Crypto World
Hyperliquid Strategies doubles HYPE holdings to 29.3M
Hyperliquid Strategies has raised $647 million in equity capital and more than doubled its treasury to 29.3 million HYPE tokens, valued at $1.9 billion at the end of June.
Summary
- Hyperliquid Strategies held 29.3 million HYPE and $149.9 million in cash on June 30.
- The Nasdaq-listed company reported $305.5 million in annual net income and no debt.
- PURR shares gained nearly 18% after the fiscal-year results were released.
- Since December, the firm has spent $773.4 million buying about 16.5 million HYPE.
Hyperliquid Strategies builds a $1.9 billion HYPE treasury
Hyperliquid Strategies said in its fiscal-year results that its HYPE holdings increased from an initial 12.5 million tokens to approximately 29.28 million by June 30. At the token’s fiscal year-end price of $65.04, the position carried a value of $1.90 billion.
Alongside the token reserve, the company reported $149.9 million in cash and cash-like assets, including $12 million held in USDC. Total assets reached $2.06 billion, while stockholders’ equity stood at $1.87 billion.
No debt remained on the balance sheet at the end of the period, according to the results. The company also said substantially all its HYPE tokens were staked and generating income.
“This was the year we built the platform,” CEO David Schamis said. He added that the company had doubled its treasury, launched a validator with Unit, and completed its exit from legacy biotechnology operations.
Operating the Hyperliquid Strategies x Unit validator produced another source of income tied to the network. The company described it as Hyperliquid’s third-largest validator when excluding wallets connected to the Hyper Foundation.
During the 12 months ended June 30, the company recorded $9.5 million in staking revenue and validator commissions. Interest income added $2.7 million, while selling, general, administrative, and research and development expenses totaled $14 million.
Net income reached $305.5 million for the fiscal year. According to the company, $709.9 million in unrealized gains on its HYPE holdings accounted for a large part of the result.
Several charges reduced the benefit of the token appreciation. Hyperliquid Strategies recorded a one-time $169.2 million loss related to HYPE contributed when its business combination closed, a $35.6 million write-off tied to the former Sonnet operation and $183.5 million in deferred tax expenses.
$647 million equity facility funds token purchases
Since the business combination closed on Dec. 2, 2025, Hyperliquid Strategies has deployed $773.4 million to buy approximately 16.5 million HYPE at an average price of $46.77 per token. The purchases brought its total position to 29.3 million tokens as of Aug. 19.
Funding came mainly through a committed equity facility, which generated $646.6 million at an average issue price of $8.70 per PURR share. Issuing stock through the facility provided capital for token purchases but also increased the number of shares outstanding.
Part of the available capital went back into the company’s stock. Hyperliquid Strategies spent $27.8 million repurchasing approximately 5.8 million PURR shares at an average price of $4.80.
After the HYPE purchases and share repurchases, cash stood at $132.6 million on Aug. 19, including $12 million in USDC. The company continued to report no debt.
Earlier accumulation had already made the firm one of the largest identified corporate HYPE holders. In February, crypto.news reported that a five-million-token purchase cost about $129.5 million at an average of $25.90, raising the treasury to 17.6 million HYPE at the time.
The company’s exposure later attracted outside institutions seeking access through a U.S.-listed security. Duquesne Family Office disclosed a $23 million PURR position in its second-quarter Form 13F, giving Stanley Druckenmiller’s investment firm indirect exposure to the token.
Wyoming also reported an indirect HYPE investment through PURR shares in its second-quarter filing. Neither disclosure showed the institutions purchasing or holding HYPE directly.
For U.S. investors, PURR provides stock-market exposure to a company whose asset value and earnings are heavily tied to HYPE. The shares trade on Nasdaq, while options on PURR began trading through the Nasdaq Options Market in March.
Hyperliquid activity supports treasury income
Hyperliquid Strategies said that about $945 million in value accrued to the Hyperliquid ecosystem during the 12 months through June. The figure came from public ecosystem data that the company said it had not independently verified.
According to the results, Hyperliquid’s share of global perpetual futures volume, including centralized exchanges, reached about 9.4% on June 30. By Aug. 23, the protocol accounted for roughly 63% of open interest across decentralized perpetual markets, more than five times the share of its nearest competitor.
