The Solana-based tokens marketed as a way to gain exposure to Anthropic and OpenAI before they go public got an unwelcome reality check this week.

The two companies said the transfer of privately held shares to the special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that back the tokens is invalid because any such move requires approval by the corporate board.

The tokens slumped. Anthropic PreStocks (ANTHROPIC), issued by Solana-based platform PreStocks to represent Anthropic shares, dropped 34% in seven days, while OpenAI PreStocks fell 39%, CoinGecko data show.

PreStocks uses SPVs, legal entities set up specifically to hold something on behalf of investors, to hold the shares, and issues tokens on Solana that represent indirect economic exposure to those shares.

“We do not permit special purpose vehicles to acquire Anthropic stock and any transfer of shares to an SPV are void under our transfer restrictions,” Anthropic said in an updated investor warning page.

Any third party claiming to sell its shares through “direct sales, forward contracts, tokenized securities, or other mechanisms” is “likely either engaged in fraud or offering an investment that may have no value due to our transfer restrictions,” the company said.

OpenAI issued a similar warning, saying unauthorized transactions may violate U.S. securities laws and could result in the invalidation of the underlying equity. Both companies named several intermediaries. Anthropic listed Open Door Partners, Hiive and Forge as unauthorized to buy or sell its shares.

While PreStocks tokens claim 1:1 backing through SPVs, neither the platform nor any third-party auditor has published the attestation reports the company promised at launch.

Liquidity is a concern as well. Data from PreStocks shows just over $333,000 in stablecoins and $18,000 in solana (SOL) in Anthropic liquidity as of Wednesday, meaning early buyers sitting on big profits might not be able to fully cash out. This exposes the gap between the implied valuations on the platform and what the underlying SPVs can actually deliver.

The dashboard also shows an implied Anthropic valuation above $1.3 trillion against the platform holding roughly $23 million in total assets, a gap that gave the companies the structural opening to push back.

PreStocks debuted in August 2025 with backing from Republic Capital and is led by CEO Xavier Ekkel. The platform is unavailable to residents of the U.S., Singapore, the European Union, and certain sanctioned jurisdictions, and requires know-your-customer processes for minting and redemptions. Partnerships at launch included Jupiter and Meteora, both decentralized exchanges on Solana.

Aerodrome voting opens May 28. Mainnet Launch: June 4.

This quarter, AI started writing its own exploits. Tea is shipping the trust layer underneath it. Code Is Abundant. Trust Is Not.

In the span of seven days, the ground beneath the software shifted twice. On May 4, The Conversation published the most widely-circulated post-mortem yet of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview, the frontier model Anthropic itself declined to release, because it can autonomously discover zero-days, generate working exploits, and execute multi-step cyber operations with minimal human oversight.

Days later, Google’s Gemma 4 landed inside Android’s AICore and Google AI Edge, putting agentic code generation, function calling, and offline reasoning on every developer’s phone and laptop under an Apache 2.0 license.

The implication is unavoidable. When any device can generate, execute, and weaponize software autonomously, trust cannot live in the binary. It has to live at the source.

Tea: the value layer for open source

Tea is the provenance, attribution, and verification layer for a world where code is written by agents faster than humans can audit it. Every package, every contribution, every dependency, cryptographically attributed, continuously verified, and economically aligned with the people and systems that built it.

Tea goes live on Aerodrom: the liquidity engine of base meets the trust layer of software

The moment Tea lists on Aerodrome, the two fastest-moving primitives in crypto collide: Base’s deepest liquidity venue and the first on-chain provenance layer built for the agentic AI era. Working with Aerodrome is a statement. It’s known as the place where Base’s most serious assets route. Tea chose Aerodrome because a trust layer for software should launch into the most battle-tested, transparent, community-governed market structure on-chain, not a centralized orderbook pretending to be neutral.

