Hedge funds built a $1.2 trillion Treasury trade on money they have to keep borrowing
Companies can own a mountain of US government debt without betting that bond prices will rise. Hedge funds buy Treasury securities and sell futures against them to collect a small pricing gap, borrowing most of the purchase money to make the return…
Kalshi’s $40 billion growth story hits tough questions about its trading volume
Kalshi is ending a trader-volume incentive program nearly a year early as scrutiny of activity in its crypto markets intensifies. The prediction-market operator told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that its Volume Incentive Program will…
Bitcoin slips below $85,000 as 5% Treasury yield returns to haunt risk assets
Bitcoin fell below $85,000 on Sept. 23 after stronger-than-expected US business activity sent Treasury yields higher and flushed leveraged longs. The reversal broke the momentum behind a rebound that had accelerated as Bitcoin pushed through a large…
Circle pays millions for Binance distribution while its margins collapse
Circle is doubling down on Binance after USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin customer balances on the exchange nearly quintupled since their first agreement. On Sept. 22, the companies announced a new five-year commercial agreement alongside Binance’s $100…
A new XRPL upgrade could concentrate XRP ownership inside banks instead of retail wallets
A proposed XRP Ledger (XRPL) upgrade could let banks and fintechs absorb XRP costs so customers never need to hold the token. The Sponsor amendment, based on the XLS-68 Sponsored Fees and Reserves proposal, would let a company pay account reserves and…
Circle’s Arc launch ties Wall Street firms to the network without making them its safety net
Circle is tying major financial institutions to its Arc blockchain as operators, investors, and future users ahead of its Sept. 16 mainnet launch. BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, and ICE are among 11 outside institutions Circle named as founding…
Why Nasdaq surveillance cannot settle the fight over 24/7 tokenized markets
Nasdaq’s agreement to invest $100 million in Payward, Kraken’s parent company, adds a planned surveillance rollout to a push into tokenized and always-on markets. One day earlier, Citadel Securities asked U.S. regulators to keep products tied…
Strategy erased nearly $8 billion of net debt in 11 months and put S&P’s junk rating on the clock
Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury firm, is making a case for an escape from its B- junk credit rating after building billions of dollars in liquidity and reducing debt. On Sept. 10, Strategy’s head of investor relations, Chaitanya Jain, said the…
Strategy doubles its stock buyback to $2 billion to pull its STRC shares back to $100
Strategy doubled the size of its preferred-stock repurchase program to $2 billion Tuesday as Michael Saylor’s Sept. 8 recovery benchmark arrived with STRC still short of its $100 stated value. The board’s decision extends a campaign that was approaching…
El Salvador added 1,540 Bitcoin, but the IMF says Bukele’s government didn’t pay for them
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says El Salvador’s Bitcoin reserve growth over the past year came from private donations, not new government spending. In its latest review of the country’s loan program, the global financial agency said documents…