Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has stunned the XRP community with a surprising admission. He revealed that he personally holds Solana tokens alongside his XRP position. The comment challenges the idea that Ripple’s chief backs only XRP.

Garlinghouse Breaks From XRP Maximalism

Garlinghouse told a podcast audience that he does not push people toward XRP alone. Instead, he encourages a broader approach to crypto holdings. He suggested buying the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap and holding for five years.

That basket currently includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, BNB, and XRP. Garlinghouse’s remarks show he still values XRP as part of a diversified strategy. However, he made clear that XRP does not stand alone in his personal portfolio.

The Ripple CEO also stressed that he supports multiple blockchain projects for different reasons. He does not view himself as loyal to a single token. This stance marks a shift from the maximalist image often tied to Ripple leadership.

Solana Enters Garlinghouse’s Portfolio

Garlinghouse confirmed he owns a modest amount of Solana. He explained that he does not see Solana as a rival to XRP. Rather, he framed both networks as capable of succeeding together.

He pointed to Solana’s meme-coin activity as a factor driving fresh liquidity to the chain. This activity, he noted, strengthens Solana’s broader ecosystem over time. Garlinghouse added that he expects both XRP and Solana to perform well long-term.

Ripple’s leader also said his firm’s real competition comes from elsewhere. He named other blockchain projects as bigger threats to XRP’s market position. Still, he expressed support for Solana’s continued growth and adoption.

Market Context Around The XRP And Solana Remarks

XRP has long carried a reputation shaped by loyal supporters and cross-border payment use cases. Ripple has spent years building partnerships tied directly to XRP adoption. Garlinghouse’s comments do not change that underlying business focus.

Solana, meanwhile, has grown through fast transaction speeds and a thriving meme-coin culture. The network has attracted developers and traders seeking lower fees. Garlinghouse’s disclosure adds a notable voice to Solana’s growing credibility.

For XRP holders, the statement signals that diversification does not equal disloyalty. Garlinghouse continues to back XRP as part of his five-year basket strategy. His comments simply widen the conversation beyond XRP alone.

Ultimately, the remarks reflect a broader shift toward multi-asset crypto strategies among industry leaders. XRP remains central to Garlinghouse’s outlook, even as his portfolio expands. The market now watches how this balanced stance shapes future XRP and Solana sentiment.

Starting cryptographic table initialization…

Aave has announced a Base equities market designed to accept seven Coinbase-issued tokenized stocks as collateral for USDC loans, with an initial borrowing cap of $21 million.

According to a Sep. 25 X post, the Equities Hub covers tokens tied to Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. Eligible holders can deposit the tokens and borrow USDC against them without selling their stock exposure. Aave’s published Base deployment proposal lists the same seven assets, but still sets out governance votes as steps before deployment.

Aave V4 sets separate limits for each stock

Within the proposed market, the seven stocks serve only as collateral. Users cannot borrow the equity tokens or borrow one stock token against another, according to Aave’s governance materials. USDC is the sole borrowable asset.

Aave has set a $32 million limit on USDC supplied to the main lending market and a $21 million limit on USDC borrowed. Its risk provider, LlamaRisk, put the combined initial stock collateral cap at roughly $29 million. The limits describe how large positions can become; they do not measure deposits or loans already made.

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Each stock also has its own borrowing limit relative to its collateral value. Aave’s published factors range from 65% for Meta and Tesla to 79% for Microsoft, with Apple at 78%, Alphabet at 76%, Amazon at 73%, and Nvidia at 70%. The amount a user can borrow therefore depends on which tokens they deposit, even when several stocks sit in the same position.

Aave’s V4 design places the equity positions in a dedicated Equities Hub with a shared USDC reserve. Suppliers who put USDC into that hub take exposure to loans backed by the seven stock tokens, while the equity market’s risks remain separate from Aave’s other Base markets. A separate supply-only route is intended for USDC vaults and aggregators.

Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, described the lending use:

“Until now a tokenized stock was something you could hold or trade. Today it becomes something you can borrow against.”

Aave’s governance materials describe the Base deployment as a proposal requiring an offchain Snapshot vote followed by an onchain vote.

