Crypto exchange Kraken plans to offer tokenized versions of popular U.S. equities. Kraken will list a new suite of tokenized equities dubbed xStocks in partnership with Backed Finance. The assets will reportedly be live on the Solana blockchain and represent actual shares held 1:1 by Backed. Clients in selected non-U.S. jurisdictions will reportedly be able to trade more than 50 U.S. stocks and ETFs, including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, outside traditional market hours. The launch positions Kraken among the first exchanges to successfully list tokenized U.S. equities since Binance’s short-lived effort in 2021. Unlike earlier iterations, Kraken’s approach relies on real securities held in custody and tokenized on a fast, low-cost blockchain. Mark Greenberg, Kraken Global Head of Consumer said, “Access to traditional U.S. equities remains slow, costly, and restricted. With xStocks, we’re using blockchain technology to deliver something better, open, instant, accessible, and borderless exposure to some of America’s most iconic companies.” The xStocks tokens are reportedly issued as SPL tokens on Solana, meaning they are compatible with wallets and protocols on the network. This integration also allows users to leverage their tokenized stocks in decentralized finance environments, including as collateral.
Fresh institutional inflows and rising demand for tokenization driving Ether’s outperformance vis-à-vis Bitcoin; likely to reach and/or surpass its all-time high price by the end of the year
Ether outpaces bitcoin on fresh institutional inflows and rising demand for tokenization, signaling a potential push towards its all-time high. ETH zoomed 5% in the past 24 hours, leading gains among majors. Ether ETFs have attracted more than $800 million in the past two weeks alone, outpacing bitcoin’s sub-$400 million, according to SoSoValue data. That’s helped the spread between ether’s implied volatility and bitcoin’s reach its highest level since late 2022 — a sign traders expect bigger price swings ahead. “Investors are finally recognizing the compelling investment opportunity that Ethereum presents. It’s still trading well below its all-time highs, while bitcoin is already near its ATH levels,” said Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE. He pointed to Ethereum’s growing role in tokenizing real-world assets like stocks, money-market funds, and U.S. Treasuries, adding that it was “very likely that Ethereum will reach and/or surpass its all-time high price by the end of the year.” Open interest in ether perpetuals on Kraken hit an all-time high of 30,000 ETH this week, said Alexia Theodorou, Head of Derivatives at Kraken. “This signals a notable uptick in speculative activity around the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap,” she noted. However, she cautioned that the market “has yet to form a clear directional consensus,” with the long/short ratio still well below January levels.
Visa invests in Stabelcoin infrastructure platform BVNK that processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd
Stabelcoin infrastructure platform BVNK received an investment from Visa. The new capital comes on the heels of a $50 million Series B funding round in December. “We’re proud to support BVNK as they help accelerate global adoption of stablecoin payments,” Rubail Birwadker, head of growth products and partnerships at Visa, said. “Stablecoins are fast becoming a part of global payment flows, and Visa invests in new technologies and builders like BVNK, staying at the forefront of what’s next in commerce to better serve our clients and partners.” There was $27 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume globally across 1.25 billion transactions in 2024, per Visa Onchain Analytics. BVNK processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd. “We’re experiencing a once-in-a-generation shift to a new foundational payment technology, powered by stablecoins,” BVNK co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson Struthers said. “At BVNK, we’re building the infrastructure to make these new rails accessible to businesses, empowering them to operate at the speed of today’s economy.”
