Bitcoin’s rally after soft CPI data reversed rapidly, triggering over $500 million in liquidations from leveraged long positions.
The sell-off was driven by derivatives traders taking profits, unlike prior moves led by spot sellers, per on-chain data.
The Bank of Japan’s first rate hike in 30 years threatens the yen carry trade, a key source of global market liquidity.
Bitcoin whipsawed again after Thursday’s soft inflation report signaled a recovery, triggering over $500 million in crypto liquidations.
With headline and core inflation coming in at 2.7% and 2.6%, respectively, below 3% forecasts, the crypto market outlook seemed bullish. Bitcoin even came close to revisiting $90,000, but sellers stepped up again, undoing the gains in a few hours.
Per CoinGlass data, the crypto market saw $575 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, of which $368 million were long positions. Bitcoin accounted for $202 million of the liquidated positions, with $119 million of longs liquidated.
Unlike the Wednesday whipsaw, where spot investors drove the price lower, the recent reversal was also driven by profit-taking from derivatives investors, per Velo data.
Despite the washout, the $85,000 to $81,000 range has been a good source of demand. Bitcoin is up nearly 1% over the past 24 hours and is currently trading at around $88,100, according to CoinGecko data.
Traders on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, remain optimistic, placing a 61% chance on Bitcoin’s next move taking it to $100,000 rather than $69,000.
]]>
Pressure on the yen carry trade
The Bank of Japan raised its interest rate by a quarter point on Friday, ending a 30-year low rate regime, likely adding pressure on crypto and other risk assets, according to a previous Decrypt report.
The historic decision puts pressure on the carry trade that has been ongoing for decades. As a result, the subsequent unwinding of the carry trade post-rate hike will halt the liquidity that has greased risk assets for years.
Regardless of the catalyst, leverage remains elevated in the crypto ecosystem. Reflecting this, there have been four days in December when total crypto market liquidations have surpassed $500 million.
A closer look at liquidation data shows that optimistic investors’ long positions have been a major contributor to the total liquidations, per Coinalyze.
With the holidays fast approaching, volatility is likely to ramp up as liquidity shrinks and investors rebalance portfolios.
The reduced spot demand and defensive positioning among futures and options traders will only amplify these conditions.
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The job search has never been a static process, but recent years have accelerated changes that were already underway. Economic uncertainty, demographic shifts, and rapid technological adoption have reshaped how people look for work and how employers signal opportunity. What once followed a relatively predictable path-job postings, applications, interviews-now reflects a more fragmented and adaptive labour market.
For job seekers, this shift has introduced both opportunity and complexity. Access to roles has expanded across geography and industries, yet clarity has become harder to maintain. The modern job search increasingly mirrors the broader labour market: flexible, decentralized, and shaped by forces beyond individual control.
A Labour Market Defined by Movement, Not Stability
One of the most notable changes in recent years is the normalization of job mobility. Long-term tenure with a single employer is no longer the default expectation across many sectors. Workers move more frequently between roles, industries, and employment models, often in response to economic conditions rather than personal preference.
This fluidity has altered how job seekers approach opportunity. Instead of searching for permanence, many now focus on adaptability-seeking roles that align with current needs, transferable skills, or short- to medium-term goals. The job search has become less about securing a final destination and more about navigating transitions.
Digital Access Has Expanded, but So Has Noise
Technology has significantly lowered barriers to entry in the job market. Online platforms, remote work infrastructure, and digital applications allow people to explore opportunities across regions and industries with ease. From a labour market perspective, this has increased participation and visibility.
At the same time, expanded access has created saturation. Job seekers often face an overwhelming volume of listings, varying in quality, accuracy, and relevance. Employers, in turn, receive more applications than they can reasonably evaluate. The result is a job search environment where access is broad, but signal clarity is reduced.
Navigating this environment requires more discernment than ever. The ability to filter, prioritize, and evaluate opportunities has become a core job-search skill rather than a secondary one.
The Changing Role of Employers in the Hiring Process
Employers are also adapting to labour market shifts. Hiring decisions are increasingly influenced by uncertainty around demand, supply chains, and economic outlook. Many organizations hesitate to commit to long-term hires, opting instead for contract roles, probationary periods, or project-based arrangements.
This caution reshapes how roles are presented and how candidates interpret them. Job descriptions often emphasize flexibility, adaptability, and evolving responsibilities. For job seekers, reading between the lines has become necessary to understand the true nature of a role.
The job search, in this sense, has become a two-sided exercise in risk management.
Skills Take Precedence Over Career Narratives
Another clear shift is the growing emphasis on skills rather than linear career progression. Employers increasingly focus on what candidates can do now, not just where they have been. This reflects both technological change and the need for immediate impact in uncertain conditions.
For job seekers, this trend alters how experience is presented. Resumes and applications are less about chronology and more about capability. Transferable skills, adaptability, and problem-solving carry more weight than traditional career narratives.
This shift also benefits those whose paths have been non-linear, including career changers, return-to-work candidates, and those affected by economic disruption.
Job Discovery as an Ongoing Process
In a shifting labour market, job searching is no longer confined to moments of unemployment or transition. Many workers engage in passive or continuous job discovery, monitoring opportunities even while employed.
This behaviour reflects a broader sense of labour market awareness. Workers recognize that stability is conditional, and staying informed is a form of preparedness. Job discovery tools and aggregated listings-such as those surfaced through platforms like Higher Hire [https://higher-hire.com/%5D-support this ongoing awareness without requiring active application.
The job search, in this context, becomes a background process rather than a single event.
Regional and Sectoral Divergence
Labour market shifts do not affect all regions or industries equally. Some sectors experience persistent shortages, while others face contraction. Geographic differences also play a role, with remote work blurring boundaries but not eliminating them entirely.
Job seekers must now account for these divergences. Opportunity may exist, but not always where or how it did previously. Understanding sectoral trends and regional dynamics has become an important part of evaluating prospects.
This complexity reinforces the need for informed, deliberate job-search strategies rather than reactive ones.
Emotional and Cognitive Impacts of Change
Beyond structural changes, the evolving job search carries emotional consequences. Uncertainty, delayed responses, and opaque hiring processes contribute to stress and disengagement. Many job seekers report fatigue not from lack of effort, but from sustained ambiguity.
Labour market volatility places psychological demands on individuals navigating it. Successful job searching increasingly depends on managing attention, expectations, and energy over time. The ability to structure the process and maintain perspective is as important as technical qualifications.
What These Changes Suggest About the Future
The transformation of the job search reflects broader labour market realities. Flexibility, adaptability, and continuous learning are no longer optional traits; they are structural necessities. The mechanisms through which people find work will continue to evolve alongside economic and technological change.
What remains consistent is the need for clarity. Job seekers who approach the process with structure, awareness, and realistic expectations are better positioned to navigate uncertainty. Employers who communicate transparently and align roles with actual needs contribute to healthier labour market dynamics.
