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Democrats Sanders And Warren Push Labor Department To Abandon Bitcoin 401(k) Rule

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Democrats Sanders And Warren Push Labor Department To Abandon Bitcoin 401(k) Rule

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are calling on the Trump administration’s Labor Department to scrap a rule that would open America’s retirement savings accounts to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — a move the lawmakers say puts workers’ financial futures at risk while lining the pockets of President Trump and his family.

In a 14-page letter sent Monday to Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Sanders (I-VT) and Warren (D-MA) joined House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) to condemn a proposed Department of Labor rule floated in March.

The rule would give 401(k) plan fiduciaries cover to offer volatile assets — including cryptocurrency, private equity, and private credit — so long as fiduciaries can demonstrate they weighed relevant factors before offering access.

“The proposed rule is harmful to American workers and counter to statute, Congressional intent, existing regulations, and case law,” the letter reads.

What the rule would do

The proposal stems from an executive order President Trump signed last August, directing the Labor Department to revisit its approach to alternative assets in retirement plans. Under current law, fiduciaries managing 401(k) plans are held to a strict “prudence” standard — a requirement rooted in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 and reinforced by Supreme Court precedent.

The Democrats argue the new rule would flip that standard on its head. Rather than requiring fiduciaries to demonstrate due diligence, the rule would presume it — so long as a fiduciary follows the process the rule outlines.

That shift, the lawmakers say, conflicts with decades of legal precedent and exposes the estimated $14.2 trillion sitting in American 401(k) accounts to assets with extreme price swings and limited regulatory oversight.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has warned that crypto investments “have experienced higher levels of volatility relative to more traditional investment assets” and that “the risk of losing all of your investment is significant.” The FBI reported over $11 billion in cryptocurrency fraud losses in 2025 — among the highest losses from any category of cyber-enabled crime.

The Trump conflict-of-interest argument

The Democratic lawmakers went beyond retirement policy, raising pointed conflict-of-interest concerns. Trump’s adult sons manage the family’s crypto business, and the ventures have raised an estimated $5 billion for the Trump family following the September launch of their digital currency, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The family’s crypto portfolio includes World Liberty Financial’s WLFI and USD1 tokens, as well as the official Trump meme coin — which surged past $75 per token at Trump’s January 2025 inauguration before collapsing to around $2.

“The change to the prudence standard described above expands opportunities for President Trump and his family to profit at the expense of taxpayers, workers, and retirees,” the letter reads.

Consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform echoed those concerns.

“Opening 401(k)s to these products risks turning workers’ retirement savings into a Ponzi-like scheme that throws a lifeline to an industry scrambling for fresh cash,” said Oscar Valdés Viera, a senior policy analyst at the organization.

The letter also cited senior poverty statistics: more than 22.8% of seniors in the United States live in poverty, compared with 5.1% in Denmark, 5.8% in France, and 12.6% in Germany — underscoring the stakes for retirees who can’t absorb major losses.

The administration’s defense

The Trump administration has framed the rule as an expansion of worker choice.

“The department’s days of picking winners and losers are over,” Acting Labor Secretary Sonderling said in a statement. “Our rule clearly spells out that managers must evaluate any and all potential product offerings by following a prudent process.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added his support, calling the rule “another step in ushering in President Trump’s ‘Golden Age.’”

Coinbase Ventures Buys ENA on the Open Market as Coinbase and Ethena Strike Distribution Deal

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Coinbase Ventures Buys ENA on the Open Market as Coinbase and Ethena Strike Distribution Deal

The exchange’s venture arm bought ENA tokens directly on the open market rather than through a private round, the first such disclosed purchase, alongside a partnership to push Ethena’s onchain dollar and savings products into Coinbase’s userbase.

Coinbase Ventures has bought ENA tokens on the open market rather than through a discounted private round, the venture arm’s first such disclosed purchase, as the parent exchange and synthetic-dollar issuer Ethena announced a separate partnership to push onchain finance and savings products to Coinbase’s userbase.

Ethena disclosed both moves in a post on its official X account Tuesday, saying the two companies “have partnered to grow onchain finance and savings products” for Coinbase’s “100m+ userbase,” with “the first growth initiative launching next week.”

