Crypto World
OKX Delays U.S. IPO, Cites Weak Crypto Listings
TLDR
- OKX said it will not rush into a U.S. IPO and will wait until it can deliver shareholder value.
- Haider Rafique said the company will only go public when it has confidence in long-term returns.
- OKX secured a strategic investment linked to Intercontinental Exchange that valued the company at $25 billion.
- Rafique said the firm intentionally priced the funding round conservatively despite strong revenue growth.
- He warned that poor stock performance by listed crypto firms has hurt the industry’s image.
OKX said it will not hurry into a U.S. IPO as it expands global operations. A senior executive linked the timing to shareholder returns and market performance. The company instead plans long-term growth across regions and tokenized finance.
OKX Ties IPO Plans to Shareholder Value and Market Timing
Haider Rafique said OKX will enter public markets only when it can deliver shareholder value. He spoke during the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Thursday. He said, “We will go public when we have confidence that we can give back shareholder value.”
He added that the firm will avoid listing without that confidence and clear performance targets. He said, “If we are not confident, there is no desire to go public.” He linked the approach to long-term planning and measured expansion.
OKX recently secured a strategic investment linked to Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange. The deal valued OKX at $25 billion, according to Rafique. He said the company priced the round conservatively despite revenue growth.
He said, “We did underprice ourselves when you look at our revenue growth and licenses.” He added that the pricing decision was intentional and tied to long-term returns. He said the company focused on durability over short-term valuation gains.
Rafique also referenced poor public market performance by crypto firms. He said he bought one share in a major listing that later fell 50%. He said, “That’s not a good thing, and that’s bad for the category.”
He did not name the company during the discussion. However, Coinbase trades nearly 50% below its 2021 IPO price. Other crypto-linked stocks have also faced price swings since listing.
Global Expansion and Tokenized Assets Drive OKX Strategy
Rafique warned that careless listings could hurt the broader crypto sector. He said, “If we treat going public like we treated ICOs, we are doomed.” He compared rushed IPOs to the release of millions of tokens last year.
He said OKX plans to build the company over 20 or 30 years. He described the IPO decision as tied to durability rather than timing. He said the firm wants stable growth before entering public markets.
OKX operates across Europe, Latin America, Asia, and other regions. Rafique said the exchange ranks among top venues in crypto derivatives. He contrasted that reach with U.S.-focused rivals like Coinbase and Kraken.
He said international exchanges benefit from liquidity across time zones. He said, “Our unified order book becomes a strong competitive advantage.” He added that this structure supports trading during U.S. off-hours.
The company also targets tokenized financial assets and blockchain infrastructure. Its partnership with Intercontinental Exchange supports plans to bring equities and other assets onchain. Rafique said OKX will act as a distribution layer for those products.
MARA Holdings sold more than $1 billion of Bitcoin in March to repurchase convertible debt at a discount, using its BTC holdings to reduce leverage, the company said Thursday.
In a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the largest listed US Bitcoin miner said it would buy back about $1 billion of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2030 and 2031 for roughly $913 million in cash, capturing about $88 million in savings, or close to a 9% discount to par.
The company said it sold 15,133 Bitcoin (BTC) for around $1.1 billion between March 4 and March 25 to fund the transactions, which it said will cut its outstanding convertible debt by about 30% to roughly $2.3 billion once the deals close at the end of the month. According to Bitcointreasuries.net, MARA now holds 38,689 BTC on its public balance sheet.
MARA’s chairman and chief executive officer, Fred Thiel, commented in a release that the transaction enhanced the company’s “financial flexibility” and increased its “strategic optionality” as MARA expands “beyond pure-play Bitcoin mining into digital energy and AI/HPC infrastructure.”
Related: Riot Platforms’ AI/HPC push could net up to $21B, says activist holder
MARA’s premarket share price reacted positively to the news, rising from yesterday’s close of $8.25 to $9.29, a gain of around 12.6%, and traded at $8.74 (+5.56%) at the time of writing, according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Bitcoin miners continue to sell down their stashes
The move follows a $1.7 billion net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven largely by non-cash fair-value adjustments on MARA’s Bitcoin holdings. At the time, MARA pushed back against speculation that it was quietly selling down its BTC holdings, saying it continued to view Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset while actively managing its balance sheet.