Conclusion
The job search is no longer a simple response to open positions; it is a reflection of a labour market in motion. Economic shifts, technological access, and changing employment models have transformed how opportunity is found and evaluated.
In this environment, success depends less on volume and more on interpretation. The ability to navigate complexity, recognize patterns, and adapt strategy has become central to finding work in a shifting labour market.
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The SEC’s approval of generic listing standards for crypto ETPs on Sept. 17 cut the launch timeline to 75 days and opened the door to plain-vanilla products.
Bitwise predicts more than 100 crypto-linked ETFs will launch in 2026. James Seyffart, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, backed the call but added a caveat:
“We’re going to see a lot of liquidations.”
That pairing of explosive growth and swift culling defines the next phase, as generic standards solve a timing problem rather than a liquidity problem. For Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, the flood reinforces dominance. For everything else, it is a stress test.
The new rules mirror what the SEC did for equity and bond ETFs in 2019, when annual launches jumped from 117 to over 370. Fee compression followed immediately, with dozens of small funds closed within two years.
Crypto runs the same experiment with worse starting conditions. Custody is heavily concentrated: Coinbase holds assets for the vast majority of crypto ETFs, claiming an up to 85% share of global Bitcoin ETFs.
Additionally, APs and market makers depend on a handful of venues for pricing and borrowing, and many altcoins lack the derivatives depth to hedge creation/redemption flows without moving the market.
The SEC’s July 29 in-kind order allowed Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts to settle creations with actual coins rather than cash, tightening tracking but requiring APs to source, hold, and manage tax treatment for each basket. For BTC and ETH, that is manageable.
For thin underlyings, borrow might dry up entirely during volatility, forcing creation halts and leaving the ETF trading at a premium until supply returns.
Plumbing under load
APs and market makers can handle higher creation/redemption volume on liquid coins. Their constraint is short availability: when a new ETF launches on a token with thin borrow, APs either demand wider spreads or step back entirely, leaving the fund to trade on cash creations with higher tracking error.
Exchanges can halt trading if reference prices stop updating, a risk Dechert’s October analysis stressed even under the faster approval pathway.
Coinbase’s first-mover custody position is now both a revenue engine and a target. US Bancorp revived institutional Bitcoin custody plans, while Citi and State Street are exploring crypto-ETF custody relationships.
Their pitch: do you want 85% of ETF flows dependent on a single counterparty? For Coinbase, more ETFs mean more fees, more regulatory attention, and a higher risk that a single operational glitch spooks the entire category.
Index providers hold quiet power. Generic standards tie eligibility to surveillance agreements and reference indices that satisfy exchange criteria, gating who designs benchmarks. A handful of firms, such as CF Benchmarks, MVIS, and S&P, dominate traditional ETF indexing.
Crypto follows the same pattern of wealth platforms defaulting to indices they recognize, making it harder for new entrants to break through, even with superior methodology.
2026 launch bucketLikely underlyings / examples (using Seyffart queue as context)Custody notesIndex / benchmark notesAP / creation-redemption & spread notes19b-4 still needed?Single-asset majors: BTC / ETH “me-too” and fee-cut clonesMore zero-fee or low-fee spot BTC/ETH ETFs from second-tier issuers; possible share-class and currency-hedged variantsCoinbase still dominates ETF custody with 80%+ share of BTC/ETH ETF assets; some banks (U.S. Bank via NYDIG, Citi, others) are re-entering but at smaller scale. Concentration risk stays high unless regulators push for diversification.Mostly direct spot exposure; no index provider, or simple NAV calculation off a single reference rate. Benchmarks from CF Benchmarks, CoinDesk, Bloomberg Galaxy used for NAV and marketing rather than portfolio rules.SEC now allows in-kind creations/redemptions for crypto ETPs, so APs can deliver or receive native BTC/ETH instead of cash, tightening spreads and reducing slippage. Plumbing is largely “solved,” so competition is mainly on fees and marketing.No, as long as products fit the generic Commodity-Based Trust Share standards and the underlying assets meet ISG/futures criteria; exchanges can list without a new 19b-4.Single-asset altcoins that meet generic criteriaSOL, XRP, DOGE, LTC, LINK, AVAX, DOT, SHIB, XLM, HBAR, etc., which either already have or are close to having qualifying regulated futures or ETF exposure.Custody will be thinner and more concentrated: Coinbase plus a handful of specialists that actually support each coin at institutional scale. Smaller custodians will struggle to sign enough mandates to amortize security and insurance costs.Some funds will be pure single-asset; others will wrap a futures-linked or blended index if spot markets are fragmented. Indexers (CF, CoinDesk, Bloomberg Galaxy, Galaxy, etc.) gain leverage as “gatekeepers” for which markets count for pricing and surveillance.APs face real borrow and short constraints in thin markets. Even with in-kind allowed, locating borrow for hedging is harder than for BTC/ETH, so spreads will be wider, and creations may be more episodic. Expect more frequent “no-arb” periods where tracking error blows out when funding or borrow spikes.Often no, if each underlying meets the generic futures/ISG test. But any asset that does not have a qualifying futures market or ETF exposure fails the generic test and would still need a bespoke 19b-4 to list.Single-asset long-tail and meme-coin ETPsTRUMP, BONK, HYPE, niche gaming and DeFi tokens in the filing queue that lack deep regulated futures or ISG-member spot marketsVery few top-tier custodians will touch the really illiquid names, so these products may rely on smaller or offshore custodians. That concentrates operational and cyber risk in names that already have weak fundamentals.Pricing more likely to lean on composite indexes built from a handful of centralized exchanges. Any manipulation or wash trading on those venues directly contaminates NAV; index providers’ methodologies become a major systemic risk variable.APs will often be issuers’ own affiliates or a tiny circle of trading firms willing to warehouse inventory. Creations/redemptions may be cash-only in practice even if in-kind is permitted, because APs don’t want to hold the underlying. Expect chronic wide spreads, persistent NAV discounts/premiums, and frequent creation halts when liquidity vanishes.Yes in most cases. Without qualifying futures or an ETF that already provides 40%+ exposure under the generic test, these ETPs fall outside the Generic Standards and must use the traditional, slower 19b-4 path – if they are approved at all.Broad large-cap and “top-N” index ETPsGLDC-style large-cap baskets (e.g., BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA), “Top 5/10 by market cap,” or “BTC+ETH+SOL” blends; many of the basket/index products in the Seyffart chart sit hereCustody usually consolidated with a single provider across all constituents to simplify collateral and operational workflows. This amplifies the “single point of failure” problem if a dominant custodian has an outage.Indices from CF Benchmarks, CoinDesk, Bloomberg Galaxy, Galaxy, etc. decide inclusion rules, weights, and rebalancing. Under the Generic Standards, every component still has to meet its own surveillance/futures test, so index design is constrained by what already qualifies.More creation/redemption line items per basket, but APs can net flows across components and use in-kind baskets to reduce slippage. The main plumbing risk is rebalance days, when several thin alts must be crossed at once.No for “plain vanilla” index trusts where every component asset meets the Generic Standards.Thematic / sector index ETPs“L1/L2 smart-contract index,” “DeFi blue chips,” “tokenization plays,” “meme basket,” etc., mixing qualified and non-qualified namesCustody becomes multi-provider if certain tokens are only supported by niche custodians, complicating collateral management and increasing reconciliation and cyber risk.Indexers must choose between thematic purity and staying inside the generic regime. Many will publish both a broad “research” index and a narrower investable version.Creations get fragile because APs need to source several illiquid names at once. One broken component can halt creations for the entire ETP.Often yes. As soon as the index holds even one asset that fails the futures/ISG test, exchanges lose the generic safe harbor.Options-overlay on single-asset BTC/ETHBuy-write BTC or ETH ETFs, buffered-loss strategies, collar products holding spot or futures and selling optionsUses the same custodians as plain BTC/ETH products, but adds derivatives plumbing. Collateralization and margin become key operational risks.Some track buy-write indices; others are actively managed. These are no longer simple commodity trust structures.APs must manage both spot and options liquidity. During volatility spikes, creations may pause, causing large NAV deviations.Yes in most cases. Actively managed, leveraged, or “novel feature” ETPs fall outside the Generic Standards.Options-overlay on multi-asset or thematic indexes“Crypto income” funds writing calls on baskets (BTC+ETH+SOL), volatility-targeting or risk-parity crypto ETPsRequires multi-asset custody plus derivatives infrastructure. Failures at any layer can force trading halts.Custom indices and proprietary overlays increase differentiation but reduce comparability and platform adoption.APs face thin alts, limited options markets, and complex hedging models, implying high costs and wide spreads.Yes. These sit squarely outside the generic template and require full 19b-4 approval.