The same post said Coinbase Ventures “have also made their first investment into Ethena on the open market.”

Coinbase Ventures confirmed the token purchase on its official X account.

“Coinbase Ventures is proud to back @Ethena through an open market purchase of ENA,” the post said. “Ethena is a critical player in onchain finance, and we are excited for the closer partnership with Coinbase and USDC.”

The Open-Market Posture

Coinbase Ventures, founded in 2018, has logged over 600 investments across crypto and web3, according to its website, almost all of them seed or early-stage private rounds where the venture arm participates alongside other firms. Buying a publicly traded token on a secondary market is a signal as it leaves Coinbase Ventures aligned with ENA holders on float and price rather than with a cap-table preference stack.

The distribution side of the deal opens the protocol’s two flagship assets — the USDe synthetic dollar and the staked, yield-bearing sUSDe — at a user base that, by Coinbase’s own historical disclosures, crossed 100 million verified accounts in 2022 and has grown since. Coinbase reported $294 billion in assets on platform at the end of the first quarter, the largest custodian balance in the industry.

Ethena’s Numbers Going In

Ethena holds about $5.4 billion in total value locked, of which the USDe contract accounts for roughly $4.5 billion, per DefiLlama. The protocol is running at $178 million in annualized fees and has produced $972 million in cumulative fees and $332 million in cumulative protocol revenue since 2023, when Ethena Labs was founded by Guy Young. ENA, the governance token, has a market capitalization of $859 million and a fully diluted valuation of $1.4 billion.

The token reacted within minutes of the news, and it’s up 7.6% in the past 24 hours. DefiLlama showed 24-hour ENA trading volume of $168 million, with on-chain volume of $178 million on Uniswap V3 and Aerodrome, heavier than centralized-exchange flow and consistent with a coordinated bid into the news.

What’s Not Yet Disclosed

Ethena did not say how many ENA tokens Coinbase Ventures bought or at what price, and there has been no on-chain disclosure of the buying wallets. Neither side has named the product that will launch next week, and Coinbase already serves as primary custodian for ENA held by the Ethena Labs core team and Foundation under a prior multi-product agreement with Coinbase Prime, so custodial flow alone is not new.

A Little Story About Inflation

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A Little Story About Inflation

When I was a teenager, I delivered newspapers. I earned 10 German marks (DM) per hour. That was enough money to buy 33 scoops of ice cream, since a single scoop only cost 30 cents, or pfennig, as they were back then.

Fast forward to 2025: today, a teenager delivering newspapers earns at most €12 per hour. However, a scoop of ice cream now costs a hefty €1.50, and sometimes more than €2 in the big cities. This means that for every hour of newspaper delivery, you can afford at best a mere eight scoops of ice cream, but it’s often less than that.

The working time of a newspaper boy or girl has been significantly devalued in Germany over the last forty years. An hour’s work now yields only six to eight scoops of ice cream, compared with the 33 scoops it originally earned in the 1980s. That’s a loss of around 80%.

If I had put my 10 DM in a drawer, found them forty years later, and exchanged them for €5, I’d only get about two to three scoops of ice cream—a loss of over 90%.

This concerns inflation and its redistributive effects. It’s not only saved money that’s devalued; it’s also the time that’s spent earning that money—or to be more precise, earning a fixed basket of goods. As money loses value, so does the actual time we spent earning it. On average, we receive far less in real goods for the work we do.

Inflation, the continual devaluation of money, is a huge problem. The global money supply (M2) is estimated at around $120 trillion (see Figure 4). Even at an inflation rate of 4% (and the global rate is likely higher), the M2of approximately $120 trillion implies that $4.8 trillion in purchasing power is destroyed each year. That’s more than the entire gross national product of Germany. Inflation affects billions of people. Almost everyone, in fact. And the less you earn, the more you are dispossessed by inflation. The vast majority of people, which I estimate at around 90% of all citizens, have no way to avoid the devaluation of money. They lose out as their savings are devalued, and their wages fail to keep pace with rising inflation.

