Cointelegraph

Google’s cloud computing division is progressing with a service that lets financial institutions jointly authorize and sign cryptocurrency transactions without giving any single party control over the full private key.
Google Cloud detailed its Multi-party Compute (MPC) service in documentation updated Monday, positioning the preview product for institutional Bitcoin custody. The service remains in preview, meaning Google provides it as is, with potentially limited support.
The documentation update preceded Google Cloud’s MPC Symposium, taking place Wednesday in New York. The event promises an “exclusive revealing of Google’s frontier MPC product and research projects,” according to its description, and features speakers from financial institutions including Morgan Stanley, OKX, Citi and Wells Fargo.
Google Cloud’s release notes for the service date back to August 2026. On Oct. 1, Google expanded its Bitcoin security rules to evaluate transaction amounts, identify destination address types and detect change outputs.
The Alphabet subsidiary has previously explored related technology through Confidential Space, a cloud environment designed to support secure multi-party computation and data sharing, as described in a June blog post.
Cointelegraph contacted Google Cloud and Rich Widmann, Google’s director of digital assets strategy, for clarification on the service’s availability and launch timeline.

The Depository Trust Company (DTC), a subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), has launched tokenization services enabling eligible users to mint tokenized representations of securities held at DTC.
DTCC Tokenization Service (DTS) will convert between traditional and tokenized forms of securities that are transferable to digital wallets and retain the same ownership rights and investor protections as their traditional counterparts, the company announced on Wednesday.
The company did not elaborate on the criteria for users eligibility. A emailed request for further details was not immediately returned.
The post-trade market infrastructure provider said that 20 of its clients have signed agreements to access the services, including Alpaca, Citadel Securities, Citi, Clear Street, DriveWealth, Fidelity Investments, Interchange Clearing and JPMorgan.
DTC has more than $114 trillion in assets under custody, including stocks and exchange-traded funds. The company said its service will create a “practical path” for tokenized securities adoption.
In December 2025, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a “no action” letter stating that it would not recommend enforcement action against DTCC’s subsidiary in relation to its proposed tokenization program.
In May, DTCC said it planned a full service launch of trading of tokenized securities in October 2026, following a July 2026 pilot.
The tokenization service is currently integrated with Canton Network and DTCC’s Besu private network, with plans to add additional blockchain networks in 2027.

Stock exchange operator Euronext suspended CoinShares’ Zcash exchange-traded product (ETP) on Wednesday, when it was scheduled to debut for trading on Euronext Paris.
In a Wednesday notice, the exchange operator said the CoinShares Zcash ETP (ZCSH) was suspended from trading on Euronext Paris until further notice. The notice did not provide a reason for the decision.
CoinShares’ Zcash ETP will remain suspended until “standard settlement operations can be fully supported by the Central Securities Depository (CSD),” Euronext’s press and communications manager, Flavio Bornancin-Tomasella, told Cointelegraph, adding that the measure was strictly limited to “operational settlement requirements.”
The suspension notice delays what would have been the fourth Zcash-based ETP listed in Europe. Other companies that launched Zcash ETPs earlier this year include 21Shares, Virtune and Valor.
CoinShares announced the planned launch of its ZCASH ETP on Euronext Paris earlier on Wednesday. Cointelegraph contacted CoinShares for comment on the matter but did not receive a response by publication.

The Hong Kong arm of Mirae Asset Securities, one of South Korea’s largest securities firms, has issued tokenized notes on Solana to institutional investors.
The transaction involved six-month floating-rate notes issued under the firm’s $3 billion structured note program, according to Wednesday’s announcement. Singapore-based digital market infrastructure operator Marketnode acted as an authorized distributor.
Mirae Asset Securities managed token issuance, payments and the notes’ lifecycle using its internal digital infrastructure. The company said the transaction could provide a model for distributing a wider range of structured products through blockchain-based channels.
The securities firm is part of South Korea’s Mirae Asset Financial Group, whose businesses span brokerage, investment banking, asset management and insurance.
The group has been expanding into digital assets, with affiliate Mirae Asset Consulting acquiring a controlling stake in crypto exchange Korbit in July, which has since rebranded to Digital X.
The group’s asset management arm, Mirae Asset Global Investments, operates the Global X and TIGER exchange-traded fund brands. Its website lists $275 billion in ETF assets under management as of June 2026 and describes its ETF business as the world’s 12th-largest.