MARA is part of a broader shift among crypto miners seeking more stable revenue streams, redeploying energy and infrastructure toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The company recently agreed to acquire a majority stake in Exaion’s AI-focused data centers, and peers are making similar moves.
Bitdeer sold down its Bitcoin treasury to zero in February as it pivots toward infrastructure and service‑based revenues in cloud and AI compute, while Canaan has invested in US mining sites in Texas to run both Bitcoin mining and AI workloads from the same energy-intensive facilities.
Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, during a hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 26, 2026.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a blistering letter to Federal Reserve chair nominee Kevin Warsh on Thursday, predicting he would serve as a “rubber stamp for President Trump’s Wall Street First Agenda,” and accusing him of having learned “nothing from your failures” during a prior stint at the central bank.
Warren, D-Mass, in the letter reported first by CNBC, told Warsh that his record as a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors from 2006 until 2011 — which included the 2008-09 financial crisis and Great Recession — “should disqualify you from a promotion.”
“But President Donald Trump has vowed that ‘anybody that disagrees with’ him ‘will never be the Fed Chairman,’ ” Warren noted.
“And you, apparently, have passed his test,” she added.
“As Fed Chair, you will be responsible for directing economy-altering policies that have serious
consequences for American workers and communities,” Warren wrote. “However, your track record leading up to, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis raises significant concerns about your ability to do so.”
The letter, which CNBC obtained before it was publicly released, asked Warsh pointed, detailed questions about 10 different subject areas to be answered for his confirmation hearing at the Senate Banking Committee, where Warren is the ranking Democrat.
But those queries were buried at the bottom of what reads as a scathing, eight-page indictment of his tenure at the Fed, and what she called his advocacy “against tougher safeguards intended to prevent big bank failures and taxpayer bailouts” after he left the central bank.
“I write to better understand what, if anything, you’ve learned from your failure to prioritize American families over Wall Street before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis while serving as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,” Warren said in the letter’s first sentence.
“Rather than implementing policies to improve the lives of the American public, you ignored the obviously excessive risk-taking on Wall Street; worked tirelessly to bail out large financial institutions after their bets blew up the economy; and advocated for policies that would have further harmed the millions of Americans who lost their jobs, were thrown out their homes, and saw their life savings evaporate,” she continued.
Warsh did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC about the letter.
Warsh’s nomination is in limbo as Warren’s fellow Banking Committee member, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he would effectively block the nomination from being considered by the full Senate until a criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell is resolved.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has indicated she has no intention of dropping that probe.
Pirro’s office is seeking to reverse a ruling on March 11 by a federal judge in Washington, blocking subpoenas issued to the Fed as part of its investigation of Powell, which is purportedly focused on cost overruns of the pricey renovation of the Fed’s headquarters and testimony about that project to the Banking Committee.
District Court Judge James Boasberg, in his order quashing those subpoenas, wrote, “There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will.”
Trump has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, pressured Powell and the entire Board of Governors to cut interest rates more quickly and deeply than they have since Trump reentered the White House in January 2025.
Powell earlier in March said he would remain as chair pro tem if Warsh is not confirmed by May, when Powell’s term as chair expires.
In her letter to Warsh on Thursday, Warren said that when he began his service on the Board of Governors, there were “warning signs of the coming crisis” in the subprime home-lending market.
“Yet rather than using the Fed’s powerful supervisory and regulatory authorities to address the severe consumer and financial stability risks posed by subprime mortgages, you defended and even implicitly promoted these products,” Warren wrote.
“Astonishingly, in December 2007, you agreed that “subprime mortgages have gotten a bad name
in this environment,” she wrote. “You also promoted derivatives and other forms of ‘financial innovation’ as vehicles to disperse risk and make the financial system safer.”
“Again, you were wrong.”
Warren said that during the resultant financial crisis, “you appear to have prioritized the interests of large financial institutions ahead of the American public.”
“Your eagerness to bail out Wall Street, including through taxpayer-assisted megamergers, was not surprising, given the seven years you spent as a Morgan Stanley mergers and acquisitions executive prior to joining the George W. Bush Administration,” Warren wrote.
