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Open Standard, an independent issuer backed by Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard, will hand almost all reserve yield to the partners that distribute it — a direct assault on Circle's economics.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Schwab and Cboe will launch S&P 500-linked binary options for retail customers in the coming months. Schwab's 47 million accounts will sit one tab over from contracts Polymarket and Kalshi have spent three years building a category around.

Kraken launched in-app on-chain trading for more than 2,500 Solana tokens on June 18, using Privy wallets and Jupiter quotes. The FAQ explicitly states none of these tokens are listed, custodied, or reviewed by Kraken for investment merit, quality, or suitability.

Every cirBTC is backed 1:1 by native BTC at a regulated Circle entity, with Chainlink Proof of Reserve verifying the float on chain. The launch is calibrated to siphon institutional flow away from WBTC and Coinbase's cbBTC.

Tether International took full control of the Bitcoin treasury company XXI after acquiring SoftBank's entire position, valued at roughly $679 million. SoftBank's directors stepped down at closing, leaving Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald as the principal backers of the 43,514-BTC vehicle.

USDF, a USDC-backed stablecoin issued on Solana through Coinbase's Custom Stablecoin platform, launched yesterday with wallet app Flipcash as its branding partner — the first commercial deal under the program.

SpaceX's IPO filing this week confirmed 18,712 BTC sitting on the balance sheet at a cost basis of $661 million — more than double what on-chain analysts had estimated, and untouched since 2024.

The second-largest difficulty cut of 2026 reflects what miner earnings have been telegraphing all year: Marathon, Riot and their peers are pulling power and capital out of bitcoin mining and into AI data centres as fast as the contracts can be signed.

Strategy disclosed in an 8-K filing on Monday that it had acquired 24,869 BTC for roughly $2.01 billion between May 11 and May 17, lifting total holdings to 843,738 coins — and funded about 97% of the buy through sales of its STRC perpetual preferred rather than common stock.

THYP, the first US spot ETF tracking Hyperliquid's HYPE token, has gathered $12.6 million in AUM through four sessions of consecutive net inflows since launching on Nasdaq on May 12, with issuer 21Shares now pitching the fund on 24-hour market exposure rather than the token itself.

Bitcoin Depot's voluntary Chapter 11 filing on Monday took North America's largest bitcoin ATM fleet offline overnight. A 49 per cent year-on-year revenue collapse, a $3.7 million April hack, and parallel state attorney general lawsuits finally moved faster than the company's cash position.

NUVA, co-developed by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs, has linked $19 billion of Figure Technologies' tokenised assets — including a $18.4 billion HELOC portfolio — to Ethereum DeFi through two new products: nvYLDS and nvPRIME.

The $9 trillion broker rolled out Schwab Crypto to a first cohort of US retail clients on May 13, priced well below Coinbase's standard fee, with custody handled inside a chartered bank rather than an exchange.

The Trump-family crypto firm filed a defamation suit against Justin Sun in Florida state court two weeks after Sun sued it for fraud — turning a token-freeze dispute worth roughly $240 million into a contested public trial.

Binance launched Withdraw Protection on May 4, letting users freeze their account against on-chain withdrawals for up to seven days. A stricter lockdown mode disables early unlocking entirely. The feature exists because verified physical coercion attacks against crypto holders rose 75 per cent last year.

Western Union went live with USDPT, a dollar-backed stablecoin, on Solana on May 4. Anchorage Digital Bank is the issuer, and the company plans to use it for agent settlement, institutional listings, and a consumer payments product launching in more than forty countries this year.

Kraken's deal with MoneyGram puts crypto-to-cash withdrawals in roughly 500,000 retail locations across more than 100 countries, weeks before the exchange's planned Nasdaq listing.

Coinbase will lay off roughly 660 employees and rebuild around AI-native pods, two days before reporting a quarter in which revenue fell 26 per cent and trading volume hit an 18-month low.

Crypto exchange Bullish announced a $4.2 billion deal on May 5 to acquire shareholder-services giant Equiniti from Siris Capital, structured as $1.85 billion in assumed debt and $2.35 billion in stock. The strategic logic only works if tokenised securities actually arrive on schedule.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies disclosed on May 4 that it acquired 101,745 ether last week, taking its treasury to 5.18 million ETH and pushing total holdings to $13.1 billion. Chairman Tom Lee used the announcement to declare that crypto spring had commenced.