Bitcoin (BTC) approached $82,000 on Wednesday as South Korea’s KOSPI Composite Index gained over 6%.
Key points:
Bitcoin reached $81,687 on Wednesday, extending a rebound as bid liquidity thickened around $79,000 and $80,000..
South Korea’s KOSPI Composite Index gained 6.63% as tech stocks rebounded from earlier October losses.
Analysts remained uncertain about where BTC/USD will build its next trading range as resistance stayed intact near $82,000.
BTC price heads higher with KOSPI up 9.3% week-to-date
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD extending an intraday rebound to reach $81,687 on Bitstamp.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair avoided new lower lows on hourly time frames as bid liquidity thickened around $79,000, and $80,000, per data from CoinGlass.
BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Crypto markets strengthened gradually as nerves over AI spending and debt financing eased. The KOSPI finished Wednesday’s trading session 6.6% higher, returning above 6,000 points for the first time since Oct. 14. The index’s week-to-date upside stood at 9.3%.
KOSPI one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
In the US, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 1.1% on Tuesday ahead of major corporate earnings from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Intel. Samsung is due to report Q3 earnings on Thursday.
Speaking to CNBC, Mike Wilson, chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, saw tech stocks entering a new bullish phase on the back of their rebound from a sell-off earlier in October.
“Most of the correction is already over. We’ve been in correction mode for four or five months... the market I think has digested this very efficiently,” he told the network on Tuesday.
Markets continued to expect the Fed to hold rates at its Wednesday meeting, with CME Group’s FedWatch showing 90.6% odds of rates staying in their current 3.75-4% range.
Fed target-rate probabilities comparison for October FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
BTC bear-market comparison puts focus on $82,000 resistance
Commenting on Bitcoin’s repeated dips below $80,000, crypto trader and analyst Rekt Capital drew fresh comparisons to the 2022 bear market.
The weekly chart for BTC/USD resembles 2022’s structure, Rekt Capital said, with it still unclear whether the pair will build a new range above resistance around $82,000.
On weekly time frames, the pair has yet to discard a “macro accumulation range pattern” between $60,000 and $80,000, Rekt Capital added.
BTC/USD one-week chart comparison. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) attracted about $176 million in net inflows on Tuesday, extending their recovery to a second consecutive trading day.
The inflows rose from $110 million on Monday, bringing the two-day total to $286 million, according to SoSoValue data.
The rebound followed nearly $774 million in withdrawals on Thursday and Friday. October net outflows narrowed to about $26 million through Tuesday, while year-to-date net inflows stood at roughly $850 million.
Market sentiment also edged higher. Alternative.me’s Crypto Fear & Greed Index rose to 51 from 48 the previous day, remaining in “Neutral” territory. The reading was still below 63, or “Greed,” a week earlier.
Bitcoin (BTC) traded at about $80,818 at the time of publication, up 1.6% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, US spot Ether (ETH) ETFs continued to see withdrawals, recording about $149 million in net outflows on Monday and Tuesday after four straight weeks of net outflows.
Their October net outflows reached $1.32 billion through Tuesday, putting the month on track for the largest net withdrawals since November 2025.

