Wall Street market maker Jane Street reduced its exposure to Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the first quarter of 2026 while increasing positions in Ether funds.

Jane Street cut major Bitcoin ETF holdings in Q1 2026, including BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), according to a 13F filing published Tuesday.

IBIT holdings fell about 71% from Q4 2025 to roughly 5.9 million shares valued at about $225 million, while FBTC dropped about 60% to around 2 million shares worth roughly $115 million.

At the same time, Jane Street increased its exposure to Ether (ETH) ETFs, nearly doubling its position in BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) and sharply raising its stake in Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH), adding about $82 million combined across the two products over the quarter.

The move comes amid early signs of institutional Ether ETF buying in early 2026, including increased exposure reported at Wells Fargo. The filing points to a reshuffling of Jane Street’s reportable crypto-linked holdings at quarter-end, though 13F disclosures do not show the market maker’s full trading book or net exposure.

Bitcoin exposure weakens further as Strategy stake falls

Jane Street’s Bitcoin-linked exposure weakened further in Q1 2026 as it reduced its stake in Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) alongside major ETF cuts.

In Q4 2025, the firm held about 968,000 MSTR shares worth roughly $145.9 million. By Q1 2026, the common stock stake fell to about 210,000 shares valued at roughly $27 million, a decline of about 78% quarter-over-quarter.

Jane Street increased its Strategy (MSTR) position by 473% in Q4 2025. Source: TheBTCTherapist

Strategy selling followed significant buying in the previous quarter as Jane Street reportedly increased MSTR position by 473% in Q4 2025.

In Q1 2026, the company also trimmed exposure across several Bitcoin mining stocks, including IREN, Cipher Mining, TeraWulf and Core Scientific.

Increased exposure to Coinbase, Galaxy and Riot

Despite broad downside pressure on Bitcoin-related assets, Jane Street increased exposure to several crypto-linked equities over the quarter, suggesting more selective positioning in crypto-related equities rather than a broad exit from the sector.

Jane Street raised its stake in the crypto mining company Riot Platforms (RIOT) to about 7.4 million shares, up from 5 million, increasing its value to roughly $91 million from $63 million.

It also increased its position in Coinbase (COIN) to about 888,000 shares from 778,000, with the value rising to about $155 million from $176 million in the prior quarter.

Related: EToro profits rise as commodities boom offsets crypto trading slump

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) saw the sharpest expansion, jumping to about 1.5 million shares from just around 17,000, lifting its value to roughly $28 million from around $380,000.

Jane Street posted a record $16.1 billion in Q1 trading revenue, according to Reuters, as volatile markets and gains tied to artificial intelligence-related investments boosted financial results.

Magazine: Strategy reveals why they would sell BTC, Trump Media posts loss: Hodler’s Digest, May 3 – 9

Parliamentary standards watchdog formally launched a probe into Nigel Farage over an undeclared £5M gift tied to crypto donations.

The investigation centers on a £5 million payment Farage received from Christopher Harborne in early 2024, weeks before he reversed a public decision and announced his candidacy for the Clacton seat.

Harborne, who holds a 12% stake in stablecoin issuer Tether, has separately donated over £22 million to Reform UK since the party’s founding, a total that makes him arguably the largest single financial backer of any British political party in recent memory.

Farage has maintained the £5 million was a personal gift intended to cover lifetime security costs, citing a firebomb attack on his home, and that it falls under an exemption from disclosure rules. Reform UK described the payment as “unconditional and irrevocable.” Both the Conservative and Labour parties rejected the exemption argument and referred the matter to Commissioner Greenberg, who has now formally opened a full inquiry.

The ban that changed British political finance

The probe arrives seven weeks after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a moratorium on political crypto donations, effective March 25, 2026. The measure followed the Rycroft Review’s conclusion that digital assets posed a unique risk for foreign interference, given the difficulty in tracing the origin of funds across pseudonymous blockchain transactions. The ban is being written into the Representation of the People Bill with criminal penalties for non-compliance once enacted.

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo separately disclosed donating approximately £4 million to Reform UK since the start of 2026. Reform was the first Westminster party to accept crypto, a policy Farage announced at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas.

If Greenberg finds a breach, sanctions range from a formal apology to suspension from the Commons, potentially triggering a by-election in Clacton. A YouGov poll this week put Reform UK at 28% of voting intentions, ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.

April brought a subtle retreat in Polymarket’s monthly trading activity, marking the first month-over-month decline since August as competition within the prediction-market space intensifies. Combined volume on Polymarket and its US trading app surpassed $10.2 billion in April, slipping from more than $11.2 billion in March, according to Dune Analytics data.

In contrast, Kalshi published a stronger showing for the month, with trading volume climbing roughly 13% to about $14.8 billion. Overall, the broader prediction-market sector moved higher, with total monthly volume reaching about $29.8 billion in April from around $26.5 billion in March — an increase of roughly 12.4%.