Activity expanded beyond crypto perpetual contracts during the summer. Real-world asset markets accounted for more than half of weekly platform volume for two consecutive weeks in July, while open interest across HIP-3 markets exceeded $4 billion for the first time in August.
A recent policy submission has placed that activity within the U.S. regulatory debate. The Hyperliquid Policy Center asked federal regulators to treat qualifying equity perpetual contracts as security futures jointly supervised by the SEC and CFTC. The group said HIP-3 markets had processed more than $480 billion in notional volume over their first 10 months.
President Donald Trump said on Aug. 19 that CFTC Chairman Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States “in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” However, Hyperliquid Strategies stated in a footnote to its results that the CFTC had not granted an application, registration, exemption or rulemaking involving the protocol.
The company also said it was unaware of any pending CFTC process and warned that no U.S. regulatory route could be assured. Hyperliquid users in the United States currently remain unable to access the protocol, according to the Policy Center’s filing.
PURR gains as HYPE extends monthly rally
Following the earnings release, PURR shares rose nearly 18% to around $13.59 during Thursday’s trading session. The move placed the Nasdaq-listed company’s market capitalization near $1.8 billion.
PURR’s multiple to adjusted net asset value, or mNAV, reached about 1.35 times, its highest level since May. The company calculates adjusted net asset value using factors that include cash, its HYPE holdings, and the number of shares outstanding.
HYPE gained about 77% during the quarter ended June 30, while total crypto market capitalization fell approximately 13% over the same period, according to figures included in the company’s release. More recently, the token has risen over 50% during the past month.
By Aug. 23, total open interest on Hyperliquid had climbed to a record of approximately $13 billion. The company also reported that HYPE became one of the five largest constituents in the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index when the benchmark launched on July 21.
“We don’t have good approaches for understanding/overseeing the activity and aims of AI ‘swarms,’” wrote Greenblatt on X. “The difficulty of understanding incidents and overseeing AI agents appears to be growing faster than the rate at which more capable AIs help us with oversight and understanding.”
The independent researchers’ reliance on AI was in part necessitated by the fact that they were a team of only three people, whose investigation at OpenAI was initially planned to last two days, then extended to six after they raised concerns about limited time and incomplete data, according to the report.
OpenAI published its own technical report on the incident separately on Wednesday. The company said in August that it had moved some staff from capabilities work to alignment, and paused some of its training until it could better mitigate what went wrong.
But the independent researchers’ reliance on AI to understand the Hugging Face incident is a microcosm of a bigger trend. Leading AI companies are themselves increasingly relying on AI to monitor their own systems for wrongdoing.
In a long X post, Justin Sun is claiming that he wined and dined a Chinese movie actress — Jing Tian, known in the US for her roles in Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim Uprising — and offered her 30 million yuan ($4.5 million) for her eggs.
He’s now taking her to court in China for taking the 30 million yuan but refusing to provide the eggs unless Sun gave her an additional 20 million yuan ($3 million).
Jing Tian is denying the claims through her studio.
Bizarre story that shouldn’t be public
Regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong, Sun is airing his dirty laundry in public.
Jing has issued a statement, claiming that Sun is attempting to “use [her] reputation as leverage” and that “all matters [involving Sun] will be handled by the court.”
Read more: Justin Sun and WLFI clash on arbitration hearing verdict
According to individuals following the drama through Chinese social media and courts, Sun has moved to ensure that Jing can’t transfer her assets, meaning that if she does lose the case, he’ll be able to get his money back.
Sun mentions that he sent Jing to a five-star resort in Laguna Beach to have her eggs removed and that she left without ever submitting to the process.
After she demanded further payment, according to Sun, he sought out Claude for therapy. The AI told him not to give her the money so he refused.
Needless to say, the court case will look bad for both parties if it goes forward: surrogacy is strictly prohibited in China, and if Sun was attempting to acquire Jing’s eggs and she was willing to give them to him it is not impossible that they could both face fines or jail time.
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Charles Schwab is set to expand the range of cryptocurrencies it offers to retail clients, adding Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK) to its Schwab Crypto platform in the coming months. The move broadens Schwab’s direct crypto trading beyond its initial support for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
Schwab Crypto began rolling out to retail clients in May, allowing customers to trade BTC and ETH through Schwab’s website, mobile app and thinkorswim platform. Schwab has said it intends to add additional digital assets over time, but—beyond naming the three new tokens—it has not provided further details on what else may follow or a more specific schedule.
