Ripple ($XRP) is edging lower below $1.40 at the time of writing on Tuesday, as the broader crypto market faces renewed volatility. The remittance token is under intense sell-side pressure and struggling to hold key support levels amid growing risk-off sentiment.
The conflict in the Middle East continues to drive investors on edge, while the crypto Fear & Greed Index declines to 33 on Tuesday, from 47 the previous day. Despite the United States (US)-Iran ceasefire holding, the Strait of Hormuz is still shut.
Reports say that US President Donald Trump is unlikely to accept Iran’s proposal to open the Strait, which skips Tehran’s nuclear program. Dismantling Iran’s nuclear program remains to be Trump’s hardline point to ending the war.
Institutional interest in $XRP digital investment products shows signs of deterioration, as ETFs remained quiet on Monday, with no flows recorded, according to SoSoValue data. Cumulative inflows held at $1.29 billion, while net assets under management averaged $1.06 billion. If sentiment softens further amid deteriorating risk appetite, recovery for $XRP could be an uphill battle.
$XRP ETF flows | Source: SoSoValue
Despite retail demand holding steady with the futures Open Interest (OI) at $2.57 billion, it pales in comparison to the record $10.94 billion reached in July. Low retail demand signals that investors lack conviction in $XRP’s ability to sustain the uptrend. Hence, there is an unwillingness to open new positions.
$XRP Futures OI | Source: CoinGlass
Technical outlook: $XRP at risk of extending losses
$XRP trades at $1.38, maintaining a bearish near-term bias. The price holds below the 20-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) of the Bollinger Bands around $1.40 and the 50-day Exponential Moving Average near $1.41, confirming a broader bearish outlook.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) sits just below the 50 midline, around 47 on the daily chart, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram has slipped marginally back below zero, with the signal line turning down. Both indicators suggest waning upside momentum as rallies meet overhead supply.
$XRP/USDT daily chart
On the topside, initial resistance is aligned at the Bollinger Bands’ middle boundary at $1.40, followed by the 50-day EMA around $1.41. A stronger recovery would face further caps at the upper Bollinger Band near $1.48, then at the 100-day EMA at $1.53, and the 200-day EMA near $1.75, reasserting the broader bearish structure. On the downside, the lower Bollinger Band at roughly $1.32 serves as the next notable support, with a sustained break below it likely opening the door to deeper losses within the prevailing daily downtrend.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)
The cryptocurrency ecosystem is experiencing unprecedented network growth, and Ethereum ($ETH) is a part of this growth.
Cryptocurrency analysis platform Santiment has revealed the networks with the most wallet owners. And the Ethereum network is about to reach a historic milestone.
According to this, the Ethereum network is approaching 190 million users for the first time in its history, while Bitcoin ($BTC) is nearing the 60 million user mark. Santiment also revealed the user numbers for Tether, $XRP, and other major cryptocurrencies besides $ETH and $BTC.
According to Santiment data, Ethereum leads the crypto ecosystem with 190 million users. This figure marks a significant milestone in the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.
Bitcoin ($BTC), with 60 million users, is right behind Ethereum, solidifying its status as digital gold.
Following Bitcoin and Ethereum, the list included Tether ($USDT), $XRP, USD Coin ($USDC), Cardano ($ADA), Dogecoin ($DOGE), and Chainlink ($LINK), respectively.
“Tether – $USDT (on Ethereum): 13.6 million users $XRP – 7.8 million users USD Coin – $USDC: 6.8 million users Cardano – $ADA: 4.6 million users Dogecoin – $DOGE: 8.3 million users Chainlink – $LINK: 871 thousand users”
In August 2019, Sholonda was back in the studio for the 19th time to film for Maury — but this time, she wasn’t the one who would run. She received the typical boos and thumbs-downs from the studio audience at the Rich Forum in Stamford, Connecticut when the host revealed how many times she’d graced the daytime talk show’s stage to air her personal drama. But she quickly won them back, earning a wave of cheers when it was announced she had recently lost 150 pounds.
