Connect with us
DAPA Banner

Crypto World

SoFi is launching a 24/7 banking hub that blends traditional cash with crypto

Published

on

SoFi is launching a 24/7 banking hub that blends traditional cash with crypto

SoFi said Thursday it is launching a new business banking platform designed to let companies handle both traditional money and crypto in one place, as it pushes deeper into digital assets.

The service, called SoFi Big Business Banking, allows firms to hold U.S. dollars, convert them into stablecoins and move funds around the clock, all within SoFi’s regulated bank.

Today, companies operating in crypto often rely on a patchwork of providers: a bank for cash, a separate firm for stablecoins and another for custody. Moving money between them can take hours or days. SoFi said it is trying to simplify that.

“To be competitive, businesses today must operate… 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said in a press release, contrasting the platform with traditional banking hours.

Advertisement

Under the new system, a trading firm could deposit dollars at SoFi, convert them into a digital token like SoFiUSD and deploy that capital instantly into markets, without waiting for bank wires to clear. Funds can also move back into dollars just as quickly.

The platform includes large crypto firms as early partners, including Cumberland, Wintermute, Galaxy (GLXY), BitGo (BTGO) and CoinDesk parent company Bullish (BLSH). These companies, which handle trading, liquidity and asset custody, are expected to use the system to move money and settle transactions more efficiently.

A central piece of the offering is SoFiUSD, a stablecoin that can be created and redeemed inside the bank. Unlike many stablecoins issued outside the U.S. banking system, SoFi’s version is tied directly to a regulated balance sheet, with reserves held internally.

The platform will also use blockchain networks, including Solana (SOL), to process transactions.

Advertisement

The launch reflects a broader shift in finance, as banks and crypto firms move closer together.

Instead of operating as separate systems, companies are increasingly trying to merge traditional banking with blockchain-based infrastructure. If successful, SoFi’s approach could reduce the need for multiple intermediaries and make it easier for large firms to move money globally.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Crypto World

Russia Targets 50,000 Miners as Crypto Mining Banned in 13 Regions

Published

on

Russia Targets 50,000 Miners as Crypto Mining Banned in 13 Regions

Russia has moved to shut down crypto mining operations across 13 regions, targeting an estimated 50,000 miners in what amounts to the most sweeping enforcement action since the country legalized the activity in August 2024.

The bans, extending through 2031 during peak autumn-winter seasons, signal that Moscow’s tolerance for grid-straining mining has hit a structural limit, not just a seasonal one.

The immediate pressure is energy: affected Siberian regions are reporting shortfalls of nearly 3,000 MW on the Unified Energy System grid, driven largely by miners exploiting cheap, heavily subsidized local electricity. That’s not a rounding error – it’s a grid crisis, and Russian officials are treating it as one.

Key Takeaways:

Advertisement
  • Ban Scope: Mining restrictions now cover 10 active regions – including Irkutsk Oblast, parts of Buryatia and Zabaikalsky Krai, six North Caucasus republics, and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories – with seasonal bans running through 2031.
  • Affected Miners: An estimated 50,000 operators face enforcement, with major firm BitRiver among the hardest hit due to its reliance on Irkutsk’s low-cost power infrastructure.
  • Energy Context: Power shortfalls in Siberian regions have reached nearly 3,000 MW, with miners blamed for exploiting subsidized electricity at grid-destabilizing scale.
  • Escalation Path: Year-round bans in southern Buryatia and Zabaikalsky Krai take effect January 1, 2026, moving beyond seasonal restrictions into permanent operational prohibition.
  • What to Watch: A government commission on the electric power sector is expected to convene soon to finalize expanded year-round bans; potential amnesty programs in the North Caucasus could redirect illegal miners toward licensed operations.

Discover: Top Crypto Presales to Watch Before They Launch

What the Russia Crypto Mining Ban Actually Does – and Why the Regional Selection Matters

The mechanics are straightforward: registered and unregistered miners in covered regions are prohibited from operating during designated periods, with enforcement escalating to include FSB agents, drones, and surveillance technology in areas like Kabardino-Balkaria, where illegal operations hidden in abandoned buildings caused over 1 billion rubles ($13 million) in utility damages in 2025 alone.

The regional selection isn’t arbitrary. Irkutsk Oblast faces a full-year ban – its southern areas were already restricted earlier in 2025, freeing up 320 MW – because it anchors the cheap-power arbitrage that made Siberia a global mining hub in the first place.

The North Caucasus republics (Dagestan, North Ossetia-Alania, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia) are included because illegal mining there has metastasized beyond regulatory reach.