Key takeaways
- Schwab Crypto will add Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK), expanding beyond BTC and ETH.
- The brokerage started its retail rollout in May, initially offering direct trading for Bitcoin and Ether via Schwab’s existing platforms.
- Schwab charges 0.75% (75 basis points) on the dollar value of each crypto trade.
- Schwab Crypto availability is limited to U.S. states excluding New York and Louisiana, with no offering in territories or internationally.
- The firm’s crypto expansion aligns with a broader push into new trading products, including prediction-style contracts tied to the S&P 500.
Beyond BTC and ETH: Schwab’s next crypto batch
Schwab’s announcement marks another step in the firm’s efforts to integrate digital assets into mainstream brokerage workflows. When the initial rollout began in May, Schwab positioned its service as a direct trading option—bringing crypto into the same environment retail investors use for traditional market exposure.
With SOL, AVAX and LINK now on the roadmap, Schwab is effectively moving from a “two-asset” entry point to a wider selection of widely followed networks and token ecosystems. However, the company has not described any broader framework for how it chooses future listings, nor has it outlined whether additional assets could be added after these three.
For investors, the practical impact is twofold. First, it increases the range of coins that can be traded directly through a familiar brokerage interface rather than via separate exchanges. Second, it potentially changes portfolio construction, because tokens like SOL and AVAX represent different market dynamics compared with BTC and ETH—particularly in terms of sector exposure tied to smart-contract and decentralized application ecosystems.
How Schwab Crypto works—and what it costs
Schwab Crypto operates as a direct crypto trading service offered through Schwab’s banking and brokerage structure. The accounts are provided through Charles Schwab Premier Bank, while affiliated brokerage Charles Schwab & Co. performs certain operational functions on the bank’s behalf.
Pricing is set at 75 basis points, or 0.75%, on the dollar value of each crypto trade. Schwab has also defined geographic limits for customers: the service is available in all U.S. states except New York and Louisiana, and it is not offered in U.S. territories or internationally.
Those restrictions matter because they define who can actually access the expanded token list. Even as Schwab adds new assets, participation will remain constrained by the company’s current regulatory and compliance footprint.
Retail rollout in motion since May
Schwab Crypto’s initial retail availability began with BTC and ETH as Schwab started rolling out the product to customers. According to earlier coverage from Cointelegraph, the exchange-enabled experience was introduced through Schwab’s website, mobile app and thinkorswim platform for a first group of retail clients.
Schwab has continued to describe the crypto offering as something that will grow over time. The inclusion of SOL, AVAX and LINK therefore fits within that stated plan, but the company’s public communications still leave key questions unanswered for traders—especially around whether it will expand to additional tokens beyond those three and when.
Schwab’s parallel push into prediction markets
Schwab’s crypto expansion arrives as the broker prepares additional trading-related offerings. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that Schwab plans to offer prediction contracts tied to the S&P 500 index in partnership with Cboe Global Markets. Those contracts would let clients wager whether the index will close above or below a specified level, with the product reportedly expected to launch within months.
Importantly, Schwab’s reported plan differs from platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which are known for broader prediction markets. The Journal report suggested that Schwab’s initial contracts would be limited to index outcomes rather than expanding immediately into other event categories.
From an industry standpoint, the connection is less about crypto specifically and more about how traditional brokerage firms are expanding beyond standard asset classes. If Schwab follows through on both the multi-asset crypto trading roadmap and prediction-style contracts, it signals a broader effort to develop new “trading products” that can sit alongside conventional investments—potentially drawing investor attention to alternative ways of positioning risk and expectations.
What to watch next
Schwab hasn’t provided a precise timetable for when SOL, AVAX and LINK will go live, so investors should watch for official platform updates and client notifications once trading availability is enabled. More broadly, the bigger question is whether Schwab will continue expanding its crypto roster after these three tokens—and how its evolving product menu (from crypto to prediction contracts) reshapes participation for retail traders in the U.S.
Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded toward $81,000 around Thursday’s Wall Street open as Nvidia earnings boosted US stocks.
Key points:
- Bitcoin reclaims $80,000 as $96.2 billion Nvidia earnings provide a boost to crypto and US equities.