Major historical upheavals and revolutions have very often been preceded by inflation, for example, the French Revolution. Currency devaluation also played a significant role in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in AD476, some one thousand years before the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. Therefore, inflation also represents a serious threat to democratic societies today.

The amount of bitcoin will not increase in the long term. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoin, and no one will ever be able to change that. At this point in early 2026, there are already 19.9 million bitcoin, a good 95% of the set amount. This means that any remaining expansion (or new issuance) of bitcoin will amount to just under 5%; not in the next year, but over approximately one hundred fifteen years. Around the year 2140, 100% of all bitcoin will have been mined, and there will simply not be any more. This means that the share of money you hold in bitcoin will not be devalued against a basket of goods over a decade or even a century. Your share won’t be diluted. Bitcoin does not inflate; when measured in bitcoin, goods actually become cheaper over time. So the money you exchange for bitcoin today will buy you at least as many scoops of ice cream in ten years as it does now—and probably more. A lot more. This is the fundamental essence of bitcoin.

Discover more in Bitcoin: The Honest Money!
This excerpt is just the beginning. Dive deeper into how inflation devalues your money, your savings, and your time in Bitcoin: The Honest Money by Alex von Frankenberg, Ph.D. The paperback is available now.

Order your copy here!

CFTC Chair Claims Gemini Case was Politically Motivated, Seeks to Reverse $5M Settlement

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CFTC Chair Claims Gemini Case was Politically Motivated, Seeks to Reverse $5M Settlement

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig is claiming that the agency under former President Joe Biden “politically targeted” the co-founders of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini through enforcement actions.

In a Tuesday CNBC interview, Selig said under his leadership, the CFTC was “trying to get back to a baseline” on enforcement, after what he claimed was politicization by the Biden administration. While the Selig acknowledged that he is a political appointee nominated by US President Donald Trump, he claimed that the recently reported staff cuts targeted people “engaging in lawfare.”

“The Biden administration weaponized the federal agencies against the crypto industry and many other industries,” said Selig. “They politically targeted people like the Winklevoss twins, and that’s not acceptable. We’re righting those wrongs. We’re gonna start fresh. The agency should not be used to engage in lawfare.”

Michael Selig in Tuesday interview. Source: CNBC

Under Selig, the CFTC last week moved for a federal court to vacate the agency’s $5 million settlement with Gemini, which it reached in January 2025 before the commission was under the Trump administration. Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss each donated $1 million to Trump’s 2024 election campaign and have since attended White House events with the president, including the signing ceremony for the stablecoin-related GENIUS Act.

“I’m not going to get into the facts, because this is an active investigation, litigation rather,” said Selig. “But what is important here is that to the extent the agency was used to politically target folks, we’re reversing that, and we’re starting fresh.”

Related: CFTC backs crypto perpetual contracts, issues advisory on 24/7 trading

According to former CFTC Chair Timothy Massad, it was “extraordinarily unusual” for the agency to attempt to reverse its position on a previously settled case like Gemini’s. Cointelegraph reached out to the CFTC and Gemini for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Selig leads CFTC policy as the agency’s sole commissioner and chair

Under Selig, the CFTC has taken the position that federal commodities law supersedes individual US states’ authority over prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The commission has filed lawsuits against Minnesota and other jurisdictions attempting to restrict or ban prediction markets.

Source: Polymarket

Selig remains the agency’s sole commissioner following a string of resignations and departures from its leadership in 2025, including former acting chair Caroline Pham. Many US lawmakers have urged Trump to fill the agency’s five-person leadership panel with a bipartisan group of regulators, but the president had not announced any picks as of Tuesday.

Magazine: HYPE chases $100 target, ETH could dump below $1800: Market Moves

Bad Sentiment, Strong Fundamentals: the Institutional Turn | Chris Perkins, Franklin Crypto

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Bad Sentiment, Strong Fundamentals: the Institutional Turn | Chris Perkins, Franklin Crypto

🎧 Listen to Interview 💻 Watch Video… Read the full story at The Defiant

BTC may face deeper losses as capital chases AI stocks, K33 says

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BTC may face deeper losses as capital chases AI stocks, K33 says

Bitcoin BTC$67,160.49 tumbling to $67,000 may signal a challenging summer ahead as investor capital continues flowing into artificial intelligence (AI) stocks and away from crypto.

