Polygon Opens Its Money Stack To TRON’s $94 Billion USDT Market

TL;DR: Polygon Open Money Stack now supports TRON, giving payment and fintech businesses a single infrastructure layer for bank transfers, wallets, cross-chain routing and payouts involving TRC-20 USDT. Polygon says more than $94 billion of USDT currently circulates on TRON.

Polygon has spent much of 2026 trying to turn its Open Money Stack into infrastructure for moving real money rather than just crypto between wallets.

Its latest integration goes straight to one of the largest pools of stablecoin liquidity in the world.

Polygon Labs announced Thursday that Open Money Stack now supports TRON, allowing businesses to accept, hold, route and pay out USDT on the network while connecting those flows to fiat banking rails and other blockchains.

The attraction is obvious.

Polygon says TRON carries more than $94 billion in circulating USDT, representing more than half of the stablecoin’s supply across supported chains.

That liquidity is already heavily used in remittances, exchange transfers and dollar-based payments in markets where access to traditional banking can be expensive or slow.

Open Money Stack is designed to sit around that activity.

A business can give a customer a persistent TRON deposit address, accept USDT, hold the balance through an appropriate wallet model, route assets to other chains when required and eventually pay money out to a bank account, card, cash pickup location or another wallet.

The important part is that the customer does not necessarily have to see any of the cross-chain plumbing.

Polygon Trails can route assets between TRON and EVM networks so, for example, one side of a transaction can begin with USDT on TRON and the other can settle in a different supported stablecoin elsewhere.

That is very different from asking the user to find a bridge and move the funds themselves.

The integration also says something about Polygon’s strategy.

Rather than insisting that payment activity must happen on Polygon’s own chain, Open Money Stack is increasingly being presented as an orchestration layer that can work around whichever network customers already use.

TRON is a particularly strong test of that approach because many users are not choosing it for ideological reasons. They use it because USDT liquidity and payment habits already exist there.

For a remittance business, forcing those customers to migrate to another blockchain would add friction for little benefit.

Polygon’s answer is to let TRON remain the balance layer while its own software handles the surrounding services.

That could make the Open Money Stack business more valuable even when the end user never knows Polygon is involved.

Stablecoin competition is therefore moving beyond which network has the most supply.

The next battle is over the infrastructure connecting those balances to bank accounts, businesses and other chains.

TRON already has the dollars.

Polygon now wants to provide more of the machinery around them.

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Winklevoss Zcash ETF Filing Brings Privacy Coin Exposure To Nasdaq

TL;DR: Winklevoss Asset Services has filed an S-1 with the SEC for the Winklevoss Zcash ETF, a proposed Nasdaq-listed product designed to hold ZEC directly. The preliminary prospectus sets a 0.25% sponsor fee, while Winklevoss Capital has indicated nonbinding interest in purchasing up to $100 million of shares.

Zcash has entered the US crypto ETF race.

A new registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission proposes the launch of the Winklevoss Zcash ETF, an exchange-traded product designed to give investors exposure to ZEC held directly by the trust.

The shares are expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK if the product clears the regulatory process and becomes effective.

The filing immediately makes the proposed fund one of the more unusual additions to the widening US crypto ETF market.

Bitcoin and Ethereum established the first major spot products, but issuers have increasingly pushed into individual altcoins and staking assets.

Zcash brings a different regulatory conversation with it because privacy sits at the center of the network’s design.

According to the prospectus, the trust’s objective is straightforward: hold ZEC and provide exposure to its price, minus the fund’s operating expenses and other liabilities.

The proposed sponsor fee is 0.25% annually.

The document also discloses a potentially substantial source of early demand.

Winklevoss Capital Fund, through one or more affiliates, has indicated an interest in purchasing as much as $100 million worth of shares.

That indication is explicitly nonbinding.

The fund could ultimately buy more, less or nothing at all, so it should not be treated as committed seed capital. But its inclusion gives some idea of the scale at which the sponsors may be thinking about the product.