Advertisement
Photo: Dagestan

The inclusion of occupied Ukrainian territories – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – reflects Moscow’s intent to consolidate energy control in those regions rather than tolerate gray-market extraction.

Power officials in Buryatia welcomed the year-round bans, with TASS and Kommersant reporting officials cited relief from “serious” shortages. The Industrial Mining Association took the opposite view, stating the restrictions “reduce [Southern Siberia’s] attractiveness to investors” and leave miners “vulnerable.” Both reactions are accurate – which is precisely what makes this ban structurally significant rather than cosmetic.

50,000 Miners Offline – What That Means for Global Hash Rate

Russia currently accounts for roughly 5% of global Bitcoin hash rate, according to Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance data – a share built almost entirely on the cheap, subsidized electricity now being clawed back.

Displacing 50,000 operators from that base doesn’t evaporate hash rate; it redistributes it, and the redistribution logic points toward the United States, Kazakhstan, and parts of Central Asia as the most likely beneficiaries.

Advertisement

That matters because hash rate geography isn’t just a mining industry statistic – it shapes where block rewards flow, which jurisdictions capture mining revenue, and how resilient the network is to coordinated regulatory pressure.

Source: Bitcoin Hash Rate / Coinwarz

A meaningful contraction in Russian hash rate tightens the global difficulty adjustment modestly in the short term, briefly improving margins for miners elsewhere before difficulty recalibrates. Bitcoin’s broader market performance adds another variable: compressed miner margins in a sideways or declining price environment accelerate the exit of marginal operators, potentially amplifying the hash rate shift beyond what the Russian ban alone would produce.

BitRiver – the largest industrial mining operator in Russia, anchored to Irkutsk’s power infrastructure – faces the most acute operational exposure. Its model was built on energy-cost arbitrage that the Russian state is now explicitly dismantling.

Explore: Best Crypto Projects With High Growth Potential in 2026

The post Russia Targets 50,000 Miners as Crypto Mining Banned in 13 Regions appeared first on Cryptonews.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto World

Lise plans Europe’s first fully on-chain IPO for French aerospace supplier

Published

on

Centrifuge token surges over 180% following Upbit exchange listing announcement

Summary

  • French tokenized exchange Lise plans to list aerospace parts maker ST Group in what is expected to be Europe’s first fully on-chain IPO.
  • Lise operates under the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime and is backed by institutions including BNP Paribas, CACEIS and Bpifrance.
  • ST Group forecasts about $68 million in potential project revenues over the next decade, targeting aerospace, defense and space programs.

French stock exchange Lise is preparing to list aerospace components supplier ST Group in what is expected to be Europe’s first fully on-chain initial public offering, according to a report from CoinDesk. The listing on the Paris-based venue would mark a milestone for tokenized primary markets in the EU, moving an IPO’s trading and settlement entirely onto distributed ledger infrastructure.finance.

Lise, short for Lightning Stock Exchange, was authorized last year under the EU’s Distributed Ledger Technology Pilot Regime, becoming the first institution in Europe approved to operate a fully tokenized equity exchange that fuses trading and settlement on-chain. Headquartered in Paris, Lise counts French financial heavyweights BNP Paribas, CACEIS — a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole — and public investment bank Bpifrance among its backers, underscoring that this is not a fringe experiment but a regulated market infrastructure project.

ST Group produces composite material components for aerospace, defense and space projects, positioning it squarely in Europe’s strategic industrial base. CoinDesk reported that potential project revenues linked to the company’s pipeline are estimated at around €59 million, roughly $68 million at current rates, over the next ten years, giving investors a sense of the growth opportunity Lise aims to channel into its tokenized venue.

Advertisement

By opting for an on-chain IPO rather than a listing on a traditional exchange, ST Group is effectively stress‑testing whether tokenization can offer small and mid-sized issuers a cheaper and more flexible way to tap public equity markets. Lise’s stated mission is to provide a lower-cost, more efficient listing path for SMEs and mid-caps, replacing the lengthy, document-heavy IPO process with a digital workflow where ownership is recorded, transferred and settled on a single ledger.

Under the DLT Pilot Regime, Lise is allowed to combine the functions of a multilateral trading facility and a central securities depository on one blockchain system, enabling near‑instant, atomic settlement and continuous 24/7 trading. Advocates argue that such architectures cut post‑trade risk and administrative overhead by collapsing what is now a multi‑day, multi‑intermediary chain into a single synchronized platform.