But Sholonda was about to get a slap in the face. Before she even stepped onto the set that journalist-turned daytime talk show host Maury Povich used for the final 14 years of his 31-season run, the audience had learned that her husband, Tyrell, and daughter, Deanna, were having a shocking secret affair — and that Tyrell was claiming to be the father of Deanna’s toddler. A challenge to the family dynamic, to say the least.
Throughout the now-infamous segment, Povich encouraged Sholonda to “let it all out” as she sobbed, screamed at Tyrell and had to be held back as she tried to attack him. The audience — shouting, flailing and worked into a frenzy as Deanna explained that Tyrell came to her hotel room the previous night — hit a fever pitch as Povich, the grandmaster of the spectacle, read the DNA test results to determine the truth behind the child’s paternity.
“I’ve been opening these envelopes a long, long time, and this might be the one I do not want to open,” he said to viewers at home and the audience in front of him. Some say this formula — used on Maury, the reigning champion of daytime TV ratings for years — was “barrier-breaking” and “hypnotic.” Others saw flat-out exploitation of underprivileged people that used false sympathy to sink lower than Jerry Springer’s notorious 11 a.m. brawl-oriented spectacles.
When Maury ended its original run in 2022, the once-dominant daytime format had already been in decline for years. Syndicated talk shows that routinely pulled in up to 5 million daily viewers in the 1990s now struggle to crack 1 million, according to Nielsen data; meanwhile, dozens of local-market staples have quietly disappeared. The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Wendy Williams Show, The Real, and Dr. Oz all ended in 2022, and this year, the entire syndicated TV ecosystem is flatlining. But even though Maury and its competitors are long gone, their legacy lives on — splintered into new forms on reality television and TikTok that have become an addiction.
This splintering is explored in the latest episode of On Par with Maury Povich, where the 87-year-old host welcomed fellow daytime talk icon Ricki Lake onto his podcast. The two sat for an hour in a Midtown Manhattan studio and reminisced about the heyday of the 1990s daytime TV scene, when Lake, at 24 and fresh off her star-making turn in John Waters’ Hairspray, became the youngest host in the genre, commanding a live studio audience. Her syndicated show launched in 1993 on New York’s WWOR, entering a crowded field of daytime hosts and carving out a new niche aimed at younger audiences and the issues they faced.
“Scared shitless” was how Povich described the general vibe among daytime hosts when Lake arrived on the scene. He told her as much shortly after she came to record his podcast, which scored two Webby Award nominations last week. At the height of the daytime talk boom, Lake — who beat out 100 other women for the role — was ready to launch a show under producers Garth Ancier and Gail Steinberg that would chase a coveted demographic long underserved by daytime TV: younger viewers, often dismissed as outside the homemaker-focused core audience.
“You scared the shit out of the rest of us,” Povich repeated. “You have to understand — the ’90s were the golden age of daytime talk. There were 20 of us on the air, most in our 40s and 50s. And here comes this 23-year-old who gets the youngest audience of us all.”
The format was slightly tweaked, and Ricki Lake was initially less sensational than its competitors. But its topics — beginning with shoplifting, safe sex, violence, drug use, and teen pregnancy — soon migrated to familiar territory: cheaters, lie detectors, paternity tests. The show ranked No. 2 in daytime talk behind TheOprah Winfrey Show by its second season and ran until 2004, with millions inviting Lake and her guests into their homes every day.
Those days are now gone. The syndicated talk show era took another hit when NBCUniversal stunned the industry with news that The Kelly Clarkson Show would not return, alongside long-running newsmagazine Access Hollywood, while shows hosted by Steve Wilkos and Karamo Brown were also canceled. In March, it was announced that Sherri Shepherd’s Sherri would end as well.
Recalling the bygone era while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter after their taping, both Povich and Lake say they have no regrets. Whatever critics said, they believe they made pioneering television that offered millions something that today’s reality spectacles do not: an intimate invitation into strangers’ lives.
“There’s no feeling like you’ve been welcomed into someone’s family,” Povich said. “It was like an election — we had to campaign to get into the house. We had to knock on the door, be invited in, sit at the table as a member of the family.”
