A bitcoin symbol (Artur Widak/Getty Images)

Asset Entities to merge with Ramaswamy’s Strive and launch bitcoin treasury

Shares of the company skyrocketed on the announcement.

9/10/25 12:14PM

Asset Entities’ shareholders have approved a merger with Strive, founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, to launch a bitcoin treasury. Shares of Asset Entities jumped 145% in premarket trading on Wednesday and were up 50% as of 12:00 p.m. ET. The company expects to raise up to $1.5 billion from its PIPE deal if the warrants are exercised.

Meanwhile, bitcoin-native venture Nakamoto has invested $30 million in Metaplanet. This is Nakamoto’s “largest single investment to date and its first in an Asian public company with a bitcoin treasury strategy,” the company said in a press release.

The investment is part of Metaplanet’s recently announced international equity financing in its common stock. On Tuesday, the company announced it had upsized the offering to 385 million shares and raised $1.4 billion. Initially, the bitcoin treasury said it planned to raise up to $880 million by issuing up to 5 million new shares, according to a regulatory filing.

The bulk of the proceeds will be used to buy bitcoin. The company holds 20,136 bitcoin. Shares, which have been struggling — down 36.7% in the past month — jumped on the announcement.

In other bitcoin news:

UK-based The Smarter Web acquired 30 bitcoin and now holds 2,470 bitcoin, as part of its “10 Year Plan” strategy.
Bitcoin ETFs have continued to experience inflows, amassing $391.3 million, SoSoValue data shows.
Bitcoin miner Canaan announced it mined 98 bitcoin in August, a 10% month-over-month increase. The company now holds 1,547 bitcoin.

Sage D. Young2h

Crypto IPOs hit pause as “appetite has been sold to AI”

The rule of three means we can now declare 2026 will not be the year of crypto IPOs:

Ethereum development firm Consenys,
Security hardware company Ledger,
And crypto exchange Kraken are pausing plans to go public, according to reports from CoinDesk.

The companies have delayed their IPOs due to tough market conditions, the report said, including declined trading volume in digital assets, weak price performance of tokens, and investor interest in other sectors.

Kay Kyeongsik Woo, the founder of blockchain ride-hailing application Tada, told Sherwood News, “The market is cooled down and investors’ appetite has been sold to AI.”

Just today, AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems went public and is this year’s largest IPO so far, and investors are excited about potential IPOs for OpenAI and Anthropic as their valuations soar.

“It’s a fair decision on behalf of all the crypto firms,” according to Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth. “For one thing, they will ultimately be dwarfed by some of the other massive IPOs coming up.”

Unsworth also pointed to how the CLARITY Act, if passed, could be a strong tailwind for these companies. “A better regulatory environment could make these companies more appealing to potential investors,” he said.

Consensys, Ledger, and Kraken did not confirm to Sherwood if they had put their IPO plans on hold. A Consensys spokesperson told Sherwood, “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on market speculation,” while a Ledger representative declined to comment on the story.

Meanwhile, Lauren Post, Kraken’s vice president of corporate communications, told Sherwood that the company did not put out any public statements on freezing IPO plans.

Sage D. Young5/13/26

XRP tops 24-hour chart on South Korean crypto exchange

XRP is among South Korea’s favorite coins.

In the last 24 hours, XRP saw the highest trading volume on South Korean exchange Upbit at over $105.3 million, a figure exceeding bitcoin’s $102.6 million, ethereum’s $62.9 million, and dogecoin’s $27.7 million, data from CoinGecko shows.

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs saw $5.3 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing monthly inflows to more than $65.3 million, according to SoSoValue.

The activity has not, however, translated into positive momentum for the token, with XRP remaining flat at the $1.43 level in the period.

Prediction market-implied odds of XRP rising above $1.50 in May (a level that hasn’t been surpassed in over two months) now stand at 70%, up from as low as 9% at the start of the week.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

XRP returning to Upbit’s leadership position in trading volume follows the news earlier this week that Ripple’s prime brokerage unit secured a $200 million debt facility from global investment management firm Neuberger Berman to aid with the unit’s margin financing solutions.

Elsewhere, the XRP Ledger notched a new record of 332,000 addresses holding at least 10,000 tokens, worth $14,300, per data analytics platform Santiment. “Historically, rising numbers of mid-to-large wallets suggest increasing conviction from investors who are less focused on short-term price swings and more interested in long-term positioning,” Santiment posted Tuesday night on X.

“This is especially notable because XRP has spent much of 2026 trading below previous highs, meaning many holders appear willing to accumulate during fear rather than chase momentum,” Santiment added.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

5/13/26

CLARITY Act could help reshape bitcoin’s narrative for second half of 2026

“Thursday isn’t the finish line, it’s the gate. A clean markup is what tells institutional capital it’s safe to come off the sidelines.”

EL SALVADOR-ECONOMY-CRYPTOCURRENCY-BITCOIN

$6.75B

Sage D. Young5/12/26

Cryptocurrency theft has become a huge source of state revenue for North Korea.

Between 2016 and early 2026, threat actors linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have stolen ~$6.75 billion across 263 documented incidents, security services provider CertiK estimated in a report published Tuesday morning.

The data likely falls short of the actual magnitude, as hundreds of smaller exploits against individuals and early-stage projects remain underreported.

“DPRK actors have consistently targeted humans and supply chain weaknesses rather than smart contract code vulnerabilities,” the report stated. “Across nearly a decade of operations, their primary attack vector has rarely been code. It has almost always been people.”

For example, North Korea’s more than $270 million exploit on solana-based protocol Drift was six months in the making. It involved Drift contributors physically meeting in multiple industry conferences across several countries with people claiming to be part of a quantitative trading firm.

DPRK actors who siphoned $625 million from the Ronin network in 2022 also used a social element: an exploiter impersonated a job recruiter on LinkedIn and provided a fake offer to an employee at Sky Mavis, the firm backing Ronin, through a PDF infected with malicious spyware.

“They are state employees executing a strategic mandate with the full backing of a nuclear-armed government. Their persistence, resources, and willingness to invest months in a single operation reflect institutional incentives that no criminal enterprise can match,” the report added.

“The fundamental challenge remains: North Korea has weaponized cryptocurrency theft as an essential revenue stream for regime survival. Until that incentive structure changes, the threat will persist and evolve.”

Last month, the decentralized finance ecosystem saw 28 hacks, the highest monthly number of exploits ever, totaling $635.2 million, with the largest coming from ethereum-native protocol KelpDAO.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin breakout?

5/12/26

Bitcoin’s bull-bear cycle signal turns green

When the indicator moves out of bear territory and enters the early bull zone, it often suggests that the worst phase of the correction has already passed and that market structure is beginning to recover, according to one analyst.

Asset Entities to merge with Ramaswamy’s Strive and launch bitcoin treasury

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Crypto IPOs hit pause as “appetite has been sold to AI”

XRP tops 24-hour chart on South Korean crypto exchange

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