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About Crypto Coin Show News Team

https://cryptocoinshow.com

The Crypto Coin Show News Team covers digital assets, blockchain infrastructure, markets and policy. Crypto Coin Show has been running for more than 12 years, with 1,500+ interviews with founders, investors and builders.

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BlackRock says AI agents could become crypto’s next source of demand

BlackRock says AI agents could become crypto’s next source of demand

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AI NewsCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·5 min read

BlackRock’s digital assets research team has published a whitepaper arguing that autonomous AI agents, not traders or treasuries, could be the next structural source of demand for stablecoins and blockchain settlement. The data on actual agent payments today is far thinner than the thesis, and the paper says so itself.

  • BlackRock’s “The Machine-Native Economy,” published in September 2026, frames AI as machine-native intelligence and digital assets as machine-native money.
  • The paper points to Coinbase’s x402 protocol and stablecoins as the payment layer for high-frequency, low-value machine-to-machine transactions, and to tokenized compute as a possible new asset class.
  • Real usage is still small: TRM Labs found that only 0.6% to 7.5% of $52.7 million in x402 settlements it examined likely came from AI agents.
  • $300B+ stablecoin market cap as of September 2026, per RWA.xyz data cited by BlackRock
  • $11T adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in 2025, per Visa/Allium data cited in the paper
  • $1.1T projected combined 2030 cloud revenue for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

The world’s largest asset manager is making the case that crypto’s next demand wave will come from software rather than people. In “The Machine-Native Economy: How Digital Assets Connect Intelligence, Commerce, and Compute”, BlackRock head of digital assets research Will Su and head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick, writing with iShares colleagues Jay Jacobs and William Helm, argue that agentic AI systems that can act and pay on their own need a kind of money that card networks and bank rails were not built to provide. The paper was first reported by Decrypt.

BlackRock pitches stablecoins as the payment rail agents need

The core argument is about fit. An AI agent that buys a data feed, pays for an API call or rents GPU time may need to make thousands of tiny payments a day, around the clock, with no human approving each one. BlackRock notes that existing rails such as ACH and cards already support heavy automation, but says their onboarding requirements and settlement economics make them a poor match for always-on, very low-value transactions.

Stablecoins are the paper’s answer. BlackRock cites RWA.xyz data showing more than $300 billion in circulating stablecoins in September 2026, and Visa/Allium figures showing $11 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in 2025. That volume grew at roughly 80% a year from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 8.5% a year for ACH, according to the paper. BlackRock adds a caveat worth keeping: the adjusted stablecoin figures filter out exchange flows, internal transfers and bot activity, so they are not directly comparable to traditional payment data. ACH still processed about $93 trillion in 2025.

Coinbase’s x402 sits at the center of the machine-payments thesis

The paper leans on x402, the open protocol developed by Coinbase that revives the web’s long-dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code. With x402, a server can ask for payment inside a normal web request, and a piece of software can pay in stablecoins, usually USDC, and receive the data or service immediately. No account, no card on file, no human in the loop.

BlackRock also points to big tech adoption. Amazon has added stablecoin payments to its AI cloud tooling through Coinbase and Stripe, and Google’s Agent2Agent framework supports cards, stablecoins and real-time bank transfers, with backing from Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation. The x402 ecosystem has been widening on the crypto side too, with NEAR joining the x402 Foundation this week and Solana and Google launching Pay.sh earlier this year.

For native tokens, the paper is careful. It says activity on permissionless networks could drive demand for blockspace and validator services, but whether any of that value reaches a network’s token depends on its fee, staking and gas-sponsorship design. It names Ethereum and Circle’s Arc, where USDC is the native gas asset, as examples of the two ends of that spectrum.

Tokenized compute could be the bigger long-term market

The paper’s most ambitious section treats compute itself as a future digital asset. Sell-side consensus compiled by Bloomberg puts combined 2030 revenue for AWS, Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud and Google Cloud at $1.1 trillion, and BlackRock cites Goldman Sachs estimates of more than $5 trillion in cumulative AI capital spending from 2025 to 2030.

“As agents become more capable and persistent, standardized claims on compute capacity could become a significant digital asset use case for financing and programmable settlement.”

BlackRock Digital Assets Research, The Machine-Native Economy

The idea is that agents could source, price and pay for compute directly, settled on-chain against standardized, tokenized claims on capacity. BlackRock flags real obstacles: chips differ by generation, energy costs vary by region, and there is no agreed standard yet for delivering or cash-settling capacity. It suggests commodity market tools such as basis markets and contracts for difference as a template.

On-chain data shows agent payments are still a sliver of activity

The gap between thesis and usage is wide. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs examined $52.7 million in x402 settlements in 2026 and estimated that only 0.6% to 7.5% of that traffic likely originated from AI agents. Most x402 volume today is still people and conventional software, not autonomous agents.

BlackRock does not hide this. The paper calls the ecosystem nascent, says agentic payment activity and compute-market liquidity remain limited, and describes machine-native payments as an area worth monitoring rather than a forecast. It also carries the standard disclaimer that it is not investment advice.

peaq brings machine identities onto Solana

The agent economy BlackRock describes is mostly software paying software. peaq is building the physical side of it, and this month it moved that work onto one of crypto’s most used chains. peaq launched its Economics 2.0 model on September 7, and the next day Wormhole Labs’ Sunrise gateway listed PEAQ on Solana as the canonical version of the token, according to Crypto Briefing. peaqOS then went live on Solana on September 16, letting robots and IoT devices activate directly on Solana, receive a verified on-chain identity and bond PEAQ.

