Crypto World
Hyperliquid unlocked $820 million in HYPE tokens. Here is why that number is misleading.
Every HYPE unlock triggers the same panic cycle. Every time, the sellers never show up. The September batch will probably be no different, and the data from previous unlocks explains exactly why.
Summary
- Hyperliquid released approximately 9.92 million HYPE tokens on September 6, valued at roughly $820 million at the prevailing market price of $82.60 per token.
- Historical data from HYPE unlocks shows that the vast majority of newly unlocked tokens are not sold. After the March 2026 unlock, on-chain data indicated that only about 1.75% of unlocked supply reached exchanges within the first 30 days.
- HYPE has gained more than 50% since its mid-August breakout from the $55 to $60 range, reaching an all-time high of $88.06, with price holding above $80 through multiple unlock events in recent months.
- The Assistance Fund has burned 48.42 million HYPE through automated buybacks funded by 99% of eligible trading fees, permanently removing 4.84% of maximum supply.
- Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed treasury company, held 29.3 million HYPE worth $1.9 billion as of June 30 and expanded its equity facility to $2.5 billion for potential additional purchases.
Crypto Twitter lit up on September 6. The headline was irresistible: Hyperliquid just unlocked $820 million worth of HYPE tokens, adding nearly 10 million tokens to the available supply in a single batch. On paper, that sounds like a wall of sell pressure about to crush the price. Traders who have been burned by unlock dumps on other tokens immediately started hedging, opening short positions, and posting dire warnings about what comes next.
They are almost certainly wrong. And the reason they are wrong tells you something important about how HYPE actually works, how token unlocks function in practice, and why the market keeps getting smarter about separating real supply pressure from headline noise.
The $820 million number is technically correct and practically meaningless
The September 6 unlock released 9.92 million HYPE tokens from their vesting contracts. At the time, HYPE was trading around $82.60, which puts the theoretical market value of those tokens at roughly $820 million. That is the number that landed in every headline and every panicked tweet.
But theoretical value and actual sell pressure are wildly different things.
An unlock does not mean that 9.92 million tokens hit the open market. It means those tokens become claimable by their holders. The people receiving vested HYPE are not random speculators looking to dump at the first opportunity. They are core contributors, early team members, and ecosystem participants who have been building on Hyperliquid for years. Most of them have strong reasons to hold.
Think about it from their perspective. They received HYPE allocations when the token was worth single digits. They have watched it climb to $82. They are sitting on life-changing gains. But they also know the protocol is growing faster than almost anything else in DeFi. Hyperliquid processes more than $4 billion in daily trading volume. The Assistance Fund is burning tokens worth $1 million per day. A Nasdaq-listed company is spending hundreds of millions to accumulate their token. Why would they sell now?
The data says they do not.
What actually happened after previous unlocks
The best predictor of unlock behavior is unlock behavior. And HYPE has given us enough data points to see a clear pattern.
After the March 2026 unlock, which released a comparable batch of tokens, blockchain analysts tracked the movement of newly unlocked HYPE for 30 days. According to on-chain data aggregated by Arkham Intelligence and independent researchers, approximately 1.75% of the unlocked tokens moved to exchange deposit addresses within the first month.
Read that number again. 1.75%.
Out of hundreds of millions of dollars in theoretical unlock value, the actual sell pressure amounted to a tiny fraction. Most recipients left their tokens untouched. Some staked them. Some moved them to new wallets for tax or security reasons. But the panic-inducing “massive supply dump” that the headlines predicted simply did not happen.
The August 29 unlock provided even more recent evidence. That batch was larger, releasing approximately 14.18 million HYPE tokens valued at roughly $1.2 billion near the all-time high of $86.71. The immediate price reaction was a pullback to around $81, which is exactly the kind of dip that gets called a “crash” in breathless Twitter threads. Within days, HYPE was trading back above $85. The pullback represented normal profit-taking in a token that had just rallied 50% in a month, not a structural supply crisis.
This pattern repeats across the entire unlock history. Each time, the headlines scream about billions in new supply. Each time, the actual selling is minimal. Each time, the price recovers.
Why unlock panic consistently overstates the real impact
The gap between perceived and actual unlock impact comes down to three factors that most market commentary ignores.
First, vesting recipients are not the same as traders. When a centralized exchange lists a new token and airdrop recipients rush to sell, that creates genuine supply pressure because those holders were never committed to the project. Vesting recipients are different. They earned their tokens through years of work or early commitment. Their time preference is fundamentally different from someone who received a free airdrop.
Second, HYPE has structural demand that absorbs new supply before it can create meaningful price impact. The Assistance Fund buyback mechanism runs continuously, spending approximately $1 million per day on open-market HYPE purchases. That is $30 million per month in automated buying pressure that does not stop for unlocks, does not get scared by headlines, and does not negotiate its entry price. The buyback alone could absorb a substantial portion of any actual selling from unlock recipients.
Third, the market has learned. The first few HYPE unlocks may have caused genuine uncertainty, but after multiple cycles where the feared dump failed to materialize, sophisticated traders and market makers now treat unlock events as potential buying opportunities rather than sell signals. The informational content of an unlock event in HYPE is close to zero because the pattern has been so consistent.
This is not unique to HYPE. Research across the broader crypto market shows that large-cap tokens with strong fundamentals tend to absorb unlock supply more efficiently over time. The difference is that HYPE has one of the most aggressive built-in demand mechanisms in the industry, which narrows the window for any sell pressure to have lasting impact.
The Assistance Fund is the real story here
While traders obsess over token unlocks, the Assistance Fund quietly does the opposite of an unlock every single day.
Hyperliquid’s protocol directs 99% of eligible trading fees into the Assistance Fund, which uses those fees to buy HYPE on the open market. The purchased tokens are then burned, permanently removed from supply. No one can ever sell those tokens again. They are gone.
The numbers are staggering. By September 6, cumulative burns had reached 48.42 million HYPE tokens. That is 4.84% of the original maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, permanently erased. At current prices, the burned supply would be worth more than $4 billion.
To put that in perspective, the September 6 unlock released 9.92 million tokens. The Assistance Fund has removed 48.42 million tokens. The net effect of the buyback program outweighs this unlock by nearly five to one.
And the burn rate is accelerating. When Hyperliquid was processing lower volumes in early 2025, daily buybacks ran around $500,000. By mid-2026, they had doubled to roughly $1 million per day. In peak weeks, single-day buybacks have reached $3.97 million. The mechanism scales directly with trading volume, and Hyperliquid dominates crypto buyback activity, accounting for nearly 90% of all tracked token repurchases in 2026 alongside Pump.fun.
The annualized buyback rate runs near 7% of HYPE’s market capitalization. Compare that to Ethereum’s burn rate, BNB’s quarterly burns at roughly 20% of profits, or Solana’s 50% priority fee burn. HYPE’s ratio is four to five times higher than any comparable large-cap crypto asset.
This is the number that matters far more than any unlock. The protocol is eating its own supply faster than vesting events can replenish it.
Token unlocks across crypto: the pattern is clear
HYPE is not the only token that survives unlock events better than expected, but it is one of the clearest examples.
Look at Solana. SOL went through massive unlock periods in 2021 and 2022, with billions of dollars in tokens becoming available. The short-term price action was choppy, but the long-term trend was determined by network adoption and ecosystem growth, not by unlock schedules. SOL went from under $20 to over $250 because people built useful things on it, not because its vesting schedule was perfectly smooth.
Arbitrum saw similar dynamics. ARB experienced large unlock events that triggered temporary volatility, but the tokens that actually reached exchanges represented a small fraction of the theoretical total. Optimism’s OP token followed the same pattern. The market has a remarkably consistent response to unlocks: brief uncertainty, minimal actual selling, and a return to the prevailing trend within days or weeks.
