Ripple is driving measurable economic impact through its $RLUSD initiative, channeling millions into underserved U.S. small businesses while expanding access to capital and supporting job creation.
Ripple $RLUSD Funding Drives Small Business Growth Across the United States
Blockchain payments company Ripple shared on social media platform X on April 2 an update about its $15 million $RLUSD contribution. The post highlighted lending activity, job creation, and expanded financial access for small business owners across the United States, alongside engagement metrics showing 51.6K views.
“Last September, Ripple donated $15M $RLUSD issued on XRPL to Accion Opportunity Fund,” the crypto firm stated, adding:
“Here’s what’s unlocked for small business owners across the U.S.: $53.6M in capital deployed, 905 loans to 895 unique borrowers, $59K average loan size, 1,003 jobs created, 1,631 retained.”
The initiative focuses on expanding access to affordable capital, advisory services, and financial education for underserved entrepreneurs.
Accion Opportunity Fund uses the contribution to scale lending programs and provide structured business support. The model combines financing with mentorship and digital tools that help owners manage growth. This approach targets long-term sustainability rather than short-term funding gaps, strengthening business outcomes across diverse communities.
Blockchain Lending Model Expands Financial Access and Job Creation Impact
The program also integrates learning platforms that help entrepreneurs improve financial literacy and operational decision-making over time. Participants gain access to tailored resources, workshops, and advisory networks that address specific business challenges. These efforts aim to reduce barriers that often limit growth opportunities for smaller enterprises. By combining capital with education, the initiative supports more resilient business models and encourages sustainable expansion across different industries.
The broader results show how blockchain-enabled funding can integrate with traditional lending frameworks to produce measurable economic effects. Reported outcomes include job support, increased economic output, and expanded borrower reach. Ripple continues advancing its strategy of applying blockchain infrastructure to real-world financial challenges.
Ripple’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Eric van Miltenburg shared on X:
“Very proud of the work Ripple is doing with Accion Opportunity Fund. Awesome to see $RLUSD driving real world value for small business owners!”
FAQ 🧭
How is Ripple using $RLUSD to support small businesses in the United States? Ripple deployed $RLUSD through the Accion Opportunity Fund to expand lending, financial education, and advisory services for underserved entrepreneurs.
What economic impact has Ripple’s $RLUSD initiative generated so far? The program has driven tens of millions in capital deployment, supported job creation and retention, and expanded access to funding for hundreds of borrowers.
Why is blockchain important in Ripple’s small business funding strategy? Blockchain enables efficient, scalable capital distribution while integrating with traditional lending systems to deliver measurable economic outcomes.
What makes Ripple’s partnership with Accion Opportunity Fund significant for investors? The collaboration demonstrates real-world utility of blockchain finance in driving sustainable growth and expanding financial inclusion across diverse markets.
Riot Platforms sold more than $250 million in BTC during Q1.
The firm, which has begun pivoting into AI, has now sold Bitcoin in consecutive quarters.
Shares in RIOT finished Thursday up nearly 2.5%, but are down 33% in the last six months.
Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms parted ways with more than $250 million worth of BTC during the first quarter of the year, the firm announced on Thursday.
The firm sold 3,778 Bitcoin at an average price of more than $76,000, decreasing its total holdings to 15,680 BTC at the end of Q1—now valued around $1.04 billion as Bitcoin changes hands at $66,844.
The Colorado-based miner has now sold Bitcoin in consecutive quarters, after netting proceeds of nearly $200 million from sales of the top cryptocurrency during November and December.
At that time, speculation was that the funds would be used to fund capital expenditures for its entry into the AI sector, a pivot that nearly all Bitcoin miners are making. For example, publicly traded miner Bitfarms recently announced it was completely detaching itself from Bitcoin to focus on AI. Additionally, one of Riot’s major Bitcoin mining rivals, MARA, recently sold $1.1 billion in BTC to help fuel its pivot into AI.
A representative for the firm did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment about what its proceeds may be used for.
Those ongoing operations are particularly focused on AI and other high-performance computing needs moving forward, according to the firm’s most recent strategic business update.
“2025 marked a watershed year for Riot, defined by a strategic evolution in our business that has transformed our future trajectory,” Les said in a statement in early March. “By unlocking our large, nearly two-gigawatt power portfolio for high-demand data center infrastructure, we are driving significant shareholder value.”