Machine peaqID documents and NFTs now live on Solana, while subscription bonds stay on the peaq chain. Each machine builds a Machine Credit Rating from verified on-chain activity, which can later support financing. peaq says its network spans more than 6 million machines across 60-plus applications, with about 3.3 million positioned to bond PEAQ through the Sunrise integration and just over 240,000 activated by early September. Doosan Robotics deployed its first A-Series cobot on the system by September 17. The design is also a live test of the point BlackRock makes about token value: operators lock PEAQ as collateral to activate a machine, so demand for the token is tied to machines actually operating. It builds on peaq’s earlier move to bring World ID to robots.

“We’re still very early in the adoption of stablecoin payments by AI agents.”

Ashton Addison, CEO of Crypto Coin Show

Addison expects that to change quickly. “As the machine economy picks up over the next 12 months, we should see these numbers start growing exponentially,” he said. “With machine IDs moving onto Solana, the machine economy is reaching more mainstream blockchains, and that makes stablecoin payments much easier to adopt.”

The CCS read. The paper does not move markets on its own, but who wrote it matters. When BlackRock’s digital assets team, the same group behind the BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund, puts AI agents next to stablecoins and tokenized assets as a demand driver, it gives institutional allocators a framework for owning crypto that has nothing to do with speculation. The honest read is that this is an early, infrastructure-first story. The rails are being built by Coinbase, Google, Amazon and Stripe, while real agent volume is still measured in single-digit percentages of a $52.7 million sample. The value will likely accrue first to stablecoin issuers and the networks that settle their transfers, and only later, if at all, to tokens whose fee design captures that activity.

Watch the share of x402 and similar settlements that analytics firms can attribute to agents over the next few quarters. If that 0.6% to 7.5% range climbs meaningfully, BlackRock’s thesis moves from framework to measurable demand. Also watch for the first standardized compute contracts or tokenized capacity products from a major cloud or exchange partner.

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Money funds absorb 85% of Treasury surge as stablecoins hold $200 billion

Money funds absorb 85% of Treasury surge as stablecoins hold $200 billion

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·4 min read

Money-market mutual funds, not stablecoins, drove the Treasury’s summer borrowing surge, absorbing 85% of new bill issuance in July and August. Stablecoins remain material holders of short-term government debt at nearly $200 billion, but their reserve structures channel demand through the same money funds that now dominate marginal Treasury supply.

  • Money-market mutual funds absorbed approximately 85% of more than $550 billion in net Treasury bill supply issued during July and August 2026.
  • Stablecoin issuers hold nearly $200 billion in Treasury bills and close-to-maturity government securities, according to Treasury Department data.
  • Circle’s USDC reserves were 84% invested in a Rule 2a-7 government money-market fund as of June 30, showing institutional stablecoin demand channels through traditional cash managers.
  • 85% of July-August Treasury bill supply absorbed by money funds
  • $200B in Treasury holdings by stablecoin issuers
  • $550B net bill supply growth in two months

Deputy Treasury Secretary Francis Brooke revealed in remarks delivered September 22 (September 22) that traditional money-market funds, not digital assets, seized the lion’s share of the government’s latest borrowing wave. The Treasury Department said net bill supply grew by more than $550 billion in July and August, an 8% increase in two months, with money funds purchasing approximately 85% of that additional issuance. Stablecoin holders remain significant Treasury investors, sitting on nearly $200 billion in bills and other short-dated securities, yet these figures measure different things: money funds’ buying during a specific two-month window versus stablecoins’ stock of holdings at an unspecified date.

Circle’s USDC reserve fund holds more Treasury repos than direct bills

The overlap between stablecoin reserves and money-fund portfolios reveals how institutional demand flows through traditional vehicles. Circle disclosed in its second-quarter filing that approximately 84% of USDC reserves were invested in the Circle Reserve Fund, a Rule 2a-7 government money-market fund, as of June 30 (June 30, 2026). The fund’s annual shareholder report showed that as of April 30 (April 30, 2026), the portfolio held $19.111 billion in direct Treasury obligations but $46.998 billion in repurchase agreements collateralized by Treasuries, meaning more than two-thirds of Treasury exposure came through repos rather than direct bill ownership.

This structure matters for institutional buyers evaluating stablecoin risk and Treasury financing channels.

The repo-heavy allocation shows that even as stablecoins became significant Treasury holders, they funneled demand through money-fund and repo channels that traditional cash managers already dominated.

A single issuer’s allocation does not characterize the entire stablecoin market, but Circle’s disclosure demonstrates the accounting overlap that can obscure which buyer class, money funds or digital assets, actually absorbed marginal supply.

Federal Reserve and foreign demand added to money funds’ core Treasury appetite

Beyond money funds and stablecoins, the Federal Reserve and foreign residents supplied additional demand for short-term government debt in 2026. The Fed purchased more than $300 billion in Treasury bills through reserve-management operations and reinvestment of principal payments from agency mortgage-backed securities, according to Treasury data current through September 22 (September 22, 2026). The July monetary policy report recorded nearly $250 billion of bill purchases through July 1, comprising about $160 billion from reserve-management operations and roughly $90 billion from agency MBS principal reinvestment.