Some Coinbase customers’ contact information was exposed in a security incident at analytics vendor Amplitude, the exchange said Wednesday.
The incident impacted a “small subset” of Coinbase customers, along with other Amplitude clients, Coinbase Support said on X.
Coinbase denied that its own systems had been breached and said customer funds were not affected.
The disclosure adds to Wednesday’s reports of cyberattacks affecting both crypto exchanges and traditional financial firms. In South Korea, Bithumb is investigating whether a breach of its internal work platform exposed customer information, while brokerage Daishin Securities reported a leak of personal and credit information belonging to 38,490 customers.
Cointelegraph contacted Coinbase to find out how many customers were affected but had not received a response by publication.
In May 2025, Coinbase disclosed a separate data breach that impacted less than 1% of its monthly transacting users. The exchange estimated reimbursement and remediation costs at up to $400 million.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says uncertainty over the longevity of US tokenization rules could prevent investors from committing substantial assets to tokenized markets, despite the securities regulator opening a temporary path for onchain stock trading this year.
Speaking during Robinhood’s third-quarter earnings call Tuesday, Tenev welcomed the SEC’s innovation exemption but said further rulemaking or legislation would be needed to provide longer-term regulatory certainty.
“As far as the innovation exemption goes, I think it’s a really positive step... I do think more needs to be done to give people a little bit of certainty because as we talk to customers, I think the uncertainty of what happens in five years is likely to be an impediment to, like, putting serious assets onto this technology.”
Tokenized stock offerings have faced resistance from traditional issuers. Microsoft, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs were among 16 companies that objected to their shares being offered on the proposed OKXICE venue, while AMC CEO Adam Aron separately criticized Robinhood’s tokenized stock products.
Despite the regulatory uncertainty, Binance Research projects that the tokenized equities market could grow to $349 billion by 2030 under its base-case scenario, from $4.43 billion as of Sept. 15.
“So I still think some rule-making or legislation is going to be necessary, even though, of course, it’s a positive step, and we hope to have more to share on our own US tokenization plans in the near future,” said Tenev.
Asked about private-company stock tokens, Tenev said Robinhood intends to launch those products overseas, subject to regulatory arrangements. In the US, Tenev said the company is working to find a path that satisfies current accreditation constraints.
Robinhood offers around 200 stock tokens on Robinhood Chain. The products are backed by underlying shares but structured as tokenized debt securities, providing economic exposure without the same shareholder rights as conventional stocks.
That distinction leaves their current structure outside the SEC’s innovation exemption, which requires equivalent rights, including dividends and voting rights.
Robinhood Crypto revenue falls 55%
Tenev’s comments came as Robinhood reported a 55% year-on-year fall in cryptocurrency revenue to $120 million in the third quarter, while crypto notional trading volume declined 38% to $50 billion.
Trading volume on the Robinhood app fell 48% to $21 billion, while Bitstamp volume fell 28% to $29 billion.
Robinhood’s prediction market business went in the opposite direction. Event-contract revenue rose sixfold to $173 million, while contracts traded increased more than sevenfold to 16.4 billion.
Across the wider business, total net revenue rose 12% to a record $1.42 billion, below analyst expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.60, missing estimates by 4 cents.
Magazine: Crypto could outperform AI stocks: Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser

South Korea’s crypto exchange Bithumb is investigating the extent of a data leak caused by a hack of its internal mobile system earlier this week, Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday.
Bithumb discovered the breach of its in-house mobile system — the platform used by employees to communicate internally — on Tuesday and notified the Korea Internet & Security Agency and the Personal Information Protection Commission that day, according to Yonhap, which cited industry sources.
The exchange is investigating the scope of the attack, including whether member data was leaked.
“We are analyzing the exact scope, including the possibility of member information being involved,” Bithumb told Yonhap. “We will provide an official announcement this morning. However, the internal work system is separated from the virtual asset trading system, so customer virtual assets cannot be accessed through this breach.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Bithumb for further comment.
The incident adds to a recent wave of cyberattacks in Korea’s financial sector.
During a meeting at the Financial Supervisory Authority headquarters on Wednesday, Governor Lee Chan-jin said cyberattacks had hit 16 South Korean financial firms as of Oct. 14.
The Korea Times reports that asset manager Mirae Asset Global Investments and Daishin Securities were also recent victims of cyberattacks.
Daishin Securities said that personal and credit information belonging to 38,490 customers had been leaked. Mirae Asset Global Investments said it had blocked abnormal external access to some web systems and was investigating the incident. The company said investor information was not affected, according to Yonhap.