The cull
ETF.com tracks dozens of closures each year, with funds below $50 million struggling to cover costs and often shutting down within two years.
Seyffart predicts crypto ETF liquidations by late 2026 or early 2027. The most vulnerable: duplicate single-asset funds with high fees, niche index products, and thematic bets where the underlying market moves faster than the ETF wrapper can adapt.
Fee wars accelerate the cull. New Bitcoin ETFs launched in 2024 at 20-25 basis points, undercutting earlier filers by half. As the shelf gets crowded, issuers will cut deeper on flagship products, leaving long-tail funds unable to compete on fees or performance.
Secondary-market mechanics crack first on thin underlyings. When an ETF holds a small-cap token with limited borrow, demand spikes force premiums until APs source enough coins.
If borrow disappears during volatility, the AP stops creating, and the premium persists.
Several early crypto index ETFs saw net redemptions and persistent discounts as investors stuck to brand-name single-asset funds and traded around mispricings.
For BTC, ETH, and SOL, the dynamic reverses. More ETF wrappers deepen spot-derivative connections, tighten spreads, and reinforce their status as core institutional collateral.
Bitwise predicts ETFs will absorb more than 100% of net new supply in these three assets, creating a feedback loop: a bigger ETF complex, a thicker borrow market, tighter spreads, and greater appeal to advisors prohibited from holding coins directly.
What the rules still gate and who decides
Generic standards exclude actively managed, leveraged, and “novel feature” ETPs, which must file individual 19b-4 proposals.
Want to launch a passively managed spot BTC ETF? Seventy-five days. Want 2x leverage with daily resets? Back to the old regime.
SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw warned the standards could flood the market with products that skip individual vetting, creating correlated fragilities that regulators only discover in a crisis.
The rules channel the flood toward the most liquid, most institutionalized corners of crypto.
The stakes are simple: does ETF-palooza consolidate crypto’s institutional infrastructure around a few dominant coins and custodians, or broaden access and distribute risk?
For Bitcoin, the flood is a coronation. Every new wrapper adds another venue for institutional capital, another source of borrow, another reason for banks to build custody.
Coinbase’s assets under custody hit $300 billion in the third quarter of 2025. That scale creates network effects and fragility.
For the long tail, more ETFs mean more legitimacy but also more fragmentation, thinner liquidity per product, and a higher likelihood that any given fund will close.
Issuers bet a few will stick and subsidize the rest. APs bet they can extract spread and borrow fees before someone gets stuck holding an illiquid token during a redemption wave.
Custodians believe concentration pays better than competition, until regulators or clients force diversification.
Generic standards made it easy to launch crypto ETFs. They did not make it easy to keep them alive.
Ethereum transformed the blockchain industry by enabling smart contracts, DAOs, NFTs, and decentralized apps.
From its 2015 launch to The Merge in 2022, Ethereum has driven innovation and faced growing pains.
Ethereum powers DeFi and NFTs, but still battles high fees, scalability limits, and fierce competition.
Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, is a blockchain-powered platform for creating decentralized applications (dapps).
Ethereum is not just a cryptocurrency. It’s a global, decentralized network that enables smart contracts—self-executing programs on the blockchain—and decentralized applications, or dapps, that run without banks, governments, or big tech.
When programmer Vitalik Buterin published a “whitepaper” in late 2013 proposing a new kind of blockchain—not just for money but for programmable code—a revolution in digital finance began. Today, the Ethereum blockchain hosts decentralized applications like smart contracts, games, digital art, and assets worth billions.
Ultimately, many believe that Ethereum could underpin a re-imagining of how the internet works, dubbed Web3, in which control of the internet is disintermediated away from big companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and X.
This guide will help you understand the history of Ethereum, Buterin’s big idea, and the role Ether plays in that vision.
Smart contracts: Ethereum’s breakthrough
The feature that set Ethereum apart from Bitcoin early on was the smart contract. A smart contract is a code stored and executed on the blockchain that runs automatically once its conditions are met.
Smart contracts are transparent, tamper-proof, and execute without relying on third parties. This makes them the backbone of everything built on Ethereum, from DeFi protocols to NFT marketplaces.
Who Invented Ethereum?
Russian/Canadian computer programmer Vitalik Buterin wrote the whitepaper that Ethereum is based on. However, the building of the network and community was helped along by a number of co-founders: Anthony Di Loria, Charles Hoskinson, Miha Alisie, Amir Chetrit, Joseph Lubin and Gavin Wood.
Development of the Ethereum network began in early 2014 under the Ethereum Foundation, with Gavin Wood publishing the technical “yellow paper” that defined the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
A crowdfunded token sale followed in mid-2014, raising funds through an initial coin offering, or ICO, that exchanged Bitcoin for Ether. The ICO raised over $18 million.
The network officially went live on July 30, 2015, launching as “Frontier”—a platform for developers to test and deploy decentralized applications.