- Expectations are running high ahead of Fed chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote speech at the Jackson Hole economic symposium on Friday.
- Bitcoin analysis sees sell-side pressure lessening above $82,000 ahead of the $6.6 billion August options expiry.
Nvidia earnings beat sends stocks, crypto higher
Data from TradingView showed new local highs of $80,808 for BTC/USD, with bulls again seeking to cement the $80,000 mark as support.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Nvidia surprised to the upside after Wednesday trading, posting Q2 earnings of $96.2 billion — nearly $4 billion more than expected. On Thursday, its stock surged more than 9% and its market cap gained over $400 billion, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index 1% higher at the time of writing.
“Nvidia is now on track to post the 3rd largest single-day market cap gain by a stock in history,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter wrote in a reaction on X.
Nvidia stock one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Markets are now turning to the US Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole economic symposium, already underway, ahead of chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote speech on Friday. Hopes are that Warsh, known for being tight-lipped on future policy shifts, will nonetheless tame market uncertainty amid mixed US inflation data and volatile government bond yields.
“Chairman Warsh’s address is poised to be extremely key given the jump in long-term interest rates and high uncertainty over the path of inflation and Fed’s reaction function going forward,” Nationwide chief US economist Kathy Bostjancic said, quoted by CNBC.
Analyst sees Bitcoin sell wall thinning ahead of options expiry
Crypto liquidations edged higher at around $417 million over 24 hours, per data from CoinGlass, after Bitcoin buyers chipped away at an area of significant ask liquidity.
Related: BTC RSI bullish divergence draws 2022 comparisons as analysis weighs new price trend
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that this zone extended up to $86,000, creating friction for further price upside.
Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
Commenting, analyst David Eng described this liquidity wall as “weakening” ahead of Friday’s $6.58 billion (81,700 BTC) August options expiry event on crypto exchange Deribit.
“BTC is compressed under resistance just as the derivatives structure holding it there is about to weaken. Break $82K and the path to $85K+ gets much cleaner,” he told X followers.
Bitcoin options open interest by expiry date. Source: Deribit
Bitcoin options expiry events are when options contracts end, allowing traders to buy or sell BTC for a specific price. This can spark increased market volatility, with price gravitating toward a particular strike price.
[PRESS RELEASE – Singapore, Singapore, August 27th, 2026]
TermMax, a fixed-rate lending protocol built by Term Structure Labs, announced on August 26 that it has received a strategic investment from YZi Labs. Terms were not disclosed.
TermMax was selected for YZi Labs’ EASY Residency Season 3 and has raised more than $8 million to date. Its earlier backers include Cumberland DRW — which led the 2023 seed round — HashKey Capital, Decima Fund, Longling Capital and MZ Web3 Fund.
The protocol has been live on mainnet since April 2025 and now runs across 10 EVM-compatible chains, with 60 fixed-rate markets, 40 strategy vaults, tens of millions of dollars in total value locked and more than 1.5 million registered wallets. Keyrock, Hardcore Labs, Edge Capital and Origami serve as Curators, managing strategy vaults on the protocol. The $TMX token completed its TGE on August 25.
The investor’s own public position points to the gap this investment is meant to fill. In an August 14 post describing what it wants to see built, YZi Labs wrote that tokenized blue-chip equities have reached meaningful volume, but that the financial application layer around them — credit, collateral management, risk transfer and structured products — remains underdeveloped, and that options and other risk-transfer products in particular remain conspicuously absent.
YZi Labs placed this investment precisely where that gap sits.
“When I left banking, there were a few hundred billion dollars of assets sitting on-chain without a single directly observable interest rate curve between them. In traditional markets, that would be unheard of. That is what made me decide to build this infrastructure on-chain.” – Jerry Li, Co-founder and CEO, TermMax.
Tokenized equities are the fastest-growing asset class on-chain, now at $2.48 billion, with holder count up 165% in 30 days.
TermMax integrated Ondo Global Markets in January 2026 to launch the first fixed-rate borrowing market to accept tokenized U.S. equities as collateral, then added Binance’s bStock. In August it went live on Robinhood Chain, where QQQ, SPY and NVDA can be posted against USDG.
But financing is only half of what tokenized equities need. Nearly all of this year’s tokenized-equity infrastructure has gone into perpetual futures, and almost none into options.
