Crypto Insights

Bitcoin has spent a decade being described as digital property. This month it started acting like collateral against the physical kind.

Hunter Biden launched the LAPTOP token at 8:02am ET on Wednesday 9 September 2026, and it lost roughly 98% of its value inside an hour.

• Pharos Network has launched PGNGI+, an on‑chain infrastructure fund product linked to Partners Group, extending its RealFi ecosystem beyond basic DeFi into tokenised infrastructure income rights.
• Pharos currently holds about US$127.75 million in active RWA value and US$6.79 million in DeFi TVL, which is materially smaller than leading RWA platforms such as Ondo ~US$3.44b TVL, Securitize ~US$4.96b, Maple ~US$2.23b and Centrifuge ~US$1.63b.
• The broader RWA sector is fragmenting by niche - tokenised funds and Treasuries Ondo, Centrifuge, institutional credit, and regulated issuance across many chains - with competition centred on institutional access, compliance frameworks and on‑chain liquidity.

• Ethereum is evaluating 66 proposals for its upcoming Hegotá upgrade, with FOCIL already chosen as the consensus-layer headliner and other ideas targeting privacy, account abstraction and censorship resistance.
• Ethereum still dominates DeFi with about US$41.35 billion in TVL, well ahead of Solana ~US$4.82b, BNB Chain ~US$4.87b, Avalanche ~US$0.43b and Cardano ~US$0.06b.
• Each rival chain is also upgrading—Solana on speed and client diversity, BNB Chain via the Pasteur hard fork, Avalanche with Helicon execution/validator changes, and Cardano through on-chain governed hard forks - creating different trade-offs in speed, security, governance and scalability.

• eToro’s acquisition of TradeZero highlights a broader shift toward crypto and stock market integration.
• Exchanges are expanding beyond cryptocurrencies into tokenised stocks, equities, and multi-asset trading platforms.
• Regulation and licensing remain the biggest barriers to this next phase of digital asset expansion.

• Grayscale has withdrawn three crypto ETF applications, putting the spotlight back on the next wave of token approvals.
• The strongest comparable assets are Solana, XRP, Litecoin, and Ethereum, which remain central to ETF and institutional access discussions.
• The biggest challenge remains regulatory approval standards and how the US SEC evaluates different crypto assets.

• Hardware wallet sales in Russia have more than doubled, pointing to stronger demand for self-custody.
• The trend is also visible across major hardware wallet providers, with users increasingly moving assets off exchanges.
• The main risk remains self-custody responsibility, including device security and recovery phrase management.

• BitGo reported 19% second-quarter revenue growth and US$4.3 billion in custody assets.
• Institutional crypto infrastructure firms are competing across custody, settlement, staking, and trading services.
• Regulation, security requirements, and institutional licensing remain the biggest barriers in this sector.

• Neutrl halted redemptions for its US$486 million NUSD stablecoin after reserve concerns emerged around its exposure to Resolv.
• The situation has drawn attention to reserve transparency, collateral structures, and liquidity risks across decentralised stablecoin projects.
• Reserve quality and redemption access remain the key factors separating more resilient stablecoin models from structurally weaker ones.

• Bitcoin miners generated US$875.35 million in July, up US$38.93 million from June’s US$836.41 million.
• Bitcoin hash price rose from US$29.01 to US$31.59 per PH/s over 30 days, improving revenue from computing power.
• Higher mining difficulty, BIP-110 signalling and competition for computing power remain key pressures across proof-of-work networks.

• Samsung Electronics plans native stablecoin support through Samsung Wallet as its Galaxy AI device base targets 800 million.
• USD Coin (CRYPTO:USDC) had US$72.3 billion circulating on 27 July, while PayPal USD (CRYPTO:PYUSD) recently exceeded US$2.6 billion.
• Samsung has not confirmed the stablecoin, blockchain, custody model, eligible markets or launch date, leaving the final distribution model unclear.

• BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) launched two tokenised money market products for regulated US stablecoin reserve management.
• Its existing BUIDL fund holds more than US$2.6 billion, while USDC circulation stood at US$72.3 billion on 27 July.
• Regulatory eligibility, blockchain interoperability and institutional access remain key barriers as tokenised Treasury products expand.