The switch from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake
When it first launched, Ethereum used the same Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism as Bitcoin, with cryptocurrency miners securing the network by solving complex cryptographic puzzles.
In September 2022, Ethereum switchted to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Instead of mining, Ether is created through staking: validators lock up at least 32 ETH as collateral and are chosen to propose and verify new blocks. Honest participation earns them ETH rewards.
This shift, known as “The Merge,” ended Proof-of-Work mining, making Ethereum more energy-efficient while allowing anyone with the required stake to help secure the network and earn rewards.
Blocks are still added about every 12 seconds, but ETH is now distributed as staking rewards, not mining rewards.
Did you know?
Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, pays for transactions, powers apps, and secures the network. Ether’s sub-units, Gwei and Wei, are named after Wei Dai, an early pioneer of cryptocurrencies.
What applications have been built on Ethereum?
👥 Social Networks: Get paid for your posts on social media dapps.
📁 File Storage: Decentralized file storage at a fraction of the price.
💸 Overseas Payments: Dramatically reducing the cost of sending cash overseas.
💳 Payment Cards: Contactless debit card to pay in Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
👀 Online advertising: Cutting out the middlemen in online ads. Users get paid directly for watching online advertisements.
💱 Exchanges: Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Uniswap enable users to trade cryptocurrencies peer-to-peer, without middlemen.
🏦 Loans: Blockchain-backed loans with no credit checks.
Timeline: Major milestones in Ethereum
Late 2013: Vitalik Buterin publishes the Ethereum white paper, introducing the idea of a programmable blockchain.
Mid-2014: Ethereum crowdsale (ICO) sells Ether for Bitcoin to fund development.
July 30, 2015: Ethereum launches with the “Frontier” genesis block.
September 2015: “Frontier Thawing” update increases gas limits for more stability.
March 2016: Homestead upgrade improves protocol security and usability.
April 2016: The DAO, a decentralized venture fund, launches via crowdsale.
June 2016: Hackers exploit The DAO and drain roughly $50 million in Ether. Community votes to hard-fork, creating Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
October 2017: Byzantium hard fork enhances performance, privacy, and sets the stage for Proof-of-Stake.
December 2017: CryptoKitties and CryptoPunk NFTs go viral, stressing network capacity and highlighting scalability issues.
January 2018: ERC-721 NFT standard is introduced, enabling unique digital assets.
December 2020: Beacon Chain launches, beginning Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake.
March 2020: Visa begins settling USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin transactions using Ethereum.
April 2021: Berlin hard fork reduces gas costs.
August 2021: London hard fork activates EIP-1559; introduces fee burning, reducing inflation.
September 15, 2022: “The Merge” transitions Ethereum from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, cutting energy use by more than 99 percent.
April 12, 2023: The Shanghai upgrade enables withdrawal of staked Ether from the Beacon Chain.
March 13, 2024: The Dencun upgrade introduces proto-danksharding, a step toward reducing costs and increasing scalability.
May 7, 2025: The Pectra upgrade, combining Prague and Electra updates, aims to expand staking flexibility and improve Ethereum’s efficiency.
December 3, 2025: The Fusaka upgrade introduces changes to Ethereum’s data availability and block capacity.
Ethereum and DAOs
One of Ethereum’s most radical innovations was the decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. A DAO is a blockchain-based organization governed by smart contracts and community votes. Members typically hold tokens that grant them voting power on how the DAO operates and spends its funds.
The first major experiment was The DAO in 2016, which sought to operate as a decentralized venture capital fund. Investors pooled Ether, then voted collectively on how to allocate it. The project ended in disaster due to an infamous hack, but it demonstrated the potential of blockchains as platforms for decentralized governance.
Since then, DAOs have grown into a vibrant sector. They range from DAO frameworks like Moloch and Aragon, to investment collectives like Syndicate, and governance DAOs such as MakerDAO, which manages a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, to social DAOs that organize communities online.
Supporters argue that DAOs could redefine corporate governance by replacing traditional hierarchies with code and community control. Critics warn that legal frameworks remain murky, and smart contract vulnerabilities pose risks. Still, DAOs remain one of the clearest examples of Ethereum enabling something that could not exist without it.
A network tested by crisis
If Bitcoin is the gold of the cryptocurrency world, Ethereum is the oil that machines are powered on—but it has not been all smooth sailing.
Ethereum’s first major crisis arrived in 2016 with the DAO hack, when attackers exploited a vulnerability to steal $50 million worth of Ether.
The community was split: some argued the blockchain’s ledger should remain immutable, while others pushed to undo the damage. The decision to hard fork created two parallel blockchains—Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Ethereum and the NFT boom
Ethereum also fueled the explosion of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, unique digital assets that prove ownership of items like art, music, or collectibles.
The breakthrough came in 2017 with the ERC-721 token standard, which let developers create unique tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs began to clog the Ethereum network as users spent millions trading CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, and more, showing both the appeal and the limits of the technology.
By 2021, NFTs had gone mainstream. Digital artist Beeple sold an NFT artwork for $69 million, and the Bored Ape Yacht Club launched. One of the most prominent NFT collections, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, is a collection of 10,000 primate-themed NFTs that became a cultural phenomenon, drawing celebrities and selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars each. At its height, in May 2022, all 10,000 BAYC NFTs collectively were valued over $1 billion.
Ethereum’s smart contracts made this possible by encoding ownership and authenticity directly into the blockchain. The NFT boom exposed Ethereum’s energy inefficiency, accelerating its shift away from the more energy-intensive Proof-of-Work algorithm.
The race to scale
Ethereum’s biggest weakness? Scalability. At about 15 transactions per second, it cannot match Visa’s tens of thousands. That bottleneck has often caused sky-high “gas fees,” or transaction costs.
To address this, developers began a years-long upgrade known as Ethereum 2.0. The launch of the Beacon Chain in 2020, the Berlin and London upgrades in 2021, and the Merge in 2022 marked steps toward a more efficient, Proof-of-Stake network. Later upgrades, including Shanghai in 2023 and Dencun in 2024, tackled staking flexibility and lower transaction costs.
Ethereum and the Web3 vision
Supporters see Ethereum as the foundation for “Web3”—an internet where users, not corporations, control data, money, and digital identities. Ethereum powers decentralized finance DeFi, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized autonomous organizations, each of which experiments with alternatives to traditional financial and governance systems.
But competition looms. Rival networks such as Solana, Cardano, and Polkadot have positioned themselves as faster, cheaper alternatives. Meanwhile, Ethereum scaling solutions like Polygon and Arbitrum aim to process transactions off-chain before anchoring them to Ethereum’s main blockchain, reducing lag time and cost.
Ethereum and privacy
In 2025, privacy has become a key focus of the Ethereum project. In November, Vitalik Buterin stated that “Privacy is not a feature. Privacy is hygiene,” building on a narrative in which he framed it as a fundamental requirement for digital systems such as blockchain platforms.