In a Tuesday report, K33 Research head Vetle Lunde said bitcoin’s weakness reflects fading institutional demand, heavy ETF outflows and growing vulnerabilities in derivatives markets.

“Much of the market views the opportunity cost of holding BTC as too high while anything AI-related soars,” Lunde wrote.

The divergence has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Bitcoin has failed to reclaim its 200-day moving average while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 continue setting record highs. Investors are also looking ahead to potential IPOs from companies such as SpaceX and Anthropic, which may be drawing capital away from crypto, Lunde argued.

That rotation is evident in bitcoin ETF flows. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded products shed 62,794 BTC over the past three weeks, the second-largest outflow streak on record, the report noted.

K33 said ETF selling accelerated after bitcoin’s failed attempt to break above its 200-day moving average last month.

$60,000 bottom being questioned

The shift in tone marks a notable change for K33. The firm previously argued bitcoin’s plunge to around $60,000 in February likely marked the deepest drawdown of the cycle. A key part of that thesis was unusually negative funding rates in perpetual futures markets, which reflected persistent bearish positioning and created conditions for powerful short squeezes.

That setup helped fuel bitcoin’s rebound toward $83,000. But the rally ultimately stalled at the 200-day moving average, a level that has capped previous bear market rallies.

Today, the derivatives picture looks very different, Lunde said. CME bitcoin futures open interest has fallen to its lowest level since October 2023, a sign that institutional traders are reducing exposure. Meanwhile, funding rates in perpetual futures have risen alongside open interest even as bitcoin falls, suggesting leveraged longs are building into a weakening market.

While the firm has not completely abandoned its view that $60,000 marked the cycle low, the tone has become more defensive.

“We read the latent selling pressure in those leveraged longs as a warning of possible deeper lows and advise caution,” the report said.

K33 still sees bitcoin as undervalued relative to equities over the long run. But with institutional demand fading, ETF investors heading for the exits and capital chasing stronger-performing sectors, the firm says the market faces a tougher backdrop than it did just a few weeks ago.

“With outside capital reluctant to enter and existing holders trimming exposure, we may be in for a choppy summer,” Lunde wrote.

Tom Lee predicts ETH will hit $250,000 as corporate validators take over network control

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Tom Lee predicts ETH will hit $250,000 as corporate validators take over network control

The cryptocurrency market is looking at the wrong signals, and a massive shift in how the world’s financial networks operate is happening quietly behind the scenes.

In a keynote address at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, Tom Lee, head of Research at Fundstrat and Chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), told his audience that ether (ETH) is experiencing significant changes that will eventually drive up its price to $250,000. While Lee did not provide a specific timeline for the target, he did map out the infrastructure shifts driving the network toward that value.

Ether on Tuesday was changing hands at $1,906, down 6% over the past 24 hours.

Lee’s Bitmine firm is one of the largest corporate holders of Ethereum. Bitmine ramped up ETH purchases last week, making its most significant since December. It bought 111,942 ether (ETH) worth around $237 million at current prices. That lifted the firm’s holdings to almost 5.4 million ETH, about 4.47% of ether’s circulating supply.

“If a thesis is correct and Ethereum is going to break out of this consolidation, and the consolidation breakout is tokenization and AI, you know, I think that that’s probably 50X or so—significant upside for Ethereum. If Ether realizes, is correct, and Ethereum goes to $250,000, that values Bitmine stock at $5,000. It’s a bargain at $18.”

Multi-trillion-dollar growth

Lee explained that this multi-trillion-dollar growth will be driven by artificial intelligence. As advanced software and automated computing take over the internet, machines will need a way to pay each other instantly without relying on slow, traditional bank wires.

“Robots are already going to dominate most traffic on the internet,” Lee stated. “And this is why Andreessen Horowitz and others have talked about this as being the great unification because if you’ve got robot systems, you’re going to have to control them. And that’s where blockchain is much more effective than traditional rails for controlling what robots do. Whether it’s authentication or identity or payment speed, all of these work better on crypto systems.”