Discord is making a policy change that will make conversations from its largest public servers discoverable in search engines, including Google, raising privacy concerns among users whose conversations were previously confined to the platform.
The change applies to Discoverable Servers — communities with at least 1,000 members listed in Discord’s public directory that do not require an invitation to join.
From Nov. 16, every Discoverable Server will have a web page that may include summaries of public channel discussions. From mid-December, individual messages posted in eligible channels may appear in web search, Discord said Tuesday. Messages posted before the rollout will not be included, while usernames and avatars will be excluded from published messages.
Example of an individual message being shown online. Source: Discord
Discord said the shift of online communities from message boards to its servers had made useful answers harder to find. “This has led to valuable information being locked in Discord conversations, inaccessible to the wider internet. We want to fix this,” the company said.
The move has drawn criticism from users concerned about their conversations reaching an audience outside of their intended community, even if the servers are public in the first place.
Others welcomed the change, saying it could make useful answers easier to find. One user in Discord’s announcement thread called it “very much necessary,” while another said moving communities from forums to Discord had made their discussions harder to find through search.
The change could also affect cryptocurrency communities that use Discord for technical discussions, support and project announcements.
Cointelegraph found nearly 800 servers tagged “cryptocurrency,” around 1,400 tagged “trading” and more than 700 tagged “finance” in Discord’s public directory. Discord said there are over 63,000 total discoverable servers on its platform.
How to opt out
Users have until the message-sharing rollout begins in mid-December to opt out before their posts become eligible to appear online. Discord said the feature will be disabled by default for users in Australia, the EU, the European Economic Area, the UK, Canada, Brazil and South Korea. Teen users will also be excluded.
To opt out, users should go into User Settings > Data & Privacy and switch off “Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages.” The setting covers every Discoverable Server a user belongs to, according to Discord’s guidance.
How users can opt out of having their messages visible on web pages. Source: Discord
Users can also disable the feature after launch, but it only protects messages sent after the opt-out. Users who want an eligible message removed must delete it from Discord, and Discord warns that search engines may retain cached copies for some time.
Server administrators can also prevent messages from individual channels or entire servers from appearing on public web pages and in search results through Server Settings > Web Presence.
They can separately disable discussion summaries, which are scheduled to begin rolling out in November.
Magazine: Crypto could outperform AI stocks: Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser

US asset manager VanEck has launched an actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF) that combines stocks, bonds and real assets with a targeted allocation to Bitcoin.
According to Tuesday’s announcement, the VanEck Wealth Builder ETF (NYSE: WBMO) invests in both VanEck and third-party ETFs, with a target Bitcoin allocation of 2% and a permitted range of 1% to 5%, according to the company’s website. Bitcoin exposure comes through a spot Bitcoin ETP rather than direct holdings of the cryptocurrency.
The fund builds on VanEck’s existing Wealth Builder model portfolios, previously available to financial advisers through third-party wealth management platforms. Its strategy incorporates exposure to global equities, fixed income, gold and other real assets, with allocations managed and rebalanced by VanEck.
“The traditional 60/40 portfolio was built for a different investment landscape,” said David Schassler, VanEck’s head of multi-asset solutions.
He said adding real assets alongside stocks and bonds could help investors navigate a wider range of economic conditions.
The launch follows VanEck’s March partnership with retirement platform Basic Capital, which made a selection of the asset manager’s digital asset exchange-traded products available through US employer-sponsored 401(k) plans. VanEck managed about $244.1 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, according to the company.
Magazine: Crypto could outperform AI stocks: Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser

Four companies have joined the list of those filing objections to listings on a tokenized stock exchange proposed by cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
In a Monday update to its proposed OKXICE exchange, the crypto company reported that Intel, IBM, Oracle and IonQ were the most recent companies to object to having their US stocks listed in tokenized form. With the addition of the four, 26 companies have now filed to raise objections to OKXICE’s plans, including Alphabet, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs.
The proposed offering came just a few weeks after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved temporary innovation exemptions for tokenized US stocks. Under the SEC exemption, Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) can offer limited trading for tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks.
Many of the companies to opt out of the OKXICE plans currently have US listings on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. In September, Nasdaq released guidance for companies considering the innovation exemption, saying issuers should be “cautious” about participating. The exchange invested $100 million in Kraken parent Payward in September as part of its own push into tokenized assets.
OKXICE proposed 62 companies listing tokenized stocks when it filed with the SEC under the exemption, meaning about 41% of the entities have chosen not to participate as of Monday. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, co-chair of the tokenization venture, said it was a “very natural response” for some companies to object, and he expected to see more names added to the list.