The Fed’s balance sheet corroborated the scale of expansion.

Bill holdings grew from $233.592 billion on December 31, 2025 to $550.482 billion on September 16, 2026, with the earlier figure reported in the January 2 H.4.1 release and the more recent figure reported in the September 17 H.4.1 release, showing how quickly short-dated securities became a larger portfolio component. Foreign residents increased their bill holdings by $38.8 billion in July alone, reversing three consecutive monthly declines totaling $92.5 billion from April through June. The rebound showed overseas buyers returning, though Treasury cautioned that custody-based data can obscure beneficial ownership when securities flow through third-country intermediaries.

Stablecoin growth remains conditional on regulatory clarity, not yet established as marginal buyer

Treasury presented stablecoin demand as a source of potential future growth contingent on regulatory implementation. Brooke said issuers may expand and increase Treasury holdings as rules implementing the GENIUS Act are finalized, framing the digital-asset channel as an option for future demand rather than explaining the July-August supply absorption.

That conditional language leaves material questions open: whether future stablecoin regulation will require segregated Treasury holdings outside money-fund structures, whether issuers will materially increase reserve sizes, and how much of existing stablecoin Treasury exposure already channels through money funds that Treasury credited with absorbing the surge.

The regulatory channel has not yet become a quantified source of marginal demand.

The data separate stablecoin potential from established incremental buying. Money funds dominated Treasury’s account of the July-August supply increase. The Fed supplied substantial year-to-date secondary-market demand, and foreign holdings rebounded in July.

Stablecoin issuers sat inside that market as large holders whose reserve structures, exemplified by Circle’s approach, channeled demand through the same government money-market funds Treasury identified as the primary marginal buyer.

The CCS read. Institutional crypto funds and stablecoin reserve managers should watch whether the GENIUS Act’s final rules permit or mandate direct Treasury ownership outside money-fund vehicles, or whether regulatory approval simply formalizes the existing practice of routing stablecoin reserves through traditional cash funds. This distinction determines whether stablecoins become an independent source of Treasury demand or remain a pass-through for money-fund allocations.

Treasury’s next opportunity to clarify stablecoin demand comes when the GENIUS Act regulations are finalized. Until then, the July-August supply surge belongs to money-market funds, leaving open whether stablecoins will eventually command their own buyer classification or remain embedded inside institutional fixed-income portfolios.

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Infosys standardizes six Chainlink products across banking infrastructure for 1.7 billion accounts

Infosys standardizes six Chainlink products across banking infrastructure for 1.7 billion accounts

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·3 min read

Infosys, the Indian IT services giant that underpins banking and payments infrastructure for more than 1.7 billion customer accounts worldwide, has standardized its technology stack on Chainlink, the company announced Tuesday (September 22). The deal covers six Chainlink products but names no bank, no timeline and no commercial terms, leaving institutional investors to weigh a large potential surface area against an announcement still short on specifics.

  • Infosys will standardize on six Chainlink products: CCIP, CRE, ACE, Proof of Reserve, Data Feeds and Data Streams.
  • Infosys supports critical banking and payments infrastructure for more than 1.7 billion customer accounts globally, per Chainlink.
  • Neither company disclosed a launch bank, a production schedule or commercial terms, and the 1.7 billion figure describes Infosys’s existing client reach, not a Chainlink user base.
  • 1.7B customer accounts served by Infosys’s financial-services business today
  • $16T yearly Swift volume moved by Bottomline, Chainlink’s prior banking partner
  • $400M tokenized fund Chainlink built this year with Amundi and Spiko

Chainlink disclosed the partnership in a post on X, framing it as a standardization of its cross-chain and compliance tooling across Infosys’s banking and payments practice. Infosys trades on the NYSE under the ticker INFY and runs core systems for lenders and payment networks that collectively touch 1.7 billion accounts, a scale that dwarfs most single-bank blockchain pilots announced elsewhere in the sector. That reach is what makes the tie-up notable even before a single production deployment is named, as first reported by Cryptopolitan.

Infosys Locks In a Six-Product Chainlink Stack

The agreement spans Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), alongside the Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), Proof of Reserve, Data Feeds and Data Streams. CCIP moves data and assets across blockchains, while CRE orchestrates workflows spanning onchain networks, offchain APIs and external computation.

ACE handles compliance controls, and Proof of Reserve runs automated checks on the collateral backing stablecoins and tokenized assets.

Data Feeds and Data Streams round out the stack by piping market and other external data onchain. Together the six products give Infosys a full middleware layer rather than a single point solution, which matters for a systems integrator whose clients include large regulated banks.

Announcement Skips Bank Names, Timeline and Fees

Chainlink and Infosys did not name a bank, payment network or tokenized-asset project tied to the rollout. Commercial terms, a production schedule and the identity of the first live service were all left undisclosed in Tuesday’s announcement.

The 1.7 billion figure also needs a careful read: it measures the existing reach of Infosys’s financial-services business, not the number of users on any system actually running Chainlink infrastructure today. Until a bank or payment rail confirms a live deployment, the partnership represents a standardization commitment rather than proof of production usage at that scale.

Deal Follows Chainlink’s $16 Trillion Bottomline Tie-Up

The Infosys announcement lands weeks after Chainlink’s tie-up with Bottomline, a top-three provider of Swift messaging services that moves more than $16 trillion a year for over 600 banks, as Cryptopolitan reported.