From block one, $TEA liquidity on Aerodrome means: verifiable on-chain routing, deep vote-directed emissions, and a price surface every trader, investor, and builder can see in real time. Aero flywheel + Tea provenance = a launch where the market structure is as credible as the technology’s pricing.

“Code is abundant. Trust is not,” said Tim Lewis, leading Tea’s launch. “Mythos showed us AI can write its own exploits. Gemma 4 put that capability in every pocket. The question isn’t whether agents will ship software (because they already are). The value of contribution will be weighed in inference and tokens and whether anyone can verify what they shipped. That’s what Tea is for.”

About Tea

Tea is building the software verification layer for the agentic era, serving as a decentralized protocol for provenance, attribution, and trust in open-source software. With open source running almost everything today, TEA provides the essential economic infrastructure to help people support it. Validated directly at the source, the protocol enables the community to verify work, understand dependency graphs, and govern what truly matters, ultimately empowering AI agents to build with better context.

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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is supporting the latest version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY) ahead of the US Senate’s markup of the crypto market structure bill on Thursday. 

“I don’t think it’s ever been in a stronger or more bipartisan position,” he said about the latest iteration of the market structure bill.

Armstrong said that the banking and crypto industry lobbies have reached a “healthy compromise” on stablecoin yield, which was one of the main issues that stalled the market structure bill in January. He added:

“I think there was a healthy compromise there, brokered by Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks. And you know, it was a good compromise because both sides left a little bit unhappy, but at least we got to a place that we can all live with.”

The latest version of the CLARITY bill also improved provisions surrounding decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenized stocks, and the authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate crypto markets, he said.

Source: Brian Armstrong

The comments and the bill’s pending markup follow months of back-and-forth negotiations between the banking sector and the crypto industry over the bill, which stalled in January 2025 after crypto industry players, led by Coinbase, rejected the initial draft.

Related: Latest version of crypto market structure bill raises eyebrows ahead of Senate markup

About 20% of the US population owns crypto, according to industry advocacy groups

About one in five Americans, or 20%, owns cryptocurrency, according to the National Cryptocurrency Association’s 2025 State of Crypto Holders report, which surveyed 54,000 US residents.

The survey found that about 67% of US crypto owners are below the age of 45, while about 15% are over 55 years old.

A demographic breakdown of crypto users in the United States. Source: National Cryptocurrency Association

The top-ranked use case for cryptocurrency was as an investment, with 52% of holders indicating that they use digital assets to “invest in their financial future,” according to the survey.

A HarrisX poll conducted earlier this month also found that 52% of the 2,008 registered US voters surveyed supported passing the CLARITY Act into law, while just 11% opposed the passage of the legislation.

Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Crypto wallet provider Ledger put its plans to go public in the U.S. on hold due to difficult market conditions, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Ledger has not filed any draft S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the people said. A confidential filing is typically the first formal step in the IPO process.

The French cryptocurrency security firm has a number of options, and could decide to raise capital privately, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is not public.

In January, reports emerged that Ledger had hired U.S. investment banks for a potential IPO valued at around $4 billion. Goldman Sachs (GS), Jefferies (JEF) and Barclays (BARC) were said to be advising on the offering, which could have come as early as this year.

A Ledger spokesperson declined to comment.

Ledger is best known for its hardware wallets that let people securely store cryptocurrencies offline. Its core business is protecting users’ private keys, the cryptographic credentials that control access to digital assets like bitcoin (BTC and ether (ETH).

After a wave of crypto listings in 2025, several digital-asset firms began rethinking their IPO timelines as weaker token prices, lower trading volumes and volatile equity markets weighed on investor appetite.

Kraken, one of the largest U.S. crypto exchanges, paused its multibillion-dollar IPO plans earlier this year despite having confidentially filed with the SEC in late 2025.

BitGo (BTGO), the only crypto-native company to go public in 2026, offered an early test of investor appetite for digital asset listings. It raised about $213 million in its January IPO, pricing shares above the marketed range at $18 and briefly surging more than 20% in its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) debut.

