Crypto World
Robinhood built its own chain. It still pays rent.
Every dollar Robinhood Chain earns, a tenth goes to a DAO treasury controlled by strangers. The arrangement has been covered a dozen times as good news for Arbitrum’s token.
Summary
- Robinhood Chain runs on Arbitrum’s Orbit stack, and under the Arbitrum Expansion Program every Orbit chain settling outside Arbitrum One routes 10% of net protocol revenue back to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
- The split is fixed: 8% to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, controlled by ARB tokenholders, and 2% to the Arbitrum Developer Guild.
- The figures are now real, no longer theoretical. Robinhood Chain has passed $2 million in cumulative revenue since its July 1 launch, with roughly $200,000 flowing to Arbitrum, and Arbitrum reported the network earning over $800,000 in a single seven-day stretch, annualizing near $42 million.
- The payment is calculated on net revenue after operating costs, applies to sequencer profits, and may extend to MEV capture if the chain adopts Arbitrum’s Timeboost mechanism.
- Every version of this story published so far has been written for ARB holders. The unexamined half is what the arrangement costs the brokerage, and why a company with a $2.2 billion war chest chose to pay it.
Nobody has asked the other question: what a licensed brokerage that spent a decade removing intermediaries bought by becoming a tenant.
There is a particular irony in a company whose entire founding pitch was the removal of intermediaries acquiring one. Robinhood spent a decade telling retail investors that the layers between them and the market were extractive, that commissions were a tax on participation, and that the right architecture was fewer parties taking a cut. On July 1 it launched its own blockchain, the most complete expression of that philosophy available: a settlement layer it controls, sequencing it operates, and fee revenue it collects. And under the terms of the technology stack it chose, a tenth of what that chain nets goes to somebody else. Specifically, 8% goes to a treasury controlled by holders of a governance token, and 2% funds a developer guild, both under an arrangement called the Arbitrum Expansion Program. The mechanism has been reported repeatedly since Offchain Labs disclosed it, always from one direction: what it means for ARB, why the token rallied, how a governance asset acquired a revenue claim. This piece asks the question those pieces did not. What did Robinhood buy, what is it paying, and does the arithmetic work.
What the arrangement actually is
The mechanics are specific enough to matter, and they have been reported loosely in several places.
The Arbitrum Expansion Program applies to any Layer 2 or Layer 3 chain built with Arbitrum’s Orbit toolkit that settles outside Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova. Those chains route 10% of net protocol revenue back to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Of that 10%, eight percentage points flow to the Arbitrum DAO treasury, which ARB tokenholders control through governance, and two percentage points fund the Arbitrum Developer Guild, which supports tooling, grants, and protocol work.
Three details in that description carry weight and are frequently dropped.Net, not gross. The calculation runs on revenue remaining after network operating costs, which ties the payment to a chain’s actual profitability instead of raw transaction throughput. That is materially friendlier to an operator than a gross fee would be, and it means a chain running at thin margins pays little regardless of volume.
Sequencer profits are the base. The revenue subject to sharing comes from the entity that orders and processes transactions, which on Robinhood Chain is Robinhood. That is the same revenue line this publication has examined as the core economics of any Layer 2, and it is precisely the line the chain exists to capture.
MEV may be included. If the chain adopts Timeboost, Arbitrum’s mechanism for capturing maximal extractable value from transaction ordering, those revenues could fall under the sharing arrangement as well. Whether Robinhood adopts it is a live question with real dollars attached, since ordering advantages on a chain hosting tokenized equities are worth considerably more than on a memecoin venue.
For contrast, Arbitrum One sends 100% of its own fees to the Arbitrum treasury. The Orbit arrangement is the lighter one, which is the point: it is the price of using the stack without settling on the flagship chain.
The numbers, now that they exist
For the first three weeks this was an abstraction. It is not anymore.
Robinhood Chain has passed $2 million in cumulative revenue since its July 1 launch, with approximately $200,000 routed to the Arbitrum ecosystem under the program. That is a clean 10%, and it is the first hard confirmation that the mechanism operates as described, not as an aspiration in a governance document.
Around that sit the throughput figures that produced it. The chain processed roughly 4 million transactions in its first week. Uniswap alone recorded $500 million in 24-hour volume on it. A single day in early July cleared $568 million. Within about two weeks the chain was clearing more than $800 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, briefly exceeding Ethereum’s, with roughly $3.9 billion across a week. Arbitrum reported the network earning over $800,000 in revenue across seven days, which annualizes near $42 million. Deposits crossed $600 million this week, rising 50% in seven days.
Now the distortion that every honest reading has to apply. The chain is running a 90-day gas subsidy, expiring around October, which means users are not paying the fees a mature chain would charge and the revenue figures are suppressed accordingly. Our audit of the chain’s first month documented how thoroughly that subsidy inflates activity metrics; it works in the opposite direction on revenue. The $42 million annualized figure is therefore both a real number and a floor, and the interesting reading comes after the subsidy lapses, when volumes and revenues both reprice. For broader context, crypto.news has also explained the subsidy distorting these numbers.