That deal lets banks settle cross-border transactions onchain while continuing to send standard Swift messages, pairing legacy rails with blockchain settlement rather than replacing them outright.

Chainlink’s 2026 institutional wins also include a $400 million tokenized fund built with Amundi and Spiko, adding to a pattern of asset-management and payments infrastructure deals rather than retail-facing products. Our prior coverage tracked how those moves compare against Chainlink’s broader push into bank payments, state stablecoins and tokenized stocks.

The CCS read. The market signal here is less about Chainlink’s token and more about Infosys quietly becoming a distribution channel for onchain compliance and settlement tooling into banks that would never build it themselves. Watch which Infosys client goes live first; that name, not the 1.7 billion figure, will tell institutional allocators whether this is infrastructure or marketing.

Neither company has set a date for the first live deployment, and Chainlink has not said which Infosys banking client will be first to run CCIP, CRE or ACE in production. Until a named bank or payment network confirms a go-live, the partnership remains a standardization pledge rather than a deployed system.

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Binance makes tokenized stocks viable as futures collateral

Binance makes tokenized stocks viable as futures collateral

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EquitiesCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·3 min read

Binance has turned its tokenized US equities product into a source of futures margin, letting eligible bStocks holdings back leveraged positions through the exchange’s Multi-Assets Mode. For institutional traders, the move signals that exchanges are starting to treat tokenized securities as functional collateral rather than a standalone trading wrapper.

  • Eligible bStocks holdings can now be used as collateral inside Binance’s Multi-Assets Mode for futures margin.
  • Users keep their tokenized equity exposure while a haircut-adjusted portion of that value counts toward margin requirements.
  • The feature remains gated by regional eligibility and KYC restrictions, so access is not universal across markets.
  • bStocks tokenized equity product now doubles as futures collateral
  • KYC checks still determine which accounts can use the feature
  • Haircut adjusted valuation applied before margin credit is granted

Binance confirmed that eligible bStocks positions can now be pledged as collateral within Multi-Assets Mode, a change first reported by newsbtc.com. The update lets traders retain their tokenized stock exposure while simultaneously putting a portion of that holding’s value to work against futures margin requirements on the same account.

bStocks Shifts From Trading Product to Margin Asset

Until now, tokenized equities on Binance functioned largely as a trading instrument, tracking the price of an underlying stock without a secondary role on the platform.

The Multi-Assets Mode integration changes that. A user holding an eligible bStock can keep the position open while Binance recognizes a haircut-adjusted share of its value for margin purposes on a separate futures trade, according to the report.

That does not eliminate risk. Collateral haircuts can shift with volatility and individual account settings, and losses on a leveraged futures position can still draw down the pledged bStocks value, leaving holders exposed on two fronts at once rather than one.

Composability Argument Gains a Concrete Test Case

Proponents of tokenized securities have long argued their value lies beyond simply mirroring a stock’s price, and collateral use gives that argument a working example. Once a tokenized equity can be pledged inside another financial product on the same platform, it starts to behave more like a native digital asset than a static price wrapper.

Binance built its bStocks-as-collateral feature on the same Multi-Assets Mode infrastructure that already lets traders mix crypto assets to meet margin requirements. Circle’s move to raise $100 million by selling stock to Binance earlier illustrates the exchange’s broader push to deepen ties between traditional equity instruments and its trading infrastructure.

Other platforms are pursuing similar convergence between tokenized real-world assets and crypto derivatives markets, including efforts like Ouinex’s multi-asset exchange merging crypto and traditional finance infrastructure.

Regional Gates Still Limit Who Can Use the Feature

Binance’s rollout remains subject to regional eligibility and KYC restrictions. “Available to all users” should not be read as universal availability across every jurisdiction the exchange serves.

Within eligible accounts, however, bStocks have moved beyond a pure trading role into margin utility, joining a broader trend of tokenized equities functioning inside DeFi and centralized-exchange infrastructure, a pattern also visible in Chainlink’s recent push into tokenized stocks in DeFi.

The CCS read. Exchanges that let tokenized equities double as margin collateral are quietly competing with prime brokers, not just other crypto venues. If bStocks holders can borrow against positions without selling, Binance gains a retention tool that keeps assets on-platform through market cycles, a structural advantage traditional brokerages will need to answer.

Binance has not disclosed which jurisdictions or account tiers currently qualify for bStocks collateral, leaving the practical reach of the feature unclear until the exchange publishes fuller eligibility criteria.

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Solana deploys Alpenglow consensus upgrade to testnet ahead of mainnet launch

Solana deploys Alpenglow consensus upgrade to testnet ahead of mainnet launch

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·2 min read

Solana has pushed its Alpenglow consensus overhaul onto testnet, a step toward cutting block finality by roughly 99% just as SOL trades near its strongest level since January. The upgrade’s public testing phase lands alongside a surge in tokenized real-world assets and trading volumes that now rival the New York Stock Exchange.

  • Alpenglow’s Votor phase targets block finality of about 150 milliseconds, down from roughly 12.8 seconds under TowerBFT.
  • Real-world assets on Solana reached about $4.6 billion in early September, up from the $4 billion first crossed in August.
  • Solana DEXs logged about 208 million trades the week ending September 13, edging past the New York Stock Exchange’s roughly 190 million.
  • 150ms Alpenglow’s target finality versus 12.8 seconds under TowerBFT
  • $4.6B Solana real-world-asset value versus $4B milestone in August
  • 208M weekly Solana DEX trades versus roughly 190M on the NYSE

Solana developer Anza confirmed this week that Alpenglow has begun deploying on testnet ahead of devnet and mainnet-beta releases. The move targets block finality of about 150 milliseconds, a steep drop from the 12.8 seconds validators need today. The timing coincides with SOL trading around $117 after touching almost $120 this week, its strongest level since late January.