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Chainlink feeds price the collateral around U.S. stock hours

Chainlink supplies the feeds Aave plans to use when valuing each stock token. LlamaRisk says the initial feeds publish from Sunday evening through Friday evening Eastern time and retain their last published value over weekends and market holidays.

Loans can operate around the clock, but the shares behind the tokens trade during U.S. market sessions. According to LlamaRisk, information released while the stock market is closed may appear in the feed as a single price change when publication resumes. The risk provider says that gap matters when setting collateral factors and liquidation terms, because a borrower’s position may have less room to absorb a sharp reopening move.

Chainlink expects to provide continuous feeds for the tokens later, LlamaRisk said. The risk provider plans to review market settings once those feeds are operating. For now, its published design uses the existing schedule and monitors the equity tokens and external markets.

Coinbase’s stock products reached Base before the Aave announcement. In August, the exchange introduced four tokens tied to Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Nvidia; September additions brought its lineup to 10. The seven selected for Aave’s market are all tied to publicly traded U.S. technology companies. As crypto.news reported on the initial rollout, Coinbase describes the tokens as beneficial interests backed by underlying shares, rather than products that only track stock prices.

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U.S. investors remain outside Coinbase’s current offering

Coinbase issues the products through an Abu Dhabi-based entity, while Alpaca Securities acts as broker and custodian for the underlying public shares, according to the token prospectus reviewed in the earlier report. The tokens are offered to eligible non-U.S. users and are not registered under the U.S. Securities Act. Their connection to Apple, Nvidia, and other American stocks does not make the products available to U.S. investors.

The distinction also applies to the new borrowing use. Base Head of Growth Antonio García-Martínez said eligible customers outside the United States can use the tokens to borrow USDC, while suppliers of USDC can earn interest. The Equities Hub announcement does not change Coinbase’s stated geographic restrictions.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has separately opened a conditional, five-year route for certain tokenized U.S. stocks to trade on qualifying permissioned venues. In coverage of the SEC relief, analysts identified Coinbase as a company that could seek to use the route, while noting that its existing offshore products would need to meet the applicable U.S. conditions. The Aave announcement concerns lending against Coinbase’s current tokens on Base, not authorization for those tokens to be offered to U.S. persons.

Aave is also pursuing another tokenized-asset lending market. On Sep. 16, it outlined an Avalanche credit hub where institutions would borrow Tether’s USA₮ against tokenized assets. The Base proposal instead names seven Coinbase stock tokens as collateral and USDC as the loan asset.

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AAVE price approaches $155 resistance

On the daily chart, AAVE rose slightly to $147.41 after reaching $150.14 during the session. The token traded above its Supertrend line at $117.29, while the Aroon Up reading of 85.71% exceeded Aroon Down at 35.71%, pointing to a stronger upward trend. AAVE now faces resistance at $155.43; the nearest marked support is $134.56.

The next marked level above the price is $155.43. A daily close above it would put AAVE beyond the upper boundary shown on the chart. If the price pulls back instead, the marked levels below are $134.56 and $118.18, with the Supertrend line near the latter.

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

Strategy MSTR$158.49 is asking shareholders to approve daily dividends across its four U.S. listed preferred stocks, STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD.

The largest corporate holder of bitcoin BTC$83,520.54 proposed that dividends would accrue every calendar day, including weekends and holidays, and be paid on the next business day.

The proposal changes payment timing, but leaves dividend rates and total regular dividend amounts unchanged. Shareholders are due to vote on Oct. 28. If approved, STRC’s first daily dividend would be paid on Nov. 2.

This move to daily dividends would be primarily targeted at STRC, which went from monthly to bi-monthly payments in June. STRC has still struggled to return to its $100 stated value since May, and fell to as low as $71 during bitcoin’s selloff back in June. Its annual dividend rate is currently 12%.

Daily payments could make STRC more attractive to income investors by reducing the wait to receive and reinvest dividends, while smoothing price moves around payment dates. Strategy says supporting a trading price close to $100 is the aim of the change.

The debate is no longer whether blockchain technology might someday reach traditional capital markets. The question is how existing markets will incorporate it and what rules will govern that transition.

Andrew Cuomo is the former Governor of New York, and a board member of OKX.

