Live as the Ledger Wallet app.

The updated Ledger Wallet now includes in-app trading features. It also offers portfolio analytics and a redesigned “Earn” section. The company said the Earn section surfaces yield opportunities within the app.

Ledger continues to develop enterprise-focused security tools. These products target institutional clients seeking custody and infrastructure services. The company confirmed these initiatives as part of its broader expansion strategy.

Invesco, one of the world’s largest asset managers with $2.2 trillion in assets under management, will become the investment manager of Superstate’s flagship tokenized U.S. Treasuries fund USTB, the two firms announced Tuesday, March 24.

Under the arrangement, Invesco’s Global Liquidity team — which manages over $200 billion in money market and short-duration assets — will take over day-to-day portfolio management of USTB, while Superstate continues to run the fund’s on-chain infrastructure, including blockchain-based settlement and digital transfer agency services.

Invesco will be the first asset manager to use Superstate’s digital transfer agent rails, per the release. The transition is expected to close in Q2 2026, after which the fund will be renamed the Invesco Short Duration US Government Securities Fund while keeping the USTB ticker, smart contracts, and token address.

USTB, which launched in February 2024, has grown from a proof-of-concept into the sixth largest tokenized treasury product globally, per data from RWAxyz, with over $794 million in total value. The fund directly holds U.S. government securities, with assets tokenized across Ethereum, Solana and Plume, though the vast majority of value is on Ethereum.

The Invesco deal reflects a broader pattern of traditional finance partnership with blockchain native firms like Superstate, rather than building on-chain infrastructure itself. Robert Leshner, Superstate’s CEO and the founder of Compound, called the arrangement “the blueprint for how funds and ETFs will come onchain.”

Superstate expanded beyond tokenized treasuries into tokenized stocks with the launch of its Opening Bell platform last May. More recently, the firm announced direct on-chain equity issuance, enabling SEC-registered public companies to issue new shares directly on Ethereum and Solana.

For Invesco, the deal represents the payoff of a multi-year digital assets buildout the firm says dates back to 2019.

Also today, in similar partnership between a TradFi giant and a major tokenization player, the NYSE named Securitize as its first digital transfer agent to mint blockchain-native stocks and ETFs on its upcoming Digital Trading Platform.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Circle (CRCL) sank about 22%, its worst drop since June 2025, after a tougher CLARITY Act draft threatened to ban stablecoin yield, clashing with booming USDC growth.

Circle Internet Group shares plunged on Tuesday after fresh reports that U.S. lawmakers are tightening a key stablecoin bill to restrict yield and rewards, triggering an aggressive sell-off in one of the market’s highest-beta crypto stocks.

Real-time data shows Circle trading at about $98.71 on the NYSE under ticker CRCL, down $27.93 or 22.05% on the day, with intraday lows near $98.31 after opening at $126.35 and closing Monday at $126.64. Intellectia.ai and other market trackers said the drop reached roughly 18% by midday, marking Circle’s largest one-day percentage decline since June 2025.

Circle’s slump came alongside a broader crypto-equities sell-off, with Coinbase (COIN) down more than 7% to roughly $178.10 and Robinhood (HOOD) off 4.7%, after a draft of the CLARITY Act circulated in Washington. According to summary of the draft, the latest language would “ban yield on stablecoins across exchanges,” effectively prohibiting interest-style rewards on tokens like USDC, a core revenue lever for both Circle and Coinbase. The bill is being viewed as a direct threat to Circle’s stablecoin-payments and rewards infrastructure, calling the proposed limits on yield “critical” to its platform economics and a key driver of Tuesday’s 22% intraday fall.

The price action is striking because it collides with still-strong fundamentals for USDC. Yahoo Finance recently noted that Circle’s stock nearly tripled from its $31 IPO price on June 5, 2025 and at one point almost touched $299, buoyed by optimism around U.S. stablecoin legislation. Circle’s own “Internet Financial System in 2026” report highlighted that USDC in circulation has expanded sharply alongside rising reserve income, while Intellectia.ai cited Baird as telling clients that USDC outstanding averaged $75.2 billion through March 15, up 6% since the firm’s last earnings report. Baird raised its price target on Circle to $138 from $110 and reiterated an Outperform rating, arguing there is a “real path” to new revenue via products like Circle Payments Network and Arc Blockchain.