Votor Cuts Solana’s Finality Wait by 99%

Alpenglow’s first phase, Votor, replaces the onchain vote transactions validators currently submit with votes sent directly between validators. Those votes combine into certificates capable of finalizing a block within one or two voting rounds, cutting the wait for an irreversible transaction by roughly 99% against the current baseline.

The upgrade leaves the Solana Virtual Machine, transactions, programs and fees untouched. Only the consensus layer changes.

The rollout follows months of preparation among validators and infrastructure providers, many of which had to adjust systems that stream blocks, track votes or depend on Solana’s existing commitment structure. A second component, Rotor, will later replace Turbine, the network’s block-data distribution system, though Solana has scheduled that separately according to the Alpenglow upgrade page, keeping Votor the immediate focus of testnet.

The consensus rework follows other throughput upgrades. Solana activated Transaction V1 this month, raising maximum transaction size to 4,096 bytes from 1,232, while its slot-time roadmap continues trimming target block times from 400 milliseconds toward 200 milliseconds.

SOL Nears $120 as Nasdaq Gap Narrows to 47 Million Trades

SOL has gained roughly 25% over the past month, CryptoSlate’s data shows, pushing the token back toward the roughly $120 level it last touched in late January. Network activity has expanded alongside the price move.

Real-world assets on Solana reached about $4.6 billion in early September, extending a climb that pushed the sector past $4 billion for the first time in August. Trading has kept pace: Solana decentralized exchanges recorded about 208 million spot trades in the week ending September 13, according to data cited by the Kobeissi Letter, narrowly topping the roughly 190 million trades executed on the New York Stock Exchange over the same span and narrowing the gap with Nasdaq to about 47 million trades. Jupiter, Solana’s largest aggregator, accounted for more than 80 million trades during September, up 38% from the prior month.

Multicoin’s Samani Bets SOL Overtakes Ether This Cycle

Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani has said he expects SOL’s market capitalization to surpass Ethereum’s before the current cycle ends, pointing to developers migrating toward Solana and its recent lead over Ethereum in network fees. The gap remains wide: Samani’s own comparison put Solana’s market cap near $58 billion against roughly $293

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21shares launches Europe’s first Zcash ETP with 2.5% annual fee

21shares launches Europe’s first Zcash ETP with 2.5% annual fee

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·3 min read

21shares has launched Europe’s first Zcash exchange-traded product, listing the physically backed ZCASH ETP on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam with a 2.5% annual fee. The debut lands as ZEC trades above $1,600 and pushes past $27 billion in market capitalization, giving institutional allocators a regulated European wrapper just as Grayscale’s rival US spot ETF prepares a share split.

  • 21shares’ Zcash ETP (ticker ZCASH, ISIN CH1608218801) carries a 2.5% annual fee and trades in euros in Paris, dollars in Amsterdam.
  • ZEC hit about $1,629 on Wednesday, September 23, up roughly 7% in 24 hours and clearing its September 18 year-to-date high of $1,590.
  • Grayscale’s ZCSH, the first US spot Zcash ETF, executes a 3-for-1 split with a September 28 record date and post-split trading from September 30.
  • 2.5% annual fee on both new 21shares ETPs, ZCASH and ETHFI
  • $27.6B ZEC market cap on Sept 23, ninth among all crypto assets
  • 30% of all ZEC ever mined now sitting in shielded pools, a network record

21shares confirmed the launch in a press release dated Tuesday, September 22, alongside a matching ether.fi ETP tracking the ETHFI token. Both products are physically backed, meaning the issuer holds the underlying tokens with third-party custodians rather than tracking price via derivatives.

21shares Prices Zcash Access at 2.5%, Matching Its Own ETHFI Launch

The ZCASH ETP and the ether.fi ETP trade under nearly identical terms: Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris listings, euro pricing in Paris, dollar pricing in Amsterdam, and the same 2.5% annual fee. 21shares is a subsidiary of FalconX, one of the largest digital asset prime brokers.

Physical backing removes the custody burden that keeps many institutional mandates out of direct token ownership. Investors buy the ETP through a standard brokerage account instead of managing private keys or exchange accounts.

Zcash offers something truly distinct by combining Bitcoin’s capped supply with optional privacy and future-proof cryptography.

Jasmin Muelhaupt, Director of Financial Product Development, 21shares

ZEC Clears $1,600 as Shielded Pool Balances Hit a Network Record

ZEC traded around $1,629 on Wednesday, September 23, up about 7% over the prior 24 hours and above the $1,590 year-to-date high it set on September 18. The token had pulled back to $1,429 before finding support above $1,440, then pushed to a market capitalization near $27.6 billion, the ninth largest among all crypto assets that day.

More than 30% of every ZEC ever created, roughly 4.9 million coins, now sits in the network’s shielded pools. That is the highest share the protocol has recorded, according to on-chain tracking data.