“It has been well-documented that you played a central role helping to arrange numerous [multibillion-dollar] bailouts and even obtained an ethics waiver to deal directly with Morgan Stanley, which received the special regulatory approvals from the Fed on an expedited basis necessary to access additional emergency support.”
The senator said Warsh also advocated for higher interest rates at the time, “further imperiling an ailing economy” that was hemorrhaging jobs.
“Your monetary policy record shows a repeated failure to accurately assess the impact of inflation on the American economy,” Warren wrote.
“It appears you have learned nothing from your failures,” she wrote.
“Since leaving the Fed, you have advocated against tougher safeguards intended to prevent big bank failures and taxpayer bailouts.”
— CNBC’s Matt Peterson contributed to this article.
A viral warning from economist Peter St. Onge has spotlighted how an 89–10 Senate housing bill quietly folds in a temporary CBDC ban and reshapes the path for the CLARITY Act.
Summary
- Economist Peter St. Onge’s post warning that a CBDC provision is buried inside a must-pass housing bill drew nearly 196,000 views on X in under three hours.
- The U.S. Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act on March 12 with an 89–10 vote, embedding a ban on Federal Reserve-issued digital dollars through 2031.
- The bill must still pass the House, where Republican lawmakers are pushing for a permanent CBDC ban rather than the temporary prohibition in the Senate version.
A viral alarm from Heritage Foundation economist Peter St. Onge is reigniting one of crypto’s most contested political fights in Congress: the prospect of a U.S. central bank digital currency. In a post on X that amassed 195,700 views and 3,600 likes by the afternoon of March 26, @profstonge warned that “Congress is trying to sneak a CBDC into their must-pass housing bill,” adding that such a currency “would replace the US dollar with a government-controlled crypto-token that 80% of voters reject.”
The bill in question, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, passed the Senate on March 12 by an overwhelming 89–10 margin. As reported by Yahoo Finance, the legislation is primarily a sweeping housing reform package crafted by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott and Senator Elizabeth Warren, covering everything from FHA loan limits to institutional investor restrictions on single-family homes. Buried within it, however, is Title X — a provision that bars the Federal Reserve and its regional banks from issuing or creating a digital dollar, or any asset substantially resembling one, through 2031.
The inclusion was not accidental. According to Unchained Crypto, House conservatives pushed to embed anti-CBDC language into the legislation as a condition of broader bipartisan compromise, a strategy that allowed digital currency policy to advance without requiring a standalone crypto bill. The White House signaled support for the measure, with advisors recommending the president sign it if presented in its current form.
The CBDC Provision Dividing Washington
The debate cuts across party lines in ways that complicate easy narratives. While the Senate version imposes a ban through 2031, some House Republicans are pushing for a permanent prohibition, arguing that a time-limited restriction simply kicks the problem down the road. At the same time, critics on the left have argued the provision has no place in a housing bill and could muddy what should be a straightforward affordability package.
Wall Street commentator @WallStreetMav added another layer of skepticism in a separate post on X that drew 92,000 views, writing that “Republicans aren’t banning CBDCs, they’re redesigning them. Same surveillance, same control, just routed through banks so Wall Street gets its cut.” The post, which framed the compromise as a “revenue-sharing agreement” rather than genuine reform, accumulated 873 likes and 357 retweets within hours.
The housing bill CBDC fight arrives alongside a parallel battle over the CLARITY Act, the digital asset market structure legislation that has stalled in the Senate over a separate stalemate on stablecoin yield. Coinbase withdrew support for an earlier CLARITY Act draft after proposed language would have banned passive yield on stablecoins — a provision the exchange said was worse than the status quo. Senator Cynthia Lummis has since said sticking points on stablecoin yield and DeFi provisions are “largely reached,” framing April 2026 as a critical legislative window.
A Temporary Ban or a Political Signal?
For CBDC opponents, the housing bill provision is less about the technical details of digital currency design and more about drawing a political line before midterm elections. As Ledger Insights noted, the ban expires at the end of 2030 — after Trump leaves office — leaving the door open for a future administration. The Federal Reserve, for its part, has consistently maintained it would not launch a digital dollar without explicit congressional authorization, framing its existing research as exploratory rather than developmental.