The firm, which has used nearly its entire power portfolio for Bitcoin mining thus far, added that its long-term goal is “to fully utilize our power portfolio for data center development.”
Its Bitcoin sales may be helping move in that direction—one that an activist investor recently suggested required a “renewed sense of urgency” in order to fully capitalize on the AI opportunity before it. That opportunity, the investor Starboard Value said, could be worth as much as a $21 billion boost to the firm’s valuation.
Shares of RIOT finished up 2.47% on Thursday, recently trading at $12.86.
Shares have dipped more than 33% in the last six months as Bitcoin has slid 47% from its all-time high of $126,080.
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Bitcoin posted its worst quarterly performance since 2018, falling about 22%.
The cryptocurrency outperformed equities and gold after the Iran war outbreak.
Analysts point to Fed policy and a resolution to the Middle East conflict as key Q2 catalysts.
Bitcoin closed the first quarter of 2026 with its worst performance since early 2018, shedding nearly a quarter of its value as war, tariffs, and a hawkish Federal Reserve battered risk assets.
The cryptocurrency fell from around $95,000 in February to roughly $66,700 by quarter’s end, a decline of about 22% year-to-date, according to a report from institutional trading firm Talos citing data from its financial intelligence arm, Coin Metrics. Losses reached as much as 34.6% at the quarter’s lowest point, per the firm.
Bitcoin remains pinned in a $66,000-$70,000 range with whale transfers at multi-year lows and no meaningful bid defending levels, according to a Wintermute research note shared with Decrypt.
Institutions and retail investors alike “sit on the sidelines, unwilling to commit capital” until they see regulatory clarity or a shift in geopolitical conditions, the trading firm added.
Despite its bruising quarter, Bitcoin held up better than equities and gold after the February 28 outbreak of the Iran war, falling just 1.5% compared to a 17% drop in gold, a 7.6% decline in the Nasdaq, and a 7.4% slide in the S&P 500 over the same period, per data from Talos.
Bitcoin’s performance for the quarter appears to be more of a “macro-driven reset than a structural shift,” Samar Sen, head of international markets at Talos, told Decrypt.
“Crypto, alongside other risk assets, came under pressure following the escalation of the Iran conflict, alongside tariffs and tighter policy expectations,” he added.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs hold roughly $100 billion in assets and saw net inflows resume in March, suggesting institutional demand has weathered the drawdown, Sen explained.
Liquidity across order books has also recovered from late-2025 lows allowing markets to “absorb larger moves,” with market structure “holding up more consistently” than in previous cycles, he added.
“Periods of macro uncertainty tend to slow risk appetite, but they also tend to bring a greater focus on risk management and portfolio diversification, and we’re seeing continued institutional engagement in that context,” he said.
Reaching for a reset
U.S. monetary policy could prove the most important variable for Bitcoin’s near-term trajectory, according to Zeus Research analyst Dominick John, who told Decrypt a Fed pause or easing would “release liquidity, lift risk appetite, and help stabilize Bitcoin,” while continued hawkishness “could tighten liquidity and increase selling pressure.”
A resolution to the ongoing Middle East conflict could provide a “critical catalyst” for the next quarter, with the Fed’s stance on rate cuts serving as “the definitive watershed for either a powerful rebound or a further breakdown,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt.
On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users put just a 5% chance on the Fed cutting rates by more than 25bps in the first half of the year. Myriad users are also pessimistic about the Iran conflict, with the chances of a U.S./Iran ceasefire before June plunging from 58% at the start of the week to 39% today, while the chances of U.S. boots on the ground before May have jumped from 57% to 87% in the same timeframe.
A “growing regional divergence” in markets such as Iran, where access to global financial systems remains “constrained,” could also shape Bitcoin’s trajectory, Markus Levin, co-founder of decentralized data network XYO, told Decrypt.
“Bitcoin usage has historically increased during periods of economic pressure and is likely to rise again if the conflict persists,” he said. “That demand will not offset global macro forces in the short term, but over time it can push Bitcoin toward behaving more like a neutral reserve asset, closer to gold.”
Bitcoin was trading at around $66,830 at press time, flat on the day, according to CoinGecko data.