The privacy-plus-scarcity pitch echoes a broader institutional push to package niche crypto infrastructure into brokerage-friendly wrappers, a trend also visible in enterprise blockchain deals such as Chainlink’s recent bank payment and tokenization work. Rising shielded-pool participation gives 21shares a usage metric to point to beyond price, something ETP issuers increasingly lean on when marketing single-asset products to allocators.

Grayscale’s ZCSH Split Sets Up a Fee and Access Comparison

Grayscale’s ZCSH became the first US spot Zcash ETF when it launched on NYSE Arca on August 25, roughly four weeks before 21shares’ European debut.

The fund executes a 3-for-1 share split with a September 28 record date, trading on a post-split basis from September 30, and it logged a single-session inflow of $46.56 million earlier this month, its second-highest daily inflow since inception, pushing net assets close to $917 million.

Neither the release nor Cryptopolitan’s report discloses ZCSH’s expense ratio, so investors cannot yet weigh 21shares’ 2.5% fee against its only US counterpart on cost alone.

That structural gap matters for allocators comparing wrappers the way they might weigh growth metrics across onchain products, similar to how underwriter capital growth figures get scrutinized before capital commits. Until 21shares or a competitor discloses a side-by-side cost comparison, European buyers are paying for regulated access and custody, not necessarily a cheaper entry point than the US fund.

The CCS read. A 2.5% fee on a single-asset ETP is a premium price for regulatory convenience, not a signal about ZEC’s fundamentals. What the launch really tests is whether European wealth managers will pay up for privacy-asset exposure the way US allocators paid up for Grayscale’s early trust structures, before cheaper competitors inevitably arrive.

Grayscale’s ZCSH begins post-split trading on Wednesday, September 30, the next data point that will show whether the $46.56 million inflow spike marks sustained US demand or a one-off. 21shares has not disclosed volume or holdings for ZCASH since launch, leaving the size of European uptake, and any fee response from rival issuers, as the open question for the coming weeks.

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RWA perpetual futures surge to $18.8B weekly volume, displacing altcoin trading

RWA perpetual futures surge to $18.8B weekly volume, displacing altcoin trading

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·4 min read

Perpetual futures tied to stocks, commodities and indices have jumped from under $1 billion in daily volume to $18.8 billion in a single week, pulling trading activity away from altcoins on the same exchanges that built their businesses on crypto leverage.

  • RWA perpetual futures volume rose from under $1 billion in January to $18.8 billion during September 3-9, per Talos data.
  • DefiLlama found RWA-first wallets generated 31.5% of new-user trading volume on Hyperliquid but only 8.3% of new-user fees.
  • CryptoRank counted 351 new exchange listings across 10 major venues in the second quarter, the fewest since the third quarter of 2023.
  • $18.8B weekly RWA perp volume versus under $1B in January
  • 8.3% share of new-user fees from wallets generating 31.5% of volume
  • 351 new CEX listings in Q2, fewest since Q3 2023

Daily volume in real-world-asset perpetual futures across the venues Talos tracked climbed from under $1 billion in January to $18.8 billion during the week of September 3-9, 2026, according to a report by CryptoSlate. That figure represented 18.5% of total futures volume across those exchanges, a category that barely existed eight months earlier. Crypto-perpetual volume declined over the same comparison period while total futures activity in the sample stayed roughly flat, meaning traditional-asset contracts filled the gap left by weaker crypto-only trading.

Talos Data Show Hyperliquid and Binance Each Route Roughly a Quarter of Futures Volume to RWAs

Traditional-asset perpetuals made up 28% of futures volume on Hyperliquid and 24.8% on Binance in the Talos sample, putting both exchanges well above the 18.5% market-wide average. Oil led the weekly gain as Brent crossed $100 a barrel, a move unrelated to crypto that traders could still access without leaving their existing exchange app or collateral pool.

The mechanism matters more than the headline number. Crypto exchanges perfected the perpetual contract for tokens; now the same wrapper delivers leverage on oil, gold, equities and pre-IPO companies.

CoinDesk Research separately reported that centralized-exchange volume rose 12.7% month over month to $4.29 trillion in August, with spot up 18.7% and derivatives up 11.3%. Traditional-asset perpetual volume within that total grew a smaller 2.37% to $602 billion, a slower pace than the overall derivatives growth for the month, showing the two categories can expand together rather than strictly at each other’s expense.

DefiLlama Finds Most New Traders Never Cross Between RWA and Crypto Markets

DefiLlama classified 169,514 new Hyperliquid wallets as RWA-first, meaning their debut trade landed in a stock, commodity or index market, covering January 1 through June 30, 2026. That group made up 31.7% of new wallets and generated $111.6 billion, or 31.5%, of new-user trading volume. Their economics told a different story: RWA-first wallets produced just 8.3% of the main trading fees paid by new users, a mismatch that suggests thinner margins or heavier fee subsidies in the products drawing them in.

RWA-first wallets kept 83.6% of their volume inside RWA markets. Other-first wallets, whose debut trade was crypto or another non-RWA product, sent only 22.8% of their volume into RWA markets yet still accounted for roughly 40% of all RWA-market volume, meaning existing crypto traders supply a larger share of that flow than newcomers do.

A DefiLlama follow-up sharpened the picture: 80.9% of RWA-first wallets never touched the other market category, and 82% of Other-first wallets never crossed into RWA products. Three groups emerge rather than one migrating mass, an RWA-only cohort, a crypto-only cohort, and a smaller high-frequency core that trades both. That segmentation complicates any simple claim that altcoin capital is exiting wholesale for tokenized stocks, a nuance CCS covered when examining how tokenized equities entered DeFi lending in its report on Chainlink’s bank payment and tokenized-stock integrations.