At current run rates, Arbitrum’s share is roughly $4 million a year. Against Robinhood’s quarterly revenue near $1.27 billion, that is a rounding error. Against the chain’s own economics, it is a tenth of everything.
What Robinhood bought
The arrangement only looks strange if you assume the alternative was free. It was not, and the alternatives are worth setting out because the choice reveals the strategy.
Build independently. A brokerage could commission a chain from scratch, own 100% of sequencer revenue, and pay nothing to anyone. The cost is time, engineering risk, and security. Rolling your own settlement layer means auditing it, defending it, and answering for it when something breaks, which for a regulated financial institution holding customer assets is not a theoretical exposure. It also means no ecosystem: no existing tooling, no bridges, no wallets that already work.
Use an existing chain. Deploy on Arbitrum One or Base or anywhere else, pay ordinary fees, capture nothing. This is what Robinhood actually did first, launching tokenized stock offerings on Arbitrum in 2025 before committing to its own chain, and the limitation is obvious: you are a tenant with no landlord’s economics and no control over the roadmap, the fee schedule, or who else gets to build next door.
Take the Orbit path. Get a chain you brand, control, and sequence, with Offchain Labs providing technical support, inheriting the Arbitrum ecosystem’s tooling and security assumptions, at the price of a tenth of net revenue. The launch specifications suggest what that bought: 100-millisecond block times, EVM compatibility, ETH as the gas asset instead of a new token nobody asked for, and a chain live and processing millions of transactions within a week of announcement.
Read that way, the 10% is a build-versus-buy decision resolved in favour of speed, and for a public company with a stock to defend and a crypto revenue line that fell 47% year over year in the first quarter, speed was plausibly worth more than margin. Our earnings analysis covered why the timing mattered so much.
The uncomfortable version of the same read is that Robinhood, having concluded that owning the rails is where the value sits, does not actually own them. It leases them, with favourable terms, from a decentralized organization whose token holders vote on what to do with the proceeds.
The tenant problem
That last sentence is not a rhetorical flourish. It describes a governance relationship that no traditional financial infrastructure arrangement resembles, and it has consequences nobody has priced.
The 8% going to the Arbitrum DAO treasury is controlled by ARB tokenholders through governance votes. Those holders decide how the money is deployed. They also, through the same governance process, hold influence over the direction of the technology stack Robinhood’s chain depends on. A licensed brokerage supervised by federal regulators is now a revenue contributor to, and a dependent of, an entity whose decision-making runs through token voting by anonymous participants.
For most crypto-native businesses that is unremarkable. For a public company that files with the SEC, answers to a board, and holds customer assets under regulatory obligation, it is a novel counterparty structure. The questions it raises are practical, not philosophical: what happens if governance votes to change the fee arrangement, what recourse exists if the stack’s roadmap diverges from the tenant’s needs, and how a regulated institution documents dependency on a DAO in its risk disclosures.
There is also a competitive dimension. The Orbit program applies universally, meaning any competitor can take the same path on the same terms. The arrangement Robinhood entered is not exclusive and confers no advantage over the next brokerage to build a chain, which limits how much of a moat the whole exercise creates. What it does create is a template, and the rest of the industry has noticed: our coverage of the tokenized-equity race documented Nasdaq building blockchain share issuance with Kraken’s parent and ICE working with OKX, none of which requires anyone to build from scratch.
Does the arithmetic work
Set aside the framing and ask the commercial question, because the answer determines whether any of this matters.
Roughly $42 million annualized in chain revenue, before the subsidy expires, against $4 million to Arbitrum. Against a company whose quarterly revenue runs near $1.27 billion, the chain contributes something in the low single-digit percentage range of annual revenue at current run rates, and the Arbitrum payment is immaterial to the parent by any measure.
Which means the fee share is not the story financially. It is the story structurally, because it clarifies what the chain actually is. Robinhood did not build a chain to earn sequencer fees; the numbers are too small relative to its brokerage business for that to be the motivation. It built one to control the settlement layer for tokenized equities, to avoid depending on a competitor’s infrastructure as that market develops, and to own the venue where its own products trade. Sequencer revenue is a byproduct, and 10% of a byproduct is a reasonable price for the option.
The test comes when the byproduct stops being small. If tokenized equities scale the way the DTCC’s entry into the same market suggests they might, and if Robinhood Chain hosts a meaningful share of that activity, the sequencer line grows and the 10% grows with it. A tenth of a rounding error is nothing. A tenth of a business is a negotiation, and the Arbitrum Expansion Program’s terms were set by the party that wrote them.
The precedent this sets
Strip out the two companies and the arrangement describes something the industry has been moving toward without naming: infrastructure providers taking a percentage of businesses they do not operate.
Arbitrum’s position under this model is closer to a franchise operator than a blockchain. It supplies the technology, the tooling, the security assumptions, and the developer support, and it collects a percentage of what franchisees earn across an expanding set of chains it did not build. Offchain Labs has been explicit that this is the strategy, framing enterprise adoption as the revenue thesis and noting that the flagship chain’s economics are separate. The model compounds with adoption in a way that grants and one-time licensing never do.