In daytime TV’s heyday, hosts weren’t just presenters — they were trusted narrators of chaos. Their shows mainstreamed conversations America wasn’t yet having about interracial relationships, LGBTQ youth coming out, and the full spectrum of family conflict and trauma.
“Our show was really that platform for anyone to come on for a seven-minute segment and be heard,” Lake said. “Now everyone can do it on their own phone. Everything has been fragmented.”
She points to TikTok as a descendant of daytime television. What once played out on a single stage has dissolved into millions of individual broadcasts, each chasing the kind of audience that Maury and Ricki Lake commanded all at once.
Maury Povich and Ricki Lake on On Par with Maury Povich.
On Par with Maury Povich)
The throughlines run deep. Confessional “storytimes,” “Am I the Asshole?”-style audience prompts, even modern equivalents of makeover segments via “Get Ready With Me” videos all echo the structure of daytime TV. Add in cooking tutorials, legal breakdowns via Stitch, or therapy takes via Duet, and the ecosystem begins to resemble a decentralized talk show. The only missing ingredient may be the genre’s signature paternity-test reveal.
Daytime’s DNA is also visible in reality television, which absorbed much of the format as it rose alongside its decline. Franchises like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Bravo’s Real Housewives universe turned interpersonal conflict into a serialized spectacle.
“I think all of these shows are derivative of what we did,” Lake said, noting that her friend, Housewives executive producer Andy Cohen, agrees. “They’re an outgrowth of daytime talk.”
Arguably, daytime talk didn’t disappear — it redistributed. What was once centralized with chaotic but emotional storytelling, audience participation and cultural debate now exists across a fragmented attention economy. Today, every creator, from television producer to teenage influencer, is chasing the same thing: a way into the algorithm.
Yet there’s still the matter of the critics. Daytime was never considered prestigious, in part because of its warts-and-all presentation of real life. At its peak, shows like Maury and Ricki Lake were cultural and political pariahs, especially during the 1990s push for stricter broadcast standards.
“Loud, crass, argumentative and deeply desperate” was one common critique. “Exploitative” remains the dominant charge. Povich has long rejected it.
“I always defended what I did,” he said. “With paternity shows, I was trying to get a father who was denying a child into that child’s life. With lie detector tests, I was trying to find out if people could coexist. I always felt I had a good argument.”
Lake offers a more complicated and distancing reflection.
“I think we did a lot of good,” she said. “We gave marginalized people a chance to be seen. But for me, I was like an actor for hire. My producers shaped everything — I didn’t really have a voice.”
That voice came later, after she left New York following 9/11 and had children. She reinvented herself as a filmmaker with The Business of Being Born, exploring women’s birthing options and natural childbirth.
“I wanted to do something more personal and impactful,” she said.
Still, the impact of Maury and Ricki Lake lingers. It lives in the voyeuristic itch scratched by today’s top-rated shows — and in the endless scroll of clips between commercial breaks. But competing now means going up against a single viral TikTok that can reach more viewers in 24 hours than a daytime show once did in a week.
The fragments are scalable. And the Sholondas of today can now skip a single stage in Connecticut to enter a feed and have their story go global.
The United States is considering a new proposal from Iran to end the ongoing war amid a fragile ceasefire between the longtime adversaries.
The offer focuses on reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz while postponing a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme, arguably the most contentious issue between Tehran and Washington.
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According to US media outlets, the proposal has drawn scrutiny in Washington, and officials there have expressed scepticism.
Early indications from the Trump administration suggest the plan is unlikely to be accepted in its current form, potentially further delaying any prospect of permanently ending the currently paused US-Israel war on Iran, which has killed thousands and sent global energy prices soaring.
Here is what we know so far:
What’s in Iran’s latest proposal?
Iran’s latest proposal aims for de-escalation in the Gulf without immediately placing restraints on its nuclear programme, as the US has demanded. Tehran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on the condition that the US lifts its naval blockade on Iranian ports and agrees to end the war.
Iran has effectively closed the strait to shipping, creating global economic pressure by driving up energy prices and disrupting supply chains. In peacetime, one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped through the narrow passage, which links Gulf oil producers to the open ocean.
