XRP surges more than 15% over 24 hours, trading near $1.15 and briefly touching $1.16, joining a broader crypto rally that also carries bitcoin above $72,000.
The move follows months of unusually large orders moving through XRP markets without producing much visible impact on the token’s price during that stretch.
New ledger data now shows roughly 23% of all XRP changing hands on the XRP Ledger occurs within a specific three-hour trading window each day.
That window spans the London afternoon and New York morning, the only stretch when both major financial centers operate simultaneously with full liquidity overlap.
A year ago, that same three-hour period accounted for only about 14% of daily XRP activity, according to data reviewed by treasury firm Evernorth.
Since the window represents just 12.5% of a full trading day, activity inside it now runs at nearly twice the rate expected from evenly spread trading.
The pattern shows up consistently across all three major ways XRP moves through the ledger, including its order book, its automated market maker pools, and cross-currency payment routing.
Every hour within the London-New York overlap now carries roughly twice the transaction volume of an average hour outside that window, ledger data confirms.
Evernorth frames the shift as consistent with growing institutional participation in XRP markets, though the firm maintains a direct financial interest in that narrative.
The company runs an active XRP treasury strategy backed by Ripple and other investors, with filings describing plans for over $1 billion in gross proceeds and a Nasdaq listing.
Public blockchain records reveal transaction timing, size, and routing details clearly, but they generally stop short of identifying which specific participants sit behind each trade.
Earlier this month, a separate report found that average XRP spot order sizes stayed within whale-level territory throughout the token’s slide from around $2.40 in January.
That earlier pattern suggested large holders were absorbing supply during the decline rather than triggering an immediate breakout, setting up the conditions for the current rally.
Retail traders and automated strategies remain fully capable of producing the same activity pattern, since crypto markets trade continuously and never formally close.
The overlap window also coincides with the heaviest period for breaking crypto news and the busiest hours for U.S. exchange retail volume, complicating any single explanation.
BitGo swung to a net loss in the second quarter even as revenue climbed sharply, the publicly listed digital asset infrastructure firm reported this week. The company posted a $19 million net loss for the quarter despite revenue surging nearly 80% year on year to $4.3 billion.
The loss marks an improvement from earlier in the year. BitGo’s net loss narrowed from $60.7 million in the first quarter, while revenue rose 14.7% quarter over quarter.
Unrealized losses on digital assets drove much of the year on year swing. An $18.8 million unrealized loss on digital assets compares against a $55.8 million unrealized gain in the same period last year.
BitGo chief executive Mike Belshe addressed the shortfall directly on the earnings call. He said Q2 performance fell short of expectations, adding that profitability was hurt by lower margins and an unfavorable revenue mix.
Belshe pointed to two specific pressure points behind the margin squeeze. He cited lower spreads on certain spot transactions along with a smaller contribution from derivatives trading.
Management is responding with cost discipline rather than just watching the numbers. BitGo authorized a share repurchase program of up to $50 million alongside cost cutting measures expected to save about $15 million annually.
Staffing cuts made earlier this year form part of that effort. The company expects expenses to decline in the third quarter following a workforce reduction of about 15% in June.
Markets reacted modestly to the mixed results. BitGo shares fell 1.8% in overnight trading to $4.90 after closing the prior session up 0.6% at $4.99.
The results land amid a broader wave of belt tightening across crypto infrastructure firms this year. Rivals have leaned on similar playbooks, pairing headcount reductions with buyback programs to reassure shareholders.
Revenue growth at that scale still stands out relative to peers, even with the bottom line under pressure. BitGo’s management is betting the cost cuts announced this year will translate into steadier margins by the fourth quarter.
BTCPay Server has confirmed that attackers exploited a critical vulnerability and successfully stole funds from users running outdated versions of the software.
The open-source, self-hosted bitcoin payment processor pushed an emergency update to version 2.4.2 to close the hole. It urged every operator to update immediately.
The flaw allowed an unauthenticated remote attacker to obtain macaroon credential files tied to LND, a widely used Lightning Network implementation.
Stolen macaroon files can hand an attacker effective control of an LND node. From there, funds can be moved directly out of the node without the owner’s involvement.
BTCPay Server said the vulnerability affects every version released before 2.4.2, including release candidates for that version.
The team confirmed plainly that users were affected and that funds were stolen. It said technical details would remain withheld temporarily so operators have time to patch before attackers can study the writeup.