That has an obvious appeal for anyone holding the governance token, and it has a less obvious implication for everyone building on the stack. A percentage arrangement set at launch, when the tenant is small and the terms are generous, is an arrangement that becomes expensive precisely when the tenant succeeds. Ten percent of nothing costs nothing. Ten percent of a settlement layer hosting a meaningful share of tokenized equities is a real line item, and it is collected by a party whose consent the tenant needed at the start and whose terms the tenant did not write.
The comparison from outside crypto is the app store. Developers accepted a percentage when the platform was small and the alternative was no distribution, and spent the following decade in litigation and regulatory complaint about the rate. Nothing about the Arbitrum arrangement is coercive in that way, since alternatives genuinely exist and the terms are public. But the structural shape is familiar, and the history of platform percentages is that they are renegotiated by the largest tenants, eventually, loudly.
Robinhood is now among the largest tenants on this particular platform. Whether it ever behaves like one is a question for the quarter after the subsidy expires, when the numbers stop being small enough to ignore.
What to watch
The revenue line after October. The 90-day gas subsidy expires around then, and the first unsubsidized quarter is the only honest read on what the chain actually earns. Both volumes and revenues reprice, in opposite directions, and the net is unknown.
Whether Timeboost gets adopted. MEV capture on a chain hosting tokenized equities is worth real money, and adopting Arbitrum’s mechanism would likely bring those revenues under the sharing arrangement. The decision is a direct read on how Robinhood values ordering revenue against the cost of sharing it.
Disclosure in the filings. Whether the chain’s economics, including the Arbitrum arrangement, appear in Robinhood’s regulatory filings as a described dependency or a risk factor, and in what language. A public company documenting a revenue-sharing obligation to a DAO would be a first worth reading closely.
Whether the terms hold. The Expansion Program’s rates are set by Arbitrum governance. Any proposal to change them, in either direction, would test how much leverage a large Orbit tenant actually has, and Robinhood is now among the largest.
Competing chains on the same terms. Every brokerage that follows takes the same deal. If the tokenized-equity market fragments across several Orbit chains, the interesting question stops being what Robinhood pays and becomes what Arbitrum collects from an entire category it does not operate.
A final note on why the framing in the existing coverage matters more than it looks. Every account of this arrangement published so far was written for holders of a governance token, which meant the operative question was always whether the revenue share is large enough to justify a rally. That is a legitimate question and it produced accurate reporting. It also produced a blind spot, because a revenue share has two sides and only one of them was ever examined.
The side nobody covered is the one with the public company, the regulatory filings, the customer assets, and the board. Robinhood’s chain is now a material piece of its strategic story, its stock trades on the strength of that story, and the chain’s economics include a permanent obligation to an entity that no securities analyst covering the stock has any reason to have heard of. That gap between how crypto covers a deal and how equity markets would cover the same deal is where most of the useful analysis in this sector currently sits, and it is worth reading every ecosystem announcement with the question of who else is party to it. The same platform-ownership pattern is also visible in the same playbook in prediction markets, where distribution, licensing, and customer ownership intersect.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Arbitrum Expansion Program?
An arrangement under which any Layer 2 or Layer 3 chain built with Arbitrum’s Orbit technology stack, and settling outside Arbitrum One or Nova, routes 10% of its net protocol revenue back to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Of that, 8% goes to the Arbitrum DAO treasury controlled by ARB tokenholders, and 2% funds the Arbitrum Developer Guild.
How much has Robinhood Chain actually paid?
Roughly $200,000, against more than $2 million in cumulative chain revenue since the July 1 launch, which confirms the 10% rate operating in practice. Arbitrum separately reported the network earning over $800,000 in a single seven-day period, annualizing near $42 million, though those figures are suppressed by an ongoing gas subsidy.
Is the 10% calculated on gross or net revenue?
Net, after network operating costs, which ties the payment to a chain’s actual profitability rather than to transaction volume. The revenue base is sequencer profits, and if the chain adopts Arbitrum’s Timeboost mechanism for capturing value from transaction ordering, those revenues may fall under the arrangement as well.
Why did Robinhood not just build its own chain from scratch?
Time, risk, and ecosystem. Building independently means owning all the revenue and also owning the security, auditing, and defence of a settlement layer holding customer-adjacent assets, with no existing tooling, bridges, or wallet support. Orbit delivered a branded, controlled chain with 100-millisecond block times and technical support from Offchain Labs, live within a week, at the cost of a tenth of net revenue.
Does the payment matter financially to Robinhood?
Not currently. At present run rates the Arbitrum share is roughly $4 million a year against quarterly company revenue near $1.27 billion. The chain itself contributes a low single-digit share of annual revenue at best. The arrangement matters structurally rather than financially, because it defines what the chain is and who it depends on.
What is unusual about paying a DAO?
The counterparty structure. The 8% flowing to the Arbitrum DAO treasury is controlled by token holders voting through governance, and those same holders influence the roadmap of the technology stack Robinhood’s chain runs on. A federally regulated public company holding a revenue-sharing obligation to, and infrastructure dependency on, a decentralized organization is a novel arrangement with unsettled disclosure and risk-management questions.
Does this give Robinhood any advantage over competitors?