Tokenization does not eliminate financial risk, nor does it make the basic responsibilities of regulators obsolete. Quite the opposite. Markets ultimately function on trust, and new technology succeeds only when investors have confidence that ownership is real, transactions are reliable, markets are fair and bad actors will be held accountable.

I learned that lesson from the other direction.

As New York attorney general during the financial crisis, I saw what can happen when innovation and financial engineering move more quickly than oversight and risk management. Subprime lending and increasingly complex mortgage securities were promoted as innovations that expanded access to credit and distributed risk. Instead, bad underwriting and inadequate safeguards helped transmit risk throughout the financial system.

The lesson wasn’t that financial innovation should stop. It was that innovation and regulation have to develop together.

That appears to be the approach the SEC is taking now.

Its exemption isn’t a free-for-all. All trading venue participants must be permissioned. Tokenized shares traded under the exemption must provide investors the same rights and privileges as the traditional shares of an equivalent class. Trading venues face limits on the number and volume of tokenized securities they can trade. Issuers can object to the trading of their shares when tokenized by unaffiliated third parties. Smart contracts must be auditable and deployed on public blockchains, and trading in a tokenized security must stop when trading in the underlying security is halted.

Circle and Tether have frozen stablecoins in a wallet linked to Thursday’s $351.6 million Bitget hack, though the amount is a small fraction of the total.

Circle blacklisted the address, which Etherscan labels “Bitget Exploiter 8,” at 05:00 UTC Friday, onchain data shows. The wallet holds about 170.47 ETH, 218,023 USDT and 99,990 USDC. Blockchain security firm MistTrack said Tether has since banned the wallet too.

That leaves roughly $318,000 in stablecoins stuck. MistTrack’s tracker shows other exploiter addresses still holding more than 63,000 ETH, which no issuer can freeze.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said attackers compromised a backend system in the exchange’s wallet infrastructure, spoofed transaction data and triggered its authorization process to move funds out. She ruled out a private key compromise. Chen said Bitget’s user protection fund, which holds over $464 million, covers the loss.

Circle’s quick action contrasts with its response to April’s $285 million Drift hack. In that case, the attacker moved about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s own cross-chain transfer protocol. Critics including ZachXBT said Circle could have moved faster to blacklist wallets and freeze funds. Circle said it freezes assets when legally required.

Stablecoin issuer Tether said it has very little exposure to a lender seized by U.S. authorities on Thursday.

Tether said assets it holds at EQIBank represent less than 0.034% of its total assets, after the Dominica-licensed lender was caught up in a U.S. asset seizure that it said could force it into liquidation, according to reports by the Financial Times and The Information.

“Tether had no knowledge of the conduct by Capstone alleged by the Department of Justice,” a Tether spokesperson told CoinDesk via email. The company said assets held at EQIBank were limited to “less than 0.034% of the assets of the group,” but did not disclose the exact dollar amount.

Based on Tether’s June report of $187.75 billion in group assets, the percentage the spokesperson said was at risk would put the EQIBank exposure at roughly $64 million.

EQIBank used Capstone, a U.S. payment processor, to hold funds and move customer money through accounts at Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, according to court filings. U.S. prosecutors seized money from those Capstone accounts and filed a civil forfeiture case, alleging that Capstone misrepresented its business to banks.

Bitcoin’s September 25 quarterly options expiry has put an enormous open-interest figure beside a much smaller and less visible question: which contracts produced payments? The exchange rules tell us what a winning holder receives. They do not turn a pre-expiry headline into a verified account of money transferred at settlement.

Bitcoin options worth billions of dollars have reached their quarterly expiry, but the advertised amount has not been paid from one side of the market to the other.

Deribit’s published expiry schedule puts the September quarterly contracts on the final Friday of the month at 08:00 UTC. Its delivery-price policy uses an index time-weighted average between 07:30 and 08:00 UTC. That is the price reference for automatic exercise and settlement of qualifying contracts. A pre-expiry estimate describes positions still open at an earlier observation time. It cannot be read as a receipt for the 08:00 settlement.