The Ethereum Foundation has followed suit, launching a privacy cluster in October 2025 that includes 47 researchers, coordinators and cryptographers. The Foundation also launched Kohaku, a “privacy-first” toolkit for Ethereum, alongside a browser wallet and SDK. Upon its launch, Buterin commented that “Full-stack privacy and security are first-class priorities in Ethereum.”
A decade in, Ethereum is still defining itself
As Ethereum enters its second decade, it continues to test the boundaries of what a blockchain can do. Whether it will deliver on its vision of a decentralized internet—or cede ground to faster competitors—remains an open question.
What’s certain is that Ethereum has already changed how we think about the internet, money, community, and governance.
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An API that charges for queries has always been awkward. Subscription tiers and monthly billing break down when autonomous agents make thousands of microtransactions per hour across new services. x402 is Coinbase’s bet that the missing piece is a payment primitive wired directly into HTTP.
The mechanism revives HTTP status code 402 “Payment Required.” When a client requests a resource, the server responds with 402 plus machine-readable payment terms: amount, asset, network, and recipient.
The client pays in USDC and retries with a cryptographic payment proof in an HTTP header. The server verifies settlement on-chain and serves the resource.
Coinbase released x402 in May 2025. By December, it had processed 75 million transactions worth $24 million for paid APIs and AI agents. V2 adds modularity: network-agnostic identifiers, pluggable facilitators, wallet hooks, and a “Bazaar” discovery layer.
Cloudflare announced it will integrate x402 and co-launch the x402 Foundation. Google Cloud’s Agent Payments Protocol uses x402 for on-chain settlement. CryptoSlate will integrate it soon. Solana and Base are the production networks, with Solana reportedly flipping Base in volume by late 2025.
Facilitators as payment gateways
The complexity lies in the “facilitator,” which monitors blockchain networks, verifies payments, generates signed authorizations, and exposes an HTTP interface so websites can avoid running nodes.
Coinbase’s hosted facilitator offers fee-free USDC payments on Base and Solana with high-throughput settlement. The protocol supports multiple independent operators, but whether that portability survives when Coinbase’s facilitator is free and deeply integrated is an open question.
Refunds work differently from card networks. x402 has no network-level reversal. Merchants send a compensating transfer and update the order state. Rate limiting is an application-layer feature: the 402 response encodes metering rules, and facilitators enforce per-wallet limits.
That makes x402 closer to cash than reversible card payments, a feature for high-frequency API calls where chargebacks would be ruinous, but a liability for consumer flows that need buyer protection.
Ecosystem gravity
Cloudflare’s alignment signals x402 is infrastructure, not just a Coinbase project.
Integrating x402 into Cloudflare’s edge compute and CDN stack enables payment requests to fit into everyday web workflows. The Foundation framing of open governance and multiple implementers positions the protocol as shared plumbing.
Google Cloud’s AP2 uses x402 for agent-to-agent settlement, tying it into hyperscaler AI stacks. Wallets like OneKey, Sahara, and Transak have integrated x402 as a default primitive.
Case studies mention AEON settling AI-initiated payments to millions of merchants across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Throughput is small, just $24 million over seven months, but the trajectory matters. If autonomous agents need to pay per call rather than per month, x402 becomes necessary plumbing. The bet is that embedding payments in HTTP reduces friction enough to unlock new transaction classes.
Risks and control
The most considerable risk is that Coinbase’s CDP service is the most mature.
Cloudflare and AP2 reduce protocol-level concentration, but early traffic flows through Coinbase infrastructure. Coinbase shapes adoption by deciding which chains to prioritize and how aggressively to subsidize fees.
The facilitator is free today, but that rarely lasts once network effects lock in.
Compliance is baked into facilitators. x402 itself is neutral, but hosted facilitators plug into KYT and sanctions screening, and political pressure concentrates on facilitator operators.
Token confusion is endemic, as exchanges list speculative tokens branded “x402,” conflating the protocol with unrelated assets. The team stresses the protocol has no native token, but that message competes with listing announcements.
For Solana and Base, x402 is a bet that high-throughput, low-cost chains win the agent economy. If the modal payment is $0.01 for an API call, Ethereum mainnet is out, and L2s with multi-cent fees struggle.
Solana’s flip of Base in volume suggests faster finality and lower gas costs, giving it a structural advantage when agents hammer APIs thousands of times per second.
The constraint is that x402 solves coordination, not liquidity. An agent paying for an API call needs USDC in a hot wallet: custodying keys, managing balances, handling risk.
For developers, it is manageable, but for enterprises deploying agent fleets, it becomes a compliance nightmare. The protocol makes payments manageable, but it does not ensure the surrounding infrastructure is safe.
x402 is not the first attempt to wire payments into HTTP. What is different is the combination of stablecoins, cheap blockchains, and a credible use case in autonomous agents.
Whether that overcomes coordination problems and regulatory friction will determine whether x402 becomes foundational plumbing or another experiment that never escapes the lab.
InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd. announces the release of a market assessment report on the “Global Remote Work Security Market- (By Offerings (Solution (Professional Services (Training & Consulting, Integration & Implementation, Support & Maintenance), Managed Services, Services), By Security Type (Endpoint Security, Network Security, Cloud Security, Application security), By Remote Work model (Fully Remote, Hybrid Remote, Temporary), By Vertical (BSFI, Telecommunication, IT& ITes, Education, Retail & E-Commerce, Government, Media & Entertainment, Others)), Trends, Industry Competition Analysis, Revenue and Forecast To 2034.”
Global Remote Work Security Market Size is valued at USD 56.1 Bn in 2024 and is predicted to reach USD 373.6 Bn by the year 2034 at a 21.0% CAGR during the forecast period for 2025-2034.
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The remote work security market has witnessed significant growth, driven by both established cybersecurity firms and innovative startups offering solutions tailored for distributed work environments. The global transition to remote operations-initially prompted by the need to ensure business continuity and protect employee health during the COVID-19 pandemic-has increasingly become a permanent strategic component, underscoring the critical importance of securing decentralized digital infrastructures.
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote work settings has added layers of complexity, particularly in sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing, where device security is crucial. Simultaneously, the widespread adoption of cloud-based platforms has emerged as a major catalyst for market expansion. As employees access corporate applications and sensitive data across diverse locations and devices, demand for robust cloud security measures-including secure authentication protocols, access control frameworks, and data encryption-has grown substantially.
Furthermore, the rising frequency of cyberattacks targeting remote workers-such as phishing, malware, and other malicious threats-has emphasized vulnerabilities inherent in off-network operations. These risks are often exacerbated by weaker endpoint protections outside traditional corporate environments. As organizations continue to advance digital transformation initiatives and deploy sophisticated remote work technologies, the requirement for flexible, scalable, and resilient security solutions has become increasingly imperative, driving sustained growth in the remote work security market.