The French initiative lands as other venues experiment with tokenized securities. In one crypto.news story, tokenization specialist Securitize secured EU‑wide approval to run a regulated trading and settlement system on Avalanche under the same DLT Pilot framework, while another story covered 21X’s plans for an EU‑regulated tokenized securities market using Chainlink for cross‑chain data and interoperability. A separate crypto.news story detailed how JPMorgan executed a tokenized treasuries transaction using Ondo Finance and Chainlink, illustrating how major banks are testing on-chain rails for traditional assets.

If Lise successfully floats ST Group fully on-chain, it will provide a live case study for whether tokenized exchanges can genuinely lower issuance costs and broaden investor access, or whether regulatory and operational frictions still blunt the promise of blockchain in public equity markets.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto World

Blue Owl private credit funds redemptions capped at 5% after steep requests

Published

on

Blue Owl caps private credit funds redemptions at 5% after steep request levels
Blue Owl caps private credit funds redemptions at 5% after steep request levels

Blue Owl is experiencing elevated redemption requests for two of its private credit funds, according to letters to shareholders issued Thursday.

The firm’s flagship OCIC fund, with about $36 billion in assets under management, received redemption requests of about 21.9% of shares outstanding during the first quarter, the firm said. Blue Owl’s smaller, tech-oriented fund, OTIC, received redemption requests of 40.7% during the same period, it said.

In both of the funds, Blue Owl opted to cap requests at 5%. Blue Owl attributed the higher-than-usual requests to “heightened market concerns around AI-related disruption to software companies.”

“We continue to observe a meaningful disconnect between the public dialogue on private credit and the underlying trends in our portfolio,” Blue Owl said in the shareholder letters.

Advertisement

Shares of Blue Owl were down 1% in mid-morning trading Thursday after paring earlier losses.

The private credit industry has been roiled in recent months by concerns that it is overexposed to the software industry – an area that’s been under pressure over fears of disintermediation from artificial intelligence.

Software represents about 20% of portfolio exposure among business development companies, known as BDCs (a publicly traded proxy for private credit), according to Jefferies. Headline fears about default risk in the sector have driven a small but wealthy group of institutional investors to seek the exits from many of these funds.

“As public market dislocations and AI-related uncertainty reshape sentiment, dispersion is increasing across the sector, creating opportunities for experienced lenders to deploy capital selectively at improved terms,” the technology-focused letter reads.

Advertisement

Blue Owl, which is unique in having two of these nontraded private credit funds, is also among the last to report redemptions. The firm’s percentage of redemptions is multiples higher than its peers.

Most firms have opted to use the 5% cap, but some, including Cliffwater and Blackstone allowed slightly more redemptions.

Blue Owl’s OTIC technology fund saw redemption requests of 17% in the fourth quarter, which it fulfilled. OCIC’s requests were 5% in the fourth quarter.

The two funds previously drew interest from hedge funds Saba and Cox, which extended tender offers to locked-up holders at a steep discount.

Advertisement

Blue Owl said in the most recent quarter, its tech fund’s redemption requests were amplified by a more concentrated shareholder base, particularly within certain wealth channels and regions. For its flagship fund, the firm said the activity was driven by a “small minority of the investor base,” with 90% of shareholders electing not to tender.

Both funds saw gross inflows, which combined with the 5% gates resulted in modest net outflows.

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto World

Oil shock, war risk keep crypto investors on sidelines: Grayscale

Published

on

Why bitcoin is rising even as the S&P 500 and tech stocks stumble

Crypto markets are stuck in a holding pattern as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East cloud an otherwise improving macro backdrop, according to crypto asset manager Grayscale.

“The war in Iran overshadowed virtually all other market developments in March,” the Grayscale research team said in a Wednesday report.

Before the conflict escalated, global growth appeared to be strengthening and central banks were leaning toward rate cuts. That outlook has been disrupted by a sharp rise in oil prices, which has fueled inflation concerns and pushed interest rate expectations higher, weighing on risk assets and keeping investors on the sidelines, the report said.

Since the outbreak of the Middle East conflict, crypto markets have been volatile but broadly rangebound, with sharp headline-driven swings tied to oil prices and shifting risk sentiment. Bitcoin initially dropped into the mid-$60,000s on the first escalation, then rebounded toward the low-$70,000s before slipping back again as the conflict dragged on and macro conditions tightened.

Advertisement

More recently, renewed escalation has pushed bitcoin down roughly 10% from March highs, alongside declines in ether (ETH) and other tokens, as investors pulled back from risk assets. Despite the turbulence, performance has held up better than some traditional markets, with bitcoin roughly flat since the start of the war and even outperforming equities at times, underscoring both its sensitivity to macro shocks and its relative resilience.