The momentum proved short-lived. After an initial rally, BitGo shares retreated below their IPO price, underscoring the volatility and uneven investor sentiment facing crypto firms seeking to tap public markets.

The shares are currently trading about 36% below their IPO price.

In March, Ledger appointed former Circle Internet (CRCL) executive John Andrews as chief financial officer and opened an office in New York City as part of a broader expansion of its U.S. operations.

Andrews, who previously led capital markets and investor relations at Circle, joined the crypto security firm as demand from banks, asset managers and stablecoin issuers for digital asset infrastructure continues to grow.

The company said the New York office was part of a multimillion-dollar investment in its U.S. footprint and would serve as a hub for Ledger Enterprise, its institutional infrastructure platform. Ledger also said the expansion would create dozens of new jobs across enterprise and marketing functions.

Read more: Kraken parent Payward seeks fresh funding at $20 billion valuation ahead of planned IPO

Crypto wallet firm Ledger has paused its initial public offering (IPO) after getting spooked by tanking crypto stocks.

As reported by CoinDesk today, unnamed sources familiar with the listing claim that “difficult market conditions” were behind the pause, and that Ledger still hasn’t filed an S-1 application with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

CoinDesk previously reported that crypto exchange Kraken was delaying its IPO until “market conditions improve.” Kraken’s parent company, Payward, privately filed a draft S-1 registration with the SEC in November 2025. 

Across the crypto industry, recently listed firms have seen far from stellar performance. 

Stablecoin issuer Circle was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025 and the price of its stock shot up to $263 within a month. However, it’s since fallen -52% to $126 today. 

Read more: Anthropic’s non-existent blockchain shares are tripping up investors

Elsewhere, trading platform eToro, which went public in May 2025, has seen the price of its stock fall almost -42% since its listing, while Peter Thiel-backed exchange Bullish has endured a 53% fall in its stock price since it went public in August 2025. 

BitGo went public in January 2026 and has since seen its stock plummet by almost -47%, and bitcoin firm Fold went public in February 2025 and has recorded a drop of 64%.  

Greyscale, which filed for an IPO in November 2025, revealed at the time that it had suffered a 20% revenue drop within the first nine months of 2025. 

The Winklevoss twin-controlled crypto exchange Gemini also filed for an IPO in June 2026. 

However, bucking the trend is Galaxy Digital, which, since it was listed on the US market in May 2025, has enjoyed a 41% rise to $31.

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A flurry of relatively small-scale hacks continues to wreak havoc on smaller crypto projects, despite flying under the radar when compared to recent mammoth losses.

So far this year, Protos’ hack tracker shows 77 entries, totaling over $1.1 billion in losses. 

April was a particularly rough month; the losses across its 33 incidents totalled over $600 million. However, just two incidents, namely the Drift Protocol and rsETH bridge hacks, made up 95% of the month’s losses between them.

While May hasn’t kept up such a devastating pace, an uptick in hacker activity has seen almost $6 million stolen from six projects this week alone.

Read more: Crypto hackers snatch over $1B in 68 incidents this year

Monday May 11: Two (smaller) hacks

On the Polygon network, Ink Finance’s Workspace Treasury Proxy contract was exploited for $140,000 on Monday.

According to crypto security firm SlowMist’s analysis, the root cause was the lack of access control in the PayrollDistribution function.

Huma Finance lost $100,000 the same day, also on Polygon. The team’s statement insists that the losses were from (now-paused) “legacy v1 contracts” and that its Solana-based v2 is a “complete rewrite and this issue does not apply.”

Read more: Hyperbridge exploited less than two weeks after April Fools’ day hack prank

Tuesday May 12: Four hacks

On Tuesday evening, TAC, a “purpose-built blockchain for EVM dApps to access TON,” alerted users to a “security incident affecting the TAC bridge,” which had been paused.

Third-party reports estimated losses at $3 million worth of USDT, BLUM and other tokens.