The filing also makes clear that SEC registration is not the same thing as approval.

The preliminary prospectus can be amended, and the securities cannot be sold until the registration statement becomes effective.

Still, the filing matters for Zcash.

An exchange-traded vehicle would place direct ZEC exposure inside the same brokerage infrastructure increasingly used for other digital assets.

It would also force regulators and market infrastructure providers to engage more directly with the practical questions surrounding a privacy-focused cryptocurrency inside a regulated investment product.

That may ultimately be the more significant part of the application.

The crypto ETF market is no longer only expanding by adding more assets.

It is beginning to test how far the traditional fund structure can stretch across very different kinds of blockchain networks.

Zcash is now part of that test.

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Ethereum ETFs Lose $201.9 Million As Bitcoin Funds Return To Inflows

TL;DR: US spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $201.9 million in net outflows on October 6, according to Farside Investors. Bitcoin ETFs moved the other way with roughly $118.8 million of net inflows, creating a sharp one-day divergence between institutional flows into the two largest crypto assets.

Ethereum’s US spot ETFs just suffered their heaviest day of withdrawals in weeks.

Data from Farside Investors shows the group recorded $201.9 million in net outflows on October 6, extending a difficult start to the month for Ether investment products.

The entire daily outflow shown by Farside came from BlackRock’s ETHA, while the other tracked products recorded no net movement for the session.

The size of the withdrawal stands out on its own.

But the contrast with Bitcoin makes the session more notable.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately $118.8 million in net inflows on the same day, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $122 million of positive flow before smaller movements elsewhere in the group.

That left the market with a clear divergence: investors were adding money to Bitcoin products while pulling more than $200 million from Ethereum funds.

A single day of ETF flows should not be treated as a referendum on either asset.

Institutional products regularly experience large creations and redemptions for reasons ranging from portfolio rebalancing to short-term trading strategies.

But the October 6 numbers sit inside a broader run of negative Ethereum ETF sessions.

Farside recorded $55.4 million of ETH ETF outflows on October 1, $37.4 million on October 2 and another $50.8 million on October 5 before the much larger October 6 withdrawal.

That makes the latest session harder to dismiss as an isolated print.

ETF flows matter because the products have become one of the cleanest gauges of demand from investors who want crypto exposure through traditional brokerage and asset-management channels.

For Bitcoin, that channel has repeatedly attracted substantial capital.

Ethereum’s products have also accumulated meaningful assets, but their flow profile has at times been less consistent.

The question now is whether the October withdrawals represent a temporary repositioning or the beginning of a more persistent gap between institutional demand for BTC and ETH.

The next few sessions should make that clearer.

For now, however, the message from October 6 is unusually clean.

Bitcoin ETF investors were buying.

Ethereum ETF investors were heading for the exits.

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Ethereum Tests 200 Million Gas Limit On Sepolia As Glamsterdam Moves Forward

TL;DR: Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet is testing a 200 million block gas limit as part of work around the Glamsterdam upgrade. The experiment is more than three times Sepolia’s previous 60 million target and is intended to show how clients and validators behave under much heavier Layer 1 execution loads.

Ethereum developers have pushed Sepolia into a significantly more aggressive scaling test.

The testnet is now being used to evaluate a 200 million block gas limit alongside work associated with the Glamsterdam upgrade, giving developers a chance to observe how Ethereum’s infrastructure behaves when individual blocks are allowed to carry far more computation.

Sepolia had previously been operating around a 60 million gas target.

Moving to 200 million does not mean Ethereum mainnet is about to receive the same limit.

It is an experiment.

That distinction matters because increasing the gas limit can increase the amount of activity Ethereum processes directly on Layer 1, but it also raises the demands placed on nodes and validators.

Larger blocks can create heavier execution loads, increase state growth and expose bottlenecks that are less visible at lower capacity.

Sepolia gives developers somewhere to find those problems before similar changes are considered for mainnet.