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On June 25, 2021, Elon Musk posted that his new Shiba Inu puppy would be named Floki. Within hours, people had already created a token named after the dog. Not the dog himself — the promise of the dog. The token launched before the actual puppy had even arrived at Musk’s house.
That’s the origin story. And while it sounds ridiculous — because it is — what happened next wasn’t. A community formed, took over the project, started building actual products, and turned what should have been a 48-hour meme into a token that still trades with a $270 million market cap in April 2026.
$FLOKI’s all-time high was $0.0003462 on June 5, 2024. The current price is around $0.000029. That puts the token roughly 91% below its peak, which sounds painful, but it’s worth knowing that $FLOKI hit a higher $ATH in 2024 than it did in the 2021 bull market — a fact most price prediction articles get wrong because they use the 2021 figures without checking. The 2021 high was around $0.0003437. Close, but the actual peak came three years later.
Both numbers feel very far away from $0.000029.
Disclaimer: This article is informational only. Nothing here is investment advice. Meme coins are highly volatile. Do your own research.
What $FLOKI Actually Is in 2026
The official $FLOKI pitch has evolved significantly since the Musk tweet era. The team — known as the Floki Vikings — calls it “the people’s crypto” and has spent four years building an ecosystem around the token that goes well beyond meme coin territory.
Valhalla is the centrepiece. Launched on opBNB mainnet on June 30, 2025, it’s a browser-based play-to-earn MMORPG with hex-grid combat, $NFT characters called Veras, and an in-game economy backed by a multi-million dollar treasury. Over a million transactions and 125,000 NFTs minted since mainnet launch. A Chinese version is in development. Mobile access is planned for late 2026. These aren’t vaporware announcements — the game exists and people are playing it.
TokenFi is the RWA tokenization platform. Built by the Floki team, governed by the Floki DAO, but powered by its own separate token ($TOKEN). This distinction matters: TokenFi’s success doesn’t automatically flow into $FLOKI price. However, it does build the broader ecosystem and marketing reach.
The $FLOKI Trading Bot (Telegram/Discord) routes 50% of its fees directly to buy-and-burn. That’s real market demand creating real deflationary pressure — modest, but genuine.
Staking is live: around 460,000 holders have staked over $283 million worth of $FLOKI to earn TOKEN rewards.
On the regulatory front, $FLOKI became the first crypto project to file a MiCAR-compliant white paper with the European Securities and Markets Authority — submitted via $LCX, a licensed EU exchange. That gives $FLOKI legal trading status across compliant EU platforms, which matters more than most meme coin investors currently appreciate.
$FLOKI is dual-chain — available on both Ethereum (ERC-20) and Binance Smart Chain (BEP-20). The contract addresses are well-documented and have never changed.
Is $FLOKI available on major exchanges? Yes. $FLOKI trades on Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, KuCoin, and many others. It’s one of the more accessible meme coins for retail buyers. The dual-chain deployment on Ethereum and BSC also means it’s available on Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and most major DEXs.
The Token Mechanics
Total supply: 10 trillion $FLOKI. About 9.54 trillion are in circulation.
$FLOKI has a transaction tax that takes 0.3% on every buy or sell. Half of that goes to holders (including the burn wallet), which creates ongoing deflation. As the burn wallet accumulates more $FLOKI over time, it earns more from subsequent transaction taxes, accelerating the burn rate. It’s a compounding mechanism — slow, but structurally present.
The burn wallet currently holds a significant portion of the supply. Every trade helps reduce what’s left in circulation. This isn’t going to single-handedly send $FLOKI to new highs, but it’s a mechanical support that many purely speculative meme coins don’t have.
What actually drives $FLOKI’s price is demand. Whether that demand comes from Valhalla players needing $FLOKI for in-game activity, traders rotating into meme coins during speculative cycles, or new exchange listings — the burn mechanics help but don’t do the heavy lifting alone.
$FLOKI Key Data (April 2026)
Source: CoinGecko
What Went Wrong Since the $ATH
The June 2024 peak was a product of the broader meme coin supercycle that swept through the first half of that year. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, PEPE, BONK, and WIF all had significant runs in that window. $FLOKI rode that wave to its all-time high.