For now, Grayscale expects many market participants to wait for greater clarity. If the conflict eases and energy prices retreat, markets could quickly reprice toward a more supportive macro environment. If not, persistently high oil prices may continue to pressure growth and delay a broader recovery.

Even so, crypto has shown notable resilience. Prices have held relatively steady through the volatility, suggesting a more durable bottom may be forming. The research team also pointed to continued inflows into spot crypto investment products and a pickup in futures positioning as signs that risk appetite is stabilizing beneath the surface.

Looking ahead, the report argued that the key catalyst for a sustained rebound will be a reduction in macro uncertainty. But it maintains that the long-term drivers of the asset class, including growing adoption of stablecoins and tokenized assets, remain intact.

Advertisement

The stablecoin market has expanded rapidly in recent years, with total supply rising from about $20 billion in 2020 to more than $300 billion by 2025, and sitting around $315 billion, according to industry data.

The sector added roughly $100 billion in 2025 alone, reflecting renewed growth after a brief contraction, as demand for dollar-pegged digital assets surged across trading, payments and onchain finance.

Periods of heightened uncertainty like the current one have historically presented attractive opportunities for long-term investors positioning for the next phase of growth, the report added.

Read more: Bitcoin holds ground as gold, silver slide on ETF outflows and liquidity strains: JPMorgan

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Crypto World

Riot Platforms Wallet Moves $34M in Bitcoin as Listed Miners Continue Sales

Published

on

Bitcoin Price, Bitcoin Mining, Shares

Arkham flagged a 500 Bitcoin outflow from a wallet it attributes to Riot Platforms on Wednesday, in a possible sale the company had not publicly commented on by publication time.

The Bitcoin (BTC) wallet outflow sale comes shortly after Riot posted record 2025 revenue of around $647 million, driven by an increase in Bitcoin mining revenue, and amid other recent Bitcoin disposals by large listed miners.

Last week, MARA Holdings disclosed that it sold about $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin in March to repurchase convertible debt at a discount, reflecting similar moves by other public miners that have collectively sold over 15,000 BTC in recent months as they balance operational needs and investment plans against a more volatile price and cost backdrop.

The pattern is not uniform. Bitcoin treasury companies, including Metaplanet, are still aggressively adding to their holdings. Nakamoto, meanwhile, disclosed in a recent filing that it sold about 284 Bitcoin for $20 million in March.

Advertisement

On the other hand, onchain tracker Lookonchain, citing Arkham data, reported that wallets it links to Empery Digital, one of the largest listed BTC treasuries, transferred out what it described as “the remaining 1,795 BTC” (about $122.5 million) to Gemini after a series of smaller BTC sales throughout March.

Delisting risk grows for miners

Listing pressures are also in focus for some mining-linked stocks. Cango, which has built out its Bitcoin mining operations, announced Wednesday it received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange after its shares traded below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, triggering a six-month period to regain compliance with continued-listing standards.

On the same day, Cango also announced a new $65 million capital raising transaction and $10 million convertible note financing. Its share price rose on the news, closing the day at $0.42, 4.6% higher, but was trading at $0.41, 3.59% lower, in premarket Thursday, according to data from Yahoo! Finance, well below NYSE requirements.

Bitcoin Price, Bitcoin Mining, Shares
Cango share price. Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Juliet Ye, head of investor relations and communications at Cango, told Cointelegraph that the company would maintain its strategic roadmap despite the notice, and that it had been “proactively implementing cost optimization and efficiency enhancement measures over the past several months,” including divesting obsolete capacity and migrating to lower electricity cost regions.

She added that the recent completion of the two financing transactions, alongside “the adjustment of our treasury strategy,” served as concrete examples of measures to help address both the listing requirements and current market conditions.

Advertisement

Related: Bitcoin mining difficulty falls 7.7% as miner pressure persists

In January, crypto mining hardware maker Canaan Inc. disclosed a similar minimum-bid deficiency notice from Nasdaq after its American depositary shares stayed under the $1 threshold for 30 straight sessions, and it likewise had 180 days to cure the issue. 

Despite share price pressure, Canaan has continued expanding operations. The company’s Bitcoin reserves increased in Q1 2026, despite many peers offloading their holdings. Earlier in March, it also acquired a 49% stake in two Texas-based mining sites, part of its broader strategy to diversify geographically and strengthen US market exposure.

Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author

Advertisement