The latest testing is taking place alongside Glamsterdam-related development, including work on Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation and Block-Level Access Lists.

Both are aimed at deeper changes to how Ethereum constructs and processes blocks.

Block-Level Access Lists, in particular, are designed to make it easier for clients to understand which pieces of state a block will touch. That has implications for parallel execution, where different parts of a block can potentially be processed more efficiently rather than every operation being treated as a strictly sequential workload.

Client software has also had to adapt.

Prysm released an updated version containing validator parameters for the higher Sepolia gas target ahead of the test.

The 200 million figure is therefore best viewed as a stress test rather than a promise.

Ethereum’s recent scaling strategy has increasingly involved improving Layer 1 capacity while continuing to rely on rollups for a large part of user-facing transaction growth.

Those two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

A stronger base layer can give rollups more room to settle activity while also making direct Ethereum transactions less constrained.

What developers need to establish is how far they can push that capacity without compromising network stability or making hardware requirements unreasonable.

Sepolia is now helping answer that question at 200 million gas.

If the network handles the experiment cleanly, it gives Ethereum developers more evidence for how aggressively Layer 1 throughput can be increased in future upgrades.

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Cardano Brings Compliance Rules On-Chain With CIP-0113 Launch

TL;DR: Cardano’s CIP-0113 programmable token standard is now live on mainnet. It gives issuers the ability to build controls such as KYC requirements, sanctions screening and transfer restrictions directly into native Cardano assets, targeting regulated stablecoins, funds and tokenized securities.

Cardano has launched a new token standard aimed squarely at one of the hardest problems in institutional blockchain adoption: how regulated assets can exist on a public network without giving up the controls their issuers are legally required to enforce.

The Cardano Foundation announced that CIP-0113 is now live on mainnet following development work with members of the Cardano community and multiple security audits.

The standard allows issuers to add programmable controls directly to native Cardano tokens.

Those controls can include know-your-customer requirements, sanctions restrictions, transfer rules and mechanisms that restrict or freeze assets under predefined conditions.

That puts CIP-0113 in a very different category from a conventional token standard.

Its target market is regulated financial assets.

Stablecoin issuers, tokenized funds, bonds and other real-world asset providers often need to know who can receive an asset, where it can be transferred and what happens when a wallet becomes sanctioned or otherwise ineligible.

Public blockchains historically make that awkward. Their default model is permissionless transfer.

CIP-0113 gives an issuer the ability to preserve Cardano’s native asset model while attaching rules to a particular programmable token.

The change does not rewrite the rules governing ADA itself.

Instead, the controls apply only to assets specifically issued using the new standard. That separation is important because it means Cardano can add infrastructure suited to regulated finance without turning the underlying network or its native currency into permissioned systems.

The Cardano Foundation also said CIP-0113 has been recognized by the Swiss Capital Markets and Technology Association.

Several ecosystem tools and wallets are supporting the standard at launch.

The bigger test will be whether financial institutions actually use it.

Crypto networks have spent the past several years competing for real-world assets, stablecoins and tokenized funds. In that market, raw transaction speed is only part of the equation.

Issuers also need compliance tooling, custody, reliable settlement and clear ways to enforce the legal restrictions attached to an underlying asset.

CIP-0113 is Cardano’s attempt to build more of that logic into the asset itself.

If issuers adopt it, the standard could give Cardano a clearer route into regulated tokenization without requiring a separate permissioned chain.

That is a considerably more important use case than simply adding another token format.

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Ripple Prime Expands Brevan Howard Deal Into Multi-Asset Clearing And Financing

TL;DR: Ripple has expanded its relationship with global investment manager Brevan Howard, with Ripple Prime now providing multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing services to Brevan Howard funds. The agreement pushes Ripple further into institutional market infrastructure spanning both traditional and digital assets.

Ripple’s institutional ambitions are moving further beyond payments.

The company has expanded its relationship with Brevan Howard in a deal that will see Ripple Prime provide the global alternative investment manager with multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing services.