Then the cycle ended. By late 2024, meme coins across the board had given back most of their gains. Bitcoin made new highs in late 2024 and early 2025; altcoins and meme coins largely didn’t follow. $FLOKI fell from $0.000346 in June 2024 to $0.000027 by February 2026 — a 92% decline that left most holders who bought during the peak significantly underwater.
The broader crypto bear market through late 2025 and into 2026 didn’t help. Fear and Greed Index hitting extreme fear levels for extended stretches, macro uncertainty, and capital consolidating into Bitcoin specifically all worked against altcoins and meme coins in particular.
What makes $FLOKI’s situation complicated is that its fundamentals actually improved during this period. Valhalla launched. MiCAR was filed. Staking TVL grew. The ecosystem built real products while the price fell. The token trades at 91% below its high despite the project being demonstrably more built out than it was when it set that high.
$FLOKI Price Prediction 2026
$FLOKI at $0.000029 is hovering near multi-year lows. Most analyst models were built when the token was higher, which means their 2026 ranges often start above where the token currently trades.
CoinCodex projects $0.00002831–$0.00005154 for 2026. The lower bound is essentially current price; the upper would be a modest 1.8x. Changelly sees an average of around $0.0000654, which is a 2.3x from here. Cryptopolitan models a range of $0.00003002–$0.0000983 — the upper end would be roughly a 3.4x from current prices.
The bull models diverge more sharply. CoinLore’s algorithm puts the 2026 max at $0.000983 — a 34x, which would require either a full meme coin supercycle revival or a Valhalla-driven user adoption story that’s hard to predict. CoinPedia’s range of $0.000250–$0.000820 for 2026 sits between the conservative and extreme cases.
What would a realistic recovery look like? Getting back to $0.00006–$0.00010 — roughly 2–3.5x from current prices — is achievable if the broader crypto market stabilises and meme coin rotation returns. That price range is where $FLOKI traded in Q3 2025 before the selloff accelerated. It’s not spectacular, but it’s where genuine buyers previously showed up.
Getting back toward $0.0001 and beyond requires more than macro recovery. It requires Valhalla’s mobile launch to drive new user adoption, the MiCAR compliance to actually translate into European exchange listings and institutional buying, and the trading bot fee burns to compound meaningfully.
$FLOKI Price Prediction 2027
By 2027, $FLOKI’s price thesis rests on whether Valhalla becomes a game people actually play in meaningful numbers — not just blockchain enthusiasts but casual gamers who happen to use the token. The mobile launch planned for late 2026 is the catalyst that matters most. GameFi projects that succeeded beyond crypto-native audiences did so overwhelmingly through mobile accessibility; the browser-based version is fine but mobile is where scale comes from.
TokenFi’s RWA tokenization platform could also drive $FLOKI demand indirectly through ecosystem visibility and Floki DAO governance activity, even if TokenFi itself runs on $TOKEN. The broader RWA trend — where blockchainreporter.net has covered projections toward $18.9 trillion by 2033 — gives TokenFi a credible market to operate in.
Changelly models an average of around $0.0000959 for 2027. DigitalCoinPrice targets up to $0.000147. CoinPedia’s bull range of $0.000600–$0.00100 would put $FLOKI back in territory it briefly occupied during the 2024 $ATH run.
The technical setup that would trigger a 2027 recovery: sustained close above $0.000045 (first major resistance), then a break of $0.000065 with volume. From there the path to $0.0001 opens up. None of that happens without broader market conditions cooperating.
$FLOKI Price Prediction 2030
The 2030 case for $FLOKI is actually one of the more grounded meme coin long-term theses, and not because the numbers are exciting — they’re not — but because the arguments aren’t purely speculative.
Valhalla, if it’s still operating in 2030 with a real player base, creates ongoing $FLOKI demand that isn’t dependent on meme cycles. The burn mechanism compounds over time. The staking rewards system retains holders. And $FLOKI is one of only a handful of projects from the 2021 meme coin wave that is still actively building in 2026 — the Floki team themselves made this point in a 2025 AMA, noting that $FLOKI is nearly 4.5 years old and one of the only relevant projects from that cycle beyond $DOGE and $SHIB.
Changelly’s 2030 average of $0.000318 — roughly an 11x from current prices — reflects a scenario where the project survives, the ecosystem grows steadily, and meme coin cycles contribute tailwinds. Not life-changing, but real.