The tokens that get destroyed by unlocks tend to share specific characteristics. They lack genuine revenue or usage. Their holders received tokens through airdrops or speculative farming rather than long-term vesting. Their unlock schedules release huge percentages of total supply at once. And they have no structural demand mechanism to absorb new supply.
HYPE has none of those weaknesses. The protocol generates real revenue. The holders are long-term committed. The unlock percentages are manageable. And the Assistance Fund provides constant demand.
Hyperliquid Strategies adds another layer of demand
Beyond the Assistance Fund, there is an entirely separate source of HYPE demand that most unlock analysis ignores.
Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed company that operates as a corporate treasury vehicle for HYPE, held 29.3 million tokens worth $1.9 billion as of June 30, 2026. Since its business combination closed in December 2025, the company has spent $773.4 million buying approximately 16.5 million HYPE at an average price of $46.77.
On September 1, Hyperliquid Strategies expanded its equity facility with Chardan Capital Markets from $1 billion to $2.5 billion. The facility allows the company to sell PURR shares and use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including HYPE purchases. CEO David Schamis said the company was approaching the original $1 billion limit and needed additional capacity.
This means there is a publicly traded company with $2.5 billion in potential firepower that has explicitly stated its intention to buy more HYPE. That company is already one of the largest identified holders. Its validator is the third largest on the network excluding Hyper Foundation wallets. Its shares are owned by institutional investors including Duquesne Family Office, Stanley Druckenmiller’s firm, which disclosed a $23 million PURR position.
The existence of Hyperliquid Strategies creates an asymmetric dynamic around unlock events. If newly unlocked tokens hit the market and push the price down, Hyperliquid Strategies has both the mandate and the capital to buy the dip. Unlock sellers are selling into a bid from a company with billions in available capacity. That is not a fair fight.
The institutional momentum keeps building
The unlock narrative misses the forest for the trees. While headline writers count newly released tokens, the actual trajectory of Hyperliquid is pointing sharply upward.
In the past month alone, several developments have reinforced the institutional case for HYPE. Hyperliquid Labs and Kraken parent Payward entered advanced talks to offer HYPE-linked perpetual futures to U.S. traders through CFTC-regulated exchange Bitnomial, according to Bloomberg. CME Group launched crypto indexes that include HYPE alongside BNB, XRP, and Solana. The Hyperliquid Policy Center asked the SEC and CFTC to create a framework for equity perpetuals, the first formal step toward bringing an entirely new asset class under regulatory oversight.
President Trump himself said during an August 19 White House meeting that the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a compliant fashion. A former SEC senior counsel estimated the regulatory process could take 10 to 12 months but noted that the path appeared genuinely underway.
None of this is priced into the unlock math. An unlock analysis that looks only at new supply without considering the demand from a Nasdaq-listed treasury company, a potential U.S. regulated futures listing, and CME-level institutional recognition is measuring one side of the equation and ignoring the other.
The HIP-3 equity perpetuals markets processed more than $480 billion in cumulative notional volume during their first 10 months. HIP-4 outcome markets tripled their volume after opening to outside deployers. Hyperliquid is building genuine product-market fit across multiple verticals while the market argues about whether a 9.92 million token unlock will crash the price.
How the vesting schedule actually works
Understanding why unlocks have minimal impact requires understanding the mechanics of HYPE vesting.
HYPE’s maximum supply is 1 billion tokens. The initial distribution allocated 31% to a genesis airdrop in November 2024, with the remainder split among future emissions, core contributors, and the Hyper Foundation. Core contributor tokens vest over multiple years with periodic cliff unlocks rather than daily linear vesting.
This structure means tokens do not trickle into the market continuously. They become available in discrete batches at scheduled intervals, which is what creates the headline-generating moments. But the batch structure also means that holders who want to sell have to make a conscious decision to claim and transfer their tokens. Passive holders, which is most of them, simply leave tokens unclaimed.
The September 6 batch of 9.92 million tokens represents approximately 0.99% of maximum supply. In a token with $19.2 billion in circulating market capitalization and $865 million in 24-hour trading volume, a 1% supply increase is manageable even if every single token were sold immediately. And they will not be sold immediately.
The vesting schedule will continue producing periodic unlocks for years. Each one will generate the same headlines. And each one will likely produce the same result: a brief moment of uncertainty, minimal actual selling, and a return to the underlying trend determined by protocol fundamentals.
What to watch
There are legitimate risks around token unlocks, and anyone holding HYPE should track them honestly rather than dismissing all supply concerns.
On-chain claim rates in the first 72 hours. The 1.75% claim rate after the March unlock is the benchmark. If September’s claim rate jumps to 5% or higher, that would signal a genuine change in holder behavior and warrant closer attention.
Assistance Fund buyback volume. The Fund’s daily purchases act as a natural floor under the price. If protocol revenue drops and daily buybacks fall below $500,000, the absorption capacity weakens. Track the Onchain Lens data for the Assistance Fund wallet.
Hyperliquid Strategies purchasing activity. The company’s SEC filings disclose HYPE acquisitions. If Hyperliquid Strategies pauses buying or signals a change in strategy, the institutional demand pillar weakens.
Exchange deposit flows from unlock wallets. Arkham Intelligence and similar platforms track whether newly unlocked tokens move to exchange deposit addresses. This is the single best real-time indicator of actual sell intent.
Broader market conditions. HYPE does not trade in a vacuum. If Bitcoin enters a sharp correction and risk assets sell off broadly, unlock sellers could amplify the downside. The unlock itself is not the risk. The unlock coinciding with external pressure is.
Daily trading volume relative to unlock size. With $865 million in daily volume, the market can absorb significant selling. If volume drops while unlock supply rises, the ratio shifts unfavorably.
Disclaimer:** This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only. Crypto assets are volatile and carry risk of loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Published September 7, 2026.
What was the September 6, 2026, HYPE token unlock?
Hyperliquid released approximately 9.92 million HYPE tokens from vesting contracts on September 6, 2026. At the market price of roughly $82.60, the batch was valued at approximately $820 million. The tokens became claimable by core contributors and ecosystem participants who had been subject to vesting schedules since the network’s launch.
Does a token unlock mean all those tokens will be sold?
No. A token unlock makes previously locked tokens claimable, but it does not force holders to sell. After the March 2026 HYPE unlock, on-chain tracking showed that only about 1.75% of unlocked tokens reached exchanges within 30 days. Most recipients left their tokens untouched, staked them, or moved them to new wallets without selling.
Why does HYPE typically go up after token unlocks?
HYPE has shown resilience during unlock events because of structural demand from the Assistance Fund buyback mechanism, accumulation by Hyperliquid Strategies, and the tendency of vesting recipients to hold rather than sell. When actual selling pressure is minimal and automated buying continues, the net effect of an unlock can be neutral or even slightly positive as uncertainty clears.
What is the Assistance Fund and how does it affect HYPE supply?
The Assistance Fund is an automated protocol mechanism that uses 99% of eligible Hyperliquid trading fees to buy HYPE on the open market. Purchased tokens are permanently burned. By September 6, 2026, the Fund had burned 48.42 million HYPE, equal to 4.84% of maximum supply. At roughly $1 million in daily purchases, the Fund creates constant buying pressure that offsets unlock-related supply increases.
How does HYPE’s unlock impact compare to other major tokens?
Large-cap tokens with strong fundamentals, including Solana, Arbitrum, and Optimism, have generally absorbed unlock supply without lasting price damage. Tokens that suffer from unlock dumps typically lack real revenue, have mostly airdrop-based holder bases, or release disproportionately large percentages of supply. HYPE’s combination of revenue-funded buybacks, committed long-term holders, and manageable unlock sizes places it among the more resilient tokens during vesting events.