Not through the arrangement itself, which is available to anyone on identical terms. Any brokerage can build an Orbit chain and pay the same 10%. Robinhood’s advantages, if they hold, come from distribution and from operating the venue where its own products trade, and the tokenized-equity market is already attracting incumbent exchanges building comparable infrastructure.
What should investors watch?
The first unsubsidized quarter after the gas subsidy expires around October, whether Timeboost is adopted and MEV revenue enters the sharing arrangement, how the chain’s economics and the Arbitrum obligation appear in regulatory filings, and any governance proposal to change the Expansion Program’s rates. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Revenue figures reflect third-party trackers and company statements available at the time of writing and are subject to revision, and chain activity is currently affected by a temporary fee subsidy. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 29, 2026.
Bitcoin’s price dipped below $62,800 yesterday in a de-risking move from investors ahead of the FOMC meeting, but it has rebounded swiftly to over $64,000 now.
Most larger-cap alts have turned green as well, with XRP aiming at $1.10 once again. UNI is up by over 5%, while ADA has gained more than 4%.
BTC Jumps Ahead of FOMC
BTC was rejected at $67,000 last week, and the subsequent leg down pushed it south to under $63,600 on Friday. The bulls finally stepped up after this rather substantial decline given the current dull market phase, and bitcoin remained at around $64,000 during most of the weekend.
It even climbed slightly on Sunday following some de-escalation news on the US/Iran front. More profound increases came on Monday morning when the asset priced in the lack of new attacks between the US and Iran and jumped to $65,600 on a couple of occasions.
However, it failed there quickly and tumbled hard on Tuesday. Just a day before the most unpredictable FOMC meeting in years, the cryptocurrency dumped below $62,800, losing $3,000 in less than a day.
Nevertheless, it has bounced off rather nicely over the past several hours, currently trading well above $64,000. Its market capitalization has risen to $1.290 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has jumped to 57%.
BEAT Rockets, PI Rebounds
Most larger-cap alts have posted some gains over the past 24 hours, led by XRP and ADA. The former is up by 3% to $1.09, while the latter has jumped by 4.4% and now sits at $0.165. ETH has reclaimed the $1,900 level, while XMR is up to $350. UNI has added over 5% of value, followed by SKY, ONDO, and TAO.
In contrast, NEAR has dumped by another 5%, followed by LTC and ZEC. BEAT is by far the biggest gainer over the past 24 hours, surging by 35% to $3.75. Pi Network’s native token follows suit. A 5.5% surge from PI has pushed it close to $0.08 after it dumped to $0.074 yesterday.
The total crypto market cap has recovered $40 billion since yesterday’s low and is up to $2.270 trillion on CG.
The post Bitcoin Reclaims $64K Ahead of FOMC Meeting, Pi Network’s PI Rebounds: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Crypto World
3 reasons Wednesday’s FOMC interest-rate decision is pivotal for bitcoin (BTC) prices: Crypto Daily
The Federal Reserve (Fed) will announce its rate decision at 2 p.m. ET today, followed by Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Traders typically assign greater weight to FOMC meetings that come with updated economic projections and a “dot plot” of interest-rate forecasts. Today’s gathering lacks both. Yet the outcome still carries outsized importance for three reasons.
Unusual uncertainty over the outcome: Markets are still assigning roughly a 35% probability of a rate increase, CME fed funds futures show. That level of indecision is rare so close to a decision. By now, traders have usually converged on a clear expectation of a hold, hike or cut. Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, is predicting an increase. The firm argues a move would end forward guidance as a policy choice, an outcome Chair Warsh has long favored.
Bond yields are already rising: Both the 10-year and two-year Treasury yields have broken above key trendlines that defined the shallow pullback in place since 2023 (check the Daily Signal). With the breakout complete, the path of least resistance is now clearly established to the upside.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams pushed back publicly against criticism of the protocol’s newly activated v4 fees on Tuesday, arguing that claims the change reduces liquidity provider earnings rest on flawed assumptions. The rebuttal follows Uniswap governance’s approval of protocol fee activation across selected v4 pools on multiple blockchains.
Tons of FUD and misunderstanding around the v4 fee switch: — Hayden Adams
"LP fees are getting reduced" – False. Protocol fees are additive, not subtractive. LPs earning 30bp per swap still earn 30bp
"The protocol is taking 25% of LP profits" – Made-up math. On a 30bp pool the protocol fee is…
(@haydenzadams) July 28, 2026
Adams used a 30-basis-point pool as his reference case: a 5-basis-point protocol fee, he said, represents roughly 14% of total swap fees, not a reduction in what LPs earn. His central argument is that protocol fees are additive to the existing fee structure rather than deducted from LP allocations.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
The Technical Dispute at the Center of the Controversy
That framing is where the controversy sharpens. Critics and portions of the DeFi governance community have pointed to Uniswap’s own v4 documentation, which describes protocol and LP fees as applied sequentially, protocol fee first, then LP fee on the remaining input.
Under that sequential structure, any positive protocol fee mathematically narrows the base on which LP fees are calculated, even if swap volume holds constant.
Adams’ “additive” characterization and the sequential-application mechanics described in protocol documentation represent genuinely different claims about how the fee stack operates.