CoinPedia’s $0.00153–$0.00263 range for 2030 would require $FLOKI to reclaim and surpass its $ATH — plausible if Valhalla reaches the scale of a mainstream mobile game and RWA tokenization through TokenFi drives ecosystem interest.
WalletInvestor and TradingBeasts both see sub-$0.00005 through 2030, essentially flat from today. That scenario means the ecosystem products fail to retain users and $FLOKI fades into the background as newer meme coins capture each subsequent cycle.
The honest answer: somewhere in the $0.0001–$0.0004 range by 2030 is a reasonable base case if the project continues building. That’s 3–14x from here. The variance is enormous because 2030 meme coin prices depend on factors nobody can model in 2026.
Can $FLOKI Surpass Its $ATH?
That’s the headline question and the honest answer is: yes, but not easily, and probably not in 2026.
The 2024 $ATH of $0.0003462 sits 12x above current prices. A 12x on a token with a $270 million market cap would put the market cap at roughly $3.2 billion — not unreasonable for a top-tier meme coin during a supercycle. $DOGE and $SHIB both carry far larger market caps in strong markets.
What would have to happen: a meme coin supercycle comparable to 2021 or the first half of 2024, Valhalla demonstrating real mobile user growth, the trading bot burn accumulating enough pressure to matter at scale, and the MiCAR compliance driving meaningful European buying. That’s not an impossible combination. It’s just one that requires everything to go right simultaneously.
$FLOKI is a better-positioned bet for $ATH recovery than most meme coins because it’s still being built by people who clearly intend to keep building. The community is still intact after nearly five years. The ecosystem products are real.
But “better than most meme coins” is a low bar. Whether $FLOKI specifically reclaims $0.000346 depends more on when the next meme coin season arrives and how loud $FLOKI’s community is when it does than on anything the team builds between now and then.
That’s just what meme coin investing is.
Technical Levels
Current price is near the 2026 low of around $0.000026–$0.000028 from February. The first meaningful support floor is in the $0.000020–$0.000025 range — losing that would be notable.
On the upside, $0.000045 is the first major resistance. The 200-day moving average has been declining since August 2025, meaning any recovery faces structural overhead. $0.000065 is the level that would indicate genuine trend reversal. $0.000095–$0.0001 represents the territory $FLOKI held through Q3 2025 before the selloff.
The past 24 hours have seen altcoins react differently, with the majority of them recording losses. Centrifuge [$CFG] was one of the standout performers with a 12% increase, ranking among the top ten daily gainers.
Centrifuge’s announcement to expand to Base Chain, where it allowed the trading of tokenized S&P 500 as a new asset class, drove the rally. Is tokenization the main driver of $CFG? Can bulls keep up with the pace?
$CFG price bounces off KEY retracement level
The charts clearly showed the current bullish momentum, with $CFG rallying from a low of $0.14 to a daily high of $0.172. The altcoin lost its rising trendline support on the 31st of March but seemed to have ended the correction phase.
$CFG bounced off the zone between 0.618 and 0.786 Fibonacci Retracement levels. To be specific, the altcoin respected the optimal zone at the 0.75 Fib level but seems to be seeing rejection around $0.17.
Holding through the premium zone, which is above the 0.5 Fib level, the altcoin increases the potential to hit $0.1857. However, this zone has sparked bearish reversals three times as $CFG makes the fourth attempt.
Source: $CFG/USDT on TradingView
Interestingly, bulls are showing strength, though it’s weak. The MACD lines have had a crossover confirming a short-term trend shift in the altcoin’s price action.
That puts $0.1857 as a potential reversal zone unless bulls can gather enough momentum past the resistance. This resistance zone was 18% away from $0.1561, which was a discount area considering the rally that started on the 23rd of March.
Growth in Centrifuge’s TVL, revenue, and holders
As Centrifuge continued to expand its chain, its Total Value Locked (TVL), revenue, and number of holders followed suit.
For instance, its TVL grew to $1.6 billion from $1.2 billion. This trend is continued as the asset classes have increased to four, which include treasuries, AAA CLOs, private credit, and now S&P 500. Treasuries accounted for the largest share of $1.2 billion.