Congressman reintroduces bill on blockchain regulation that exempts digital asset developers and service providers who do not custody consumer funds from compliance applicable to money transmitters
Congressman Tom Emmer has reintroduced the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which clarifies that digital asset developers and service providers who do not custody consumer funds are not money transmitters. This legislation provides legal clarity that will unlock blockchain development in the United States and is co-led by Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15). The bill aims to protect American crypto developers and innovators from undue regulation by prosecution, ensuring that they are not unfairly treated as financial intermediaries. The BRCA provides clear rules for developers who never take custody of consumer funds, preventing them from being unreasonably defined as operators of an “unlicensed money services business” under the Bank Secrecy Act. The bill also ensures that non-custodial blockchain participants, including developers, node operators, miners, validators, and wallet providers, are not subject to unnecessary and technologically infeasible compliance burdens that would significantly impede American innovation. The development of digital assets in the United States is critical to national and economic security, and the BRCA will help establish the necessary confidence required to keep non-custodial blockchain developers or service providers from seeking more straightforward regulatory environments overseas.
RISE leverages Ethereum’s network and Shreds transaction architecture to enable real-time transactions on standard hardware with ultra-low latency of 5-milliseconds and throughput of over 50,000 TPS
RISE, a real-time blockchain scaling Ethereum with record throughput and ultra-low latency, has secured a $4 million investment from Galaxy Ventures, raising its total funds to $8 million. RISE’s breakthrough transaction architecture, powered by Shreds, enables record-breaking latency as low as 5-milliseconds, making it ideal for advanced DeFi use cases like orderbook strategies, options, high-frequency trading, and market making. The blockchain addresses the tradeoff between low latency and high throughput, ensuring real-time transactions on standard hardware. RISE will also implement performance-compatible sequencing to leverage Ethereum’s network of validators and unlock synchronous composability between Ethereum and RISE. Key Differentiators of RISE: Shreds: Sub-blocktime transaction confirmations enabling as low as 5ms round-trip latency; Scalable Throughput: Currently benchmarked at over 50,000 TPS, with plans to exceed 100,000 TPS; Based Sequencing (Coming Soon): Unlocking a true extension of Ethereum and solving liquidity fragmentation for users; Secured Shreds (Coming Soon): Preconfirmations economically secured by Ethereum Validators, significantly improving the security profile.
OCC clarifies banks may buy and sell assets crypto-assets; can also outsource custody to third parties
The OCC has clarified that institutions under its oversight can now buy and sell crypto assets on behalf of their customers. In addition, the OCC stated that national banks may outsource crypto-asset services to third parties, including custody and trade execution, provided those third parties maintain sound risk management practices. The latest OCC letter follows a similar directive issued in March, which rescinded the 2021 policy requiring banks to seek prior supervisory approval before engaging in crypto-related services. “The services national banks may provide in relation to the cryptocurrency they are custodying may include services such as facilitating the customer’s cryptocurrency and fiat currency exchange transactions, transaction settlement, trade execution, recordkeeping, valuation, tax services, reporting, or other appropriate services,” the March letter stated. It further clarified: “A bank acting as custodian may engage a sub-custodian for cryptocurrency it holds on behalf of customers and should develop processes to ensure that the sub-custodian’s operations have proper internal controls to protect the customer’s cryptocurrency.” Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve recently dropped its supervisory guidelines that previously required American banks to notify it in advance of any crypto-asset activities. Banks are also no longer required to obtain formal approval from the Fed before engaging in stablecoin-related operations. The decisions by both US regulators reflect the broader shift toward more crypto-friendly policies under the Trump administration.
Ripple Ledger is to support a prime broker’s post trade settlement, data reconciliation, and collateral movements lowering settlement times to just 3 to 5 seconds
In a significant move, Ripple recently confirmed that XRPL will play a core role in powering Hidden Road’s post-trade processes, marking a potential turning point for how trades are settled in prime brokerage. Ripple’s UK and Europe Managing Director, Cassie Craddock, has revealed that XRPL will manage the post-trade infrastructure for Hidden Road, a prime broker handling over $10 billion in daily cleared volume. According to Craddock, the ledger will support trade settlement, data reconciliation, and collateral movements. This integration is expected to drastically cut settlement times, from the standard 24 hours to just 3 to 5 seconds. Craddock added, “We also see that there is an active audience of 300 institutional clients. We are very much focused on building our business, developing new cases and utility for digital assets, and enabling and solving customer problems for our banking and institutional customers.” Beyond infrastructure, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin will serve as the core collateral for Hidden Road’s trading services. Craddock confirmed this role, saying RLUSD enables the bridging of the digital asset space to TradFi, highlighting Ripple’s broader ambition to integrate stable digital value into traditional financial ecosystems. “The XRP Ledger will be used as post-trade for all of Hidden Road’s Prime Brokerage Services,” Craddock mentioned. “We will use RLUSD as collateral to enable the bridging of digital assets to tradfi.”