What is Hyperliquid Strategies and why does it matter for unlocks?
Hyperliquid Strategies is a Nasdaq-listed company that holds HYPE as its primary treasury asset. It held 29.3 million HYPE worth $1.9 billion as of June 30, 2026, and has a $2.5 billion equity facility for potential additional purchases. Its presence creates a large, well-capitalized buyer that can absorb any unlock-related selling pressure, effectively putting a floor under the token during vesting events.
How much HYPE has been permanently burned?
The Assistance Fund had burned approximately 48.42 million HYPE tokens by September 6, 2026, representing 4.84% of the original 1 billion maximum supply. At a price of $85.50, that burned supply would carry a theoretical market value exceeding $4 billion. CoinGecko reflected this by listing HYPE’s fully diluted supply near 955 million tokens rather than the original 1 billion.
Should I buy or sell HYPE based on unlock events?
Token unlocks are one factor among many that affect price. This article examines the historical pattern of HYPE unlock behavior and the structural mechanisms that influence supply and demand. Past performance during unlock events does not guarantee future results. Individual investment decisions should account for personal risk tolerance, portfolio allocation, and overall market conditions. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Should I buy or sell HYPE based on unlock events?
Token unlocks are one factor among many that affect price. This article examines the historical pattern of HYPE unlock behavior and the structural mechanisms that influence supply and demand. Past performance during unlock events does not guarantee future results. Individual investment decisions should account for personal risk tolerance, portfolio allocation, and overall market conditions. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
What the results mean for the AfD
While the election delivered the AfD a commanding victory, the party still lacks enough votes to govern alone. With 39 seats in the 83-member legislature, the party remains three short of an outright majority, and faces no obvious path to obtaining it.
Germany’s established parties have refused to work with the AfD, continuing their “firewall” against cooperating with the far-right. State premier Sven Schulze acknowledged defeat but his party, the CDU, said it would explore talks with other parties about forming a multiparty coalition.
The AfD could find unlikely support in the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, which scraped into parliament with 5.3% of the vote. BSW has rejected the firewall and expressed a willingness to speak with the AfD, although it said it would not elect either Siegmund or Schulze as premier.
Siegmund has thus far ruled out leading a minority government or adopting an informal arrangement that would leave his government depending on unsteady support. “If necessary there’ll just be new elections, then we’d just get 50 or 55%,” he told ZDF on election night. He said, however, that he would be willing to work with individual lawmakers or parliamentary groups.
Hanwha Investment & Securities has reportedly completed a tokenized securities platform supporting Avalanche as South Korea prepares to bring blockchain-based securities into its regulated capital markets system in February 2027.
Summary
- Hanwha has reportedly built a tokenized securities platform supporting Avalanche and Hyperledger Besu.
- South Korea’s tokenized securities amendments are scheduled to take effect on Feb. 4, 2027.
- The FSC plans to initially allow tokenization of certain funds, bonds, unlisted stocks and fractional securities.
- Hanwha has expanded its tokenization investments through stakes in Securitize and Digital Asset.
Seoul Economic Daily reported Sunday that the South Korean brokerage began developing the platform with blockchain technology firm FairSquare Lab in 2025. The system was built to operate across multiple networks, including Avalanche and enterprise Ethereum client Hyperledger Besu.
Development has come ahead of amendments to South Korea’s Electronic Securities Act and Capital Markets Act taking effect on Feb. 4, 2027. The changes will legally recognize distributed ledgers as securities registers and allow tokenized securities to operate within the country’s existing capital markets framework.
The Korea Securities Depository is preparing infrastructure capable of connecting with Avalanche, Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Fabric, giving securities companies several blockchain options as they build systems for the incoming framework.
Hanwha tokenized securities platform supports Avalanche
Hanwha started work on the platform last year and has since completed development, Seoul Economic Daily reported, citing blockchain industry sources.
FairSquare Lab developed the system with support for more than one distributed ledger. Alongside Avalanche, Hanwha can use Hyperledger Besu, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain designed for enterprise deployments.
Several South Korean financial firms have already used enterprise networks such as Hyperledger Besu for token securities infrastructure. Hanwha’s system extends that approach to Avalanche, where institutions can establish dedicated networks with controls over participation and validators.
The Korea Securities Depository is preparing its own token securities infrastructure to communicate with different blockchain technologies. Its published distributed-ledger requirements cover Avalanche, Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Fabric.
Participation in connected distributed ledgers will remain limited to approved institutions, including securities companies and the depository. The KSD would participate directly in the networks to oversee total issuance and electronic registration information.
Demand from financial companies influenced the inclusion of Avalanche, according to Seoul Economic Daily. A KSD official told the publication that several companies had requested support through industry consultations and existing projects.
Avalanche has already been used for regulated tokenized securities infrastructure in Japan. In July, Progmat moved its tokenized securities platform from Corda 5 to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1, transferring every active security token project managed through its system.
Those projects represented more than 452 billion yen in underlying assets and issued securities at the time of the migration. Progmat said the change made the securities compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine while retaining existing institutional controls.
The Japanese platform redesigned its architecture so business functions were no longer tied to a single blockchain, using a separate layer between its applications and underlying ledger. Progmat said the structure would allow other networks to be connected later.
South Korea tokenized securities rules start in February
Hanwha’s platform arrives as South Korea finalizes the operating structure for tokenized securities before the February rollout.
The Financial Services Commission unveiled a three-stage implementation roadmap on Sept. 4, covering the types of securities that can initially be tokenized and how the market could expand after the amended laws take effect.
Crypto.news previously reported that South Korea’s tokenized securities roadmap will initially cover privately pooled money market funds and bonds reserved for institutional investors.
Unlisted shares issued through a trust structure and publicly offered fractional investment securities will qualify during the first stage as well.
The second phase would extend tokenization to all publicly offered securities. Regulators have not set a fixed date for that stage, with implementation depending on the results of the initial rollout and adoption of the required technology among market participants.
Under the final phase, the FSC plans to build onchain payment infrastructure linked to stablecoins, allowing the payment side of tokenized securities transactions to move onto blockchain rails.
Timing for the settlement system will depend partly on pending South Korean stablecoin legislation.
The roadmap follows amendments approved by the National Assembly in January that established a legal basis for distributed ledgers to serve as securities registers. Tokenized instruments will remain securities under existing financial laws instead of being treated as a separate asset class.
Regulators had been preparing the implementation details for months. In May, the FSC outlined its rulemaking schedule while studying how stocks, bonds and money market funds could be incorporated into the system.
The FSC said at the time that South Korea would not move its entire electronic securities market onto blockchain infrastructure at once. Authorities instead planned staged tests covering securities rights, trading, settlement and onchain payments.
Securities firms face infrastructure requirements
Financial companies connecting their distributed ledgers to the Korea Securities Depository will have to pass screening and operating tests under the KSD’s technical guidelines.
Reviews will cover issuance and circulation functions alongside contingency measures for system errors and other disruptions. The FSC has said securities firms must maintain operational stability comparable to the existing electronic securities system while using distributed ledgers.
Existing financial investment companies will not need a separate license solely for handling tokenized securities. Firms can conduct tokenized securities activities falling within their current licensed business areas.
Companies seeking to intermediate tokenized securities transactions on over-the-counter markets will need prior consultation with the Financial Supervisory Service.
Retail investors will face separate limits. The FSC has proposed capping individual subscriptions to non-monetary trust beneficiary certificates at the lower of 30 million won or 5% of the total issuance.
Annual net purchases by retail investors on each OTC exchange will be capped at 100 million won.
South Korea is preparing central market infrastructure at the same time. Samsung SDS has been developing a token securities platform for the Korea Securities Depository designed to connect blockchain records with the country’s existing electronic securities account infrastructure.