TermMax Alpha is where that changes: physical delivery options, with no liquidation before expiry. The conversion price is fixed when the position is opened, and the position is settled by physical delivery at expiry. A directionally correct position therefore cannot be knocked out by a few minutes of volatile trading in thin liquidity — the failure mode that makes perpetuals unsuitable at the illiquid end of tokenized equities.
This no-liquidation design rests on a choice running through the whole protocol: when liquidation does happen, it settles by physical delivery, with collateral delivered directly to the lender rather than sold into the market. The usual assumption — that collateral can be sold at fair value on demand — holds for ETH and fails for a tokenized equity with a few million dollars of depth.
On the institutional side, TermPrime completed its first live trade on Canton Network at the end of June and has since grown its counterparty network to nine institutions.
TermMax runs an early validator node on Canton, and TermPrime is ready to support lending business for institutions there through open markets.
TermMax holds a DeFiSafety Process Quality Review score of 93%, matching Aave V3.
“What we set out to do is not to teach traditional institutions DeFi. It is to let DeFi grow into something professional enough to genuinely serve finance.” – Jerry Li, Co-founder and CEO, TermMax.
What TermMax wants to be is not another lending protocol, but the on-chain interest rate curve itself.
About TermMax
TermMax is a fixed-rate, fixed-term borrowing and lending marketplace built by Term Structure Labs, live on mainnet since April 2025 and deployed across 10 EVM-compatible chains, where it runs 60 fixed-rate markets and 40 strategy vaults. The protocol splits debt into three tradable tokens: FT (principal), XT (interest and option value) and GT (an ERC-721 receipt for leveraged positions). Professional Curators set target APR ranges across isolated markets and manage strategy vaults, and liquidations settle by physical delivery of collateral. Co-founder and CEO Jerry Li has 25 years in global financial markets and served as Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, running fixed income and FX for Greater China.
Website: https://ts.finance/
About YZi Labs
YZi Labs manages over $10 billion in assets globally. Our investment philosophy emphasizes impact first — we believe that meaningful returns will naturally follow. We invest in ventures at every stage, prioritizing those with solid fundamentals in Web3, AI, and biotech. YZi Labs’ portfolio covers over 300 projects from over 25 countries across six continents. Some notable portfolios include Trust Wallet, CoinMarketCap, Polygon, Injective, Ethena, SafePal Wallet, Better Payment Network, Aster, XAI, and more. More than 65 of YZi Labs’ portfolio companies have gone through our incubation program, EASY Residency. For more information, follow YZi Labs on X (@yzilabs).
The post YZi Labs Backs TermMax to Advance On-Chain Bond Market Infrastructure appeared first on CryptoPotato.
An estimated $390 billion in stablecoin payments took place in 2025, according to McKinsey and Artemis. But inside this market, AI agents are creating an interesting kind of payment activity.
Research shows that agents completed more than 176 million on-chain transactions worth over $73 million between May 2025 and April 2026. But most of them were very small transactions.
The median x402 payment was between $0.01 and $0.10, while 76% of transactions fell below the $0.30 fixed-fee threshold for card payments. USDC accounted for 98.6% of settlements.
Although the transaction amounts are small, the frequency of AI agentic payments is staggering — 173 million.
Software can buy data, compute and other services hundreds or thousands of times without the human behaviors that define conventional commerce. For example, opening an account, entering card details, approving an invoice or waiting until the next banking day.
XDC Network believes this offers an early glimpse of how more payments could work in future.
“Money has always moved as fast as the slowest part of the process, like a bank, a clearinghouse, or normal business hours,” Atul Khekade, Co-Founder of XDC Network, told BeInCrypto. “Agents just show what happens when you get rid of those delays. Payments stop being something you wait around for and turn into a continuous process happening in the background at the speed of the underlying network.”
Machine Payments
Software can transact continuously. An AI service may need a weather feed for one calculation, a market-price API several seconds later, and compute resources immediately afterward.
Each interaction can carry its own price, turning what might once have been a monthly subscription or invoice into thousands of individual transactions.