Concerns about quantum computing are slowing institutional investment in Bitcoin, according to Stacks founder Muneeb Ali, who warned that the network needs a credible roadmap for security upgrades to restore investor confidence.
“There is already a ceiling on the growth of Bitcoin because of quantum fears,” Ali said during an interview on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast. He argued that uncertainty could lead risk-averse institutional investors to delay large Bitcoin purchases until developers establish a credible path toward quantum-resistant security.
Stacks is a Bitcoin layer-2 network designed to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications to Bitcoin. Ali co-founded the project, which uses Bitcoin as its underlying settlement layer.
Chain Reaction Podcast. Source: Cointelegraph
Ali warned that Bitcoin could enter a riskier period if developers fail to make meaningful progress toward quantum-resistant security by 2028. He said upgrades typically take years to implement, with additional time needed for users to move their holdings to new addresses.
Ali pointed to 2030 as a target for transitioning to quantum-resistant security, citing guidance from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He suggested advances in artificial intelligence could accelerate the development of quantum computers, potentially bringing that timeline forward to 2029.
Ali acknowledged that some Bitcoin proponents believe the quantum computing threat remains distant and concerns are overblown. He argued, however, that disagreements over the urgency of the threat could themselves undermine investor confidence, particularly without a credible upgrade roadmap.
Bitcoin’s quantum security debate
Despite his concerns, Ali said a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would more likely emerge from a major research laboratory than an unknown attacker. He suggested companies such as Google or Microsoft would have little incentive to use the technology to steal Bitcoin, given the potential legal consequences.
Ali also said a quantum security threat to Bitcoin would affect the broader cryptocurrency industry, even projects developing their own protections. “If Bitcoin gets hit, everyone gets hit downstream as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, developers are exploring ways to protect Bitcoin against quantum attacks. In September, StarkWare reported that researchers had reduced the estimated computing cost of preparing an experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction by 79%, following a weeklong optimization challenge.
The approach requires no changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules, but the latest cost reductions have been demonstrated only in benchmark tests. StarkWare has described the technology as a last-resort measure and continues to advocate for a protocol-level upgrade as a longer-term solution.
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Ripple and Robinhood have expanded their partnership to bring the RLUSD stablecoin to Robinhood’s retail and institutional businesses, alongside new integrations spanning treasury management, lending and trading services.
RLUSD is already available on Robinhood Chain and Bitstamp by Robinhood, with a launch in the Robinhood app planned for later this year, according to a Tuesday announcement coinciding with Ripple’s Swell 2026 conference in New York. Robinhood also plans to use the stablecoin on the XRP Ledger for institutional settlement.
Robinhood will also adopt Ripple Treasury to manage its global cash and liquidity operations, including payment processing, cash flow forecasting and intercompany transactions. The integration extends the partnership beyond customer-facing services to Robinhood’s internal financial infrastructure.
The partnership also expands Robinhood’s existing relationship with Ripple Prime, which provides financing services to Bitstamp by Robinhood and plans to introduce perpetual futures trading on the exchange later this year.
Launched in December 2024, RLUSD has reached a market capitalization of $2.57 billion, with nearly $1 billion issued on the XRP Ledger, according to DeFiLlama data. Robinhood reported 28.6 million funded customers globally as of August, offering a potentially significant distribution channel for the stablecoin.
Source: DefiLlama
Ripple expands into custody and trade finance
Ripple also announced on Tuesday an expanded partnership with financial services giant BNY, which now supports custody of XRP and RLUSD through its Digital Asset Custody platform. The companies plan to work together to allow BNY clients to mint and redeem RLUSD directly through the bank and broaden support for tokenized assets issued on the XRP Ledger.
Separately, Ripple partnered with working-capital platform C2FO to bring financing and settlement for its new Instant Pay service onto the XRP Ledger, using RLUSD. The service is designed to let suppliers receive payments against approved invoices in seconds rather than waiting days for traditional bank settlement.
A C2FO spokesperson told Cointelegraph the service is currently in testing, with a controlled launch and the first RLUSD transactions on the XRP Ledger expected by the end of the year.
The string of announcements on Tuesday followed Ripple’s receipt of final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday to establish a national trust bank. The institution will manage reserves backing RLUSD and provide digital asset custody services, while stablecoin issuance will remain with Ripple’s New York-regulated subsidiary.
Magazine: Crypto could outperform AI stocks: Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced legal action against Utah officials after the state’s attorney general said he would sue to compel Kalshi and its affiliates to return up to $60 million in profits allegedly obtained illegally.
In a Monday filing in the US District Court for the District of Utah, lawyers for the commodities regulator sued the State of Utah and its Attorney General Derek Brown a week after officials announced legal action against prediction market platform Kalshi and its affiliates over allegedly illegal betting.
According to the CFTC, Utah was attempting to bypass congressional intent to “federally preempt state law” by “restrict[ing] the functioning of CFTC-registered exchanges.” CFTC Chair Michael Selig has been claiming for months that the regulator has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets, leading to several lawsuits between state and federal authorities.
“The event contracts targeted by Utah are ‘swaps’ under the federal [Commodity Exchange Act], and the exchanges that offer these event contracts for trading are CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Markets [DCMs],” said the lawsuit. “Utah’s efforts to prevent a CFTC-regulated DCM from offering CFTC-approved financial products intrude on the exclusive federal scheme Congress designed to oversee United States commodity derivatives markets.”
Kalshi spokesperson Jacki McGavick told Cointelegraph in response to the Utah lawsuit:
“As a national derivatives market overseen by the CFTC, Kalshi answers to federal law, and no single state should have a veto over it.“
The case is another dispute between federal and state authorities over prediction markets that may be resolved only by a Supreme Court decision. In September, New Jersey officials petitioned the high court to weigh in on their case against Kalshi, similar to other lawsuits pending in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and New York. As of Tuesday, the Supreme Court has not announced whether it will hear arguments in the case.