The platform is expected to support issuance, circulation checks, rights management and monitoring when the new system begins operating.
Hanwha expands its tokenization investments
Hanwha has spent several years building positions across companies involved in tokenization and blockchain infrastructure.
The conglomerate became Securitize’s largest shareholder after holdings spread across three affiliated entities reached a combined 9.6%, according to U.S. regulatory filings.
As reported in July, entities linked to Hanwha collectively held 15.69 million Securitize shares, putting the group ahead of Blockchain Capital and Securitize co-founder and CEO Carlos Domingo.
A private equity fund managed by Hanwha Asset Management accounted for a 5.9% stake. H Foundation, a Hanwha Systems subsidiary, held 3.1%, while Hanwha Investment & Securities controlled roughly 0.6%.
Hanwha Investment & Securities described its own purchase as a financial investment through a pre-IPO financing round. The brokerage left open the possibility of using the investment in its digital asset and real-world asset tokenization businesses.
Securitize provides tokenized asset infrastructure for financial institutions including BlackRock, Apollo, BNY, Hamilton Lane, KKR and VanEck. Its platform managed more than $4 billion in onchain assets and supported more than 650 tokenized funds earlier this year.
The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ in July and issued blockchain-based versions of its common shares on Solana and Avalanche on the same day. The tokens represent the same NYSE-listed shares instead of a separate security class.
Hanwha Investment & Securities has put money into several other blockchain companies this year, including blockchain research and data company Xangle and Web3 infrastructure provider Kresus.
In July, the brokerage disclosed a 30 billion won, or roughly $22.3 million, investment in Digital Asset, the operator of the institutional-focused Canton Network.
Hanwha Investment & Securities has increased its position in South Korea’s crypto sector as well, investing another 597.8 billion won in Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, and raising its ownership stake to 9.84%.
The crypto market will welcome tokens worth roughly $325.6 million in the second week of September 2026. Major projects, including Aptos (APT), Linea (LINEA), and Cheelee (CHEEL), will release new token supplies.
These unlocks could introduce market volatility and influence short-term price movements. So, here’s a breakdown of what to watch.
1. Aptos (APT)
- Unlock Date: September 11
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 11.31 million APT
- Released Supply: 1.74 billion APT
- Total supply: 2.09 billion APT (Y2035)
Aptos is a Layer-1 blockchain platform designed for scalability, security, and efficiency in decentralized applications (dApps) and Web3 ecosystems. It utilizes the Move programming language to enable high-throughput transactions and smart contract execution.
Aptos will release 11.31 million tokens on September 11. The tokens are worth $7.09 million. It represents 0.65% of the released supply.
The team will award 3.96 million APT to core contributors. The community and investors will get 3.21 million and 2.81 million tokens, respectively. Additionally, Aptos will allocate 1.33 million tokens to the foundation.
2. Linea (LINEA)
- Unlock Date: September 10
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 960.13 million LINEA
- Released Supply: 31.92 billion LINEA
- Total supply: 72.01 billion LINEA
Linea is a zkEVM Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum (ETH). The network provides fast, low-cost transactions while maintaining compatibility with Ethereum tools and security.
The network will unlock 960.13 million tokens, valued at approximately $2.75 million, on September 10. The upcoming unlock represents 3% of the released supply
Linea will keep 480.07 million tokens for Linea Consortium (long-term alignment), and 480.07 million LINEA for Linea Consortium (Ignition).
3. Cheelee (CHEEL)
- Unlock Date: September 13
- Number of Tokens to be Unlocked: 6.42 million CHEEL
- Released Supply: 813.4 million CHEEL
- Total supply: 1 billion CHEEL
Cheelee is a SocialFi hybrid platform that rewards users with LEE tokens for watching short videos. It blends familiar social media mechanics with blockchain-based incentives. The platform utilizes its token, CHEEL, for governance, content promotion, and advertising.
The team will release 6.42 million tokens on September 13. The tokens are worth around $2.24 million and represent 0.79% of the current released supply.
Cheelee will keep 3.4 million tokens for the reserve fund. Furthermore, it will assign 2.78 million tokens to the team. Advisors will get around 208,330 altcoins. Lastly, the team will direct 27,780 tokens to a private round.
In addition to these, other prominent unlocks that investors can look out for in the second week of September include peaq (PEAQ), Babylon (BABY), Movement (MOVE), and more.
The post 3 Token Unlocks to Watch in the Second Week of September 2026 appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Harmony has proposed retiring its seven-year-old layer-1 blockchain and moving ONE to Ethereum, with validators able to begin shutting down nodes from Sept. 10 as the project prepares a new AI video business.
Summary
- Harmony has proposed retiring its layer 1 and issuing ONE as an ERC 20 token on Ethereum after taking a final network snapshot.
- Users have been asked to exit smart contracts before Sept. 10, while eligible validators can begin shutting down nodes and receive compensation from a $1.372 million pool.
- The proposal comes weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and prompted Harmony to plan a rollback removing more than 109,000 transactions.
- Harmony plans to give validators the option to remain as governors or participate in its new AI video initiative after the blockchain is retired.
Harmony said Sunday that it wants to take a final snapshot of the network, issue ONE as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and move exchange listings to the new token. The proposal remains non-binding, and the project has not given a date for the final block.
The plan would end Harmony’s run as an independent blockchain after launching its mainnet in 2019. The project cited security threats from state actors and AI agents when announcing the proposed shutdown.
Harmony has not said whether the plan will be put through its existing validator-led governance process. Under the network’s published governance rules, elected validators can submit proposals and unelected validators can vote, with voting power determined by stake. A proposal requires participation representing 51% of total stake weight and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction period and 14-day voting period.
Harmony proposes moving ONE balances to Ethereum
At the final Harmony block, the project plans to record ONE held in wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchanges before distributing replacement tokens on Ethereum.
Users would not have to file claims for the new tokens. Harmony said ERC-20 ONE would be sent to the same addresses recorded in the final snapshot, while delegated stakes and unclaimed validator rewards would be distributed to individual governor vaults.
The token’s total supply and emission rate would remain unchanged under the proposal. Harmony plans to make the Ethereum token contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts public so they can be audited.
Not every asset or application can make the move. Multisig safes, liquidity pools and onchain applications cannot be transferred through the proposed migration, according to the project, which has asked users to exit smart contracts before Sept. 10.
Exchange-held ONE is included in the planned snapshot, with Harmony proposing to coordinate the migration of centralized exchange listings to the Ethereum version of the token.
Validators face a separate transition process. Node operators can begin shutting down from Sept. 10, while Harmony has set aside $1.372 million for validators and delegators who stop their nodes on time, sign an agreement, retain their stakes and continue as governors.
The compensation would be distributed over four quarters. Harmony said it would cover the difference in emission rewards between a validator’s last block and the network’s final block for eligible operators.
Validators could move into Harmony’s AI video project
Harmony has proposed moving its work toward an AI video “remix economy” once the blockchain is retired, offering existing validators the option of remaining as governors or becoming operators or affiliates in the new project.
Under the model described by the team, a small group of video creators would publish prompts and other assets that fans could fork or remix. AI agents would then be used to turn the resulting branches into more video clips.
Operators would handle video generation, distribution and content moderation, with staking and service uptime tied to rewards. Harmony plans to subsidize GPU hardware during the first year and said operators could generate up to $1 million in combined revenue during that period, subject to the proposed staking and uptime requirements.
The project has floated a $10 monthly subscription for the service, with promoters receiving a continuing 30% commission from subscriptions they refer. Harmony said advertising could generate tens of millions of dollars if the platform reached 1 million users.
Future ONE emissions would be directed toward the new initiative, although the team said the arrangements would remain subject to feedback from governors.