That helps explain why Keyrock found activity spread across such a large population of AI agents and service directories. The report found more than 104,000 agents registered across at least 15 directories by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
The economics favor systems that can handle payments measured in cents or fractions of a cent. The payments industry is already preparing:
- Stripe launched the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, in March. The open standard allows agents and services to coordinate micropayments and recurring payments programmatically, with Stripe supporting stablecoins as well as traditional payment methods;
- Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, or AP2, concentrates on proving user authorization and establishing an auditable record of what an agent was permitted to buy. Google transferred the protocol to the FIDO Alliance in April and added support for autonomous “Human Not Present” transactions;
- Cloudflare entered the market in August with Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay, giving agents identities and programmable spending controls. Its payment tools support both x402 and MPP;
- Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines service, announced in June, is designed for continuous, high-frequency and low-value payments, with settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. More than 30 companies, including Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare and Tempo, were named among its initial supporters.
Invisible Settlement
XDC’s contribution to this market is XDCAI.tech, which uses the open x402 protocol originally introduced by Coinbase.
x402 turns the HTTP ‘402 Payment Required’ response into a payment mechanism. An agent requests a resource, receives its price, authorizes the payment, and repeats the request with proof of payment. The process allows software to purchase an API call or another digital service within the same interaction.
Coinbase introduced the protocol in May 2025, and its use has since expanded through integrations with companies including AWS.
XDC AI applies x402 to USDC settlement on XDC Network. Users fund a smart wallet with USDC and establish an on-chain spending limit. An agent can then pay an x402-enabled service per request. EIP-3009 allows the payment to be signed off-chain while a relayer covers the network fee, leaving the agent itself to hold and spend USDC.
The system can also connect to AI applications through MCP or a command-line interface, allowing agents running through products including ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Codex to discover and pay for services.
XDC already had much of the underlying settlement infrastructure in place. Native USDC and Circle’s CCTP went live on XDC in September 2025.
XDC lists two-second block times, six-second finality, and transaction costs around $0.00001, characteristics aimed at high-volume financial applications.
Invoices Could Disappear
Invoices package several functions together. They communicate what is owed, set payment terms, and provide records for reconciliation and accounting. Many businesses then wait days or weeks for the actual transfer to arrive.
Software dealing with software can compress part of that cycle. A service can state its price in a machine-readable format, an authorized agent can evaluate the request, and payment can be settled immediately. Transaction records can then feed directly into treasury and accounting systems.
This comes as agents are taking on increasing responsibility for procurement, cloud spending, portfolio management, and recurring commercial obligations. A company could eventually give an agent a budget and a set of rules, then allow it to buy compute when demand rises, renew services, pay suppliers or rebalance liquidity within those boundaries.
XDC therefore sees today’s one-cent API payment as the smallest version of something much larger.
The card networks see it too. Visa’s stablecoin settlement program reached a $7 billion annualized run rate in April after growing 50% quarter-over-quarter and expanding to nine blockchains. Mastercard announced stablecoin settlement across networks including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Tempo and XRPL in June.
The competition is consequently broader than blockchain networks attempting to replace card companies. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, Cloudflare and blockchain developers are increasingly building interoperable pieces of the same machine-commerce market.
The Other Half of the Problem
Greater autonomy raises questions about permission and accountability.
An agent paying 3 cents per API request incurs limited financial exposure. However, an agent managing a corporate treasury or procurement budget needs controls around authorization, counterparties, limits, and auditability, which is why the major platforms are converging on different pieces of the same problem. This explains why:
- Google has concentrated on cryptographic mandates that record what a user authorized;
- Cloudflare lets owners impose spending caps and approved merchant lists;
- Mastercard’s system combines agent credentials with permissioning rules;
- XDC AI places spending limits at the wallet level
Those controls determine how quickly agentic payments graduate from micropayments into larger financial relationships.
They also temper the idea that cards and invoices disappear on a fixed timetable. Card networks are already adapting their products for autonomous software, while invoices serve legal, tax, credit and accounting functions that extend beyond transferring funds.
XDC believes that payment and service delivery can happen almost simultaneously: APIs, data, compute, digital services and other machine-to-machine transactions. Success there could establish the habits and technical standards that would later be used for larger transactions.
Khekade expects the terminology itself to disappear as the technology becomes commonplace.
“In 5 years nobody will describe this as agentic payments, the same way nobody today calls a wire transfer an internet payment,” he said. “It will just be how value moves. The interesting question is not whether that happens, it is which networks were actually built for it versus which ones bolted it on afterward.”
The post XDC Says AI Agents Could Upend Invoices and Card Payments appeared first on BeInCrypto.