A September preview of the combined expiry cited approximately $18.1 billion across Bitcoin and Ether as of September 23, with Bitcoin accounting for about $16.1 billion in the snapshot it reported. An earlier $16.6 billion combined estimate appeared on September 15. Neither figure is a timestamped count of contracts that remained open at the cutoff, much less the cash or coins exchanged by winners and losers. The amount changes as positions are opened, closed or rolled, and as the underlying Bitcoin price changes the dollar translation of BTC denominated contracts.

There are three separate ledgers behind the headline. Open interest measures the outstanding contract position before expiry. Intrinsic settlement measures the value of options that finish in the money at the prescribed price. Net trading profit adds the premium paid or received and the results of any hedge put on before settlement. They are different numbers, potentially recorded in different assets. Collapsing them into one figure makes a market event sound more like a mass transfer than the contract terms support.

The big number measures outstanding positions

An option gives its buyer a right linked to a specified strike price, while its seller has the corresponding obligation. A call benefits from a settlement price above its strike. A put benefits from a settlement price below it. Open interest counts outstanding positions, ordinarily one long and one short for each open contract. Counting those two sides as separate piles of wealth would double-count the economic exposure. Counting every dollar of notional as a payout makes a different mistake: an option can expire without value, or finish only a small distance beyond its strike.

The reported $16.1 billion Bitcoin component was a pre-expiry estimate of outstanding positions, not the amount of premium paid when those positions were first traded. Option premiums can be a fraction of the notional exposure and vary with strike, maturity and implied volatility. Nor is the estimate the maximum loss of every buyer. A buyer generally risks the premium paid, while a short option can have a very different risk profile, subject to margin and any offsetting trades.

The exchange and the publication also define the scope of the estimate. A figure drawn from Deribit data does not automatically include every venue’s Bitcoin options, over-the-counter positions or listed futures used as hedges. Even within one venue, a dollar presentation can translate BTC contract sizes using an underlying price that differs from the eventual delivery price. To audit a headline, a reader needs its observation timestamp, currency, contract universe and calculation method.

The September 23 snapshot preceded expiry by almost two days. Some positions could have been closed through a trade, reducing open interest; others could have been opened or shifted into later maturities. A trader rolling a September call into October does not receive the September notional as cash. The exchange offsets the old position in a transaction and the trader opens another position at a different premium. Exchange volume during that process is real trading activity, but it is distinct from the final exercise amount.

Deribit’s contract specifications also distinguish inverse, BTC settled options from linear options whose results are settled through USDC products. A dollar sum across instruments may be a convenient scale measure, yet it does not identify a single pot of dollars ready to move at 08:00. The legal contract and its settlement currency determine the ledger entry. The quoted notional alone cannot.

The contrast has appeared in earlier coverage. After an August expiry of roughly $9.6 billion of options, the market could still trade on funding, spot flows and macroeconomic news. The fact that a large maturity arrives on a calendar does not isolate its price impact. It does, however, eliminate the expiring option positions and may change how dealers hedge any positions that survive in other instruments.

The 08:00 price sets exercise, not trading volume

Deribit’s delivery-price documentation specifies an index time-weighted average during the 30 minutes ending at 08:00 UTC for the relevant expiry. This matters because a single last trade at 08:00 is not the settlement price. A headline saying Bitcoin briefly touched a strike cannot show whether a call or put settled in the money. The exchange’s published delivery price, for the correct underlying and date, is the relevant reference.

For a conventional European-style option, exercise at expiry depends on the relationship between that delivery price and the strike. A call struck at $80,000 is worth $5,000 per BTC of underlying at a hypothetical $85,000 delivery price before premiums and contract-specific currency conversion. A call struck at $90,000 has no intrinsic value at the same price. A put struck at $90,000 has $5,000 per BTC of intrinsic value. Those values do not tell us how much any holder made: the holder could have paid $6,000 for the first call and lost $1,000 after the exercise value.

That $85,000 is an illustrative price, not a claim about September 25’s actual delivery price. It lets us separate the unit of notional from the unit of payment. Consider a holder of one BTC equivalent of the $80,000 call. The holder’s $80,000 strike exposure is not transferred at expiry. On these assumptions, the gross intrinsic value is $5,000. For a corresponding inverse BTC cash-settled calculation, a $5,000 USD value converted at $85,000 per BTC is approximately 0.058824 BTC. The exact exchange debit and credit must follow the instrument’s own payoff specification, including contract size and rounding.