List of Prominent Players in the Remote Work Security Market• Cisco Systems• Palo Alto Networks• McAfee• Symantec (now part of Broadcom)• Microsoft• Fortinet• Check Point Software Technologies• Proofpoint (acquired by Thoma Bravo)• Trend Micro• Zscaler• Citrix (US),• CyberArk (US),• Crowdstrike (US),• Forcepoint (US),• Proofpoint (US),• ESET (Slovakia),• Seclore (US)• Openvpn• Security Onion• Wallarm• Venn• Cynet Security• Sentinelone• Issquared• Revbits• Securden• Axis Security• Others
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Market DynamicsDrivers:The sustained growth of remote work arrangements-propelled by technological advancements and the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic-remains a key driver for the remote work security market. As organizations increasingly implement flexible and hybrid work models, the demand for comprehensive cybersecurity solutions to protect sensitive information and ensure network integrity has intensified. The widespread reliance on cloud-based platforms has further accelerated market expansion, as employees access corporate resources from multiple locations and devices. This trend has amplified the need for advanced cloud security measures, including secure authentication protocols, access management systems, and robust data encryption technologies.
Challenges:Despite strong demand, the remote work security market faces notable constraints. Organizational resistance to change, budgetary restrictions, and the operational complexities associated with integrating multiple security solutions into existing IT infrastructures can impede adoption. Deploying effective protection across distributed and heterogeneous environments requires significant time, specialized expertise, and financial investment.
Additionally, the rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape-characterized by increasingly sophisticated attacks-necessitates continual adaptation of security strategies. Other critical challenges include maintaining regulatory compliance, safeguarding data privacy, and mitigating vulnerabilities in connected devices and supply chains, all of which heighten the complexity of securing remote work environments.
Regional Trends:North America is projected to retain a leading position in the global remote work security market, driven by the prevalence of sophisticated cyber threats, including phishing campaigns, ransomware attacks, and large-scale data breaches. The adoption of zero-trust security models, which emphasize continuous verification of users and devices, is increasingly prevalent among organizations supporting remote and hybrid workforces. Additionally, the extensive use of digital collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack underscores the necessity for robust cybersecurity solutions to protect communications and shared digital assets.
The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing rapid market growth, supported by advancements in localized cybersecurity solutions that account for regional language, cultural, and regulatory nuances. Investments by both government agencies and private enterprises in enhancing cyber resilience are bolstering the region’s market expansion. With demand for secure remote work environments continuing to rise, the APAC market represents significant opportunities for both domestic and international cybersecurity providers.
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Recent Developments• In November 2023, Microsoft launched its Secure Future Initiative. These engineering advancements predicted forthcoming cyber threats, such as the increasing frequency of digital assaults on identity systems. Additionally, they deliberated on the establishment of robust foundations essential for the era of artificial intelligence and subsequent periods.• In Aug 2023, Fortinet bolstered its single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution by incorporating more functionalities to facilitate remote work from any location. A unified vendor SASE approach ensured reliable security for a worldwide hybrid workforce operating both on-premises and remotely.
Segmentation of Remote Work Security Market –By Offerings-• Solutiono Professional Services Training & Consulting Integration & Implementation Support & Maintenanceo Managed Services• ServicesBy Security Type-• Endpoint Security:• Network Security• Cloud Security• Application securityBy Remote Work model• Fully Remote• Hybrid Remote• TemporaryBy Vertical• BSFI• Telecommunication• IT& ITes• Education• Retail & E-Commerce• Government• Media & Entertainment• OthersBy Region-North America-• The US• Canada• MexicoEurope-• Germany• The UK• France• Italy• Spain• Rest of EuropeAsia-Pacific-• China• Japan• India• South Korea• Southeast Asia• Rest of Asia PacificLatin America-• Brazil• Argentina• Rest of Latin AmericaMiddle East & Africa-• GCC Countries• South Africa• Rest of Middle East and Africa
About Us:InsightAce Analytic is a market research and consulting firm that enables clients to make strategic decisions. Our qualitative and quantitative market intelligence solutions inform the need for market and competitive intelligence to expand businesses. We help clients gain competitive advantage by identifying untapped markets, exploring new and competing technologies, segmenting potential markets and repositioning products. Our expertise is in providing syndicated and custom market intelligence reports with an in-depth analysis with key market insights in a timely and cost-effective manner.
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Coinbase will allow customers to trade stocks that aren’t tokenized.
The firm will also offer access to Kalshi-powered prediction markets.
The exchange’s app now supports novel assets on Solana.
Coinbase signaled on Wednesday that its platform is expanding beyond digital assets, with U.S. customers gaining access to traditional stock trading as part of a sweeping update.
In a livestreamed event, the exchange detailed changes to over a dozen new and existing products, ranging from prediction markets to decentralized finance on Solana, as well as an end-to-end platform for creating digital representations of real-world assets.
As a commission-free brokerage, Coinbase said it will support thousands of equities and exchange-traded funds in the coming months, which trade five days a week. The company also plans to introduce perpetual futures tied to stocks outside the U.S. next year.
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The offering mirrors services offered by competitors like Kraken and Robinhood, which Coinbase described as an “important milestone toward enabling tokenized stocks.” Coinbase also plans to debut a service allowing institutions to tokenize assets.
In an interview with Decrypt, Coinbase Head of Trading Scott Shapiro said the company hopes to offer access to tokenized stock trading in the coming quarter. He noted that Coinbase’s stock offering, from the get-go, is compatible with Circle’s USDC stablecoin.
“There’s still a lot of work to do,” he said, explaining that the tokenization timeline is largely dependent on guidance being crafted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “The government shutdown obviously didn’t help.”
Shapiro said that Coinbase’s model for tokenization will allow market participants to “wrap and unwrap” traditional shares, which can move across various blockchains and applications while “the underlying stock is still custodied in a safe place.”
Following Robinhood’s support of Kalshi-powered prediction markets this summer, Coinbase indicated that its entry into space will also tap the Polymarket competitor. The company noted that it plans to integrate additional prediction market platforms in the future.
The company said that it will also allow U.S. customers to trade perpetual futures, which allow traders to indefinitely hold leveraged positions tied to digital assets. In July, Coinbase began offering perpetual-style futures for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The company said that customers can now trade any asset that’s supported on a Solana-based decentralized exchange directly within Coinbase’s mobile app. The feature was teased in August, when Coinbase first offered access to tokens on its Ethereum layer-2 network, Base.
“With millions of assets on Base and Solana now available by default in the main Coinbase app, we’ll continue expanding to further networks over time,” a company blog post stated.
Coinbase highlighted that its Base app, a rebrand of the company’s self-custody wallet, has become available in 140 countries. The app allows users to earn from posts and play games, blending social elements with features that crypto users have grown accustomed to.