The shift occurs as Polymarket continues its bid to reintegrate US users amid heightened regulatory scrutiny that followed the sector’s rapid growth during the 2024 elections. At the same time, an array of new entrants is reshaping the landscape for event-based markets.

Last week, Prophet, an AI-native prediction market, launched its first live trading tranche, introducing an AI model that acts as the counterparty using real capital. Separately, MoonPay unveiled an AI-powered tool to assist traders with strategies on prediction markets, signaling a broader push toward AI-assisted decision-making in this space.

Related context: Dutch users still access prediction markets despite Polymarket’s US restrictions, underscoring how different regulatory regimes shape participation across regions.

Polymarket eyes US expansion as prediction markets face heightened scrutiny

Polymarket has been pursuing a path back into the US market after exiting in 2022 as part of a settlement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which barred the platform from serving US residents on its main global exchange. To regain a foothold, Polymarket rolled out a dedicated US app in December 2025, a stand-alone product that operates separately from the main platform and its liquidity pool.

Still, the platform and the broader sector are under intensifying regulatory glare. Senior lawmakers and enforcement officials have raised concerns about insider trading in prediction markets, particularly on geopolitically sensitive topics such as war and energy prices. Earlier this year, lawmakers urged the CFTC to curb potential insider trading and to ensure federal restrictions apply to government insiders engaging with prediction-market platforms.

In parallel, state authorities have begun to push back against prediction-market operators. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed lawsuits in April against Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction-market platforms, alleging violations of state sports-betting laws. The evolving legal landscape suggests a continued tension between innovative market formats and compliance requirements across jurisdictions.

The regulatory narrative matters for investors and users because it influences who can participate, how much liquidity flows, and which platforms can sustain long-term growth. For Polymarket, the path forward hinges on clarifying US access while maintaining liquidity and trust with a global user base.

AI-enabled rivals and the reshaping of the prediction-market map

The April volume data illustrate a more contested market where incumbents and newcomers alike vie for share. Kalshi’s surge highlights how a platform with established regulatory compliance frameworks continues to attract substantial activity, even as others experiment with AI-driven models and new business lines.

Prophet’s live-trading tranche represents a notable development: an AI model stepping into the counterparty role could alter risk dynamics, pricing efficiency, and user trust if it scales and proves robust in various event types. MoonPay’s AI tooling signals a broader fintech push into strategy automation, potentially lowering barriers to entry for non-professional traders and expanding participation.

As the sector experiments with AI-driven participation and more sophisticated counterparty models, the relative appeal of human-only versus AI-assisted decision-making remains a live question for traders. For Polymarket and similar platforms, the challenge is balancing innovation with regulatory compliance and ensuring that liquidity remains robust enough to support meaningful markets across a broader set of events.

A broader takeaway for readers is that the trajectory of prediction markets now hinges not only on appetite for event-risk betting but also on how policymakers, regulators, and market participants negotiate insider trading safeguards, cross-border access, and platform accountability. The signals from April suggest continued growth in overall activity, but with a more complex regulatory and competitive backdrop that could shape which platforms emerge as durable players in the next cycle.

What to watch next: whether Polymarket’s US-enabled offering can regain traction amid ongoing scrutiny, how AI-native entrants perform at scale, and which regulatory actions—if any—reshape the permissible contours of prediction-market activity in the United States and abroad. The evolving policy environment and the competitive dynamic between traditional and AI-enhanced platforms will likely define the pace and direction of adoption in the months ahead.

Data and context: the April activity figures and the broader market movements come from Dune Analytics data, with citations to related coverage on regulatory developments and platform updates referenced in the article.

References and further reading:

AI Layer-2 token Matchain MAT surged 349% in a single session as speculative capital rotated into small-cap altcoins.

Matchain is an AI-powered zk-rollup blockchain built on BNB Chain that focuses on decentralised identity, data sovereignty, and performance-based advertising. Its native token MAT is used for gas fees, staking, governance, and access to its MatchID decentralised identity layer.

The project reports over 27 million wallets created and holds a partnership with Paris Saint-Germain targeting mainstream Web3 onboarding.

The 349% move, reported across crypto market data platforms on May 13, occurred as Bitcoin consolidated in the $79,000 to $82,000 range. Matchain carries a market cap of well under $3 million, meaning large percentage moves can occur on thin volume and reverse equally fast.

The token launched on Binance Alpha in June 2025 at an all-time high of $6.67 before falling over 99% to a low of $0.036 in March 2026.

CryptoQuant bull signal adds context to the rotation

The session came one day after CryptoQuant’s Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator flipped bullish on May 12 for the first time since March 2023. That prior reading preceded a sustained run taking Bitcoin from $20,000 to above $73,000.