The expanded agreement puts Ripple Prime closer to the plumbing of institutional trading rather than simply the movement of money between counterparties.

Brevan Howard will gain access to prime services across traditional and digital markets through a unified platform designed to improve capital efficiency and simplify operations.

That is an important distinction for Ripple.

The company remains closely associated with XRP and its payments business, but Ripple has steadily built a broader institutional financial infrastructure operation around custody, stablecoins and prime brokerage.

Ripple Prime sits at the heart of that expansion.

The business emerged from Ripple’s acquisition and integration of institutional brokerage capabilities and is designed to give professional investors a single framework for trading, financing and managing positions across asset classes.

Brevan Howard is a significant name to bring deeper into that system.

The global macro investment manager has been active around digital assets for years and has also participated indirectly in Ripple’s broader financing story. An affiliate of Brevan Howard was involved in Ripple’s previously announced $500 million strategic investment round.

The latest agreement turns that relationship into something more operational.

Instead of simply backing a company exposed to digital assets, Brevan Howard funds will now use Ripple infrastructure for functions normally associated with institutional prime brokers.

Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel said the expanded relationship reflected demand for infrastructure capable of spanning conventional and digital markets without forcing institutional clients to operate through disconnected systems.

For Ripple, that cross-asset positioning may ultimately be more important than any single crypto product.

Institutional adoption has often been discussed in terms of whether a hedge fund owns Bitcoin or whether an asset manager launches a crypto fund. But as the market matures, the less visible infrastructure beneath those trades increasingly matters.

Clearing, collateral, financing, custody and capital efficiency are all parts of the same institutional stack.

Ripple is betting that it can own a larger part of it.

And with Brevan Howard expanding its use of Ripple Prime, that strategy has just picked up one of its more credible institutional endorsements yet.

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Robinhood Puts $25 Million Of Bitcoin On Its Own Balance Sheet

TL;DR: Robinhood has added $25 million worth of Bitcoin to its corporate balance sheet, marking its first proprietary BTC holding separate from customer assets. The amount is small relative to Robinhood’s roughly $100 billion valuation, but the company says that is partly the point: the purchase is intended as a signal of alignment with Bitcoin and the wider crypto market.

Robinhood has spent years building a business around giving customers access to crypto. Now it has put some of its own money into Bitcoin.

Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Crypto and International, confirmed that the company has purchased $25 million worth of BTC for its corporate balance sheet.

Crucially, the Bitcoin is Robinhood’s own. It is separate from the crypto the company holds on behalf of customers.

That distinction turns what would otherwise be a relatively modest purchase into a more interesting strategic move.

Robinhood is not attempting to transform itself into a Bitcoin treasury company in the mold of firms whose balance sheets are dominated by BTC. Against a market capitalization of roughly $100 billion, a $25 million allocation is small.

Kerbrat acknowledged as much while explaining the thinking behind the move.

The purpose is less about materially changing Robinhood’s financial position and more about putting the company alongside the asset and ecosystem it has increasingly built around.

Robinhood’s involvement in crypto has expanded well beyond simple spot trading. The company has been building out crypto products, international services and blockchain infrastructure as it tries to position itself as a broader financial platform.

Holding Bitcoin directly adds another layer to that strategy.

It also makes Robinhood the latest publicly traded company to move BTC from something offered to customers into something held at the corporate level.

That trend has taken several different forms. Some businesses have made Bitcoin accumulation a central capital allocation policy. Others have made smaller purchases that function more as strategic reserves or statements of conviction.

Robinhood currently appears to sit firmly in the second category.

There is also no indication that the company has committed itself to a fixed recurring BTC purchase program.

For now, the $25 million position looks deliberately restrained.

But the symbolism is difficult to miss. A company with tens of millions of funded accounts, a growing crypto operation and an expanding blockchain strategy has decided that offering Bitcoin is no longer enough.

Robinhood now owns some too.

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