A new poll from the DeFi Education Fund and Ipsos found that 72% of people surveyed said it was “somewhat” to “extremely” important for politicians to be supportive of policies encouraging financial technology built in the US.
On Tuesday, Ipsos released the results of a poll of 1,545 people conducted in September, showing that 35% of respondents said it was “very” or “extremely” important for political candidates to support the idea of “ensuring that those who are building the next generation of financial technology are encouraged to do so in the United States.” An additional 37% of those surveyed said that the fintech policy was “somewhat important.”
Notably, only 9% of the Ipsos poll respondents said that they were familiar with crypto, and 5% with stablecoins. A majority, 87%, said that they had not held any digital assets in the previous 12 months. Only 13% said it was “very” or “extremely” important for a political candidate to encourage growth in blockchain, crypto, and DeFi.
“Ownership of crypto and openness to DeFi are largely consistent with 2025, and interest looks consistent across party lines,” said Ipsos.
The poll was conducted about two months before Americans were set to vote on the next session of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, in which crypto policies and laws could be a factor at the polling stations. Political action committees backed by crypto companies have already spent tens of millions of dollars in an attempt to influence voters in key races.

Asset manager Janus Henderson and tokenization platform Centrifuge have launched a blockchain-based fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index on Stellar, offering eligible investors outside the United States exposure to the benchmark.
Called JQQQ, the fund uses Centrifuge’s tokenization infrastructure and seeks to track the Nasdaq-100 under a licensing agreement with the exchange, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The launch expands Janus Henderson’s onchain investment offerings beyond US Treasurys and structured credit into equity-index exposure. The asset manager said its institutional onchain strategies now exceed $1 billion.
JQQQ is structured as a segregated portfolio of a British Virgin Islands investment company and provides indirect exposure to the Nasdaq-100 rather than ownership of the underlying stocks. The fund targets eligible professional investors outside the US, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported a minimum investment of $100,000.
The launch follows Nasdaq’s decision in April to expand licensing of its Nasdaq-100 Index to additional asset managers, including BlackRock and State Street, while maintaining its longstanding partnership with Invesco, which operates the $499 billion market cap Invesco QQQ Trust exchange-traded fund.
Stellar expands institutional tokenization footprint
The Janus Henderson launch expands Stellar’s growing tokenization business. The Layer-1 blockchain currently ranks fourth among blockchains by distributed real-world asset value, with approximately $3.8 billion in tokenized assets, behind Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana, according to RWA.xyz.
The network hosts tokenized assets from major issuers including Spiko, Franklin Templeton and Ondo. In July, tokenization platform Tradable announced plans to bring up to $1 billion in private credit assets to Stellar, with $500 million expected at launch.
Stellar is also part of a planned expansion by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which announced in May that it would connect its tokenization service to the network. DTCC-tokenized assets are expected to become available in the first half of 2027, potentially including US Treasurys, major index ETFs and Russell 1000 stocks.
Despite the expansion of Stellar’s tokenized asset market, its native token, XLM, has fallen about 16% year to date, trading near $0.17 on Tuesday, according to CoinGecko data.
Magazine: Crypto could outperform AI stocks: Wall Street veteran Jordi Visser

Cryptocurrencies could deliver a better payoff from the artificial intelligence boom than AI stocks themselves, according to Visser Labs founder Jordi Visser.
Explosive gains in AI stocks are becoming harder to repeat, Visser tells Cointelegraph’s Trade Secrets. At the same time, AI agents are creating demand for crypto payments and tokenized assets.
“Without AI, I don’t think crypto would be going through this bull market,” he says.
Hyperscaler capital spending and free cash flow (left), and forward valuations compared with the S&P 500 (right). Source: JPMorgan Asset Management
As a result of his thesis, he has expanded his own holdings beyond Bitcoin, Ether and Solana into a broader basket of tokens.
Visser’s three-decade career includes stints as managing director at Morgan Stanley and chief investment officer at Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers. He now heads 22V’s AI Macro Nexus Research.
AI is crypto’s smartphone moment
The Wall Street veteran’s broader bet is that AI agents will allow people to instruct software to execute trades and other financial transactions on their behalf.
“AI agents are effectively the same as the App Store or the smartphone for crypto,” he says.