Its revenue showed steady growth even though there was a slight dip since the year started. March recorded higher revenue than February, indicating the growth was back to positive territory.
Source: Dune Analytics
Dune Analytics recorded a total of 19,699 unique addresses interacting with $CFG. Moreover, holders were growing steadily day by day since May 2025.
Only 14 new holders had been added in the past 24 hours, taking the total over time to 9,111.
Source: Dune Analytics
In summary, $CFG prices were mainly driven by the network activity alongside a bullish technical setup.
Final Summary
Centrifuge surges 12% amid Base Chain integration to trade tokenized S&P 500, but $CFG faces a key test at $0.18.
Centrifuge’s network activity was thriving, as seen in TVL, revenue, and number of holders.
US President Donald Trump’s harsh statements regarding a potential war with Iran caused the price of Bitcoin ($BTC) to fall below $67,000, wiping out gains made in previous days.
With this decline expected to continue, one analyst has claimed that Bitcoin could fall to $10,000.
An analyst at CryptoQuant, using the pseudonym XWIN Research, claimed that in a worst-case scenario, $BTC could fall to $10,000.
The analyst said the current price structure is heavily reliant on derivatives rather than spot demand.
It has been noted that open interest in CME Bitcoin futures is concentrated in short-term leveraged positions of 18,000 to 20,000 $BTC. Such a structure is fragile.
According to the analyst, this situation could lead to a series of liquidations and selling pressures during periods of negative news, as investors would close their positions rather than roll them over.
Given Bitcoin’s current fragile state and vulnerability to news, the analyst outlined several possible scenarios that could be anticipated.
At this point, in the medium-term scenario, Bitcoin could fall to $50,000. This represents a 25% to 30% decrease.
If spot ETF outflows and weak spot demand continue, $BTC could fall to the $20,000-$30,000 range (60% to 70%).
In the worst-case scenario, for example, if the Strait of Hormuz is blockaded or a full-scale war breaks out with the participation of more countries, a sharp contraction in global liquidity and oil prices hovering between $150 and $200 could see $BTC fall to $10,000 (80%).
The U.S. employment market rebounded in a big way from February’s sizable losses.
According to a Friday morning release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country added 178,000 jobs in March, after losing 133,000 positions the previous month. Economist forecasts had been for 60,000 jobs to have been added.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% versus 4.4% in February and expectations for 4.4%.
At least part of the beat was due to a sizable downward revision in the February data from an originally reported decline of 92,000.
Trading quietly near the $67,000 level in the hours ahead of the data, bitcoin remained there in the minutes just following the report.
U.S stock index futures remained modestly lower, the Nasdaq 100 down 0.2%. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield jumped four basis points to 4.36%.
Expectations about the future course of interest rates, of late, have been far more influenced by events in the Middle East and the price of crude oil than by the outlook for domestic economic growth.
As recently as last week, oil’s surging price had markets forecasting imminent rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Speaking earlier this week, though, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank recognized that oil price shocks — while initially making headline inflation numbers look worse — can depress economic activity. He indicated that the Fed would be in no hurry to raise rates in response to short-term moves in crude oil prices.
This morning’s strong beat suggests growing momentum in the economy, perhaps putting 2026 rate hikes back on the table.
The Ethereum Foundation staked roughly $93 million in ether ($ETH) on Thursday in several batches, bringing its total staked position to approximately $143 million and nearly completing the 70,000 $ETH staking target it announced in February, according to Arkham data.
The total deposit of 45,034 $ETH was split into uniform chunks of 2,047 $ETH, each worth roughly $4.23 million, sent from the foundation’s treasury multisig to the Eth2 Beacon Chain deposit contract.
At roughly $2,059 per $ETH, the $143 million total staked position works out to approximately 69,500 $ETH, nearly the full 70,000 $ETH commitment.
The foundation had been building toward the target incrementally since February, starting with an initial 2,016 $ETH deposit and adding roughly 20,470 $ETH on Monday. Thursday’s batch covered the remaining balance in one shot.
The foundation’s Arkham-tracked portfolio shows approximately $270.9 million in total assets across 14 addresses, with $ETH as the dominant holding at roughly 102,400 $ETH ($210.9 million). Smaller positions include USDC, BNB, and a fraction of a bitcoin.