Days after the ceasefire began on April 8, Trump announced a blockade on Iranian ports and ships, restricting Tehran’s ability to export oil and cutting off a crucial source of its revenue.
Iranians walk past a huge billboard carrying a sentence reading in Persian ‘The Strait of Hormuz remains closed’ at Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, 28 April 2026 [Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA]
However, a central feature of Iran’s offer to reopen the Strait to all traffic is that discussions over Iran’s nuclear activities would be postponed until after the war ends.
The proposal was conveyed to Washington through Pakistan, which has been acting as a mediator.
“These messages concern some of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s red lines, including nuclear issues and the Strait of Hormuz,” Iranian state media Fars News Agency reported.
“Informed sources emphasise Mr Araghchi is acting entirely within the framework of the specified red lines and the diplomatic duties of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
The news agency said the messages relayed were “unrelated to negotiations” and are “considered an initiative by Iran to clarify the regional situation”.
On Monday, Tehran’s envoy to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said “lasting stability and security” in the Gulf and the wider region can only be achieved through a durable and permanent cessation of aggression against Iran.
How does this proposal differ from previous ones?
Iranian analyst Abas Aslani said Iran’s latest proposal is based on an “altered” approach.
Aslani, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera that Tehran believes its previous model – which was based on making compromises on its nuclear programme in exchange for economic sanctions relief – is no longer a “viable path towards a potential accord”.
“Iran believes this can also function as a trust-building measure to compensate for the trust-deficit issue,” he added.
Analyst Negar Mortazavi, a Center for International Policy senior fellow and host of The Iran Podcast, said the Iran proposal looks “reasonable” as the the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has created a “a global crisis and countries around the world want it resolved”.
“Both Tehran and Washington need to immediately focus on reforming the Strait,” Mortazavi added. “Tehran will not move if the US doesn’t lifts its blockade, and Washington will not do so if Iran does not open the strait. So this can be a good first step towards a more permanent ceasefire, and then after reducing tension, the two sides can talk about other issues.”
On the nuclear file, she said while it was a “top priority” issue for both Washington and Israel, it is a “complex issue”.
“Tehran once negotiated a successful nuclear deal with the Obama administration, which took two years of intense negotiations,” she said.
“Tehran also tried to negotiate on its nuclear programme with the Trump administration once last year and again this year, and both times the patience of the US president was very short and, in the middle of negotiations, Iran was attacked.”
As a result, Mortazavi said, the nuclear issue cannot be resolved “in a few hours in high-level meetings between the US vice president and the Iranian speaker of parliament”.
“The nuclear issue … needs serious negotiations with technical experts, and it has to be done with proper time and patience. It would be better if it happens after the war ends, in an atmosphere of peace and calm, and not during an active conflict between the different sides,” she added.
How has the US responded so far?
US President Donald Trump met with top security advisers on Monday to discuss the Iranian proposal, the White House confirmed.
However, according to media reports, the US response has been largely dismissive. According to Reuters, an unnamed US official said President Trump was unhappy with the proposal because it did not include provisions for Iran’s nuclear programme. The official noted that “he doesn’t love the proposal”.
Citing two people familiar with the matter, US media outlet CNN reported that Trump was unlikely to accept the proposal. It said Washington lifting its blockade of Iranian ports without resolving questions over Tehran’s nuclear programme “could remove a key piece of American leverage in the talks”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday that the proposal was “better than what we thought they were going to submit”, but questioned Tehran’s intentions.
“They’re very good negotiators,” he said. “We have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made, is one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point.”
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, said, “There’s been a complete lid over what was discussed” during the meeting between Trump and his national security team.
“It was so tight that we do not know exactly who in his national security team was present at that meeting,” Hanna added.
“Normally, there is some form of readout or some form of more information giving, fleshing out the details of a meeting like this.”
What has been the response from other countries?
While the “US and Iran feel that time is on their side, the longer this goes on, the more difficult it’s going to be,” Mohamed Elmasry, an analyst for the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, said.
“I really don’t think time is on anyone’s side. I really do think the Europeans are losing patience,” he told Al Jazeera.