Whether the CBDC provision survives a House-Senate conference process remains uncertain. House leaders have already indicated they are unlikely to accept the Senate version of the housing bill as written and may seek to renegotiate key provisions — including how long, and how broadly, any CBDC ban applies. As crypto.news previously reported, the Senate vote drew rare cross-aisle alignment, but that consensus may face pressure once negotiations with the House begin in earnest.
NYSE CPO Jon Herrick says blockchain should plug into existing rails like central clearing, as ICE’s OKX deal and SEC moves on tokenized stocks redraw market structure.
Summary
- NYSE Chief Product Officer Jon Herrick said at the New York Digital Assets Summit on March 26 that the exchange’s strategy centers on blockchain “interoperability” with existing market infrastructure, not wholesale replacement of it.
- Herrick emphasized that legacy mechanisms like central clearing retain irreplaceable risk management value and predicted the boundary between traditional and tokenized assets could disappear within the next decade.
- The comments land weeks after NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) made a strategic investment in crypto exchange OKX at a $25 billion valuation, with plans to offer NYSE tokenized equities to OKX’s 120 million users.
NYSE Chief Product Officer Jon Herrick on March 26 told the audience at the New York Digital Assets Summit that the world’s largest stock exchange has no intention of tearing down its existing market infrastructure to make way for blockchain — it intends to wire the two together. According to CoinDesk, Herrick said the NYSE is pursuing interoperability, exploring the application of tokenized assets within the current system, including real-time or near-real-time settlement and extended trading hours.
The position is a meaningful signal. NYSE is the most systemically significant equities venue on the planet, and Herrick’s framing — blockchain layered onto existing rails, not substituted for them — reflects how the exchange is navigating the practical and regulatory constraints of one of the most tightly supervised industries in finance. He noted that existing mechanisms such as central clearing still carry irreplaceable risk management value and should be preserved, even as the exchange pushes deeper into tokenization. As previously reported by crypto.news, the NYSE is already building a 24/7 blockchain-based trading venue for tokenized stocks and ETFs, pending SEC approval. The platform is designed to combine NYSE’s Pillar order-matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade settlement funded by stablecoins.
Herrick predicted that the boundary between traditional and tokenized assets may gradually dissolve over the next decade — a timeline that aligns with where institutional momentum is visibly heading. Morgan Stanley, as detailed in a previous crypto.news story, plans to enable tokenized stock settlement on its internal alternative trading system in the second half of 2026, while Nasdaq has already filed with the SEC to support tokenized equities on its public exchange.
ICE doubles down with OKX investment
The strategic backdrop to Herrick’s remarks is considerable. Earlier this month, ICE — NYSE’s parent company — made a strategic investment in OKX, valuing the crypto exchange at $25 billion and securing a board seat, as covered in a previous crypto.news story. Under the partnership, subject to regulatory approval, OKX’s 120 million users would gain access to ICE’s U.S. futures markets and NYSE tokenized equities. “Our strategic relationship with OKX will expand global retail access to ICE’s pre-eminent regulated markets and accelerate our plans to offer on-chain infrastructure and tokenized assets to U.S. investors,” said Jeffrey C. Sprecher, Chair and CEO of ICE, at the time of the announcement.
A market structure being redrawn
The tokenized equity market reached a market cap of roughly $800 million and $1.8 billion in monthly volume as of early 2026, still nascent by Wall Street standards but growing fast. The regulatory environment has also shifted: the SEC granted the DTCC a three-year window in late 2025 to custody tokenized securities, effectively clearing a path for broker-dealers to connect to on-chain settlement without abandoning the existing market structure.
Herrick’s interoperability-first philosophy — bridging old and new rather than replacing one with the other — may well prove to be the dominant model for how legacy exchanges absorb blockchain over the decade ahead.
U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is questioning the limited “master account” obtained by crypto exchange Kraken from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which she said raises potential consumer-protection issues and questions about the approval process.
Waters, who is likely to return to the chairman seat on the committee if the Democrats regain a House majority in this year’s elections (set at an 84% chance in current bets on Polymarket), sent a Thursday letter to the president of the Kansas City arm of the Fed system, Jeff Schmid. She suggested that the unusual approval for a “limited purpose account” at Kraken, which allows the firm to become the first to win direct access to Federal Reserve payment services, is on unclear legal footing.