Reuters reported in February that Circle beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on the back of stronger stablecoin circulation and higher interest income on reserves, sending the stock up nearly 30% in a single session at the time. Yet CRCL now trades below $100, roughly 35% below last week’s peak near $150 and more than 20% off the intraday highs it set earlier in March, even as USDC leads 2026 stablecoin flows and on-chain usage has jumped 600% year-to-date. That disconnect between booming token metrics and a stock that has just erased nearly a fifth of its value in one day captures the core investor dilemma: as long as U.S. lawmakers treat stablecoin rewards as quasi-banking, Circle’s equity seems to know be trading as much on the Hill’s mood as on USDC’s growth curve.

BitGo Prime (BTGO) and Susquehanna Crypto said they are partnering to provide institutional clients with over-the-counter (OTC) access to prediction market trades, using digital assets held on BitGo’s platform as collateral.

The offering targets hedge funds, family offices and high-net-worth investors, allowing them to transact in event-driven contracts without relying on retail platforms or converting crypto holdings into cash, the companies said in a press release Tuesday.

Liquidity will be provided by Susquehanna Crypto, with trades executed bilaterally through BitGo’s OTC desk. The firms said transactions will follow standard derivatives documentation frameworks. Investors use over-the-counter desks mainly to trade large or complex positions without disrupting the market or exposing their strategy.

The structure mirrors how institutions already trade traditional derivatives, where assets remain in custody and positions are collateralized rather than fully funded upfront. In contrast, most prediction market activity today takes place on retail platforms that require pre-funding and offer limited integration with institutional custody systems.

Institutional investors are increasingly using prediction markets as a hedging tool, taking positions on event outcomes, such as elections, policy decisions or macroeconomic shifts, to offset risks in their broader portfolios. By pricing discrete, real-world events, these markets offer a way to hedge tail risks that are difficult to capture with traditional instruments such as equities, rates, or options.

Prediction markets have seen rapid growth, with trading volumes topping roughly $40 billion–$45 billion in 2025, up several-fold year over year as retail participation surged and platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi gained traction.

At the same time, institutional interest has begun to build, with hedge funds and banks increasingly using these markets for price discovery around political and economic events, even as infrastructure and regulatory uncertainty continue to limit broader adoption.

Regulatory fragmentation has also slowed adoption. In the U.S., platforms like Kalshi operate under Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight, while others, such as Polymarket, remain offshore, limiting access for domestic institutional capital. That has pushed many firms to explore alternative structures that better align with existing compliance frameworks.

The companies said the new offering is designed to address those gaps by combining custody, collateral management and OTC execution into a single workflow. By allowing investors to trade against crypto collateral without moving assets off-platform, the model aims to bring prediction markets closer to the infrastructure institutions already use in other asset classes.

Read more: AI agents are quietly rewriting prediction market trading

Balaji Srinivasan’s viral X post argues libertarianism only works with Lee Kuan Yew‑style order, using Singapore to link his crypto, network‑state and U.S. debt theses.

Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis), former chief technology officer of Coinbase and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, posted a terse but widely discussed political and philosophical argument on X on March 24, contending that libertarianism as an ideology can only function when paired with the kind of disciplined, order-driven governance associated with Singapore’s late founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew — a post that generated 60.6K views and 185 reposts within hours of publication.

“Libertarianism in theory requires Lee Kuan Yew in practice,” Srinivasan wrote. “Order and borders are prerequisites for liberty and prosperity. Tolerance and internationalism enables trade and capitalism. Pragmatism about the scope of the state minimizes the scope of the state.” The four-sentence formulation is a deliberate compression of a political philosophy Srinivasan has developed across years of writing and public speaking, and one that sits at the intersection of his views on crypto, network states, and sovereign city models.​

Who Was Lee Kuan Yew — and Why Does It Matter to Crypto?

In a reply to the thread, Srinivasan elaborated, pointing to Singapore as a state that operates across all four quadrants of conventional political mapping. “Singapore does things like HSAs and HDB flats (top left) and also restricts behavior likely to cause ethnic resentment (bottom left),” he wrote. “I think of political paradigms as akin to programming paradigms. Often you use” — with the remainder visible only upon expanding the post — the implication being that pragmatic governance, like good code, selects the best tool for each problem rather than adhering dogmatically to a single ideology.​

The framing echoes ideas Srinivasan has been developing publicly for several years. In December 2025, the Financial Times reported on Srinivasan’s efforts to build self-governing network states and experimental cities — initiatives backed by venture capital and cryptocurrency funding — describing him as a central figure in a movement to create new governance structures outside the traditional nation-state framework.