CompoSecure’s hardware wallet to allow users to deposit cash at MoneyGram locations and receive Circle USDC on the Stellar blockchain, and withdraw local currency from their digital USDC holdings
Payment card and security solutions provider CompoSecure announced the integration of its Arculus Cold Storage Wallet with MoneyGram Access. The move lets users convert physical cash to digital USDC stablecoins and withdraw cash at MoneyGram locations worldwide. This integration allows users to deposit cash at participating MoneyGram locations and receive Circle USDC on the Stellar blockchain, which can be managed within the self-custody Arculus crypto wallet. Users can also withdraw local currency from their digital USDC holdings at over 440,000 MoneyGram retail locations across more than 200 countries and territories. Adam Lowe, chief product and innovation officer at CompoSecure and Arculus, said this could be particularly appealing to those who lack access to traditional banking services. “This integration enables people to convert physical cash into digital dollars on the highly performant Stellar blockchain and store those digital dollars securely, giving them complete autonomy and control over their assets.” Additionally, Arculus announced a grant from the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization supporting the development and growth of the Stellar network, to enable payments over traditional payment card rails directly from self-custody crypto wallets via smart contracts.
PayPal to offer users a 3.7% annual rewards rate on holdings of the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets
PayPal Holdings will launch a rewards program this summer that will allow users to earn rewards on holdings of the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets. The company expects to offer a 3.7% annual rewards rate upon the launch of the program, although it can change the rate at any time. Users will be able to immediately use the rewards to send to other PayPal or Venmo users, fund international transfers, exchange for fiat, convert to other cryptocurrencies or make purchases at merchants with PayPal Checkout. “Consumers and businesses use PYUSD today for commerce, crypto, peer-to-peer transfers and B2B payments,” PayPal President and CEO Alex Chriss said. Michelle Gill, general manager of small business and financial services at PayPal, said the company expects to use the stablecoin to power a new B2B bill pay offering. “B2B bill pay is tapping into a $2 trillion market,” Gill said. “This is exciting not just for our merchants, but also for PayPal in that it opens up a brand-new network. … They now get to invite their vendors and their suppliers to join the PayPal ecosystem. … By the end of 2025, we hope to power all of this through PYUSD.”
P2P payment information network Phixius by Nacha partners Kinexys by J.P. Morgan to add near real-time global validation of bank account ownership, status and transactions to its real-time validation
Phixius by Nacha and Kinexys Liink established information exchanges between their payment information networks. The collaboration will enhance account validation coverage for financial institutions, FinTechs and corporations. Phixius, which is a peer-to-peer payment information network, will serve as Kinexys Liink’s key U.S. payment information network responder, enabling near real-time validation of domestic bank account data. Kinexys Liink, which is a bank-led peer-to-peer data-sharing network and part of Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, will allow Phixius participants access to its Confirm application’s global account validation capabilities, expanding the reach of the Phixius network. “Kinexys Liink and Phixius customers can benefit by validation services using data provided by either network, helping to mitigate payment fraud and reduce potential ACH returns,” Rob Unger, managing director of ACH Network development at Nacha, said. Gloria Wan, general manager of Kinexys Liink at Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, said: “Through the collaboration with Phixius by Nacha, we look forward to expanding the reach of Kinexys Liink to further strengthen account validation and cross-border payment infrastructure globally.”