Harvard Management Company kept its position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust unchanged during the second quarter, ending two consecutive quarters of reductions in its publicly disclosed Bitcoin exposure. 

Its Aug. 14 SEC filing showed 3,044,612 IBIT shares worth $101.36 million as of June 30.

The share count was identical to March 31, when the position was worth about $116.97 million. The roughly $15.6 million decline in reported value therefore came from IBIT’s lower quarter end price rather than additional selling by Harvard.

Harvard stops selling after two quarters of IBIT cuts

Harvard had been reducing its Bitcoin ETF exposure since late 2025. It held 6,813,612 IBIT shares at the end of September before cutting the position about 21% to 5,353,612 shares in the fourth quarter. It then sold another 2.31 million shares during Q1, reducing the position 43% to its current 3,044,612 shares.

As crypto.news previously reported, Harvard cut its Bitcoin ETF position 43% and exited its Ether ETF entirely during Q1. The latest filing contains no BlackRock Ethereum ETF position, confirming Harvard did not rebuild that exposure during Q2.

Harvard’s IBIT position accounted for about 2.4% of the $4.26 billion in securities reported on its latest 13F. The filing listed 19 positions in total. Space Exploration Technologies was the largest at $2.21 billion.

Gold exposure remains larger than Harvard’s Bitcoin ETF stake

Harvard reported $149.5 million in the iShares Gold Trust and another $21.7 million in SPDR Gold Trust shares. Together, those positions were worth about $171.2 million, compared with $101.4 million in IBIT at June 30.

The comparison applies only to securities disclosed on Form 13F. It does not mean gold represents a larger allocation than Bitcoin across Harvard’s entire investment portfolio. SEC guidance says Form 13F covers qualifying securities over which an institutional manager exercises investment discretion, including U.S. listed ETFs. It does not provide a complete picture of private funds or other assets outside the reporting regime.

Dartmouth College also kept its crypto ETF share counts unchanged during Q2. As crypto.news reported, Dartmouth retained its Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana ETF positions, although their combined quarter end value fell. Its SEC filing shows 201,531 IBIT shares, 178,148 Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF shares and 304,803 Bitwise Solana Staking ETF shares.

Abu Dhabi funds keep nearly $764M in IBIT

Two Abu Dhabi investment entities also made no changes to their reported IBIT share counts. Mubadala Investment Company held 14,721,917 shares worth $490.1 million at June 30.

Abu Dhabi Investment Council reported another 8,218,712 shares worth $273.6 million. Together, the two filings show about 22.94 million IBIT shares valued at roughly $763.7 million at quarter end. Both share counts were unchanged from Q1.

That contrasts with Q1, when Mubadala added to its position while Harvard was reducing exposure. In related coverage, Mubadala increased its Bitcoin ETF holdings as Harvard sold shares.

JPMorgan adds IBIT while Morgan Stanley trims

Other institutional filings showed a mixed picture. JPMorgan reported about 10.4 million IBIT shares at June 30, up from approximately 8.3 million three months earlier. Morgan Stanley moved in the opposite direction, reducing its reported IBIT position about 4.5% to roughly 16.5 million shares worth $548.6 million.

Those filings should not automatically be interpreted as proprietary Bitcoin bets by the banks. The SEC says Form 13F can aggregate securities over which banks, broker dealers, investment advisers and related entities exercise investment discretion, including client accounts and trading activities.

Tudor Investment Corporation reported 688,529 IBIT shares worth $22.9 million, 109,446 more shares than in Q1. Its filing also included IBIT put and call options, showing that the reported equity position alone does not capture the manager’s complete exposure.

What happens next

The filings provide a snapshot only as of June 30. They do not reveal transactions made during the third quarter or show whether Harvard, the Abu Dhabi funds or other managers have changed their positions since then.

The next Form 13F cycle will disclose qualifying holdings as of Sept. 30. Until then, the latest verified data shows Harvard ended two quarters of IBIT selling without adding shares, while Mubadala and ADIC also maintained their positions. The wider institutional picture remained mixed, with JPMorgan and Tudor reporting higher IBIT exposure while Morgan Stanley trimmed its reported stake.

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, reported $508 million in adjusted revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up 17% year over year, while adjusted EBITDA dropped sharply to $23 million. 

The company disclosed the results on Aug. 14 as weaker spot trading weighed on activity despite growth across other financial products.

The profitability decline was substantial. Kraken reported $80 million of adjusted EBITDA on $432 million of adjusted revenue in Q2 2025. Payward did not disclose net income in its latest release. Its earlier financial disclosures describe adjusted revenue and adjusted EBITDA as management measures that exclude certain expenses.

Payward revenue grew while transaction volume fell

Total platform transaction volume reached $310 billion, down 18% from the previous year. Payward attributed the decline partly to weaker crypto spot volumes, while saying traditional futures, equities and tokenized equities grew during the quarter. Futures daily average revenue trades increased 8%.