Hardware wallet maker Foundation and bitcoin publication Citadel21 both reported Lightning nodes swept clean, with channels force-closed before the public warning went out.
Operators unable to update right away were told to take their BTCPay Server offline entirely. That step is meant to block unauthorized access until the patch can be applied.
The vulnerability was disclosed to BTCPay by the Bitcoin Red Team, a volunteer security group that has been auditing open-source Bitcoin infrastructure.
BTCPay Server’s own on-chain and hot wallets are not affected by this specific issue. The exposure is isolated to LND-based Lightning deployments.
Updating alone does not fully close the door for affected operators. The team also advised revoking LND macaroons and moving any funds sitting in a BTCPay-generated on-chain hot wallet as an added precaution.
The incident lands amid a broader wave of scrutiny across Bitcoin infrastructure. It follows a separate Coldcard exploit that Galaxy Research says has cost users roughly 1,719 BTC, worth close to $111 million.
Circle (CRCL) confirms its Arc blockchain moves to public mainnet on September 16, marking a major step for the stablecoin issuer’s institutional ambitions.
The company unveiled a founding validator cohort dominated by traditional finance giants rather than typical crypto infrastructure operators.
BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa, and Standard Chartered headline the list of eleven institutions securing the network at launch.
Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, MoneyGram, SBI Group, and Sumitomo Corporation round out the founding validator group alongside Circle itself.
Arc is currently operating on a private mainnet with more than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders already testing infrastructure.
The network is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses USDC as its native gas asset and supports EVM compatibility.
Arc also features sub-second transaction finality and an in-protocol foreign exchange engine called StableFX for institutional settlement flows.
BlackRock plans to deploy its BUIDL tokenized money market fund on Arc once the public mainnet goes live.
DTCC is preparing a deeper integration, with tokenized asset support expected to expand onto Arc from 2027 onward.
CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC the validator count could eventually grow to between 20 and 40 operators over time.
Allaire added that ARC token holders will eventually gain staking rights and voting power over protocol governance decisions.
The announcement landed alongside Circle’s second quarter earnings, which showed total revenue and reserve income reaching $701 million.
Net income came in at $48 million, a sharp turnaround from a $482 million loss in the same period last year.
USDC in circulation closed the quarter at $73.3 billion, up 19 percent, while on-chain transaction volume hit $14.8 trillion.
Circle’s share of the fiat-backed stablecoin market slipped to 27 percent even as absolute volumes climbed sharply higher.
Arc’s testnet has already processed more than half a billion transactions across nearly three million individual wallets.
Circle also confirmed its USDC distribution agreement with Coinbase (COIN) has renewed on existing terms heading into the mainnet launch.
The validator model is built around institutions actively building on Arc rather than relying on independent node operators.
Circle says this structure is designed to satisfy the operational and compliance standards expected of financial market infrastructure.
The company plans to introduce AI developer tools and a composable application framework alongside the September mainnet launch.
Analysts see the validator lineup as a signal of deepening institutional comfort with permissioned blockchain settlement rails.
The SEC has suspended its approval of Nasdaq’s cash-settled bitcoin index options — ticker QBTC — putting the product on hold while it reviews a jurisdictional challenge from rival exchange operator CME Group.
Nasdaq’s Phlx exchange had won conditional SEC approval for the options in May on an expedited basis, with contracts designed to track the Nasdaq Bitcoin Index, itself derived from the CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index. CME filed a formal challenge in mid-June, arguing that because bitcoin is legally treated as a commodity, any options tied to its value should fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s exclusive authority rather than the SEC’s. The full SEC commission has now granted CME’s petition for review, staying the earlier approval and opening a public comment period running through August 24.
CME’s position centers on the fact that it already operates its own regulated bitcoin futures and options markets, and that allowing Nasdaq’s product to launch without registering under the CFTC framework governing CME would let a securities exchange compete for the same order flow while sidestepping commodities oversight. The petition also flagged a broader concern: that letting the approval stand could set precedent for securities exchanges to list derivatives on other commodities more generally.
If CME’s argument prevails, Nasdaq would either need to register QBTC under CFTC rules or redesign the contracts entirely to reference a security, such as a spot bitcoin ETF, instead of the commodity itself. Until the commission rules, the product remains shelved — another sign of how listed bitcoin derivatives increasingly sit at the boundary between the SEC’s and CFTC’s overlapping authority.
MicroStrategy, now rebranded as Strategy, has introduced a new framework for measuring its bitcoin holdings that offers common shareholders greater transparency into net exposure.