“The announcement raises questions about the approval because neither statute nor the Federal Reserve Board’s Account Access Guidelines refer to a ‘limited purpose account’ type,” she wrote in the letter. “Accordingly, I write to request that you clarify the terms of Kraken’s account access approval and provide additional information regarding the process and considerations informing the approval.”
The new account granted the U.S. firm full-fledged access to the same payment rails that much of the traditional financial system operates on. Several crypto-native firms have sought that access but are still awaiting approval, keeping a close eye on a separate effort at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington to write rules that could govern a “skinny” master account for such businesses. That process is still in the early stages.
When the Kansas City Fed was asked to comment on Waters’ queries, a spokesman said the bank has “received the letter and will review it.”
The regional bank in Kansas City — one of the 12 such banks nationwide — announced earlier this month that Kraken would get the long-sought-after access. Schmid said at the time that his bank was trying to maintain a system that “supports a level competitive field and reinforces the stability and resilience that has underpinned the Federal Reserve’s payment system offerings throughout its history.”
Read More: Court closes Custodia fight with Federal Reserve just as Fed opens master-account door
The crypto exchange has previously been in the crosshairs of Japanese regulators for offering products and services without the proper registration.
Japan’s watchdog overseeing many activities for cryptocurrency exchanges, has issued warning letters to companies including KuCoin for conducting certain operations without registering, according to a Thursday update from the Financial Services Agency (FSA).
According to the agency’s latest list of entities “conducting financial instruments business without registration,” the FSA said platforms KuCoin, NeonFX, theoption, and GTCFX received a March notice for “soliciting over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trading via the internet.” Of the four platforms, the FSA listed KuCoin, which is headquartered in the Seychelles, as offering services to Japanese residents, while the others have an international user base.
The FSA issued a similar warning to KuCoin and other exchanges, including Bybit, in November 2024 for offering products and services to Japanese residents without proper registration. In February 2025, the financial watchdog sent requests to Apple and Google for the companies to suspend downloads of KuCoin’s app.
Japan has a high concentration of crypto users. The FSA reported in February 2025 that there were more than 12 million accounts among a population of about 123 million. The country ranked 19th in Chainalysis’s 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index.
Cointelegraph reached out to KuCoin for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Related: Austria’s regulator slaps new business ban on KuCoin’s EU exchange
The FSA’s notice comes as the financial watchdog prepares to shift Japan’s legal framework from the country’s Payment Services Act to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. The change would significantly alter reporting requirements for initial exchange offerings and token issuers, and provide regulators with greater enforcement authority over unregistered platforms.
Japan’s PM denies involvement in memecoin project
Sanae Takaichi, who has served as the prime minister of Japan since October 2025, publicly denied connections to the “Sanae token” earlier this month after the project grew to a market value of about $28 million before falling sharply. The FSA was reportedly considering an investigation into the matter.
Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?
Crypto World
Ethereum Price Prediction Turns Bullish Long Term as Pepeto Presents Strongest Odds Before the Binance Listing
Large wallets are stacking ETH at a pace that took the market off guard, with buying address balances going vertical while the Fear and Greed Index hits 10, the lowest reading in 16 months. While the new trend looks good for the ethereum price prediction on a longer timeline, it could take a while before retail sees any returns from it.
This is why smaller entries and presales are growing in popularity. Pepeto is the exchange that raised more than $8 million, but the Binance listing approaching presents a much shorter path to returns when compared to waiting for ETH to clear resistance. Analysts project 100x to 300x, and the entry is still open.
The Fear and Greed Index dropped to 10 on March 26, the worst reading in 16 months, while ETH open interest climbed to multimonth highs as DeFi and AI tokens outperformed BTC, according to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin settled at $68,350 with spot ETF outflows hitting $124 million on March 25, the fifth straight day of redemptions, according to The Block.
The ETH outlook benefits from whale buying during fear, but the exchange already at presale pricing with a Binance listing confirmed is where the compressed returns live before trading opens.
Where the ETH Whale Buying Meets Presale Returns Before the Listing Window Closes
Pepeto
There is no guarantee ETH makes a massive move any time soon. This is exactly why Pepeto and the presale entry present such a valuable opportunity for traders who want control over their timing.