Revenue also became less dependent on transaction fees. Asset-based and other revenue accounted for 60% of total revenue, compared with 55% a year earlier. Payward said that shift reflects income generated from assets and services surrounding its trading operations rather than a retreat from trading itself.

Assets on the platform stood at $40 billion at quarter-end. Payward also reported $65 billion of what it calls “Real Assets on Platform,” calculated by holding prices at Q2 2025 levels to remove market-price effects. That adjusted measure increased 48% year over year, according to the company.

Funded accounts reach a record 6.6 million

Payward reported 6.6 million funded accounts, up 42% year over year and the highest level in its history. However, comparisons with Kraken’s previously published 4.4 million funded accounts for Q2 2025 require caution.

The newer Payward definition counts distinct funded accounts across its platforms and products and counts sub-accounts separately. Kraken’s 2025 disclosure instead described funded accounts as funded customers with balances above zero. The reporting perimeter has also expanded as Payward integrated businesses such as NinjaTrader and Bitnomial.

Bitnomial expands Payward’s regulated U.S. derivatives stack

Payward closed its acquisition of Bitnomial on May 1, adding a CFTC-regulated designated contract market, clearing organization and futures commission merchant. As crypto.news previously reported, the $550 million Bitnomial acquisition gave Payward a vertically integrated U.S. derivatives stack.

Payward said the infrastructure supported regulated U.S. perpetual futures and spot margin products during Q2. Separately, a July CFTC letter shows Kraken is reconsidering the future of Kraken Derivatives Exchange, the former Small Exchange it acquired in 2025, including potential partnerships or a sale following the Bitnomial transaction.

Its federal banking push is also unresolved. The OCC still lists Payward National Trust Company’s May 8 charter application among pending digital-asset licensing applications. As crypto.news reported, the proposed national trust company would give Payward a federally supervised custody entity if regulators approve it.

What happens next for Payward

Payward expects its second-half strategy to focus on broader trading products, banking, tokenization, payments and services sold to third-party platforms. It completed its Reap acquisition on July 1 and has agreed to acquire Magic Labs’ wallet infrastructure business, although that transaction has not yet closed.

Tokenized equities remain a major part of that strategy. In related coverage, Payward expanded xStocks beyond U.S. equities through its GTN partnership, while Kraken has also begun allowing eligible users to use selected tokenized stocks as collateral.

The next financial report will show whether Payward can maintain revenue growth while restoring profitability. For now, Q2 presents a mixed picture: revenue and funded accounts increased, but transaction volume fell and adjusted EBITDA declined from $80 million to $23 million.

Solana is now accessible on the XRP Ledger’s native decentralized exchange through a wrapped SOL asset issued through Axelar, extending interoperability between the two blockchain ecosystems. 

Axelar confirmed the availability in an Aug. 14 post, directing users to SOL/XRP trading on XPMarket.

Hussein Zangana, known as Vet, warned users that Axelar is currently “the only legitimate issuer” of wrapped SOL on XRPL and told traders to beware of copycat assets. His warning matters because tokens on the XRP Ledger are identified by both their currency code and issuer account, rather than a ticker alone.

Mark Cuban said on Aug. 16 that “chips as an asset class will be the new crypto,” offering a one-line prediction as artificial intelligence drives demand for advanced computing hardware. 

Cuban did not identify a financial product, investment structure or timetable in his post.

The comment has been widely interpreted as referring to high-end AI accelerators such as GPUs. However, Cuban did not explicitly define which chips he meant. His claim therefore remains a broad investment thesis rather than an announced business venture or established asset category.

GPU-backed financing gives Cuban’s idea a precedent

AI hardware is already being used in financial structures that go beyond simply purchasing semiconductor stocks. CoreWeave closed a $2.6 billion delayed draw term loan facility on Aug. 10 to finance high-performance computing infrastructure. The company said the structure reflected lender confidence in long-term GPU demand.

The approximately five-year facility extends beyond the average three-year duration of the customer contracts supporting it. CoreWeave said lenders were therefore accepting renewal risk based partly on expectations for the future value of Nvidia GPUs deployed through its cloud platform. The transaction was also oversubscribed.

CoreWeave has pursued GPU-backed financing for several years. In May, it completed another $3.1 billion publicly syndicated facility and described AI infrastructure financing as an “emerging asset class.” That is CoreWeave’s characterization and does not mean individual GPUs currently trade like cryptocurrencies.

AI demand is supporting strong GPU economics

Nvidia’s latest reported quarter provides another measure of demand. The chipmaker reported $75.2 billion in data center revenue for the quarter ended April 26, up 92% from the previous year. Total quarterly revenue reached a record $81.6 billion, according to its May results.

Those figures do not establish chips as a standalone investment class. GPUs are physical assets that face technological obsolescence and depend on electricity, networking, data center capacity and customer utilization to generate revenue. Their supply also lacks the fixed issuance mechanics that distinguish Bitcoin.