Only to explain its 20x cheaper
— Hayden Adams
(@haydenzadams) July 28, 2026
The primary source does not elaborate on Adams’ technical reasoning for reconciling the two, and no further detail from his X post is available in the sourced reporting. That gap is the live dispute, not whether protocol fees exist, but whether their structural effect on LP returns is material or negligible in practice.
It is also worth noting that Adams’ arithmetic deserves a brief examination: 5 basis points out of 30 basis points is 16.7% of total swap fees by simple division, not 14%. Whether Adams is applying a different calculation method, perhaps referencing effective LP take after some adjustment, is not explained in the sourced report. The 14% figure is his, and it has not been independently verified in the available sourcing.
Uniswap Scale and the Stakes for LPs
The stakes here are meaningful. Uniswap holds approximately $3.06 billion in total value locked, making it the largest decentralized exchange by TVL according to DefiLlama. Fee structure changes at that scale carry direct consequences for concentrated liquidity providers managing positions across the protocol’s major pools.
The broader tension sits between UNI tokenholders who benefit from protocol revenue capture and LPs who supply the liquidity that generates those fees.
As Ethereum’s dominant DEX, and as ETH price dynamics continue to influence DeFi activity broadly, Uniswap’s ability to retain competitive liquidity depth while extracting protocol revenue is the central economic question that governance has effectively reopened with this activation.
For active LPs, the practical question is whether the actual net yield on deployed capital shifts once protocol fees are live across a broader pool.
Adams’ position is that it will not. The math embedded in the protocol’s own documentation suggests the answer is more nuanced than a flat denial. Governance votes to extend v4 protocol fees to additional deployments are expected to continue, meaning this dispute is unlikely to resolve on founder messaging alone; it will resolve on LP performance data as it accumulates.
Trade Ripple XRP on Bybit and Get a Chance to Win Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop
The post Uniswap v4 Fee Maths Under Scrutiny as Adams Defends LP Impact Claims appeared first on Cryptonews.
These findings, while interesting, couldn’t tell us if being a physician itself caused worse birth outcomes. To help answer that part of the question, we used a “natural experiment” that was designed to improve the working environment for some physicians. Natural experiments are instances in which people are exposed, by chance, to one path or another that allows researchers to study cause and effect (in this case, studying the impact of improved working conditions on health, a question that would be difficult to study in a controlled, randomized study).
In 2011, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education enacted a reform that limited the number of hours that first-year residents (physicians in training) could consecutively work to be less than 16 consecutive hours. The reform was intended to improve the working conditions for first-year residents.
Since the work reform only affected physicians, we could compare the birth outcomes of physician mothers to those of lawyer mothers before and after the reform to understand how an improvement in working conditions affected physician mothers’ birth outcomes. (Lawyer mothers should be unaffected.) In addition, because the reform was targeted at first-year residents, we focused on physicians who were 26 to 30 years old at the time the reform was enacted.
According to several reports, Russia’s Federal Security Service has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity and issued an international warrant for his arrest.
The agency alleged that the messenger app failed to remove content used by Ukrainian intelligence services as well as terrorist and extremist organizations to coordinate sabotage, mass killings, cyber fraud, and other attacks against Russia.
Telegram is among the most used applications on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war, with more than a billion users around the world.
Although the report stated that Moscow has repeatedly attempted to restrict the app and promote the state-backed MAX service, Russian government bodies, including the Kremlin and the defense ministry, continue to prefer Durov’s platform for official communication.
Previous reports from earlier this year claimed that Durov was already under investigation in a terrorism-related case. A summons addressed to Suspect P.V. Durov was reportedly delivered to an apartment he had lived in over 20 years ago.
He responded at the time that he was targeted for defending constitutional protections for free speech and private correspondence. His whereabouts remain unknown, according to Reuters.
Today’s charges come approximately two years after Durov was arrested in France as part of an investigation into whether Telegram had failed to adequately prevent criminal activity and cooperate with law-enforcement requests.
The allegations at the time included complicity in organized fraud, money laundering, narcotics sales, the distribution of child sexual abuse material, and making hacking and cryptography tools available without the required declarations. Durov, who now holds French and Emirati citizenships, denied any wrongdoing.
The post Russia Issues Arrest Warrant for Telegram Founder Pavel Durov: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.
South Korea convened an emergency market meeting on the evening of July 29. This came as the KOSPI shed 864.5 trillion won in value across two trading sessions.
On Wednesday, the index closed at 5,663.24, down 5.98%, and triggered a market-wide circuit breaker for a second straight day.
South Korea’s Financial Authorities Meet Amid KOSPI’s Slide
Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol is hosting the session, which started at 6 pm local time, Bloomberg reported. Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song joined him. FSC Chairman Lee Eog-weon and Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin also took part, according to media reports.
Lawmakers had questioned senior officials repeatedly in parliament on July 29. They traced part of the selloff to the single-stock leveraged products launched in May.
Lawmakers argued the ETFs had magnified those price swings. They said speculative trading had concentrated in a small group of blue-chip stocks, which left Korean equities far more volatile than global peers.
Koo apologized at one hearing and conceded the products warranted closer study before launch. He still described them as one cause among several.
“We’ve already put in place a package of measures, but if it’s needed we’ll introduce additional steps to help normalise the market,” he said.