The company said its “system update” also entails an AI-powered advisor for wealth management that can help customers build portfolios or digest news.
Finally, the exchange said that it would offer a service allowing companies to create custom stablecoins, allowing them to put their “brand front-and-center in every transaction.” That dovetails with x402, an internet standard stablecoin payments that can be used to power AI agent payments, the exchange added.
Analysts at investment bank Compass Point estimated this week that Coinbase could take in $230 million annually from prediction markets. However, analysts at investment bank Mizuho also warned that a significant portion of users are likely to sell crypto to fund wagers.
Coinbase shares changed hands around $244 on Wednesday, according to Yahoo Finance. The company’s stock price has declined around nearly 2% year-to-date, as it continues to lay the groundwork for its vision for the future of finance.
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Bitwise is predicting a new Bitcoin all-time high in 2026 and the end of the four-year cycle.
The firm cited a weakening impact of the halving, the expectation of rate cuts, and a reduced risk of major blow-ups.
The firm also thinks Solana and Ethereum can make new all-time highs, on the condition that the CLARITY Act is passed into law.
Crypto investment firm and index fund manager Bitwise thinks Bitcoin will hit new all-time highs again in 2026, even after falling into a rut over the last two months.
The firm is predicting that the leading crypto asset will buck the trend of previous four-year cycles thanks to the diminishing strength of previous cycle indicators, and burst through to a new high mark above $126,080—its current all-time high set in early October.
“Bitcoin has historically moved in a four-year cycle, with three significant ‘up’ years followed by a sharp pullback year. According to this cycle, 2026 should be a pullback year,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan wrote.
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“We don’t see that happening,” he continued. “In our view, the forces that previously drove four-year cycles—the Bitcoin halving, interest rate cycles, and crypto’s leverage-fueled booms and busts—are significantly weaker than they’ve been in past cycles.”
Hougan also noted the continuing momentum of institutional capital that has been entering crypto since the approval of Bitcoin ETFs and regulatory tailwinds as reasons BTC is set to find new highs.
“We expect the combination of these factors will push Bitcoin to new all-time highs, relegating the four-year cycle to history’s dustbin,” he added.
BTC was recently changing hands at $87,800, up 2% over the last 24 hours but down more than 30% from its all-time high mark.
Despite its swing to new highs in 2025, over the course of the last year, the largest crypto asset by market cap is actually down nearly 18% according to data from CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, traditional equity indices like the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are up 14.5% and 12%, respectively, over the same time period.
Bitwise expects that correlation to deviate further in 2026 as well, once more citing regulatory progress and institutional adoption as reasons that Bitcoin’s correlation to the stock market will fall. The firm also predicted that Bitcoin, a historically volatile asset, will be less volatile than leading AI stock, Nvidia—the world’s largest publicly traded company by market cap.
Combining those predictions with the end of the four-year cycle gives investors the “trifecta” of strong returns, less volatility, and lower correlations, in Bitwise’s view.
Other notable predictions from the firm’s 2026 outlook include crypto equities outperforming tech stocks, half of Ivy League endowments making crypto investments, and new highs for Ethereum and Solana as well—but only if the CLARITY Act passes.
The firm expects the pair of layer-1 blockchains to benefit most from tokenization and stablecoins, crypto functions it calls “megatrends” that would be further solidified if the U.S. CLARITY Act, sometimes called the market structure bill, provides clear guidance on crypto regulation.
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For two years, decentralized finance operated on the concept that purely crypto-native assets could serve as the monetary base for a parallel financial system.
Ethereum staked through Lido anchored billions in DeFi loans, wrapped Bitcoin backed perpetual swaps, and algorithmic stablecoins recycled protocol emissions into synthetic dollars.
The entire edifice assumed crypto could bootstrap its own collateral hierarchy without touching the $27 trillion US Treasury market.
That assumption has broken quietly over the past 18 months. Tokenized US Treasuries and money-market funds now sit at roughly $9 billion across 60 distinct products and over 57,000 holder addresses, with an average seven-day yield near 3.8%. The growth in the period was more than five times.
Zoom out to the entire real-world asset stack and tokenized RWAs on public chains approach $19 billion, with government securities and income products dominating, according to rwa.xyz data.
Treasuries have become the spine of this stack, functionally replicating their role in the $5 trillion US repo market, the instrument against which everything else clears.
This is not boutique experimentation. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund reached nearly $3 billion in size, was accepted as collateral on Binance, and was extended to BNB Chain.
Franklin Templeton’s BENJI token represents over $800 million in a US-registered government money-market fund, with its shareholder records maintained on seven different networks.
Circle’s USYC quietly surpassed $1.3 billion in July, fueled by a partnership with Binance that enabled institutional investors to use the token as collateral for derivatives trading.
JPMorgan launched a $100 million tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum that allows qualified investors to subscribe and redeem in USDC. The plumbing connecting Wall Street custody to Ethereum rails is in production, not proof-of-concept.
Tokenized US Treasury products grew from under $2 billion in mid-2024 to nearly $10 billion by late 2025 across multiple issuers.
Wall Street custody meets Ethereum settlement
The issuer landscape reveals two competing theories of how crypto collateral evolves.
BlackRock’s BUIDL operates as a tokenized institutional liquidity fund managed by Securitize, with Bank of New York Mellon handling custody and fund administration. Shares represented by BUIDL tokens invest in cash, US Treasuries, and repos.
Redemptions are made in USDC, with a $250,000 minimum and no redemption fee, placing BUIDL squarely in the institutional lane. Its acceptance as collateral on centralized exchanges and extension to multiple chains positions it as high-grade, dollar-denominated collateral for crypto derivatives and basis trades.
Franklin Templeton took a different path with its OnChain US Government Money Fund, which tokenizes the shareholder registry itself: one share equals one BENJI token, with transfer and record-keeping maintained on-chain rather than in a legacy transfer-agent database.
The fund remains a registered US government money-market fund, the innovation sits in where the ledger lives.
This approach bets that public blockchains can serve as a primary record for regulated securities, not just as a secondary token layer on top of traditional systems.
Janus Henderson’s Anemoy Treasury Fund and Ondo Finance’s OUSG sit at opposite ends of a third axis. Anemoy deploys tokens across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Celo, emphasizing multichain resilience, and has earned an S&P rating focused on its tokenization architecture.
Ondo, by contrast, operates as a DeFi-native issuer partnering with institutional back-ends. Its OUSG product offers 24/7 minting and redemption in USDC or PayPal’s PYUSD, targeting qualified investors who want Treasury exposure without leaving crypto-native rails.
Ondo’s broader platform reached $1.4 billion in total value locked by mid-2025, with roughly half tied to tokenized Treasury products, and has since expanded multichain.