On Monday, German Chancellor Merz stated that the “Iranians are negotiating very skilfully”, Elmasry noted. He said this shows that Trump is coming under increasing pressure from his allies, “who believe he [Trump] got them into this big mess and isn’t able to clean it up”.
“Trump isn’t going to be happy hearing that and the chancellor is hitting Trump where it hurts.”
Season 4 of the soccer-themed series, which stars Jason Sudeikis as a Kansas football coach who relocates to the U.K., will debut Aug. 5 with episodes dropping weekly until Oct. 7. Sudeikis also exec produces the series.
Returning alongside Sudeikis are Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift. They will be joined by new castmembers Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely.
Season 4 will see Ted returning to Richmond to coach a second division women’s soccer team. In a new trailer, Sudeikis can be seen trying to coach his young hopefuls while in another scene he is berated for “coaching a bunch of girls – you wanker!”
“Throughout the course of the season, Ted and the team learn to leap before they look, taking chances they never thought they would,” promises the synopsis.
Jack Burditt, who has a new overall deal with Apple TV, joins Season 4 as executive producer alongside Hunt, Joe Kelly, Jane Becker, Jamie Lee and Bill Wrubel.
Goldstein, who plays soccer star Roy Kent in the show, also serves as a writer and exec producer alongside Leann Bowen. Sarah Walker and Phoebe Walsh. Sasha Garron co-produces.
Julia Lindon will write for Season 4, while Dylan Marron is story editor. Bill Lawrence executive produces via Doozer Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television, a division of NBCUniversal content. Doozer’s Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer also serve as executive producers.
Billie Eilish graces the cover of Elle magazine ahead of the theatrical release of her concert movie “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)” and reveals her fourth album is “more than half way” done, although “that’s all I will say” on what’s in store for her next LP. The Grammy winner spoke more in depth about her penchant for speaking out against ICE, billionaires and more hot-button political issues.
“I was raised like this,” Eilish told the magazine. “When you have this insane platform that you can use to advocate for people, but you’re not advocating for people because you don’t want to be controversial? Why is it controversial to step in when someone’s getting bullied and try to stop it? Yeah, you’re probably gonna have to deal with some problems, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”
Eilish attended the Grammys earlier this year wearing an “ICE Out” pin and yelled “fuck ICE!” on stage during her acceptance speech for song of the year for “Wildflower.”
“As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land,” Eilish added. “And, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter, and fuck ICE. That’s all I’m going to say. Sorry. Thank you so much.”
Last November, Eilish gave an acceptance speech at the Wall Street Journal Innovator Awards and called out billionaires. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was in attendance at the ceremony.
“We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than kind of ever, especially in our country,” Eilish told the room at the time. “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
A few days later, Eilish took to her Instagram story to slam Elon Musk for hoarding his wealth while approaching trillionaire status. She called Musk a “fucking pathetic pussy bitch coward” for not giving his money away toward humanitarian relief efforts.
For what it’s worth, Eilish walks the walk. The same night she called out billionaires, the music star pledged to donate $11.5 million from her tour earnings to multiple charities and organizations.
Elsewhere in her Elle cover story, Eilish opened up about getting emotional over touring without her brother and co-songwriter and producer Finneas for the first time during her “Hit Me Hard and Soft” run. Finneas dropped by to join his sister for select shows, but the tour marked the first time in Eilish’s career that she worked extensively without her brother. She refuted any speculation that not touring together means there is a rift between the siblings.
“I heard somebody say, ‘Did you guys hear Finneas and Billie had a falling-out?’” Eilish said. “Finneas and I have never and will never have a falling-out, ever in our lives. We’ll get in the biggest fucking fight you’ve ever heard of in your life…and five minutes later, we’re back, laughing and making music. It’s sibling shit. There’s nothing else in the world like sibling relationships… If I never saw Finneas at all, I might literally never make a song again…. But how do we move on and have separate lives?”
Watch Eilish’s video interview with Elle in the video below.
Developers behind a new wallet product say they have found a way to tackle quantum computing risks using a smart contract layer that runs alongside Bitcoin without requiring any change to the network itself.