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
SK Hynix Missed Estimates Despite a Record Quarter
The meeting followed a turbulent stretch for Korean equities. The KOSPI has dropped 32.54%, or 2,731.41 points, over the past month.
Over the two sessions alone, the index lost 1,092.51 points. Market value fell 600.33 trillion won on July 28 and 264.20 trillion won on July 29.
Korea Exchange halted trading in both markets on each day. It is the first time circuit breakers have hit both on consecutive sessions.
The July 29 decline came as SK Hynix missed analyst expectations despite record quarterly performance. Second-quarter revenue of 79.3 trillion won missed LSEG SmartEstimates of 84 trillion won.
Operating profit of 60.54 trillion won also trailed the 64 trillion won forecast. The stock closed at 1,401,000 won, down 9.61%. Revenue still grew 257% year over year.
Meanwhile, another index heavyweight, Samsung Electronics, finished at 208,500 won, down 5.23%. Over the past month, Samsung has lost 35.45%, and SK Hynix has fallen 46.69%.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch leaders and journalists provide expert insights
The post South Korea Holds Emergency Meeting as 864 Trillion Won Leaves Its Stock Market appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto exchange competition is spilling into tokenized versions of traditional financial assets, according to new research from CoinGecko. A report released Wednesday finds that the market capitalization of tokenized “real-world” assets listed on major crypto trading platforms has climbed sharply, reaching $6.6 billion in June 2026—up from $1.4 billion in January 2025.
CoinGecko’s analysis tracks tokenized exposure across exchanges including Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate and MEXC, spanning categories such as precious metals, US stocks, commodities, global indexes and forex. The data suggests that what began as a metals-led niche has expanded into US equities, with derivatives now playing an outsized role in how these assets are traded.
Key takeaways
- CoinGecko reports tokenized traditional assets on major crypto exchanges grew to $6.6B in June 2026 from $1.4B in January 2025.
- Precious metals drove early momentum, but by mid-2026 US stock perpetual futures became the dominant activity by both volume and open interest.
- Trading is heavily skewed toward derivatives: perpetual futures account for the majority of activity, while spot markets remain smaller.
- Derivatives appear to be easier for exchanges to scale because they can list leveraged products without necessarily issuing, custodying, or holding the underlying tokenized asset.
- Centralized exchanges are expanding beyond crypto to retain users as both decentralized exchanges and traditional brokerages compete for share.
Tokenized “real-world” assets accelerate on major exchanges
CoinGecko frames the growth as a response to pressure across the broader exchange landscape. The study identifies that tokenized traditional assets—ranging from metals to equities—have expanded quickly in market cap terms over roughly 18 months.
Crucially, CoinGecko’s report doesn’t just point to total growth; it also maps how trading preferences are shifting. The market’s initial expansion, the report says, was fueled largely by tokenized precious metals. Over time, that focus broadened into tokenized US equities.
By mid-2026, CoinGecko reports that US stock perpetual futures overtook precious metals across both trading volume and open interest. The report attributes this turn to investor attention on semiconductor stocks and to expectations for upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs). While these drivers are specific to equity demand, the broader takeaway is that exchange-listed tokenization is beginning to follow the same “liquidity gravity” seen in crypto: where leverage and activity concentrate, participation follows.
Derivatives dominate: perpetual futures outpace spot
One of the more actionable elements of CoinGecko’s analysis is its breakdown of trading structure. According to the report, perpetual futures account for “the vast majority” of trading activity, while spot markets are comparatively small.
The reason offered by CoinGecko is practical for exchanges: derivatives are typically the product of choice for traders who prefer leverage, and perpetual contracts can be listed without exchanges needing to issue, custody, or directly hold the underlying tokenized asset.
This helps explain why tokenization can grow even when the broader ecosystem hasn’t fully reached the stage where spot trading of tokenized real-world assets is the main event. In effect, leveraged trading venues can bootstrap demand and liquidity faster than spot markets, because the operational burden of holding and managing the underlying asset is reduced.
Why centralized exchanges are moving beyond crypto
The report positions tokenized traditional assets as an expansion strategy for centralized crypto exchanges. As competition intensifies, exchanges appear to be looking for incremental revenue streams and new user segments rather than relying solely on crypto spot and derivatives.
CoinGecko points to two pressure fronts. First, decentralized exchanges have chipped away at market share. Second, traditional brokerages are broadening their digital asset offerings, increasingly overlapping with crypto trading ecosystems.
A notable example cited by CoinGecko is Robinhood, which Cointelegraph previously reported has significantly expanded its digital asset offerings (see Cointelegraph’s coverage). The broader implication is that users are not only choosing between venues; they are also increasingly choosing between platforms that blend legacy finance and blockchain-based trading experiences.
Institutional tokenization momentum reinforces the trend
CoinGecko’s exchange-focused findings sit within a wider narrative of institutional adoption. Earlier this year, Standard Chartered projected that tokenization could support the expansion of decentralized finance into a $2.7 trillion market by 2030 through real-world asset adoption (as covered by Cointelegraph in a related report). Separately, Bernstein analysts estimated the broader tokenization market could reach $4 trillion by the end of the decade, citing accelerating embrace of blockchain-based assets by financial institutions (see Cointelegraph’s earlier coverage).
