Openbank, the fully digital arm of Spain’s Santander Group, has launched digital assets trading for retail clients in Germany. The move is a big step for one of Europe’s largest financial institutions into the digital asset space, with Spain to follow in the coming weeks.

The new service allows Openbank customers to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin, as well as four top altcoins — Ethereum, Litecoin, Polygon, and Cardano — directly on the bank’s investment platform.

The service sits alongside Openbank’s traditional investment products such as stocks, funds, ETFs, and robo-advisory services.

By trading within its own platform, Openbank eliminates the need for…

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Grayscale’s Digital Large-Cap Fund (GDLC) has officially been cleared for trading under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) general listing standards for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The approval marks another milestone in the integration of cryptocurrencies into mainstream financial markets.

CEO Peter Mintzberg announced the development on September 18 via X, confirming that the GDLC’s application to transition into an ETF had been accepted. This green light places Grayscale in a prime position to deliver one of the first multi-crypto ETFs in the United States, a move widely seen as a victory for the digital asset sector.

The upcoming ETF is expected to feature a diverse mix of leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA). Market watchers note that such a product could attract traditional investors seeking diversified exposure to digital assets, further legitimizing crypto as an investment class.

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Historically, bitcoin’s price peaks approximately 20 months after a Bitcoin halving. The last Bitcoin halving occurred in April 2024, which means we could see a cycle top by December of this year.

The odds of this are increasingly likely as Fed Chair Powell cut rates by 25 bps today, giving the approximately $7.4 trillion sitting in money market funds a reason to come off the sidelines and move into a hard asset like bitcoin, especially now that it’s easier to obtain exposure to bitcoin via spot bitcoin ETFs and proxies like bitcoin treasury companies.

Powell also signaled today that two more rate cuts could be on the way before the year is out, which would only further…

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The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, lowering its benchmark federal funds rate to a target range of 4.00% to 4.25%. The move, widely anticipated by markets, marks the central bank’s first rate reduction in years and reflects growing concern over slowing job growth and heightened downside risks to the U.S. economy.

In its statement, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) noted that “recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year. Job gains have slowed, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remains low. Inflation has moved up and remains somewhat elevated.”

The Fed…

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The suitcoiners are in town. 

From a low-key, circular podium in the middle of a lavish New York City event hall, Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor took the mic and opened the Bitcoin Treasuries  Unconference event. He joked awkwardly about the orange ties, dresses, caps and other merch to the (mostly male) audience of who’s-who in the bitcoin treasury company world. 

Once he got onto the regular beat, it was much of the same: calm and relaxed, speaking freely and with confidence, his keynote was heavy on the metaphors and larger historical stories. Treasury companies are like Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in its early years, Michael Saylor said: We’ve just…

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CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, announced plans to introduce options on Solana (SOL) and XRP futures starting October 13, 2025, pending regulatory approval. The move expands beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, giving traders more tools to manage exposure to two fast-growing digital assets.

The new contracts will include both standard and micro-sized options with daily, monthly, and quarterly expiries, offering flexibility for institutions and active traders alike. CME highlighted the rapid growth of its Solana and XRP futures, with record trading volumes and open interest in August 2025. More than $22 billion in Solana futures and $16 billion in XRP futures have been traded since launch.

Industry leaders welcomed the announcement. Cumberland praised CME for broadening crypto offerings, while FalconX noted the rising demand for institutional hedging tools. With strong adoption and liquidity, this development underscores the increasing role of Solana and XRP in the global crypto market, signaling mainstream momentum for digital assets.

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Visions of future technology are often prescient about the broad strokes while flubbing the details. The tablets in “2001: A Space Odyssey” do indeed look like iPads, but you never see the astronauts paying for subscriptions or wasting hours on Candy Crush. 

Channel factories are one vision that arose early in the history of the Lightning Network to address some challenges that Lightning has faced from the beginning. Despite having grown to become Bitcoin’s most successful layer-2 scaling solution, with instant and low-fee payments, Lightning’s scale is limited by its reliance on payment channels. Although Lightning shifts most transactions off-chain, each payment channel…

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