One analyst expects Warsh to take a tough line on inflation, but still sees the Fed holding off on rate hikes until at least after the November mid-term elections.
Ripple Prime, the multi-asset prime brokerage unit of Ripple, has rolled out a “Delta One” service aimed at institutional investors—bringing US equity derivatives into its existing platform alongside foreign exchange, fixed income and digital assets. The launch is positioned as an expansion of how clients can gain exposure to underlying assets through derivatives rather than direct ownership.
In a Thursday announcement, Ripple Prime said the new offering enables clients to execute total return swaps tied to US-listed equities and indexes, as well as digital assets. Total return swaps are designed to deliver the economic returns of an asset over a specified period without requiring the investor to hold the underlying instrument.
Key takeaways
- Ripple Prime’s new Delta One service uses total return swaps to provide exposure to US-listed equities and indexes, plus digital assets.
- The product targets hedge funds, asset managers, and other financial institutions that need derivative-based exposure rather than direct ownership.
- Ripple Prime says clients can use a single counterparty and cross-margin positions across the supported asset classes.
- Ripple Prime said it operates with more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital, supporting its balance-sheet role as a prime brokerage.
- The initiative follows recent capital-raising steps, including senior unsecured notes and a credit facility described in earlier coverage.
A prime brokerage step into equity-linked derivatives
Delta One products are often used by institutions to simplify portfolio implementation and risk management. Instead of buying or shorting the underlying assets, investors can gain exposure through swap structures that track the total return performance of a reference asset. Ripple Prime’s announcement extends that model to US equity derivatives, adding equities and indexes to the asset classes it already supports.
The company emphasized operational and risk-management benefits for clients. According to the announcement, clients can execute these trades with a single counterparty and cross-margin exposures across the supported asset categories. The “around the clock” framing suggests Ripple Prime is tailoring the service for continuous trading environments, which matters for institutions managing global schedules and hedging workflows.
What Ripple says the service is designed to solve
Ripple Prime said the Delta One business is aimed at hedge funds, asset managers and other financial institutions. That target customer base typically values derivatives for their flexibility—especially when institutions want to express views quickly, rebalance frequently, or hedge exposures across different markets.
Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel called the launch “an important development” and described it as a natural extension of the platform the company has built. While the announcement does not elaborate on specific contract terms or asset universe breadth, the core idea—total return swaps linked to US equities and indexes and digital assets—signals a broader attempt to unify trading and settlement workflows under one prime brokerage relationship.
Capital and balance sheet expansion behind the rollout
Prime brokerage and clearing activities rely heavily on capital, risk controls and regulatory capacity. Ripple Prime said it has more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital. It also described the platform’s existing coverage as spanning foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income and digital assets—suggesting the Delta One product is being positioned inside a multi-asset ecosystem rather than as a standalone equity-only business.
The Delta One launch follows earlier financing steps intended to support growth. Earlier in August, Ripple Prime closed a $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes, according to prior coverage from Cointelegraph (see Ripple raises $275m for US prime brokerage). In May, it secured a $200 million credit facility from funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance, as noted in earlier Cointelegraph reporting (see Ripple Prime secures $200m credit facility).
For investors and trading desks, these kinds of funding moves can be relevant because they affect the prime broker’s ability to take on counterparty exposure, expand lending or financing capacity, and support additional derivative activity. The Delta One service itself is not described as a replacement for other prime brokerage lines; rather, it appears to extend the same institutional infrastructure into equity-linked swap execution.
From Hidden Road to Ripple Prime: building toward a unified platform
Ripple Prime, as a brand and business unit, was created after Ripple completed its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road in October 2025 and rebranded the operation. That background matters because it explains how Ripple’s prime brokerage push moved from an acquired platform into a broader multi-asset offering.
The Delta One launch also reflects a broader trend in institutional crypto infrastructure: major players are trying to expand beyond spot and custody into regulated market-making and derivatives access. By linking US equity references and digital assets through total return swaps, Ripple Prime is attempting to make it easier for traditional investors to integrate crypto exposures into derivative-led strategies—potentially lowering friction for portfolios that already rely on cross-asset hedging.