In that scenario, users would direct their agents while the software handles execution. The growing use of those agents will drive more activity in tokenized assets and crypto payments, extending the investment opportunity beyond the companies supplying computing power.
But Visser’s crypto outlook still carries exposure to the AI trade he has grown more cautious about. He identifies a severe AI downturn that drags down equity markets as one threat to his bullish case.
“I don’t think that would end the bull market, but I definitely think it would retest the lows that we just saw,” he says.
The AI “fireworks show” is over
Visser says he began reducing his exposure to memory chipmaker Micron in mid-May after concluding that hedge funds and retail investors had crowded into the AI trade.
“One of the reasons that Bitcoin and Ethereum were having such a hard time is because the focus was completely on AI,” he says.
By mid-May, Bitcoin was down 10.85% for the year and Ether about 25.86%. Source: TradingView
AI offered investors potentially greener pastures backed by rising business revenue. Microsoft’s quarterly report on April 29 claimed that its AI business was generating revenue at an annualized rate of $37 billion, more than double a year earlier. Meanwhile, Micron reported in March that its fiscal second-quarter revenue had nearly tripled to $23.86 billion.
But AI investors now face a less forgiving market, according to Visser. The 100-stock AI portfolio he tracks is up about 40% this year, but has become more volatile than Bitcoin on a rolling 126-day measure.
Financing concerns have since hit AI infrastructure, as building them costs more than companies generate from their existing businesses at present.
For example, Oracle spent $55.7 billion on capital expenditures in fiscal 2026 against $32 billion in operating cash flow, and raised $43 billion in debt financing.
“I didn’t say AI was over. AI fireworks show is over,” Visser says.
He still sees several years of growth ahead in computing demand from AI agents, but says investors should temper their expectations for stock returns.
Visser widens his crypto bets
Until August, Visser’s crypto holdings consisted solely of Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. While Bitcoin remains his largest position, he has since started to acquire a broader range of tokens.
Dogecoin is a clear signal he watches for returning retail enthusiasm, which he considers essential to sustaining a broader rally.
“They’re the energy of the space and they’re the ones that are going to fuel this as other people get involved,” he says.
To track that broader market, Visser maintains an equally weighted index of 42 tokens and four publicly traded stocks. He says it has outperformed Bitcoin since June and plans to hold all its constituents.
Privacy is a theme he has already invested in.
“I’m not betting on one company, but I believe in privacy,” Visser says.
He says AI will make privacy and identity protection more important as fraud and other forms of abuse grow. Zcash and Monero among projects that fit that investment thesis.
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Circle’s USDC (USDC) has overtaken Tether’s USDt (USDT) in stablecoin trading against the euro, as European Union regulations increasingly favor bloc-compliant stablecoins, according to a new Kaiko report.
USDC now accounts for 56% of stablecoin trading against the euro, up from just 10% in January 2024, according to Kaiko data. The shift accelerated after major exchanges restricted USDT trading for customers in the European Economic Area under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
USDC has also overtaken USDT in euro-denominated trading liquidity, with its order books now roughly 40% deeper than its rival’s. Tether remains the larger stablecoin globally, with a circulating supply about 2.5 times that of USDC.
Kaiko described stablecoin-to-euro trading pairs as a “main on-ramp and off-ramp for European customers,” allowing them to exchange euros for US dollar-pegged stablecoins when entering or exiting cryptocurrency markets.
USDC-to-euro trading pair overtakes USDC-to-USDT. Source: Kaiko
The findings come about two weeks after the European Banking Authority designated USDC as the EU’s first “significant e-money token” under MiCA, a classification that places the stablecoin under direct EBA supervision and subjects its issuer to additional regulatory requirements.
US stablecoin rules could shift the balance between Circle and Tether
Kaiko said the US is taking a similar approach to stablecoin regulation under the GENIUS Act, raising the possibility that American exchanges could see the same shift in trading activity observed in Europe.
On Oct. 21, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued its first final rule under the law, establishing reserve and redemption requirements for stablecoin issuers under its supervision, effective Jan. 18, 2027.
Beginning in July 2028, US platforms will also face restrictions on offering stablecoins from issuers that do not meet the law’s approval requirements.
The regulatory changes could favor Circle, which has pursued authorization in both Europe and the US. Tether has taken a different approach, launching a separate US-focused stablecoin, USAT.