Yield income
Staking is the process of locking up cryptocurrency to help secure a blockchain and earn rewards. It’s analogous to buying bonds and lending money to the government in return for fixed income yields.
At current staking rates, the position would generate roughly $3.9 million to $5.4 million annually at the 2.7% to 3.8% APY range typical for institutional stakers. With MEV-boost, returns could run higher.
That is modest relative to the foundation’s annual operating expenses, which have historically run near $100 million, but it converts a dormant treasury into a productive one without selling $ETH.
Why staking?
The Ethereum Foundation is putting its $ETH to work through staking, earning rewards that help fund research, grants, and operations — all without needing to sell its coins, creating a long-term, self-sustaining treasury.
This replaces the earlier model where the foundation resorted to $ETH sales that weighed over valuations. The foundation faced criticism for the same through 2024 and early 2025.
With staking, the foundation earns yield. The shift, however, does not fully eliminate the need to sell entirely.
At the same time, completing the 70,000 $ETH target does not mean staking is done. The foundation still holds over 100,000 unstaked $ETH. Whether it expands the program beyond the initial commitment or holds the rest as liquid reserves has not been announced.
Ether traded at $2,059 at the time of the deposits, down roughly 4.3% over the past week.
Researchers and experts are poring over Drift’s design, questioning whether certain design features or procedures could’ve thwarted its $285 million exploit.
The incident shows how many DeFi projects prioritize technical security over cybersecurity hygiene, according to SVRN COO David Schwed.
Onlookers have argued that a “time lock” would’ve given Drift the opportunity to potentially step in and prevent the attacker from siphoning the funds.
When millions of dollars in crypto are swiped from a decentralized finance protocol, tough questions often follow—and Drift Protocol’s $285 million exploit on Wednesday is no different.
The Solana-based project has been thrust into the spotlight as researchers and experts pore over its design, raising questions about whether certain design features or procedures could’ve prevented someone from pulling off one of the most lucrative DeFi attacks in the recent past.
In a post on X, Drift said a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to its platform through a “novel attack,” which granted administrative powers over Drift’s so-called security council. They added that the attack likely involved some degree of “sophisticated social engineering.”
The heist, which is among DeFi’s largest in recent history, hinged on introducing a fake digital asset on the decentralized exchange and modifying the platform’s withdrawal limits. After inflating the malicious token’s value, the attacker gained the ability to swiftly drain real liquidity from Drift by abusing borrowing mechanics.
There are indications that the exploit is linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic said in a report on Thursday. They pointed to the attacker’s on-chain behavior, laundering methodologies, and network-level indicators.
With user deposits affected—and the protocol frozen as a precautionary measure—onlookers are also focusing on a core element of Drift’s design: a multisignature wallet, where signatures produced by two private keys enabled the attacker to gain sweeping powers.
Multisignature wallets represent a point of centralization for many DeFi projects, and the incident exposes the uncomfortable reality that smart contract audits can only prevent so much damage, according to SVRN COO and blockchain security expert David Schwed.
He told Decrypt that Drift has become the latest example of how services that seek to replace financial intermediaries with code are frequently reliant on small teams and points of centralization like multisignature wallets that present cybersecurity risks.
“All of the engineers today focus on the technology side of security, they’re not focusing on the people in the process,” he said. “So yes, the protocol is decentralized, but the governance of it is centralized against five people.”
‘Yet again’
Schwed compared Drift’s lapse in security to one of the most notorious DeFi hacks, where over $625 million worth of digital assets were stolen by hackers linked to North Korea in 2022. They targeted Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain developed for the hit NFT game Axie Infinity. The attack relied on gaining access to five private keys, per blockchain security firm Chainalysis.
While blockchain analysts see the fingerprints of a nation-state, others argue the precision of the attack suggests a more intimate knowledge of the protocol. Schwed doubted that hackers linked to North Korea were involved in the hack against Drift because it feels like the attacker, possibly an insider, “knew who to target.”
Onlookers have speculated that a “time lock” could’ve prevented the exploit from taking place so quickly. The smart contract feature restricts the execution of transactions or access to funds until a specific future time is reached, potentially providing Drift’s team with a window to step in.