Still, the announcement leaves open questions that institutions may want to clarify before onboarding—such as the scope of eligible underlying equities, index references, settlement mechanics, and how the cross-margin model behaves across more complex portfolios. Those details typically determine how smoothly a new Delta One offering fits into an institution’s existing risk and collateral processes.
What to watch next
Institutional demand for Delta One depends on product breadth, execution quality and risk/collateral mechanics. After Ripple Prime’s US equity derivatives expansion, market participants are likely to watch how quickly the service scales across clients and asset classes—and whether Ripple Prime continues adding reference assets or related hedging tools as it builds out the platform.
An Garda Síochána told TIME the force does not comment or speculate on operational matters.
Amid much discussion over the trip and the expected protests, here’s what we know so far.
Security concerns mount as protests loom
Planning is already underway for various protests, with one of the most significant demonstrations set to take place in Ireland’s capital, Dublin.
The protest is scheduled to start on Sept. 12 at the Garden of Remembrance, a public memorial to those who “gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom.”
Sara O’Rourke of the Irish Neutrality League told the Irish Times that the “protest will be under the banner of no welcome for Trump.”
Protest organizers said they expect a “big” but “safe event,” which they described as a “family-friendly, peaceful protest.”
Paul Murphy of the People Before Profit-Solidarity party said he is expecting a “massive protest” which will have “a broad coalition with a basic theme of no welcome for Trump.”
Ethena (ENA) jumped 11% after its Foundation bought out seed investors who sold after the October 2025 peak. The move capped a near-100% monthly rally as an ENA buyback vote went live.
The token has carried the same weight since launch, with early investor tokens unlocking every month. That supply drip just ended.
Ethena Buys Out Investors Who Sold After the Peak
The Ethena Foundation announced the deal Thursday, indicating that they spent the past two weeks buying locked tokens directly from early backers. Each was originally allocated more than 0.25% of ENA supply.
The Foundation split those backers into two groups:
- Investors who sold any ENA after the October 10, 2025, peak had their locked tokens bought out.
Only one wallet said no.
- Investors who never sold got a full-price offer.
None accepted.
“As a result, the investors who have been selling into the market during the relevant time frame now hold no unvested ENA which could be sold into the market in the future,” the Foundation wrote in its blog.
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The rest of the investor calendar now ends early. All remaining investor tokens unlock on October 5, 2026, and the monthly calendar disappears. Team tokens stay locked on their original schedules. Roughly 12% of supply stays locked, all of it team, ecosystem, and Foundation holdings.
The pressure this fixes was real. Ethena released 171.88 million tokens in early August alone. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought 9.05 million ENA days before that release.
One large holder sits outside the deal. StablecoinX, an ENA treasury company, still holds about 20% of supply under a separate lockup disclosed in SEC filings.
ENA Buyback Vote Ties the Fee Switch to USDe Growth
The fee switch is the second piece. A Snapshot governance vote, open through September 2, would send protocol revenue into ENA purchases. Ethena’s Risk Committee has already approved the design.
There is a catch. Buybacks only start once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. At that level, 5% of protocol revenue buys ENA. The share scales up to 20% if supply reaches $20 billion.
USDe sits near $4.6 billion today, down from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion. So the switch stays off until supply climbs roughly $3 billion. The Foundation says it wants USDe above $100 billion within five years.
Once that first threshold hits, 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation funds the purchases. Each buy will be tracked on Ethena’s public dashboard.
The playbook has precedent. Uniswap’s fee switch proposal sent UNI to a two-month high last November.
Ethena also addressed a second old doubt. A Master Framework Agreement, due in October, hands protocol intellectual property and residual value to tokenholders. Ethena Labs equity investors get neither. The Foundation says Labs equity has never taken a dollar of protocol revenue.
Will the ENA Rally Hold?
ENA trades near $0.155 after gaining 11% in 24 hours. The token is up 56.5% in a week and 84.6% over the past 30 days. Its market cap stands near $1.52 billion.
The bull case is simple. The sellers are gone, the unlock calendar dies in October, and a buyback pipeline is on the ballot. The bear case is just as clean. Buybacks stay off until USDe nearly doubles, and StablecoinX’s 20% stake sits outside the deal.
The Snapshot vote still needs quorum. From there, the signal to watch is USDe supply. Every dollar it climbs brings the ENA buyback switch closer.
The post Ethena Just Paid Its Early Investors to Exit as ENA Nears 100% Rally appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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