These projections matter because they help contextualize why exchanges are investing effort in tokenized products now rather than later. When large institutions begin to treat tokenization as infrastructure—not just experimentation—liquidity, custody arrangements, and regulatory pathways can improve, making it easier for trading venues to scale.
Cointelegraph also previously reported partnerships aimed at expanding access to tokenized securities. For instance, BitGo and OTC Markets Group have partnered to expand access for more than 150 broker-dealers (as described in Cointelegraph’s report). In another example, Tradable teamed with the Stellar network to bring up to $1 billion in private credit assets onchain (see Cointelegraph’s coverage).
Taken together, these developments underline a recurring theme: tokenization is increasingly built across the same rails—blockchain networks and token standards—while distribution is where competition shows up fastest. CoinGecko’s data suggests that on crypto exchanges, distribution is increasingly happening through derivatives, with perpetual futures providing the main on-ramp for traders.
Going forward, the key question for investors and traders is whether the current derivative-led structure will translate into deeper spot liquidity and broader usage of tokenized assets—or whether perpetuals will continue to concentrate most activity. CoinGecko’s findings point to an evolving demand map, with equities now playing a larger role than metals; the next watch item is whether that shift persists as tokenized IPO expectations and sector-specific attention change.
Soccer confederations, lawmakers criticize proposal
UEFA, which represents 55 FIFA member associations, was not the only soccer body to express concern about the proposal.
CONCACAF, the confederation that governs soccer in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean and that represents 35 of FIFA’s member associations, said it was “deeply concerned by the lack of due process,” including the fact that plans had been announced “before any discussion with the relevant governance bodies and stakeholders has taken place.”
The Football Association, England’s national football governing body, also said it was “deeply concerned about the lack of process and governance to get to this point, and the apparent substance and principles involved.” FA Chair Debbie Hewitt is one of FIFA’s eight vice-presidents.
The Asian Football Confederation also expressed concern about the proposal and said it was not consulted on it. The body, which represents 46 FIFA member associations, said it “is disappointed that a matter of such significance entered the public domain” before it was discussed “through the appropriate and established governance channels.”
The crypto market was mixed before the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decision later Wednesday. The CoinDesk 20 Index has added 0.41% since midnight UTC, with 10 members advancing and 10 declining.
Bitcoin , the largest cryptocurrency, added 0.75% to claw back some of Tuesday’s losses after a volatile 48 hours that saw it spike to $66,700 last week before crashing to $62,400 in the wake of the rout in South Korean stocks.
Inflation running at 4.1% makes the case for the Fed to raise the fed funds target rate for the first time in three years. Balanced against that, a pause in Iran-U.S. hostilities has taken some of the heat out of oil prices and slightly trimmed the odds of an increase.
Ether (ETH) is down 0.13% on the day. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index futures are both positive, while gold holds above $4,000 and silver gained 1.40%, suggesting markets are hedging rather than committing ahead of the announcement.
Derivatives positioning
- Steady positioning ahead of Fed meeting: The crypto taker long-short volume ratio is almost in a perfect balance ahead of the Fed meeting. Open interest (OI) has held steady near $113 billion over the past 24 hours while volume increased by 10% to $205 billion. Taken together, the numbers point to steady positioning but slightly higher churn.
- Spot gains yet to lift futures participation: Both BTC and ETH’s spot prices have risen more than 1% in 24 hours, but the moves have yet to translate into increased participation in futures. BTC’s OI remains steady near 750K BTC. ETH’s dropped for a fourth straight day to 14.14 million ETH.
- UNI is an exception: Most of the top-20 tokens have seen OI hold steady or fall over 24 hours. UNI is an exception, with OI up slightly to 68.53 million tokens, the most since July 13. This validates the 5% upswing in the token’s price in the wake of BlackRock’s decision to bring its tokenized Treasury fund to the decentralized exchange.
- Mixed signals from OI-adjusted CVD: The 24-hour OI-adjusted CVD paints a mixed picture. It’s positive for tokens such as ADA, TRX, XRP, CC, UNI and ETH, a sign of more and more traders going long at market orders rather than passive limit orders. Other coins display the opposite dynamic.
- Implied volatility stays near recent lows: Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indexes remain near recent lows, a sign that traders do not expect any near-term jitters. It also contradicts the unease in the analyst community over the fact that traders still assign a 35% probability of the Fed raising rates on Wednesday. This is unusual as markets typically reach a consensus on what the Fed will do before the decision.
- Puts dominate BTC options volume: In Deribit-listed options, BTC puts at strikes $62,000, $60,000 and $54,000 dominate the 24-hour volume rankings. A put option offers insurance against price drops in the underlying asset. In ETH’s case, calls are at the top of the list.
Token talk
- XRP led altcoin gains on Wednesday, rising 1.72% to $1.086, with rising 1.48%. Both are continuing to recover from their July lows as the major cryptocurrencies consolidate.
- Jupiter (JUP) was the standout 24-hour performer among DeFi coins, rising 5.79% as trading volume ticked up, extending a recovery that has now seen it rise in three of the past four days.