“Time locks are helpful for gaining time to react to such an attack, and would have helped here—but that is not the root cause,” Stefan Byer, managing partner at Oak Security, told Decrypt. “The biggest issue was that—yet again—a privileged key was compromised.”
Still, Dan Hongfei, founder and chair of Neo Blockchain, argued that protocols like Drift that house millions of dollars in funds should not be instantly drainable.
In a post on X, he said time locks tied to critical actions like listing high-risk assets must be enforced to “prevent an attacker from completing the entire exploit chain within seconds.”
The sentiment was echoed by Or Dadosh, founder of crypto security infrastructure provider Venn Network. He also pointed to automatic circuit breakers, which enable projects to instantly pause operations if abnormal outflow velocity or volume thresholds are breached.
Several security experts wagered that Drift wouldn’t be the last DeFi project to suffer an exploit like the one that occurred on Wednesday. They noted that bad actors are increasingly turning to AI, using algorithms to gain a comprehensive understanding of their next target.
“We’ve reached a level where a bad actor can spoof your mother’s voice on a phone call,” Dadosh told Decrypt. “We live in a new age where financial attacks can surface in places and formats we couldn’t have even imagined a year ago.”
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Coinbase is joining with the Linux Foundation to launch the x402 Foundation.
The group will steward the x402 payments standard under an open governance model.
Companies including Google, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, and Cloudflare are participating.
Coinbase is joining with the Linux Foundation to launch the x402 Foundation, an industry group created to oversee the development of a new internet payments standard.
The foundation will steward the x402 protocol, which lets websites request and receive payments as part of normal web traffic, after Coinbase contributed the technology to the Linux Foundation to place it under neutral governance.
“The internet was built on open protocols,” Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said in a statement. “The x402 Foundation will create an open, community-governed home to develop these capabilities in the open, ensuring they evolve with transparency, interoperability, and broad participation across the ecosystem.”
Under Linux Foundation governance, the x402 protocol will remain vendor-neutral, the Linux Foundation said, allowing for “transparent, community-driven growth, ensuring accessibility, and supporting sustainability.”
Erik Reppel, head of engineering for the Coinbase Developer Platform, said Coinbase will remain involved as a founding participant while the foundation manages development of the technology.
“Coinbase is a founding member and the original creator of the protocol,” Reppel told Decrypt. “Both Coinbase and Base are part of the initial set of industry participants supporting the foundation’s migration to an open-source model. Members will help with governance to help guide the future of x402.”
Launched in 2025 by Coinbase’s developer platform, x402 revived the long-unused HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code to create a native payment layer for the web, allowing websites and APIs to request payment directly during normal HTTP interactions before granting access to content or services.
Developers have begun experimenting with the protocol as AI agents increasingly perform tasks for users online. Projects, including Sam Altman’s World, are integrating x402 into tools that let agents prove they represent real people, and infrastructure efforts like MoonPay’s Open Wallet Standard are adding support for the protocol.
Companies participating in the launch of the x402 foundation include Google, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Cloudflare, and the Solana Foundation.
“The shift toward agentic commerce requires cloud infrastructure that is as open as the protocols it supports,” Managing Director, Web3 and Digital Assets at Google Cloud, James Tromans, said in a statement. “By joining the x402 Foundation, Google is reinforcing its commitment to interoperable standards that enable secure, AI-driven transactions across platforms.”
“Solana has been one of the earliest adopters of x402, driving nearly 65% of x402 transaction volume this year, and has a growing ecosystem building products with x402 payments,” Head of AI Growth, Solana Foundation, Rishin Sharma said in a statement. “We’re eager to support the x402 Foundation to build the future of agentic payments and onboard more developers, merchants, and agents to pay-per-request models with stablecoins.”
The x402 Foundation will operate under Linux Foundation governance to support community-driven development of the standard. Organizations that contribute to or use the technology can join the foundation and help guide its development. Early priorities include maintaining interoperability across implementations and supporting developers and merchants building services around the standard.
Shan Aggarwal, chief business officer at Coinbase, said the company views the project as an effort to create a more open infrastructure for the future of online payments.
“Agents are going to buy, sell, and transact on our behalf. They will need a payment rail that’s open, interoperable, and doesn’t require a human clicking confirm purchase,” Aggarwal told Decrypt. “That’s x402, and now it’s governed by the community.”
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