Smaller issuers fill the composability tail. Matrixdock’s STBT rebases interest daily and maintains a one-to-one peg with the dollar, backed by T-bills maturing within six months and reverse repos.OpenEden’s TBILL token earned a Moody’s “A” rating and can be used as collateral in DeFi protocols.
On Solana, nearly $530 million of the $792 million in tokenized real-world assets are US Treasuries, with Ondo’s USDY commanding roughly $175 million and behaving like an interest-bearing stablecoin inside Solana DeFi applications.
Redemption mechanics constrain composability
Mechanically, most tokenized Treasury products follow the same spine. A regulated fund or special-purpose vehicle holds short-dated US government securities and repos with a traditional custodian, such as BNY Mellon.
A transfer agent or tokenization platform mints ERC-20 or equivalent tokens representing fund shares, recorded on Ethereum or other layer-one blockchains.
Franklin’s BENJI maintains the shareholder record on-chain. Meanwhile, BUIDL and OpenEden’s TBILL keep securities custody and fund administration firmly within traditional trust structures, while issuing tokens representing economic claims.
Ondo’s OUSG offers instant 24/7 minting and redemptions in USDC or PYUSD, with the number of tokens multiplied by net asset value determining what an investor receives.
These are not tokenized CUSIPs that anyone can burn for a T-bill at the Federal Reserve. They are tokenized fund shares with specific redemption windows, minimum sizes, and know-your-customer requirements, even if the tokens themselves live on public blockchains.
That distinction limits composability. Many of these tokens exist in allow-listed smart contracts, and only KYC’d wallets can hold or move them. Some have minimum redemption sizes in the six-figure range, and full composability is often restricted to “KYC-DeFi” venues rather than public permissionless pools.
Yet within those constraints, composability is advancing on two layers. At the institutional layer, tokenized Treasury funds function as margin collateral.
The Financial Times reported that tokenized Treasury and money-market funds are increasingly used as collateral for over-the-counter derivatives, allowing dealers to move collateral 24/7 rather than being tied to bank operating hours.
USYC’s growth is another sign, as it has grown nearly six times since Circle and Binance partnered.
Circle’s USYC tokenized money-market fund grew from roughly $250 million in July 2025 to approximately $1.3 billion by December across multiple blockchains.
At the DeFi layer, integration is more fragmented but real. OpenEden’s TBILL tokens can be posted as collateral in DeFi lending protocols such as River, with secondary liquidity on decentralized exchanges and RWA marketplaces.
Matrixdock’s STBT integrates with RWA yield platforms, offering roughly 5% APY on short-term Treasuries, with instant minting and redemption coordinated with stablecoins like Ripple’s RLUSD.
MakerDAO held approximately $900 million in RWA collateral, much of it US Treasuries, by mid-2025, with plans to raise that share under the Sky Protocol rebrand.
Frax’s sFRAX vault directly purchases US Treasuries via a partner bank and passes through a yield tracking the overnight repo rate. Tens of millions of sFRAX staked, yielding near 5%.
Protocols like Pendle treat yield-bearing collateral, including RWA-backed stablecoins and sDAI, as inputs into an on-chain interest-rate curve by splitting principal and yield into separate tokens.
As tokenized T-bills and Treasury-backed stablecoins proliferate, Pendle and similar markets become the price-discovery layer for short-end rates in DeFi.
On Solana, more than 50% of tokenized RWAs are US Treasuries, with Ondo’s USDY and OUSG among the largest positions, according to DefiLlama data.
Tokenized US Treasuries on Solana climbed from roughly $5 billion to over $10 billion in 2025, reaching $8.4 billion by mid-December.
Ethereum functions as the regulatory spine, with BUIDL, BENJI, and Anemoy, while Solana operates as a high-throughput rail where Treasury-backed tokens behave almost like interest-bearing stablecoins in DeFi applications.
Regulatory friction and systemic risk
The regulatory architecture sits across three questions: who can hold these tokens, where they are registered, and how they intersect with stablecoin rules.
Most large issuers operate as money-market funds or professional funds under existing securities law. BENJI/FOBXX is a US-registered government money-market fund.
OpenEden’s TBILL Fund is a British Virgin Islands-regulated professional fund overseen by the BVI Financial Services Commission. Janus Henderson’s Anemoy earned an S&P rating focused on its tokenization setup and controls.
Regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets and, in the US, proposed stablecoin legislation explicitly reference tokenized Treasuries and money-market funds, providing clarity for issuers on wrapping government debt in tokens.
However, most of this composability remains permissioned. KYC-DeFi venues, not public permissionless pools, host the majority of integration.
When it comes to systemic risk, convergence with stablecoins matters most. Back in mid-2024, Circle held roughly $28.1 billion in short-dated US Treasuries and overnight reverse repos for USDC reserves, out of a total of $28.6 billion in reserves.
Even before Treasuries became popular on-chain as freely movable tokens, they were already the unseen collateral behind systemically important stablecoins.
Tokenization makes the collateral itself portable, pledgeable, and, in some cases, composable as DeFi money.
In short, stablecoins already monetized Treasuries as reserve assets. Tokenized Treasury funds now bring that collateral on-chain, where it can be rehypothecated, margined, and composed into rate curves and structured products.
Yield cycle or structural shift
Two forces explain the growth trajectory. On the cyclical side, the 2023 to 2025 rate environment provided an obvious tailwind.
Front-end US yields range from 4% to 5%, making tokenized T-bills a clear upgrade over zero-yield stablecoins, especially for market-making firms and decentralized autonomous organizations that need to park idle cash on-chain.
Issuance climbed from roughly $1.3 billion in early 2024 to $9 billion as of Dec. 15, closely tracking the rise in front-end rates.
On the structural side, several data points argue this extends beyond a trade on the rate cycle. Total tokenized RWAs on public chains crossed $18.5 billion, with government debt as the anchor.
Tokenized Treasury funds have become accepted collateral for crypto derivatives and centralized exchange margin, and institutions like JPMorgan are launching tokenized money-market funds on Ethereum explicitly to take advantage of 24/7 settlement and stablecoin rails.
DeFi’s monetary base has quietly shifted from pure crypto to a blend of stablecoins and RWA-backed instruments. Maker, Frax, and others increasingly rely on Treasuries and repos as collateral.
Pendle and similar protocols build on-chain rate curves that reference those instruments.
Solana’s RWA landscape is dominated by Treasury-backed tokens that behave like yield-bearing stablecoins inside DeFi applications.
Tokenized Treasuries are evolving into crypto’s repo market: a base layer of dollar-denominated, state-backed collateral that everything else, perpetual swaps, basis trades, stablecoin issuance, and prediction market margin, will increasingly clear against.
Whether today’s $9 billion becomes $80 billion depends on regulation and rates, but the plumbing is in production on Ethereum and Solana. The question is no longer whether TradFi collateral migrates on-chain, but how fast DeFi protocols rewire around it.