Harmony shutdown proposal follows August ONE exploit
The proposed shutdown follows an August security incident that forced Harmony to consider reversing days of blockchain activity after unauthorized ONE entered circulation.
On Aug. 12, crypto.news previously reported that Harmony was investigating an unauthorized mint after an outside researcher claimed nearly 4 billion ONE had been created and approximately 2.8 billion had reached centralized exchanges. Harmony had not confirmed either figure at that stage and said it was working with exchanges while examining recovery options.
A later reconstruction by the project identified more than 3 trillion ONE created across six transactions. Harmony traced the incident to a flaw in cross-shard receipt verification that allowed valid receipts to be processed more than once, creating ONE without a corresponding debit elsewhere.
By Aug. 17, the project had settled on a much more disruptive response. Harmony proposed rolling back its two shards to checkpoints recorded at 11:25:37 p.m. UTC on Aug. 11, before the forged mint activity.
For shard 0, validators were instructed to retain block 92,730,034 and restart from 92,730,035. Shard 1 would return to block 94,978,278 and resume from the following block, even though the forged mint did not originate on that shard.
The recovery would remove 141,628 consecutive shard 0 blocks containing 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. Harmony’s analysis classified 104,545 of the regular transactions, or 95.8%, as automated activity, including nearly 100,000 transactions linked to decentralized exchange automation.
One wallet connected to the forged mint attempted 534 transfers of 5 billion ONE each within 106 seconds. Of those, 477 succeeded, moving 2.385 trillion ONE, according to Harmony’s investigation.
Investigators traced the tokens into standalone wallets, exchange accounts, decentralized exchange routers and pools, liquidity provider positions, bridge contracts, wrapped ONE and staking wallets. Harmony said it was working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement as it tried to identify where the forged assets had moved.
Token migration was among the recovery options examined during that process, but Harmony said at the time that moving ONE would cause substantially more disruption than the rollback. Less than a month later, migration to Ethereum has become part of the project’s proposed plan to retire the network entirely.
Harmony has faced repeated token and bridge security incidents
The August exploit was not Harmony’s first incident involving unauthorized ONE creation. In December 2023, the project disclosed that a staking logic flaw had resulted in 146.28 million ONE being minted across 74 delegator addresses before an emergency hard fork was deployed.
Harmony’s most prominent security breach came in June 2022, when attackers stole close to $100 million from its Horizon cross-chain bridge after compromising keys used to control the bridge.
The project worked with exchanges, blockchain analytics companies and law enforcement following the attack and raised its hacker bounty to $10 million in an attempt to recover the assets.
Harmony initially considered creating billions of ONE to reimburse users affected by the Horizon attack. A proposal published the following month included an option to mint 4.97 billion ONE for compensation, drawing opposition from community members concerned about dilution.
By September 2022, Harmony had changed course and said its revised recovery plan would not mint additional ONE or alter the token’s economics through a hard fork. The project instead proposed using treasury funds for recovery and ecosystem development.
Raydium has expanded LaunchLab to support trading between any token pair, with LaunchOnSF’s StonkFun becoming the first integration to use the new system on Solana.
Summary
- Raydium LaunchLab now allows newly launched tokens to be paired with any supported quote token on the platform.
- StonkFun has become the first integration to use the new model after changes to Raydium programs, aggregators and trading terminals.
- StonkFun said deployment costs have fallen to 0.03 SOL from 0.29 SOL, while liquidity fees can be directed back into liquidity.
- The upgrade expands LaunchLab more than a year after Raydium introduced the platform following Pump.fun’s move to its own PumpSwap exchange.
According to Raydium’s Sept. 7 announcement on X, LaunchLab can now pair a newly launched token with any quote token supported through Raydium, removing the fixed pairing structure used by many token launch platforms. Raydium said the upgrade brings more flexible token pairing, deeper liquidity and lower fees for memecoin trading.
LaunchOnSF confirmed that its StonkFun platform is the first integration partner to bring the feature live. Its team spent the previous week preparing the integration, which required changes across Raydium’s programs, trading terminals and aggregators before custom quote tokens could be supported.
Raydium LaunchLab now supports custom token pairs
Under the new system, creators can select the quote token used for a LaunchLab deployment, allowing communities to build markets around assets other than the standard quote tokens commonly used for new Solana launches.
Raydium described the feature as the ability to launch “any token, paired with any quote token.” LaunchOnSF said Raydium updated its programs to accommodate custom quote and reward tokens, while aggregators and trading terminals needed to support routing for the resulting pairs.
The integration covers permissionless deployments, bonding curves and constant product market maker pools. LaunchOnSF said deployment costs through StonkFun have been reduced to 0.03 SOL from 0.29 SOL, while liquidity provider fees can be directed back into liquidity.
Developers do not have to use the StonkFun API to deploy tokens and can construct transactions themselves. LaunchOnSF said the system was built to reduce problems it had encountered with snipers and launches concentrated in a single wallet.
Ahead of the integration, StonkFun reported more than $392 million in total trading volume, including roughly $219 million routed through Raydium. The platform had generated $1.21 million in revenue and distributed more than $5.35 million in rewards to ecosystem holders.
More than $705,000 had been spent on buybacks and burns of its ecosystem token, while another $68,000 went toward buying and burning tokens from its 10 largest ecosystem projects, according to figures published by LaunchOnSF.
LaunchLab followed Pump.fun’s move away from Raydium
Raydium first disclosed LaunchLab in March 2025 after Pump.fun began working on its own automated market maker. The platform offered creators different pricing curves and allowed third party interfaces to build on the underlying infrastructure and set their own transaction fees.
Crypto.news previously reported on Raydium’s LaunchLab plans in March 2025. An anonymous Raydium developer said at the time that the product had been under development for several months but had initially been kept on the sidelines while Pump.fun continued using Raydium for liquidity.
LaunchLab officially went live in April 2025, allowing users to create, customize and trade tokens through Raydium. Projects crossing the original 85 SOL threshold were automatically moved into Raydium’s automated market maker.
Raydium introduced customizable bonding curves, no migration cost and a 1% trading fee under the initial model. The protocol said 25% of trading fees collected through LaunchLab would be used to buy back RAY.
More than 10 projects had passed the 85 SOL threshold shortly after LaunchLab opened, while RAY rose roughly 13% following the launch before giving back part of the move.
LaunchLab arrived after Pump.fun changed a relationship that had directed a steady flow of newly created memecoins toward Raydium.
Tokens launched through Pump.fun had historically moved into Raydium liquidity pools after completing their bonding curves. Pump.fun began testing its own automated market maker in February 2025, opening a path for graduated tokens to remain inside its own trading infrastructure.
PumpSwap ended Pump.fun’s reliance on Raydium
Pump.fun formally moved away from the previous setup when it launched the PumpSwap DEX in March 2025.
Built around a constant product automated market maker similar to Raydium v4 and Uniswap v2, PumpSwap allowed tokens completing Pump.fun bonding curves to migrate directly to its own liquidity pools. Users could create pools, provide liquidity and trade tokens without sending graduated launches to Raydium.
PumpSwap introduced instant migrations and removed the six SOL migration fee previously associated with the process. The platform initially charged 0.25% on trades, allocating 0.20% to liquidity providers and 0.05% to the protocol.
Trading activity climbed quickly. PumpSwap captured 21% of Solana DEX trading about a week after launch, with cumulative volume exceeding $1.2 billion. Raydium remained ahead with a 57.4% share at the time.
By March 30, PumpSwap had recorded $2.43 billion in volume, alongside $5.4 million in protocol fees, around 700,000 active wallets and 30.59 million swaps. Raydium accounted for 74% of Solana DEX volume on that date, compared with PumpSwap’s 8%.