The overhaul comes as bitcoin continues to face sustained selling pressure, with the broader crypto market navigating a prolonged bear cycle in 2026.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and his team developed the revised metrics to account for obligations tied to preferred stock and convertible debt instruments.
The new framework strips out those financial obligations before presenting bitcoin exposure figures, giving ordinary shareholders a more accurate picture of what they actually hold.
Strategy has become the largest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world, making the accuracy of its reporting metrics a matter of significant investor interest.
Previous measurement approaches did not clearly reflect how preferred stock and convertible debt diluted the effective bitcoin exposure available to common shareholders.
The revised metrics are designed to cut through that complexity and present a cleaner, more honest accounting of net bitcoin value per common share.
This kind of transparency push is particularly important during bear market conditions, when investor confidence in bitcoin treasury strategies faces its toughest tests.
Strategy’s stock has historically moved in close correlation with bitcoin prices, meaning common shareholders feel the full weight of any extended market downturn.
By reframing how bitcoin exposure is calculated and communicated, Saylor and his team are attempting to reinforce long-term conviction among the company’s retail and institutional investor base.
The move also signals that Strategy is evolving its financial communication practices as its capital structure grows more complex with each successive debt and equity raise.
Analysts have noted that as Strategy layers on more preferred offerings and convertible notes, the gap between gross bitcoin holdings and net shareholder exposure becomes increasingly meaningful.
Providing a clearer metric helps investors avoid overestimating the common shareholder’s actual claim on the company’s bitcoin reserves after senior obligations are satisfied.
Strategy holds hundreds of thousands of bitcoin on its balance sheet, a position built aggressively over several years under Saylor’s direction.
The company continues to signal that it views bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset and has no intention of unwinding that position regardless of short-term price volatility.
The World Foundation, the nonprofit steward of the World Network protocol, has secured $52.5 million through a locked token sale to strategic investors.
The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Eightco Holdings, targeting digital verification expansion.
Investors who participated in the raise agreed to a 12-month lockup on World’s native token, WLD, as part of the deal structure.
The Sam Altman-backed digital identity project aims to use the fresh capital to scale its Orb-based “proof of human” verification technology across enterprise platforms and AI agents.
Growing concerns across the tech industry over bots, deepfakes, and AI agents impersonating real humans online have intensified demand for reliable identity verification infrastructure.
More than 39 million people have joined the World Network, with over 18 million verified through an Orb device and more than 475 million World ID proofs issued to date.
World ID functions by having users visit a physical Orb that scans their iris, generating a unique cryptographic credential stored locally on the user’s phone.
The system relies on zero-knowledge proofs and what World describes as anonymised multi-party computation to confirm someone is a unique human without exposing personal identity data.
The project, originally conceived by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania, has faced sustained regulatory scrutiny over its approach to biometric data collection.
Docusign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder have each signed integration deals with World, addressing different dimensions of the bot and deepfake trust problem on digital platforms.
World is collaborating with Zoom on a feature called “Deep Face,” which verifies that a meeting participant is a real human rather than a deepfake representation.
A partnership with Docusign is also underway to incorporate proof-of-human checks directly into digital agreements, adding a verification layer to legally sensitive workflows.
World is additionally rolling out a developer toolkit called “AgentKit,” designed to attach human-verified credentials to AI agents handling sensitive or commerce-related tasks.
The company is working with Okta, Vercel, and Browserbase on these agent-focused capabilities, aiming to establish a trust layer for automated workflows that requires no personal data disclosure.
The White House is pressing Senate Democrats to accept ethics restrictions on President Donald Trump’s crypto dealings embedded in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
Trump agreed to certain limits on his crypto business interests, a concession that surprised many observers following months of contentious negotiations over government conflict-of-interest rules.
The ethics section, revealed for the first time in a final working draft of the Clarity Act circulated this week, would impose unprecedented constraints on a sitting president’s crypto activities.
Democrats have responded with sharp criticism, arguing the restrictions are too weak and poorly enforced to meaningfully curb the president’s multi-billion-dollar crypto business interests.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, was particularly blunt in her assessment of the bill’s ethics provisions.
“Donald Trump raked in more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures, and this bill does nothing to prevent him from vacuuming up his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits,” Warren said, referring to Trump’s disclosed crypto earnings for 2025.
Warren also warned that the president will “simply ignore the law” as it is currently proposed, deepening Democratic skepticism about the bill’s enforceability and long-term impact.