A Philosopher-Investor With Stakes in the Crypto Future

Srinivasan is not merely a commentator. He has repeatedly argued that the U.S. faces an unfixable $175 trillion in fiscal obligations when future entitlement promises are included, calling it “a national bankruptcy” to be resolved through money printing — a thesis that directly underpins his conviction in Bitcoin and hard-capped digital assets as exit vehicles from fiat debasement. He has also argued that crypto is the foundational currency of AI economies, positioning decentralized financial infrastructure as the rails on which autonomous agents will eventually transact.

That the post garnered more than 60,000 views and drew responses ranging from memes to academic political theory charts suggests Srinivasan has touched a live nerve — not only in crypto circles, but among a broader audience wrestling with the gap between libertarian ideals and the institutions required to make them work.

• Mantle’s DeFi TVL surges, surpassing major rival networks.
• Mantle (MNT) price lags despite strong ecosystem growth.
• The key MNT price levels to watch are the $0.75 resistance and the $0.65 support.

Mantle (MNT) network’s DeFi ecosystem has expanded rapidly and overtaken Sui in total value locked (TVL).

The milestone reflects a sharp increase in capital flowing into Mantle, even as broader market conditions remain uncertain.

In just one month, Mantle’s ecosystem has recorded a significant surge in locked assets, signalling rising confidence from both users and developers.

According to data obtained from DeFiLlama, Mantle’s total value locked in DeFi is currently valued at around $632.17 million, while that of Sui stands at $589.5 million.

This kind of growth is rarely accidental and often points to deeper structural strength within a network.

Mantle’s DeFi expansion

The surge in Mantle’s DeFi activity has been driven by a combination of strategic positioning and ecosystem development.

One major factor behind the growth is its focus on real-world assets, which continues to attract institutional interest.

By integrating traditional financial instruments into blockchain systems, Mantle is positioning itself for long-term adoption rather than short-term speculation.

Another key driver is its connection to centralised exchange infrastructure, which helps onboard liquidity more efficiently.

This hybrid model allows users to move seamlessly between centralised and decentralised finance, reducing friction that often limits adoption.

At the same time, integrations with major DeFi protocols have boosted activity across lending and borrowing markets.

These developments have helped create a steady inflow of capital rather than relying on temporary incentives.

Such consistency is often a sign of a maturing ecosystem rather than a hype-driven spike.

Despite this strong growth, the price of MNT has not followed the same upward trajectory.

This divergence between fundamentals and price action is becoming increasingly noticeable.

MNT price struggles to reflect strong fundamentals

While the network’s DeFi metrics continue to improve, MNT remains significantly below its previous highs.

The token is still trading far from its peak, reflecting broader weakness across the altcoin market.

Short-term price action has also been mixed, with recent declines interrupting what appeared to be a recovery phase.

This suggests that traders are still cautious, even in the face of improving fundamentals.

Market sentiment continues to play a dominant role, especially with altcoins reacting closely to movements in Bitcoin.

Without a strong catalyst, MNT has struggled to build sustained upward momentum.

This creates a situation where the asset shows promise on paper but remains technically fragile.

Such conditions often lead to periods of consolidation before a clearer trend emerges.

Mantle price forecast

The near-term outlook for MNT is defined by a tight range that is likely to determine the next major move.

The $0.75 level stands out as the most important resistance zone, acting as a barrier that bulls have yet to overcome.

A confirmed move above this level would signal a shift in short-term momentum and could open the door for further upside towards $0.8642 and even $0.9223 as projected by CoinLore.

On the downside, the $0.65 level is providing immediate support and remains critical for maintaining stability.

A break below this support would reinforce the current bearish structure and increase the risk of further declines.

For now, the price remains trapped between these two levels, creating a clear decision zone for traders.

Until a breakout or breakdown occurs, the current bounce should be treated with caution.

If buyers manage to push the price above resistance, it could mark the beginning of a recovery phase supported by strong fundamentals.

However, failure to hold support would likely confirm that bearish pressure is still dominant in the short term.