Raydium had entered the contest from a strong position in memecoin trading. A CEX.io report showed its memecoin volume share rising from 77% to 83% during the first quarter of 2025.
Pump.fun was responsible for more than half of daily SPL token creation at the time, with tokens previously flowing into Raydium after meeting Pump.fun’s graduation requirements. That pipeline changed once PumpSwap began taking the migrations directly.
Raydium remains a major Solana trading venue
Despite heavier competition among Solana exchanges and launchpads, Raydium has remained one of the network’s largest execution venues.
Across 2025, the protocol processed $352.8 billion in execution layer DEX volume. Meteora followed with $113.7 billion, while Orca and SolFi recorded $103.9 billion and $97.9 billion, respectively.
More recent activity has remained spread across several Solana venues. On Aug. 21, 2026, Solana generated approximately $2.8 billion in daily decentralized exchange spot volume. PumpSwap processed roughly $485 million, followed by BisonFi at $466 million, Orca at $307 million, Raydium at $260 million and Manifest at $218 million.
The five platforms together accounted for approximately $1.74 billion of the network’s daily total.
LaunchLab’s latest update changes the type of markets that can be created through Raydium’s launch infrastructure. Instead of requiring creators to launch against a predetermined quote asset, StonkFun deployments can select another supported token and carry that pairing through the bonding curve and subsequent liquidity setup.
Raydium ecosystem contributor Infra said the structure lets a community pair a meme token with another asset its users already follow and use the same asset for rewards. LaunchOnSF became the first partner to put that model into production through StonkFun following the Sept. 7 rollout.
South Korea’s National Tax Service ruled on Aug. 28 that residents must continue reporting qualifying cryptocurrency accounts held with bankrupt overseas exchanges, even when trading and withdrawals are unavailable.
Summary
- Korean residents must report qualifying overseas crypto accounts even when bankrupt exchanges block withdrawals entirely.
- Reporting applies when combined foreign account balances exceed 500 million won at any month-end annually.
- Affected taxpayers must submit declarations during June of the following calendar year to Korean authorities.
- Digital assets have been included in South Korea’s foreign account reporting regime since 2023 filings.
- Reported overseas digital asset holdings fell 5.4% to 10.5 trillion won in the 2026 disclosure cycle.
The National Tax Service issued its interpretation after a Korean resident asked whether an inaccessible exchange balance still qualified as an overseas financial account.
The taxpayer was a creditor of an overseas cryptocurrency exchange that entered bankruptcy in November 2022. The account holder could no longer trade or withdraw the assets and had entered the exchange’s distribution process.
The taxpayer was receiving partial bankruptcy distributions through a domestic foreign-currency account. However, the NTS concluded that the original overseas account remained subject to reporting because it had been opened with a foreign virtual asset service provider to trade digital assets.
The decision concerns disclosure obligations rather than whether the inaccessible assets generate taxable income. Reporting an account does not by itself establish that tax is owed on its entire balance.
The 500 million won threshold applies across accounts
Korean residents and domestic corporations generally must report when their combined overseas financial account balances exceed 500 million won, approximately $350,000, at the end of any month during the relevant calendar year.
Balances across qualifying foreign accounts are aggregated when applying the threshold. The rule can therefore apply even when no single account independently exceeds 500 million won.
Taxpayers must submit the report during June of the following year. The filing identifies the foreign financial institution, account information and reportable balance.
Digital assets were added to the foreign financial account regime beginning with the 2023 reporting cycle. Accounts held through overseas cryptocurrency exchanges can therefore qualify alongside foreign deposits, securities, funds and other covered financial assets.
Self-custody wallets are treated differently because they are not accounts opened with overseas virtual asset service providers. Crypto.news previously reported that decentralized wallets were excluded from overseas account declarations under the NTS interpretation.
The latest ruling clarifies that an exchange’s insolvency does not produce the same result. A customer can retain a reportable account or claim against the exchange even after losing normal control over the assets.
Bankruptcy creates a difficult valuation question
The NTS interpretation confirms that the account must be reported, but the publicly available summary does not fully explain how taxpayers should value a disputed or partially recoverable bankruptcy claim.
An exchange interface might display the customer’s original token balance even when the bankruptcy estate cannot return all assets. The value eventually distributed may differ substantially from that displayed balance.
The legal interpretation arose from a taxpayer already receiving partial distributions. It does not establish that every reported account balance will equal the amount recovered through bankruptcy.
Affected account holders may need records showing monthly balances, exchange statements, bankruptcy claims and distributions. Those documents can help establish what existed in the account and what was later recovered.
Exchange bankruptcy can leave customers waiting years for repayment. The FTX estate, for example, began a multibillion-dollar creditor repayment process after customers lost access to funds held on the platform.
The NTS ruling means Korean creditors cannot assume that frozen balances disappear from their disclosure obligations while those proceedings continue.
Overseas crypto disclosures fell to 10.5 trillion won
Korean taxpayers reported 10.5 trillion won in overseas digital assets during the 2026 disclosure cycle, according to figures attributed to the National Tax Service. The total declined 5.4% from the previous year.
Individual holdings increased 5.4% to 9.8 trillion won. Corporate holdings dropped 61.1% to approximately 700 billion won, producing the decline in the combined total.
The NTS attributed the overall reduction to a broad fall in asset prices. The figures represent balances disclosed through overseas financial account reports, not the full cryptocurrency holdings of every Korean resident.
South Korea’s total reported overseas financial accounts reached 107.1 trillion won in the latest cycle. The number of reporting individuals and companies rose 9.1% to 7,484, according to the published results.
The disclosure requirement is separate from South Korea’s planned tax on cryptocurrency gains. The country currently plans to apply a combined 22% tax to qualifying digital asset income from Jan. 1, 2027.
That future tax will also cover activity on overseas exchanges and private wallets. As crypto.news reported, annual gains above the 2.5 million won deduction would face a 20% national tax and 2% local income tax.
What affected account holders must do next
Residents whose combined overseas account balances exceeded the threshold during 2026 will generally need to file their disclosures in June 2027.
Customers of bankrupt exchanges should retain account records even if the platform no longer provides normal access. Bankruptcy notices, claim approvals and payment records may also be required to explain differences between reported balances and recovered funds.
The NTS is preparing broader enforcement tools ahead of the 2027 crypto income tax. In related coverage, the agency was reported to be developing wallet-tracing capabilities for overseas transactions.
South Korea also plans to exchange crypto transaction information with participating jurisdictions through the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework. The new data channels could make previously undisclosed overseas exchange accounts easier to identify.
Ripple has expanded XRP’s presence in major U.S. college sports through a multi-year sponsorship with the University of Florida that will put the token’s logo on the field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Summary
- Ripple has signed a multi year partnership with the University of Florida that will put XRP branding on the football field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
- The deal covers digital properties and event signage, while Ripple will support financial and technology education for student athletes and the campus community.
- Florida becomes Ripple’s latest major college sports partner after the company put XRP branding on University of Kansas athletics uniforms earlier this year.
- XRP traded near $1.41 on Friday as spot XRP ETF demand cooled, with cumulative net inflows remaining around $1.6 billion.
Florida Athletics said Friday that XRP branding will appear on the football field at the 88,548-seat stadium beginning this season, while the partnership will extend to digital properties and event signage across Gainesville.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Ripple has committed to supporting financial and technology education for student-athletes and the university community, covering subjects across traditional finance and digital assets.
The agreement gives Ripple another major college athletics sponsorship only two months after it signed a similar deal with the University of Kansas.
XRP branding is coming to the Swamp
At Florida, Ripple is pairing XRP marketing with educational programs designed for students and athletes. The arrangement places the cryptocurrency inside one of the largest college sports programs in the Southeastern Conference.
University of Florida Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin said the school has a history of adopting technology to improve its programs and fan experience.