Bitcoin advocate Pierre Rochard made that distinction in response to Cuban. He wrote that chip manufacturing has neither difficulty adjustments nor halvings and is therefore “not the new bitcoin.”

Cuban’s prediction follows his retreat from Bitcoin

Cuban’s latest comment comes less than three months after he sharply reduced his Bitcoin exposure. As crypto.news previously reported, he sold roughly 80% of his Bitcoin holdings after losing confidence in its hedge narrative. Cuban said Bitcoin was “not the hedge I expected” and had “lost the plot.”

He did not abandon every digital asset. Cuban said he continued holding Ethereum because he viewed smart contracts and decentralized finance as having clearer utility. His Aug. 16 chips comment did not say that he was replacing his remaining crypto exposure with hardware investments.

What happens next

The clearest test of Cuban’s prediction will be whether GPU financing becomes more standardized and accessible beyond specialist AI infrastructure operators. CoreWeave’s transactions show institutional lenders are already willing to finance computing infrastructure at multibillion-dollar scale and accept some risk around the future earning power of GPUs.

For now, however, “chips as an asset class” remains Cuban’s prediction rather than a defined market category. The underlying trend is measurable: Nvidia is reporting rapidly growing data center sales, while lenders are financing GPU-backed infrastructure in increasingly large transactions. Whether those developments eventually produce a liquid market resembling crypto remains unconfirmed.

Justin Sun said on Aug. 14 that Binance had clarified its coming restrictions on transactions involving HTX apply only to Binance users in the UK and European Union. 

His statement followed Binance’s notice that it will stop processing direct or indirect transactions involving HTX and ten other platforms from Aug. 23.

Sun said he had been communicating with Binance and that HTX does not conduct business in either region. He also said settlement negotiations with UK and EU regulators were underway. Binance’s public notice, however, does not itself state that the restrictions are limited to UK and EU customers. It says the exchange must comply with requirements in jurisdictions where it operates.

Binance restrictions match the EU’s Aug. 23 sanctions list

Binance named Rapira, Aifory Pro, ABCeX, WhiteBird, NoOnecrypto, Tradex, Monease, BitPapa, Exnode, HTX and EXMO in the Aug. 23 group. Transactions attempted after the deadline may be held for compliance review, while affected wallets can face restrictions during that process.

The list and effective date match an EU sanctions measure adopted July 23. Council Regulation 2026/1848 places the same eleven platforms under transaction restrictions from Aug. 23 and identifies them as entities providing crypto asset services outside the EU that significantly frustrate sanctions involving Russia. As crypto.news reported, Binance will stop processing transactions involving HTX and ten other platforms from Aug. 23.

Sun’s geographic clarification is absent from Binance’s notice

Sun wrote that “This matter concerns only Binance’s UK and EU users.” That geographic limitation comes from Sun’s account of his discussions with Binance. The exchange had not added equivalent wording to its public announcement as of Aug. 16.

Sun also said “HTX does not conduct business in the UK or EU.” That statement should be treated as HTX’s position. The UK Financial Conduct Authority said in February that HTX had stopped new UK users from registering after proceedings began, but existing users could still log in and access promotions. The FCA continues to list HTX as unauthorized.

HTX’s UK settlement talks are confirmed by court records

One part of Sun’s statement can be independently verified in Britain. A June 25 High Court order extended a stay in the FCA’s case against Huobi Global for another two months so the parties could try to settle the dispute. The regulator sued in October 2025 over alleged unlawful crypto promotions to UK consumers.

As crypto.news reported, HTX and the FCA entered settlement talks over the crypto marketing lawsuit. The talks are separate from sanctions. Sun also says negotiations are underway with EU regulators, but no separate official EU settlement announcement was identified in the materials reviewed.

UK and EU sanctions remain separate from the FCA case

Britain designated Huobi Global S.A. on May 26 under its Russia sanctions regime. The measures include an asset freeze and restrictions on correspondent banking and payment processing. The UK said it had reasonable grounds to suspect Huobi Global provided financial services or resources to A7 LLC and Garantex Europe OU.

HTX previously argued that Huobi Global was legally separate from the online exchange. UK sanctions authorities rejected that distinction for enforcement purposes. OFSI guidance states that it considers HTX subject to UK financial sanctions because it is owned by Huobi Global. The EU separately placed HTX on its transaction-ban list in July, as previously reported.

What happens next

The compliance response is spreading beyond Binance. Bitget announced on Aug. 15 that it will apply additional controls to the same eleven entities from Aug. 23. Direct or indirect transactions can face review or rejection, while related accounts may be restricted during compliance checks.

For HTX users, Aug. 23 is the next confirmed deadline under the EU framework and the restrictions announced by Binance and Bitget. Sun said affected users can contact HTX customer support and that the exchange will coordinate a resolution. That is an HTX commitment, not a guarantee that Binance, Bitget or regulators will release any transaction or wallet placed under compliance review.