A White House official fired back, framing Democratic resistance as bad-faith opposition to legislation the administration says reflects historic compromise.
“If Senate Democrats block this historic legislation after the administration has bent over backward to accommodate their concerns, stakeholders should make no mistake: It is the Democrats who are blocking this legislation because they were never serious about a legislative outcome,” the White House official said.
Trump “has agreed to the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history,” the White House official added, though specific details of the restrictions remain undisclosed.
Democratic negotiators including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Ruben Gallego, and Angela Alsobrooks reportedly have not received details of the agreement, despite Trump having met personally with Republican senators last week.
The proposed restrictions would reportedly apply to the president, the vice president, and members of Congress, representing a broad scope of government officials subject to crypto trading limits.
With the ethics debate consuming legislative bandwidth for months, the window for passing the Clarity Act in 2026 is narrowing with each day the impasse continues.
Crypto insiders are expecting the bill to reach the Senate floor as early as next week, consistent with signals previously given by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, with a final vote potentially taking several additional days.
LMAX Group, a global financial technology company operating institutional execution venues for crypto and foreign exchange trading, is exploring a potential sale or IPO.
The London-based firm has built a significant presence in institutional crypto markets, reporting $8.2 trillion in trading volume last year alone.
That figure underscores the scale of LMAX’s operations and likely makes it an attractive target for prospective buyers or public market investors.
LMAX Group posted revenue of £149.36 million in 2024, alongside a net income of £56.62 million, reflecting strong profitability across its trading venues.
The company operates electronic execution venues catering to institutional clients across both cryptocurrency and foreign exchange markets globally.
Private equity firm JC Flowers agreed in July 2021 to acquire a 30% stake in LMAX for $300 million, a deal that valued the group at $1 billion at the time.
That valuation now appears conservative given the dramatic expansion of institutional crypto trading volumes since 2021.
A public listing would allow LMAX to tap capital markets at a moment when appetite for crypto-adjacent financial infrastructure companies remains strong among institutional investors.
The IPO route would also provide existing shareholders, including JC Flowers, with a structured path to realizing returns on their investment in the company.
A sale, meanwhile, could attract interest from major exchanges, financial technology firms, or other private equity players seeking exposure to institutional-grade crypto trading infrastructure.
The crypto trading infrastructure sector has grown increasingly competitive, with institutions demanding faster execution, deeper liquidity, and more sophisticated tools than retail-focused platforms can offer.
LMAX has positioned itself squarely within that institutional segment, differentiating its venues through transparent, neutral execution models that appeal to banks and asset managers.
Any transaction, whether a sale or a listing, would represent one of the more significant liquidity events in the institutional crypto trading space in recent years.
Webull EU has received formal approval under Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation, clearing the way for the platform to offer digital asset services to clients across the region.
The approval comes from the Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the Dutch financial regulator, making Webull one of the first dual-regulated investment firms in the Netherlands to hold MiCAR authorization.
Under the new framework, Webull users will be able to place orders for crypto assets directly through the platform, with custody handled internally by the European subsidiary.
Trade execution will run through a partnership with Coinbase Luxembourg, giving Webull a regulated pipeline for order routing without building its own exchange infrastructure from scratch.
Andries van Luijk, chief executive of Webull Securities Europe, called the approval a major milestone in the company’s push to expand its footprint across the continent.
He said the authorization reflects Webull’s commitment to giving European clients secure and compliant access to digital assets under the bloc’s regulatory standards.
MiCAR requires firms to meet strict investor protection and operational benchmarks, giving traders added assurance when holding or trading crypto through licensed platforms.
Approval currently covers only the Netherlands, though Webull has submitted passporting requests that would let it extend services across other EU member states.
Passporting is the mechanism that allows a firm licensed in one EU country to operate across the entire bloc without separate national licenses.
Webull expects to launch its crypto operations in late 2026, giving the company several months to build out infrastructure before going live.
The Nasdaq-listed firm operates in sixteen markets worldwide and serves more than twenty seven million registered users across stocks, options, futures, and now digital assets.
This approval lands amid a wider scramble among brokers and exchanges to secure MiCAR licensing before Europe’s compliance deadlines tighten further this year.
Rivals including Bitget and BingX have filed similar applications in Austria, while Ripple and Bridge have already secured licenses through Luxembourg regulators.
The trend signals growing competition among global financial firms racing to capture regulated crypto market share inside one of the world’s largest trading blocs.