“Ripple has established itself as an innovative leader in financial technology, and we’re excited to welcome XRP to Gator Nation,” Stricklin said.
The field placement will give XRP exposure during Florida Gators home football games at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, commonly known as the Swamp. Digital placements and event signage will keep the branding visible outside football games during the multi-year agreement.
Ripple has already tested the college sports strategy at another major NCAA program. As crypto.news previously reported, the company signed a five-year sponsorship with the University of Kansas in July that put XRP branding on Jayhawks athletics uniforms.
The Kansas agreement covered football, basketball and other university teams, making XRP the first cryptocurrency to appear on the jerseys of a major NCAA Division I athletics program. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, a University of Kansas alumnus, publicly promoted the partnership after it was announced.
Education was part of that agreement as well, with Ripple extending its existing relationship with the university into athletics, financial education and blockchain research.
Ripple expands its XRP college sports strategy
Ripple’s move into college athletics has drawn attention beyond the two university partnerships.
After the Kansas deal, Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz defended XRP advertising in college sports after critics questioned whether cryptocurrency promotion should face tighter restrictions.
Schwartz argued in July that truthful advertising for XRP receives commercial speech protections under the First Amendment, citing previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving advertising for lawful products. Commercial speech can still be regulated under U.S. law, meaning those protections do not prevent every potential restriction on advertising.
The Florida agreement takes the strategy from uniforms to the playing field itself. Ripple has not disclosed whether more college programs are being considered for similar partnerships.
The sponsorship campaign is running alongside a much larger expansion of Ripple’s financial infrastructure businesses, including payments, custody, corporate treasury services and its Ripple USD stablecoin.
RLUSD crossed $2 billion in market capitalization in August, less than two years after its December 2024 launch, according to Ripple. Nearly $1 billion of the stablecoin had been issued on the XRP Ledger when the company announced the milestone.
Standard Custody issues RLUSD under New York regulatory oversight, while Ripple has been building stablecoin settlement and treasury products around the asset.
XRP price holds near $1.41
XRP’s market reaction has been limited despite the new Florida sponsorship.
The token traded near $1.41 on Friday, gaining 0.6% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data cited in the original report. XRP was up roughly 34.9% over the past 30 days but remained approximately 49.8% lower over the past year.
Institutional demand through U.S. spot XRP exchange-traded funds has cooled after becoming a major source of inflows earlier in 2026.
ETF flows were essentially flat on Sept. 4 after the funds recently ended an inflow streak. Cumulative net inflows remained close to $1.6 billion, while Decrypt’s XRP ETF tracker classified market sentiment as neutral.
The slowdown had already become visible in August. Weekly U.S. spot XRP ETF net inflows fell 93% from $14.86 million to $1.01 million during the week ending Aug. 8.
Regulated XRP products have continued appearing in U.S. fund filings despite the weaker pace of fresh capital. SEC filings dated Aug. 27 and Aug. 28 listed three XRP-linked ETFs, including ProShares products and a Cyber Hornet strategy fund combining S&P 500 equities with XRP exposure.
Seven U.S. spot XRP ETFs had accumulated $1.57 billion in net inflows by Aug. 24.
Ripple builds visibility outside crypto markets
The Florida and Kansas agreements put XRP branding in front of college sports audiences while Ripple continues developing businesses that do not depend exclusively on the token.
Over the past several years, the company has moved into custody, stablecoin payments, prime brokerage and corporate treasury management through product launches and acquisitions. RLUSD has become part of that strategy as Ripple develops payment and settlement services for institutions.
Ripple launched enterprise tools earlier this year that allow corporate finance teams to manage fiat currencies, RLUSD, XRP and other digital assets within existing treasury workflows. The platform builds on the company’s acquisition of treasury management software provider GTreasury.
XRP remains closely associated with Ripple’s public identity despite the company’s expansion into other financial products. The Florida partnership continues that association by promoting XRP itself, not Ripple’s stablecoin or one of its institutional services.
The University of Kansas agreement followed the same approach, placing XRP branding directly on athletic uniforms while combining the sponsorship with blockchain and financial education programs.
At Florida, the logo will move onto the football field this season, accompanied by digital branding and event signage throughout the multi-year partnership.
GUANGZHOU, CHINA – JULY 14: The exterior of an Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) branch building is seen on July 14, 2026, in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
China’s finance ministry is leading a smaller-than-expected $54 billion capital injection into state-owned banks and insurers, as Beijing seeks to foster growth with restrained stimulus.
Three state lenders and five insurers will get a combined 360 billion yuan ($53.6 billion) from state institutions, led by the Ministry of Finance and the country’s tobacco giant. It’s the first time that Beijing has extended recapitalization to insurers, as stress in the country’s financial system spreads. With more of a capital cushion, financial institutions may also be asked to do more to mobilize resources in capital markets, including bond and equity purchases, said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis.
The recapitalization was smaller in scale than markets had anticipated for these financial institutions, according to Citibank. “This downsized package underscores the healthier capital positions of Chinese insurers, indicating an overall lower urgency for aggressive capital replenishment.”
Hong Kong-listed shares of the banks and insurers slumped Monday, underperforming the broader market. The Hang Seng Index fell less than 1%, while Agricultural Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China dropped 2.7% and 2.3%, respectively. China Taiping Insurance lost almost 4%, while People’s Insurance Company of China and China Life Insurance each fell more than 2%.
The moves build on a 500 billion yuan capital injection into four major state banks last year and a pledge in March to issue 300 billion yuan in special treasury bonds this year to replenish capital at large state lenders. China’s banking sector has been grinding through a multiyear margin compression, as Beijing pushes lenders to keep credit cheap for struggling borrowers. The net interest margins — the spread between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits — fell to record lows this year.
Beijing is preparing lenders to finance its next strategic investment cycle, “particularly the massive capital requirements of AI and advanced technology,” said Han Shen Lin, China country director at The Asia Group. “China is effectively using state capital to strengthen the banking system’s shock absorbers.”
Injection details
Agricultural Bank and ICBC, two of the country’s largest state banks, plan to raise up to 160 billion yuan and 100 billion yuan, respectively, through private A-share placements to a group of institutions, including the finance ministry, and China National Tobacco Corp and its subsidiaries. Proceeds will be used entirely to replenish capital, according to their statements on Sunday.
The Export-Import Bank of China will get a direct 30 billion yuan injection from the finance ministry, aimed at strengthening its ability to “provide funds to the real economy and withstand potential risks.”
China Life, the country’s largest life insurer, will receive 35 billion yuan, while China Taiping Insurance will get 7 billion yuan. People’s Insurance plans to raise up to 15 billion yuan through a private placement of A-shares to the Ministry of Finance. The finance ministry will also inject 10 billion yuan into China Export and Credit Insurance Corp, the state trade insurer known as Sinosure, while China Reinsurance Group will raise 3 billion yuan.
Falling market interest rates have limited banks’ ability to rebuild capital through retained earnings, making external injections critical, said Bruce Pang, a member of the Chief Economist Forum in China, adding that the state push would strengthen lending power at large state-owned banks, allowing “higher-quality” financial support for the economy and the priority sector.
The recapitalization also gives banks room to accelerate the disposal and write off of non-performing loans, offsetting “potential asset quality pressure down the road,” said Citibank analyst July Zhang.
“The capital pressure on China’s big banks could start easing,” Zhang said, as policymakers prioritize quality growth and ease pressure on banks to chase fast loan growth, while credit demand remains weak.
China’s insurers have seen solvency ratios deteriorate as persistently low rates squeeze profitability. The solvency ratio of the insurance sector dropped to 180.6% at the end of the second quarter, from 204.5% last year, though higher than the regulatory requirement of 100%.