Change the hypothetical delivery price to $80,100, and the same call has just $100 per BTC of intrinsic value. Leave it at $79,900, and the call has none. The advertised notional attached to the open position could look broadly similar in all three cases just before settlement, while the actual exercise value changes dramatically. Near-the-money concentration is therefore more informative for settlement than a single aggregate notional.

Deribit’s inverse options specifications describe automatic exercise of in-the-money options and cash settlement in BTC. Cash settlement means an account is credited or debited under the contract; it does not require delivery of physical Bitcoin in exchange for a strike payment, nor a purchase of one BTC in the spot market for every expiring call. Its delivery procedure pauses trading in expiring instruments around the event and updates balances. The clearing system nets obligations by account and contract. Public open interest, which consists of outstanding longs and shorts, does not reveal that account-level netting.

Some traders may have exchanged premiums minutes or weeks earlier. A customer can buy a call from a market maker, and the market maker can hedge by buying spot Bitcoin or futures. When the option expires, that hedge may be reduced, maintained for another exposure or transferred to a new maturity. A spot purchase before expiry and a sale after expiry are actual market trades, but neither should be labeled the option settlement cash flow. An observed burst of spot volume requires a separate attribution to identify whose hedges changed.

Two contract designs can pay in different assets

The BTC inverse option and a USDC linear option may both appear in a dashboard of Bitcoin options exposure. Their payoff plumbing differs. Deribit’s inverse option uses BTC as the settlement currency. Its value expressed in dollars at the delivery price is translated into a BTC account change. A participant receiving BTC can choose to sell it later, but the settlement itself is an exchange-account credit in the contract currency, not automatic evidence of a sale into dollars.

Deribit’s current linear-options documentation says the USDC product exercises into a future and that the resulting position is cash settled in USDC. The exchange introduced this two-step arrangement in April 2026. At expiry, therefore, describing every Bitcoin option as simply paying BTC would be incorrect. The exercise may create an offsetting futures position before the USDC settlement step. The relevant futures specifications say profit and loss is transferred in USDC. A reporter has to inspect the instrument code before calling the payment BTC, USDC or a spot-market purchase.

The term cash settled can confuse readers because it does not necessarily mean a bank-wire transfer in fiat currency. On a crypto derivatives venue it refers to a ledger cash flow in the contract’s specified unit, potentially BTC or a stablecoin account balance. These credits and debits are real economic transfers between counterparties through the clearing venue. Their total gross value is not published merely by reporting options open interest.

The conversion creates a subtle accounting issue. If a BTC-settled inverse option has a fixed USD intrinsic value in a hypothetical payoff, the number of BTC credited depends on the delivery price used for conversion. Summing BTC credits across strikes and translating the result at a different spot price later would give another dollar figure. A claim of an exact amount “changing hands” must identify its unit and valuation time. The same headline can otherwise conflate the option’s reference exposure with coins delivered, dollar-valued settlement and exchange volume.

This distinction matters to risk as well as to journalism. A trader receiving BTC from a winning inverse option can have more BTC exposure after settlement unless another position offsets it. A USDC linear payout adds a different balance and may leave no equivalent BTC holding. If the goal is to infer buying pressure from expiry, one would need to observe how recipients traded those balances, what sellers did to cover obligations and whether market makers unwound hedges. The settlement rules alone do not establish a directional spot flow.

Max pain is a model, not a clearing result

Expiry coverage often quotes a “max pain” strike, the price at which the aggregate intrinsic value of open call and put positions would be minimized under a specified snapshot and simplified assumptions. The number can be recalculated when positions change. It does not dictate the actual delivery price, and it is not an amount transferred. The method also assumes open-interest holders have similar interests, while real accounts can combine options at several strikes, futures, spot positions and exposures on other venues.

An options seller might welcome a given strike finishing out of the money in isolation. The same trader may have bought an offsetting option, sold futures or hedged spot inventory, changing the net economic result. An observed concentration of calls at one strike does not tell us whether the holders are retail buyers, institutions hedging a different position or market makers long an option against a short elsewhere. The published distribution does not identify the beneficial owners or their net books.