BitMEX co-founder and Flop Labs CEO Arthur Hayes shared new details about the Flop Network and how he expects its native token could turn AI computing power into a tradable commodity, two days after selling his altcoin holdings.
Hayes proposed measuring the computing power delivered for each AI inference task and using transaction data to derive a spot price for compute denominated in Flop (FLOP) tokens. He cited a lack of a universal benchmark price for AI computing power.
“If Flop becomes the payments network for AI agents, then it follows that the $FLOP/compute exchange rate will be the global benchmark for spot compute,” wrote Hayes in a Monday Substack essay, adding that a liquid spot compute market would enable derivatives based on that price.
Analysts at BCG in a July 2026 report considered how soon AI computing power could become a commodity. The consultancy projected that the market for AI compute will reach roughly $2.3 trillion by 2030 climbing from $360 billion in 2025.
Flop Labs is developing a network that allows AI agents to pay for computing and decentralized memory services. In August, Hayes said Flop was planning a “massive airdrop” in the fourth quarter of 2026 and announced that he would be the company’s CEO.
Hayes’ Flop explainer came in the wake of his statement on Saturday that he “dumped it all” and took profits from the Ether (ETH), Ethena (ENA) and Uniswap (UNI) token holdings in Maelstrom’s directional trading book, citing “dicey” macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions.
Lookonchain later flagged about $22 million worth of tokens sold by Hayes-linked wallets, including $15 million in ETH, $2.7 million in ENA, $2.2 million in UNI, $1.2 million in Ether.fi (ETHFI), $398,000 in Aerodrome Finance (AERO), $244,000 in Pendle (PENDLE) and $214,000 in Zama (ZAMA) tokens.