Lack of credit demand
The capital injections are likely to have “only a very limited short-term impact on the economy, said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie, as the binding constraint on bank lending is weak credit demand, rather than a lack of bank capital.
Growth has faltered further in the world’s second-largest economy into the third quarter this year. Beijing’s policy tone has shifted to acknowledging “difficulties and challenges” in the economy, a marked shift from earlier language describing growth as “better than expected,” Hu said.
Fiscal support has picked up in response, with faster government bond issuance and a push toward the infrastructure projects, Hu said. But he doesn’t expect a major stimulus push. “We expect policymakers to do just enough to meet this year’s growth target,” he said. “Incremental stimulus should be sufficient.”
Liquid, the Bitcoin sidechain operated by Blockstream, has paused operations after actors who claim they are “white-hat” hackers withdrew roughly 4,000 BTC from Liquid’s federation wallet—an amount the report describes as worth about $320 million. The move has triggered a wider shutdown of bridge activity, with Liquid saying new transactions are currently blocked.
On Sunday, Liquid said it disabled bridge nodes, halting activity that would otherwise allow users to move funds between Bitcoin and Liquid’s network. Exchanges, meanwhile, were either already stopping deposits and withdrawals of L-BTC or preparing to do so, according to Liquid’s public statements.
Key takeaways
- Liquid disabled bridge nodes after actors withdrew about 4,000 BTC from the federation wallet, leaving the sidechain in a paused state.
- Liquid and Blockstream say they contacted the actors through signed on-chain messages seeking a remediation and coordinated return of funds.
- Liquid estimates the withdrawn BTC represented about 95% of the wallet’s roughly 4,200 BTC balance at the time of the incident.
- L-BTC bridge-related activity was stopped, while Liquid says other issued assets on the network—including USDT—were not affected.
- SideSwap says its peg-out service processed a withdrawal order using its PAK and that the key was not compromised, attributing the source of the L-BTC to a bug in Elements.
Bridge nodes disabled as federation wallet is emptied
Liquid’s response centers on preventing further bridge transactions while the federation works through the situation. Liquid stated that bridge nodes were turned off, which stops new transactions from being created or relayed through the bridge.
The immediate market-facing impact was felt by custodians and exchanges supporting L-BTC. Liquid said exchanges had halted or were in the process of halting L-BTC deposits and withdrawals—effectively reducing the risk of users interacting with a bridge that is no longer operating normally.
Liquid said the seized Bitcoin amount was taken from its federation wallet. The report notes that the withdrawn BTC accounted for approximately 95% of a federation balance that was around 4,200 BTC prior to the incident.
On-chain messages and a demand to patch before funds return
Blockstream, Liquid’s technology provider, reportedly began contacting the actors directly using signed on-chain messages. Subsequent messages, as described in the reporting, show the actors telling Blockstream to patch the vulnerability and ensure that every node is updated before they would return most of the Bitcoin.
The actors also reportedly provided encrypted technical details to Blockstream. According to Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn, those details were shared through the same channel of communications.
As of the time of writing, the funds had not been returned, leaving the sidechain paused and raising an open question for Liquid users: even if the actors’ stated intent is to improve security, the operational downtime could persist until updates are verified across the network.
Other Liquid-issued assets reportedly unaffected
Liquid said other assets issued on the network were unaffected. That includes tokens and instruments such as USDT, DePix, and real-world assets (as referenced in the report). The sidechain’s pause appears focused on bridge functionality and the federation wallet state, rather than a broader halt of every on-chain activity.
For traders and integrators, this distinction matters. When a sidechain pauses because of bridge-layer issues, it can limit the ability to move assets in or out, but it may still allow certain on-network transfers—depending on the specific operational constraints put in place by the federation and bridge nodes.
SideSwap attributes peg-out details to Elements, not its system
One of the most specific parts of the incident response came from SideSwap, which said the withdrawal passed through its peg-out service as a customer order using its Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK). SideSwap emphasized that the PAK was not compromised.
The company’s statement further claims that the L-BTC used in the transaction originated from a bug in Elements—the open-source software that underpins Liquid—rather than from a compromise or failure within SideSwap’s systems.
That framing is significant because it shifts attention from custodian or peg-out authorization credentials toward the base protocol layer. If the vulnerability truly stems from Elements behavior, the remediation would likely require coordinated updates not only on the bridge or federation components, but also across the surrounding software stack that interfaces with Liquid nodes.
What to watch next for Liquid users and integrators
Until Liquid and Blockstream complete the patching and federation-wide node updates demanded in the messages, the bridge will remain paused and L-BTC flows are likely to stay constrained. Users should monitor further public updates from Liquid and Blockstream—especially any confirmation that the patched version is fully propagated across nodes and that exchanges resume deposits and withdrawals safely.
Crypto World
Supposed White-Hat Hackers Drain $320 Million in BTC From Liquid Network, Say They’ll Return It After Fix
Bitcoin Layer 2 network Liquid Network has reported a security incident in which purported white-hat hackers withdrew approximately 4,000 BTC, worth $320 million, from the Liquid Federation wallet.
Blockstream is attempting to contact the parties involved through a signed on-chain message.
Network Bug Must Be Fixed First
In an update, Liquid said the funds were withdrawn using the SideSwap PAK (Peg-out Authorization Key) but stated that the key itself was not compromised and that no other keys were in jeopardy. Crypto exchanges have been informed and have already suspended, or are preparing to suspend, LBTC deposits and withdrawals.
Liquid said other assets on the network, including USDT, DePix and real-world assets, were not affected. The network has also temporarily disabled its bridge nodes, meaning new transactions cannot be submitted. As a result, the sidechain is effectively paused while the issue is being addressed.
“Liquid wallets will be impacted, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience. Federation members are actively working on resolving this so we can restore normal network activity.”
The public back-and-forth between Blockstream and the party claiming to be the white-hat hacker behind the withdrawal is continuing on-chain. According to Samson Mow, the hacker appears to prefer communicating publicly rather than via email, and is posting messages via Bitcoin transaction data.
They even asked Blockstream to make contact on Signal at @m671aw.70″
The exchange began at 11:30 AM PDT, when the hacker wrote, “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Blockstream responded at 12:31 PM on September 6 and asked the hacker to contact its security team by email. Later, Blockstream sent an encrypted, PGP-signed message to the hacker’s key.
The discussion between @Blockstream and the white-hat hacker (WHH) regarding the ~4000 BTC from @Liquid_BTC is happening in public. It seems to be their preference over email. As it’s hard to follow the chain of messages in OP_RETURN, here’s a summary with links.
11:30 AM PDT -… https://t.co/IEXyFpBITx
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) September 7, 2026
At 7:20 PM, the hacker said they planned to send most of the funds back and asked whether a specified address was acceptable. About an hour later, they said the bug needed to be fixed first, and added,
“The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.”
Blockstream replied, “Yes, thank you,” at 8:30 PM. As of 9:12 PM PDT, around 3,998.5 BTC remained unmoved. There were no further messages from either side.
Unusual Hacker Behavior
Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet was skeptical of the white-hat claim and pointed out that legitimate security researchers would not typically drain a bridge and then ask to be contacted on-chain.
He drew parallels with the Ronin hack, in which attackers stole around $625 million after compromising validator keys, and the Euler exploit, where the attacker sought to negotiate the return of funds after the theft.
The move to Signal also did little to change Guillemet’s opinion that the behavior was unlike usual white-hat activity. Despite this, the exec noted that criminal groups do not typically reach out to their victims either.
The post Supposed White-Hat Hackers Drain $320 Million in BTC From Liquid Network, Say They’ll Return It After Fix appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Andrew Garfield Faces Heat Over His Billionaire Warning
BREAKING: XRP wird Teil des globalen Finanzsystems!
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