The following day, security auditor Peckshield drew attention to a hack of Transit Finance, which also occurred on Tuesday, with $1.9 million of DAI held by the exploiter.

Read more: LayerZero among bridges Lazarus using to launder loot

The team issued an announcement, explaining the losses came from “historical vulnerabilities” in a contract deployed on TRON which had been “deprecated since 2022.”

It said users “do not need to take any action” and affected users will be compensated.

The project was previously attacked in October 2022 for over $20 million, though the majority of funds were later returned. According to Decurity, Tuesday’s loss was due to the same vulnerability as in 2022, three and a half years later.

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Also on Tuesday, DeFi projects Aurellion and BoostHook were reportedly attacked, losing approximately $455,000 and $200,000, respectively.

Wednesday May 13: One hack, so far…

During the writing of this article, another project was reportedly hacked on the Arbitrum network.

Blockaid flagged the loss of $130,000 from FOX Colony, before highlighting a further $50,000 nabbed by a copycat. The thread notes that other similar contracts are “exposed.”

This latest hack follows today’s news that Code4rena, a long-running audit contest platform, announced it would “wind down.”

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Bug bounty platform ImmuneFi stated it will take over Code4rena’s bounty programs going forward.

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As Wall Street firms race to bring stocks, bonds and credit products onto blockchain rails, a new Ethereum-based marketplace backed by Animoca Brands is aiming to turn tokenized assets into something crypto investors can use across decentralized finance (DeFi).

NUVA, developed by Animoca and Nuva Labs, is connecting around $19 billion worth of tokenized real-world assets originating on the Provenance blockchain ecosystem, including private credit and Treasury-linked products tied to Figure Technologies Solutions (FIGR), the blockchain firm founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney.

Read more: Mike Cagney’s second act: Turning blockchain into Wall Street’s new plumbing

Tokenized real-world assets have become one of crypto’s fastest-growing sectors. Asset managers and fintech firms view blockchain rails as a way to modernize how financial products are issued, traded and used as collateral. The broader market for tokenized assets could reach trillions of dollars over the next decade, according to multiple industry forecasts.

NUVA was designed as a distribution layer for tokenized assets, allowing them to move beyond closed financial networks and into DeFi markets, giving average retail users access to assets often limited to institutional investors.

It debuts with two flagship products: a Treasury-linked yield vault called nvYLDS, tied to Figure’s SEC-regulated stablecoin YLDS with more than $500 million supply, and nvPRIME, a token tied to Figure’s $18.4 billion portfolio of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). While the former gives investors money market yield, the latter offers high single-digit yield — more than 7% currently — that is mostly accessible to institutions and accredited investors in traditional finance.

Anthony Moro, CEO of Nuva Labs and a former BNY executive, said the goal is to create a marketplace for blockchain-native financial assets rather than wrapped versions of traditional products.

“Nobody really has that unified global distribution layer for blockchain-native assets,” Moro said in an interview. “We thought what was missing was a platform where users could access institutional-grade assets in a simple, composable format.”

Users deposit stablecoins into vaults and receive ERC-20 tokens representing ownership in the underlying assets. Those tokens can then be traded, lent or posted as collateral across Ethereum-based DeFi protocols.

As the NUVA platform expands, Moro said to “look for a wide range of assets to be available to everyone in an easy to use, self-directed and self custodial manner, eliminating Wall Street’s limited access, time lag and high fees.”

Moro argued that many existing tokenization models still rely too heavily on offchain infrastructure and manual reconciliation.

“The way to tokenize assets isn’t a digital twin,” he said. “The Figure loan itself is digitally native. There’s no filing cabinet somewhere keeping the real record.”

Figure has become one of the largest issuers of blockchain-based private credit products through the Provenance network. Moro said the broader vision is to eventually bring a range of tokenized assets onto NUVA from multiple issuers and expand to other blockchains beyond Ethereum.

“Cheaper, faster and safer will win,” Moro said. “That’s how all financial assets eventually come onchain.”