Postquant Labs unveiled Quip Network’s post-quantum bitcoin wallet Tuesday, the company told CoinDesk in an email. The product runs on Arch Network, a system that lets developers build smart contracts anchored directly to Bitcoin rather than on a separate chain or through wrapped tokens.
Quip uses that infrastructure to add a post-quantum signature scheme called WOTS+, short for Winternitz One-Time Signature, on top of Bitcoin’s existing security. WOTS+ is a tested cryptographic technique that does not rely on the elliptic curve math a quantum computer could break.
By using a “Layer 2” — shorthand for a separate network built on top of Bitcoin that processes transactions and settles back to the main chain—developers can add features without changing Bitcoin’s base layer.
“The Bitcoin community has delayed a fix for years, despite Satoshi himself discussing the quantum problem,” Postquant Labs CEO Colton Dillion said in a statement to CoinDesk. “Developers say any protocol upgrade could take 5 to 10 years, but with Quip’s approach, we provide similar protection immediately.”
Bitcoin’s quantum readiness
The launch arrives in the middle of an active fight over how Bitcoin should respond to quantum risk.
Prominent developer Jameson Lopp and five others proposed BIP-361 two weeks ago, which would phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses on a fixed five-year timeline and freeze coins that fail to migrate, including the roughly 1.1 million bitcoin attributed to pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Paul Sztorc’s controversial eCash hard fork would copy Bitcoin’s chain and ship seven sidechains including a quantum-resistant one, funded partly by reassigning Satoshi-pattern coins on the new ledger to investors.
Both proposals have drawn pushback from the community.
Quip’s pitch is that neither approach is necessary. The setup requires no soft fork, no consensus change, no community vote. A soft fork is a Bitcoin upgrade that tightens existing rules so older software still works, but it still needs broad miner and node support to activate. Bitcoin’s last major soft fork was Taproot in 2021. The next one, if it happens, could take years.
Technical trade-offs
The three approaches actually disagree on something specific. Lopp’s argument is that Layer 2 protection like Quip’s is insufficient because Bitcoin mainnet public keys still leak the moment a user broadcasts a transaction, giving a future quantum attacker a target.
There are a few caveats, however. The wallet app launches next week rather than today. A third-party audit is underway but not complete. Quip’s quantum-resistant accounts already exist on Ethereum and Solana, but the Bitcoin deployment is new and Arch Network is still relatively early infrastructure.
Postquant Labs CTO Dr. Richard Carback, a long-time collaborator with eCash inventor Dr. David Chaum who now advises the project, said the approach narrows the window for a quantum attack to as little as two blocks, roughly 20 minutes.
(David Chaum’s eCash is the original digital cash protocol from 1983, the academic foundation for ‘blind’ signatures and privacy-preserving electronic money. It predates Bitcoin by 25 years and has nothing to do with Bitcoin or the eCash proposal by Sztorc.)
Sztorc’s argument is that incremental patches are exactly why Bitcoin needs a clean fork with quantum resistance built in from the start. The Layer 2 approach, which now includes Quip and Blockstream’s hash-based signature work on the Liquid Network, argues both other positions overreact to a threat that better infrastructure can handle without changing Bitcoin itself.
Which approach wins depends partly on how fast quantum computers actually arrive. The Bitcoin holders most worried about quantum risk have historically been the same group most resistant to wrapped or smart-contract-anchored products.
Visa (V) is working with blockchain-based stablecoin infrastructure firm WeFi, to help establish the “last half mile” that can provide users with robust onchain payments and banking services, the companies said on Tuesday.
WeFi, which is co-founded by former Tether OG Reeve Collins, describes its platform as “an orchestration layer between decentralized finance (DeFi) and regulated payment infrastructure, designed to support use cases such as cross‑border spending and on‑chain value storage,” according to a press release.
“We’re upgrading the plumbing and offering essentially people bank accounts, because they’ll soon have their IBAN numbers, and we’re getting the various licenses around the world to operate appropriately,” Collins said in an interview.
As the platform scales, the plan is to partner with more banks and institutions, with a view towards the underbanked of the world, Collins said.