Analysts note that sharp small-cap moves typically occur in the early stages of broader speculative altcoin rotation, when retail capital begins hunting for exposure below the top 20 tokens.

As crypto.news documented, Bitcoin’s dominance has remained elevated above 59% through 2026, with genuine altcoin season historically requiring it to fall below 45%.

The Altcoin Season Index sits at 35 in May 2026, still well short of the 75-point threshold associated with a full market-wide rotation. Capital flows this year have remained heavily concentrated in large-cap names.

Traders should approach assets in this market-cap range with significant caution. Percentage gains of this size in illiquid tokens frequently reverse within hours, and Matchain’s prior price history includes a 99% decline from its listing high in less than a year.

Standard Chartered forges clearing relationship with Singapore Gulf Bank to smooth ME-Asia payments

Standard Chartered has established a strategic banking relationship with Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) aimed at improving multi-currency clearing and correspondent banking flows between the Middle East and Asia. The agreement is positioned to reduce settlement friction on key cross-border corridors and to support SGB’s growing focus on digital asset and stablecoin settlement services.

What the tie-up covers

Under the arrangement, Standard Chartered will extend its global clearing and correspondent capabilities to SGB, a Bahrain-regulated digital wholesale bank backed by Whampoa Group and Mumtalakat. The collaboration is intended to strengthen SGB’s multi-currency rails in emerging markets, accelerate settlement times and improve transparency across intermediary chains that typically complicate cross-border transfers.

SGB has been expanding its product set since launching corporate banking in late 2024. It rolled out a real-time multi-currency settlement platform, SGB Net, in May 2025 and announced a separate partnership with digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks in November 2025 to support secure treasury management and custody. The bank has also introduced around-the-clock payment capabilities and enhanced USD clearing relationships in recent months.

Context: persistent frictions in correspondent banking

Cross-border payments across emerging-market corridors remain hindered by layered correspondent chains, limited local currency liquidity, and time-zone constraints. These factors raise costs and extend settlement windows, particularly for payments routed through multiple intermediary banks. For businesses operating in the Middle East–Asia corridors, such frictions can blunt trade flows and increase operational risk.

Global banks with wide payment networks and established nostro/clearing relationships can help reduce those intermediaries, consolidating liquidity and offering faster settlement. That is the niche Standard Chartered is seeking to fill for SGB, leveraging its footprint across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Why this matters for digital asset settlement

SGB markets itself as a bridge between traditional finance and the digital asset economy, including stablecoin settlement. While this partnership does not publicise technical integration between Standard Chartered and tokenised rails, smoother correspondent flows and enhanced USD clearing capacity can materially reduce the on‑ramps and off‑ramps that currently complicate settlements between fiat and tokenised liquidity pools.

For institutions using stablecoins or other tokenised instruments as a settlement layer, faster and more reliable fiat clearing helps reconcile net positions with bank accounts and custodial platforms. SGB’s earlier tie-up with Fireblocks for custody and treasury functions indicates the bank is assembling both on-chain and off-chain capabilities; extending correspondent relationships is another step in that buildout.

Regional regulatory and market considerations

Bahrain’s regulatory environment has actively sought to attract fintech and digital-asset activity, offering a framework that some banks view as supportive for innovation while maintaining oversight. Standard Chartered’s statement referenced Bahrain’s position as a well-regulated transaction hub, underscoring the strategic value of pairing a Bahrain-licensed digital wholesale bank with a global clearing institution.

Nevertheless, corridors spanning multiple jurisdictions require coordination on AML/KYC, sanctions screening and liquidity management. Operational improvements in clearing and settlement will depend on alignment across correspondent counterparties and regulators in the relevant markets.

Implications for corporates and treasury managers

For corporate treasuries and payment service providers operating in ME-Asia lanes, the partnership could translate into shorter settlement cycles and potentially lower costs if intermediary steps are reduced. Faster fiat clearing supports tighter cash management and enables digital-asset-enabled flows to be settled with more predictable timing.

However, the exact customer benefits will hinge on implementation details such as connectivity options, cut-off times, FX pricing and the scope of currencies supported on an ongoing basis. Market participants will be watching how SGB integrates Standard Chartered’s rails with its own SGB Net platform and digital custody services.

Broader trend: incumbents partnering with digital-first banks

This deal fits a broader pattern in which established global banks partner with regional or digital-first challengers to extend reach into growth corridors and new product markets without building bespoke on-the-ground operations. For digital banks focused on tokenised settlement, securing robust correspondent lines remains a practical prerequisite to serve cross-border clients at scale.

As cross-border payment volumes and digital asset use cases evolve, relationships that combine global clearing scale with regional digital capabilities are likely to multiply. Observers should look for subsequent announcements detailing product roadmaps, technical integrations with token rails and service-level improvements that quantify the expected reductions in settlement time and cost.