Hyperliquid’s Gross Fees Rise to $419.3 Million While Core Revenue Falls to $305.3 Million

CryptoRank counted 351 new listings across 10 major centralized exchanges in the second quarter of 2026, the fewest since the third quarter of 2023, with tokenized assets contributing 42 of those additions. Gate accounted for 573 removals, nearly 60% of first-half delistings, while MEXC rarely reported removals and was effectively excluded from the comparison, limiting how much the listing data can say about altcoins broadly.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework lets outside builders deploy their own perpetual markets, including stock and commodity contracts, and its fee documentation permits deployers to retain up to 50% of the trading fees their markets generate. Fees routed to Hyperliquid’s Assistance Fund convert automatically into HYPE and get burned, but only a slice of builder-market activity reaches that mechanism.

The split shows up in the numbers. 21Shares estimated Hyperliquid’s gross fees rose from $320 million in the first half of 2025 to $419.3 million in the first half of 2026, a 31% increase, while its core protocol revenue, the share flowing to the platform treasury, fell from $317.5 million to $305.3 million over the same period. Crypto perpetuals still drove the next leg of growth: Hyperliquid’s total open interest climbed from $6.6 billion to $8.8 billion in September 2026, even as HIP-3’s share of that activity slipped from 34% to 25%, a shift echoed in how onchain lending capital has scaled elsewhere, as CCS detailed in its coverage of Cap’s growth in underwriter capital.

The CCS read. The revenue gap matters more than the volume headline. Builder-deployed markets are pulling activity onto Hyperliquid without funneling proportional fees back to HYPE holders or the treasury, which means token-linked burn mechanisms may lag actual platform growth. Investors tracking Hyperliquid as a proxy for RWA-perp adoption should watch core revenue, not gross fees, as the cleaner signal of whether this shift benefits the protocol’s own token economics.

Whether traditional-asset perpetuals ultimately substitute for altcoin trading or simply add a new revenue line depends on data not yet available: full third-quarter figures on wallet crossover rates, HIP-3’s fee share, and whether CryptoRank’s listing count recovers from its lowest level since the third quarter of 2023.

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Hong Kong stablecoin adoption trails far behind after four months of licensing

Hong Kong stablecoin adoption trails far behind after four months of licensing

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BlockchainCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·2 min read

Hong Kong’s two top financial regulators have laid out competing timelines for putting core market infrastructure on-chain, but early results show implementation lagging far behind the ambition. Four months after the city issued its first stablecoin licenses, circulation of the sole live token sits at just 522,000 units, underscoring the gap between regulatory design and market uptake.

  • HKMA plans to make its CMU settlement platform run round-the-clock, on-chain, by the end of 2026.
  • SFC’s Five-Year Plan strategy splits measures into short-term and medium-to-long-term batches for market integration.
  • HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial received Hong Kong’s first two stablecoin issuer licenses in April 2026.
  • 522,000 HKDAP tokens in circulation as of August 19, four months after launch
  • 2 stablecoin issuer licenses HKMA has granted since April 2026
  • Early next year target for HKEX’s yuan-denominated gold futures launch

Hong Kong’s two primary financial regulators unveiled parallel plans to push core market functions on-chain and build new licensing rules for digital assets, according to a report by Cryptopolitan. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is upgrading its main settlement platform to run continuously on blockchain, while the Securities and Futures Commission drafts new licensing rules for tokenized assets. Both moves arrive five months after the city issued its first stablecoin licenses in April 2026, exposing how far implementation still trails intent.

Eddie Yue Sets End-2026 Deadline For Round-The-Clock CMU Settlement

Speaking at the Treasury Markets Summit, HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue said the Central Moneymarkets Unit, the authority’s debt-securities settlement platform, will roll out new services by the end of 2026. The upgrade is meant to deliver real-time settlement around the clock rather than during limited market hours, as CMU currently operates. Yue said the redesigned platform is built to handle a digital Hong Kong dollar and a central bank digital currency.

He added that the HKMA will study whether tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins can settle directly on the CMU. No timeline was given for that separate review.

SFC Splits Five-Year Plan Into Short-Term And Long-Term Tokenization Rules

The Securities and Futures Commission separately published its strategy for carrying out Hong Kong’s first Five-Year Plan and the Chief Executive’s 2026 Policy Address. The commission split its measures into a short-term batch and a medium-to-long-term batch, both aimed at deepening links between mainland China and global markets. Over the longer term, it intends to draw up a regulatory framework for tokenized investment products covering tokenized gold and other tokenized real-world assets.

The regulator also plans a new licensing regime for digital assets, alongside a market-surveillance tool called CrypTech designed to flag suspicious trading activity. It intends to tighten anti-money-laundering monitoring and apply artificial intelligence across its oversight systems over time.