The rollout will take place region by region, starting with selected markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Expansion into additional markets will depend on local regulatory approvals and issuing partnerships.
“The partnership with Visa really closes that last half mile of onchain banking infrastructure,” Collins said.
“This collaboration demonstrates how Visa’s global network interacts with onchain models, while operating within established regulatory frameworks and the reliability consumers and merchants expect,” said Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Product & Solutions in Europe at Visa, in a statement.
BMG and Concord are merging, the two companies announced on Tuesday, in a major move that combines the music business’s two largest independent music companies and creates a new entity closer in scale to the major three record labels.
Financial details of the agreement weren’t disclosed, though Bloomberg previously reported the deal could be worth as much as $7 billion. BMG’s parent company, the German media giant Bertelsmann, will own 67 percent of the company while Green Mountain Partners will own 33 percent. The deal’s closure is subject to regulatory approval.
The new company will operate under the BMG name. BMG’s current CEO Thomas Coesfeld, who is set to become the CEO of BMG parent company Bertelsmann, will become BMG’s chairman, while Concord CEO Bob Valentine will be BMG CEO. The new company’s publishing division will be called BMG publishing, while the recorded music division will be known as Concord Records.
The music industry’s biggest stakeholders are the “big three” major music companies: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group. While a combined BMG and Concord isn’t quite as large as those three companies, the new company’s combined scale gives it the ability to compete with the majors enough that it could arguably be considered a fourth major. Regardless, BMG is now unquestionably the largest independent music company in the business.
“We believe this is a truly one-of-a-kind opportunity to bring together two world-class teams and rosters at the right moment, as scale in rights ownership becomes increasingly critical to long-term growth,” Coesfeld said in a statement. Coesfeld added that the combined company “will further deepen our position as a preferred global partner to artists, songwriters, and platforms, combining scale with the agility and independence they value.”
Among the artists the combined BMG and Concord represent include Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, Paul Simon, Phil Collins, Daft Punk.
As Valentine said: “Our greater scale will allow us to invest more in creative talent, global reach, accretive acquisition opportunities, and technology, while preserving the nimble, entrepreneurial spirit that artists and songwriters value most. This is not about replicating the major label model; it’s about using scale to strengthen independence. Together, we will build a company that gives artists more reach and more flexibility – all designed to support their distinct visions.”
Three years and change after Ted Lasso wrapped its third season, the Emmy-winning comedy will step back on the pitch.
Apple TV announced Tuesday that the show’s fourth season will premiere Aug. 5, with the title character (Jason Sudeikis) returning to London to coach AFC Richmond’s women’s team. The streamer also released a new image from the coming season and a teaser scored to “Rubber Band Man” by Mumford & Sons and Hozier.
The teaser shows Ted getting back into the swing of things in London, the Richmond women in action and a few glimpses at the returning and new cast. Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift reprise their roles from prior seasons alongside new series regulars Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely. The teaser also shows Andrea Anders as Ted’s (maybe no longer?) ex-wife, Michelle; Matteo van der Grijn as Matthijs, the Dutchman Rebecca (Waddingham) fell for in season three; and Tracey Ullman in an as yet undisclosed guest role. Watch it below.
Apple TV ordered a fourth season of Ted Lasso in March 2025, ending a long round of speculation about the show’s future after 2023’s season three closed out the story of Ted coaching the Richmond men’s side. In January, Apple said the show would return in the summer.
The 10-episode fourth season will see Ted “taking on his biggest challenge yet: coaching a second division women’s football team,” the logline reads. “Throughout the course of the season, Ted and the team learn to leap before they look, taking chances they never thought they would.”
Jack Burditt, who has an overall deal with Apple TV, executive produces season four with Sudeikis, Hunt, Joe Kelly, Jane Becker, Jamie Lee, Bill Wrubel, Goldstein, Leann Bowen, Bill Lawrence, Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer. Goldstein and Bowen are also writers; Sarah Walker and Phoebe Walsh are writers and producers. Sasha Garron co-produces. Julia Lindon is a writer on season four, and Dylan Marron is story editor. Warner Bros. TV and Universal TV produce the series.