Analysts project 100x to 300x from the current entry, which at $0.000000186 could be the return that changes your position for the rest of the cycle. The exchange pulled in more than $8 million while the correction raged. The risk scorer checks every contract before your capital touches it, PepetoSwap keeps your full position intact at zero fees, and the cross chain bridge moves tokens at zero cost.
Since you can rely on the exchange for daily trading with 193% APY staking compounding early positions while stages fill faster, the adoption path is clear. The SolidProof audit verified every contract, and the developer who created the original Pepe coin reaching $11 billion with the same 420 trillion supply built the exchange alongside a former Binance expert.
Pepeto delivers the ETH forecast crowd a faster answer because the initial move from the listing could be massive, but the exchange itself and the daily use behind it will stay active for years.
Ethereum Price Prediction: Can ETH Clear $2,200 and Start the Run to $2,600?
Ethereum trades at $2,048 as of March 27 hovering above $2,000 support with open interest at multimonth highs, according to CoinMarketCap.
The ethereum price prediction depends on clearing $2,100 and the 50 day SMA near $2,200, which opens a run to $2,600 with $3,000 as the stretch target. The setup falls apart if ETH loses $2,000, locking the price between $1,750 and $2,100.
Whale buying addresses going vertical during the correction signals conviction, and Fear and Greed at 10 historically resolves with a sharp recovery 40% of the time. The ETH forecast is structurally bullish for 2026, but the path from $2,048 to $3,000 is a 40% move over many months, not the 100x to 300x the presale compresses into one listing event.
Ethereum Price Prediction Confirms This Is the Second Chance to Be Early and the Reader Can See It Clearly
The ethereum price prediction may not offer fast movement in the short term despite the high probability that a future rally is building underneath. You are waiting for external catalysts to move the chart while the Fear and Greed Index sits at its lowest point in over a year. In contrast, Pepeto already has everything needed to break out on its own terms with more than $8 million raised and a Binance listing confirmed.
The listing date is when the 100x to 300x projections from analysts play out. Last cycle made millionaires out of the wallets that moved first, and this is that same moment with a confirmed listing approaching. The Pepeto official website is where being early this time means you collect what the rest of the cycle talks about.
Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs:
What does the ETH buying data mean for the ethereum price prediction?
Whales stacking ETH during fear reduces sell pressure over time and historically precedes big moves, but clearing $2,200 and the 50 day SMA at $2,200 is the trigger.
How does Pepeto compare to the ethereum price prediction timeline?
ETH’s bull case depends on macro conditions clearing resistance gradually. The Pepeto official website is where 100x to 300x from one listing is still at presale pricing with a confirmed date.
What levels does the ethereum price prediction need to break for a rally?
ETH must clear $2,100 and the 50 day SMA at $2,200 to open $2,600 with $3,000 as the stretch target, while losing $2,000 locks it in a range.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital is now the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury by BTC holdings, after miner MARA sold off a portion of its holdings and fell to the number three spot.
The newly formed Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company holds 43,514 BTC in its corporate treasury, valued at over $2.9 billion using the market price at the time of this writing, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.
Twenty One Capital was publicly listed late last year following its business combination with Cantor Equity Partners, a special purpose acquisition company. Now trading under the ticker XXI, the NYSE-listed shares are down more than 25% year to date.
MARA sold 15,133 BTC, valued at about $1.1 billion, throughout March 2026. The next largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder is Japanese BTC treasury company Metaplanet with 35,100. Bitcoin Treasuries analyst Tyler Rowe in a note Thursday said:
“For the industry, it’s a cautionary signal. MARA borrowed aggressively to stack sats during the bull run and is now selling Bitcoin at a loss to service that debt. This is the precise scenario critics of debt-fueled treasury strategies have warned about.”
This aggressive borrowing is in “sharp contrast” to the business model popularized by BTC treasury company Strategy, which treats BTC as “perpetual digital credit,” using it as collateral to continually finance BTC acquisitions.
“Can miners sustainably operate as Bitcoin treasury companies without the capital markets infrastructure Saylor spent five years building,” Rowe said in the note shared with Cointelegraph.
Some market observers note the change signals the capitulation of crypto treasury and mining companies amid a challenging business environment, worsened by the crypto bear market that started in October 2025 and declining share prices.