HSBC Still Hasn’t Issued Its Stablecoin Five Months After Licensing

Hong Kong granted its first two stablecoin issuer licenses in April 2026, to HSBC and to Anchorpoint Financial, a joint venture led by Standard Chartered with HKT and Animoca Brands. Anchorpoint’s HKDAP token, which redeems one-for-one for Hong Kong

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Grayscale converts Bitcoin miners fund into AI infrastructure bet

Grayscale converts Bitcoin miners fund into AI infrastructure bet

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AI NewsCrypto Coin Show News Team·September 23, 2026·4 min read

Grayscale Investments has renamed its Bitcoin Miners ETF (MNRS) into the Grayscale AI Compute ETF (GCPU), replacing an index built on block-solving with one built on data centers and power. The switch matters to institutional allocators because it converts a niche crypto-mining vehicle into a bet on AI infrastructure scarcity, a theme Goldman Sachs projects will draw more than $1 trillion in annual capital spending.

  • Grayscale renamed MNRS to GCPU on September 22, 2026, tracking the new Indxx High Performance Computing Index.
  • Roughly half of GCPU’s portfolio targets native GPU cloud and AI-hosting firms, the rest are miners and other HPC operators pivoting to AI.
  • North American data centers hold about six months of spare capacity, per CBRE, against a two-to-five-year timeline to build new facilities.
  • $1T Goldman Sachs’ projected annual AI capital spending figure
  • 6 months data center spare capacity versus years-long build times
  • 94% Riot Platforms’ 2026 stock gain versus 21% for AI-pivot miners broadly

Grayscale confirmed the change in a September 22, 2026 announcement, retiring the Indxx Bitcoin Miners Index in favor of the Indxx High Performance Computing Index. GCPU will not hold digital assets directly or track any coin’s price, according to the filing. Grayscale is instead packaging equity exposure to the physical buildout behind AI models, a trend first detailed by Cryptopolitan.

Grayscale Splits GCPU Roughly 50-50 Between AI-Native and Ex-Mining Firms

The new index captures what Grayscale describes as two distinct paths to compute capacity. About half the portfolio’s weight targets companies built around GPU cloud and AI-hosting from inception. The remainder consists of high-performance computing operators, including Bitcoin miners, that have publicly disclosed or executed a shift toward AI workloads.

The index rebalances quarterly, meaning miners that formalize AI contracts or expand hosting capacity can gain weight each quarter, while those that do not can lose it. That mechanical rule replaces the previous MNRS methodology, which weighted companies purely on mining output and hash rate regardless of revenue mix.

Vanourny Calls Compute the New Scarce Asset

Steve Vanourny, Grayscale’s Head of Index, framed the rebrand as an extension of the firm’s original digital-asset scarcity thesis rather than a departure from it.

“Grayscale has spent over a decade giving investors access to scarce, transformational technologies, such as digital assets, and we believe compute belongs in that same category. GCPU is a direct extension of that thesis, giving investors access to the companies closing the gap between AI’s demand for compute and the physical infrastructure needed to meet it.”

Steve Vanourny, Head of Index, Grayscale

Grayscale backs that scarcity argument with CBRE data showing North American data centers at record-low vacancy, with roughly six months of spare capacity in reserve. Building fresh capacity is not a fast fix; new facilities typically take two to five years to bring online. Goldman Sachs’ $1 trillion annual capex forecast, mostly directed at physical plant, underpins the case that supply cannot close the gap quickly.

What Changes in Practice for Miners That Cross Over

For crypto-native investors, the practical effect is that GCPU no longer functions as a Bitcoin mining proxy, even though several of its constituents still run mining operations.

Cryptopolitan’s reporting shows why the pivot pays: AI cloud services fetch a median of roughly $940 per megawatt-hour, against $113 to $179 for Bitcoin mining, and miners carrying AI or HPC contracts trade at about 12.9 times forward sales versus 3.7 times for those without.

TeraWulf is up near 73% year to date and Riot Platforms roughly 94%, while AI-integrated miners overall have gained about 21% against a broader Bitcoin market that has struggled. Core Scientific booked $136.7 million in colocation revenue in the second quarter of 2026, more than five times the $27.5 million it drew from mining in the same period.

The document Grayscale filed leaves one question unresolved for holders: what happens to constituents that announce an AI pivot but fail to execute it before the next quarterly rebalance.

OpenAI’s $280 Billion Compute Push Sets the Backdrop

Cryptopolitan’s analysis ties the miner repricing to a roughly $280 billion compute buildout tied to OpenAI and a 2,600-gigawatt U.S. grid interconnection backlog, conditions that make an already-permitted, grid-connected site more valuable than the mining rigs sitting inside it. That dynamic is already reshaping the mining sector beyond Grayscale’s index, with public miners collectively holding an estimated $70 billion to $100 billion in announced AI and HPC contracts.

Grayscale’s own MNRS-to-GCPU conversion effectively formalizes what miner management teams had already been telling shareholders on earnings calls.

The CCS read. Grayscale is not calling a bottom on Bitcoin mining economics, it is arbitraging a repricing that already happened in equity markets, where AI-contract miners trade at more than triple the multiple of pure hashers. For allocators who track bitcoin treasury strategies like the one covered in our report on Strategy’s bitcoin purchases, GCPU signals that public markets increasingly separate mining-as-coin-exposure from mining-as-infrastructure-exposure, and reward the latter.

The first quarterly rebalance under the new Indxx High Performance Computing Index methodology will show whether Grayscale’s roughly 50-50 split between AI-native firms and transitioning miners holds, or whether the fund tilts further from Bitcoin mining as more operators disclose AI contracts, a shift already visible in coverage of miners’ financing needs such as our report on crypto-backed lending trends.

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