- FET continued its retreat, falling 4.60% since midnight and 6.78% over 24 hours. The AI token is now down nearly 14% over the past week as the sector’s early-July momentum continues to unwind.
- shed 5.14%, giving back the bulk of last week’s speculative gains as retail enthusiasm fades.
- Monero (XMR) bucked the trend with a 1.82% gain to $347, quietly extending a run of outperformance from the privacy coin sector that has gone largely unnoticed amid the broader market turbulence.
The Core Team behind the popular project revealed more details about how its platform can support future ecosystem tokens.
They explained that, unlike other token launches in which projects typically keep the funds raised, their model sends the committed Pi coins directly into a liquidity pool paired with the newly issued ecosystem asset.
The idea is to give each new coin an active liquidity foundation from the beginning while tying tokens to real application functions such as access, payments, rewards, governance, and user engagement.
Pi’s Approach
The new update published by the team hours ago comes just a few days after they confirmed they had completed the token distribution of the Testnet coin called SLICE. With its launch, they created a pool containing the newly-created coin as well as Test-Pi. Users, known as Pioneers within the broader Pi Network ecosystem, can trade through Pi’s decentralized order book.
However, swaps can also be completed automatically through an automated market maker. The mechanism adjusts the token price depending on the amount of SLICE and Test-Pi remaining in the pool.
Upon exchanging Test-Pi for SLICE, the former enters the pool while the latter leaves it. As SLICE becomes scarcer relative to Test-Pi, its displayed price increases and vice versa when users sell SLICE back to the pool.
The system uses a constant-product formula designed to keep the relationship between the two reserves balanced during each swap.
Over 240,000 Joined the Test
The participation period for the new token ran from June 11 until June 28 (Pi2Day). More than 240,000 Pioneers committed almost 16 million Test-Pi to acquire a supply of 10 million SLICE test tokens.
The difference with the first Pi Launchpad trial is that SLICE is now connected to a working third-party game called Slice of Pi. This allowed the network to test engagement-based bonuses through a functioning application rather than a dummy project.
The team explained that this option better reflects the intended purpose of future ecosystem tokens as it supports product utility, attracts new users, and encourages activity instead of primarily raising capital.
Users can select how much Test-Pi they want to commit, and the Launchpad automatically does the rest, calculating fair-access requirements and any engagement bonuses. Participants can review their allocations, launch prices, effective purchase prices, and the SLICE liquidity pool now that the distribution phase has been completed.
The team emphasized once again that SLICE will remain a Testnet-only asset with no real value and will never migrate to Mainnet.
The post Pi Network Explains New Launchpad Model After Big Token Distribution appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Why did market rise today? Sensex soars 890 pts, Nifty closes above 24,250; 4 factors behind Rs 4 lakh crore gains on D-Street
Bitcoin Reclaims $64K Ahead of FOMC Meeting, Pi Network’s PI Rebounds: Market Watch
LIVE | Commonwealth Games Day 6 Updates: Sakshi’s bout begins; Toor qualifies for shot put final | Other Sports News
-
Fashion5 days agoWeekend Open Thread: Brooks Brothers
-
Sports3 days agoCommonwealth Games boxing: Jadumani Singh seals dominant 5-0 win over Pakistan’s Sumama Rehman to enter quarter-finals | Commonwealth Games News
-
Tech2 days agoIntel is reversing course and bringing hyper-threading back to its server chips
-
Crypto World6 days agoEthics, other provisions in crypto Clarity Act to be further discussed
-
Politics2 days agoLuke Littler dismantles Gerwyn Price to retain title in Blackpool
-
Sports5 days ago2026 3M Open leaderboard: Scottie Scheffler finds putter in Round 1, sits three back
-
Politics1 day agoThe Part of the Electric Transition Nobody Wants to Discuss
-
Fashion5 days ago16 Dresses for the High Summer Event
-
Entertainment5 days agoA New Post-Apocalyptic Gundam Anime Series Blasts Into SDCC
-
News Videos3 days agoBITCOIN JUST ENTERED THIS CRITICAL ZONE…
-
News Videos6 days agoThe Peugeot Family: How 200 Years of an “Old Money” Dynasty Died in A Boardroom
-
Crypto World4 days agoRipple bought a bank in pieces. The $4 billion audit
-
Politics3 days agoSpain sweeps the board at 2026 World Cup with individual awards
-
Business6 hours agoMajor shareholder moves on Canyon
-
Crypto World3 days agoXRP Ledger adds $2.6B as RWA inflows rank second
-
Crypto World6 days agoUniswap (UNI) pushes deeper into tokenized RWAs with permissioned trading pools
-
Entertainment16 hours ago‘Stargate’ Creator’s New Sci-Fi Series Returns for Season 3 Tomorrow
-
Tech4 days agoAnthropic launches Claude Opus 5, a cheaper AI model for coding, agents and enterprise workflows
-
Crypto World6 days ago
SEC Agrees to Overhaul Recordkeeping After Settling Coinbase Lawsuit Over Gensler’s Lost Texts
-
News Videos15 hours agoClaude: Build Financial Dashboards in Minutes (2026)
You must be logged in to post a comment Login