Related: Sweden’s H100 eyes Europe’s No. 2 Bitcoin treasury with 3,500 BTC deal
Analysts forecast the decline of the crypto treasury space in 2025
In June 2025, venture capital firm Breed said that only a few crypto treasury companies would survive the “death spiral” of contracting market net asset values (mNAVs) by maintaining a price premium that would allow these companies to secure more financing.
As access to cheap financing options disappears, companies trading at or below their net asset value would have to sell their BTC holdings to meet debt obligations, according to Breed.
Companies that treat their crypto holdings as a speculative bet, rather than a long-term play, were likely to capitulate between cycles, Deng Chao, CEO of asset manager HashKey Capital, told Cointelegraph.
At the same time, crypto treasury companies with a disciplined treasury strategy would last through multiple cycles, he said.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘biggest bull catalyst’ would be Saylor’s liquidation: Santiment founder
TLDR:
- Dragonfly’s Qureshi compares today’s AI agents to the 1964 mouse, warning adoption will take far longer than expected.
- OpenClaw remains buggy and unreliable for financial tasks as models operate outside their training distribution today.
- The x402 protocol processes only around one million dollars daily, confirming the market is still in its tinkering phase.
- Qureshi expects a new model generation within months, but says reaching the early majority will still take several more years.
Agentic payments are gaining momentum as a talking point across crypto and fintech circles globally. Yet a senior voice from one of crypto’s most recognized investment firms is urging caution on timelines.
Haseeb Qureshi, a managing partner at Dragonfly Capital, recently shared what he called his “most bearish take” on the subject.
While he believes agents will eventually reshape how money moves, he argues the technology remains far from ready for mainstream use.
Dragonfly’s Qureshi Points to History as a Cautionary Benchmark
Qureshi grounded his warning in a well-known piece of technology history. He referenced the computer mouse, which was first invented in 1964, as a parallel to today’s AI agents.
That invention clearly pointed toward mass personal computing, yet widespread adoption took many additional years. His point is that spotting a transformative technology early does not mean it arrives on schedule.
OpenClaw sits at the center of his current skepticism about agentic readiness. The Dragonfly executive described the tool as buggy, complicated, and unfit for managing real financial assets.
It regularly makes poor decisions and, in his words, “goes bankrupt doing stupid shit.” These are not minor rough edges — they reflect a structural gap between agent capability and real-world task demands.
The core problem, according to Qureshi, is that current models are handling tasks well outside their training distribution. That mismatch produces the erratic and unreliable behavior users routinely encounter.
No major lab has yet applied reinforcement learning directly to OpenClaw interaction traces. However, those traces carry strong training signal that labs have not yet tapped.
Once a lab trains purpose-built models on agentic task data, a major performance improvement is expected. Every major AI laboratory is working toward this, Qureshi noted, because the commercial prize is clearly visible.
That model release will likely arrive within months, not years. Still, even that milestone will only mark the close of the tinkering era, not the start of mass adoption.
Live Payment Data Backs the Dragonfly Partner’s Cautious Stance
Qureshi pointed to real protocol data to support his position on where the market currently stands. The x402 protocol is processing roughly one million dollars in daily volume at present.
The Machine Payment Protocol is recording even smaller figures than that. Together, those numbers confirm the current user base consists almost entirely of early experimenters.
The Dragonfly executive also drew on a widely cited framing from investor Chris Dixon. The idea is that what technically curious people do on weekends today, the broader public will be doing within ten years.
That pattern has played out consistently across major technology waves, from the internet to mobile. Agentic payments appear to be sitting at the very beginning of that same cycle.
Qureshi mapped out the full adoption curve to give context to what comes next. After the tinkering phase closes, the market enters early adopter territory, which itself will take time to mature.
The early majority follows that, and then comes the late majority and eventual late adopters. Each phase carries its own timeline, and none of them collapse quickly.
For now, the Dragonfly partner sees agents as a long-term story that the industry should not rush. The technology direction is clear, and the destination is not in question.
What remains uncertain is how long each phase of adoption will actually take. That uncertainty, he argues, is precisely what crypto has a habit of underestimating.
Representative Stephen Lynch voiced concerns about the direction of the SEC under Donald Trump, citing dropped investigations and enforcement actions on crypto companies.
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