Because of this machine-to-machine economy, Lee believes Ethereum will transform from a speculative digital asset into the primary global currency for paying for automated computer processing power.

Ethereum Foundation death

This systemic growth is completely changing how the underlying blockchain networks are managed. Lee pointed out that the non-profit Ethereum Foundation has spent years shrinking its own footprint, dropping its network holdings down to just 100,000 ETH—accounting for a tiny 0.1% of the total supply.

In its place, massive public companies are stepping in to run the network as corporate validators. Corporate entities like Bitmine and Sharklink now collectively control 7% of the entire circulating Ethereum supply. Instead of relying on foundation grants, these corporate treasuries now generate $500 million in staking rewards each year to fund the ecosystem themselves.

To demonstrate the value of this model, Lee announced a major regulatory milestone for Bitmine, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BMNR.

“Bitmine also meets the eligibility criteria to be added to the Russell 1000,” Lee revealed. “The inclusion date is June 26. Why does that matter? Well, the Russell 1000 is the most widely tracked index in the world… Every fund manager in the world who is benchmarked against the Russell 1000—and that’s over $4 trillion worth—will have to decide if they want to own Bitmine.”

Lee explained, with graphics behind him, that holding an active corporate validator stock significantly outperforms buying spot crypto. Over a baseline six-month stretch, holding regular spot ETH generated a modest 22% return, while Bitmine’s staking architecture returned 500% to its investors.

For Lee, the massive structural growth of corporate staking and AI utility completely overrides any temporary market panic. “If you are bearish today, you are selling at the bottom,” Lee concluded. “And again, I can’t emphasize thinking, if you’re bearish today, you are bearish at the bottom for Bitcoin and Ethereum.”

How High Can NEAR Price Go in June?

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How High Can NEAR Price Go in June?

NEAR, the native token of the AI- and privacy-focused Near Protocol, has been an outlier in the broader crypto market, outperforming top coins such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in recent weeks.

As of Tuesday, NEAR traded as high as $2.75, marking a nearly 20% rebound in the last 24 hours. In comparison, the crypto market capitalization dropped by 3.7% in the same period.

NEAR/USD four-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Key takeaways:

  • NEAR’s bounce from a multi-year bottom zone raises the odds of its price rising toward $3.77.
  • Fundamentals remain supportive, with NEAR Intents processing $19.69 billion in volume and generating $32.64 million in fees.

NEAR fractal targets 40% price gains

NEAR’s weekly chart shows the token rebounding from a long-term bottom area near $0.90–$1.10, a zone that also preceded its major rallies in 2021 and 2024.

The 2021 rebound from the bottom area delivered 2,375% gains, while the 2024 recovery produced a 900% rally before the top. In each case, the rally exhausted at NEAR’s descending trend line resistance.

NEAR/USD weekly chart. Source: TradingView

The current setup is smaller but structurally similar. As of Tuesday, NEAR had bounced 225% after bottoming inside the $0.90–$1.10 area in February and was approaching its multi-year descending trend line resistance.

The primary upside target came around the $3.40–$3.77 range, aligning with NEAR’s 200-week exponential moving average (200-week EMA, the blue line) and the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement level.

That would mark an upside of roughly 25%–40% from current prices.

Related: NEAR protocol leads AI token rally with a 50% pump: Is $5 NEAR price next?

Conversely, NEAR faces strong resistance in the $2.61–$2.72 area, a range coinciding with its 100-week EMA (purple) and 0.236 Fib line.

NEAR/USD weekly chart. Source: TradingView

Failing to break this level decisively may result in a pullback toward the 5o-week EMA at around $2, down by roughly 30% from current prices. Also, NEAR’s weekly relative strength index (RSI) is near 68, showing momentum is strong but nearing overheated territory.

A move above 70 would put NEAR in the classic overbought zone, increasing the odds of short-term consolidation or a pullback toward $2.

NEAR Intents, June upgrade support bullish Case

NEAR’s fundamentals favor the upside.

Investor sentiment has improved around the protocol’s AI, privacy, and cross-chain infrastructure push.

That includes NEAR Intents, a cross-chain transaction system that lets users move assets across blockchains without manually handling bridges or fragmented liquidity.

The product has processed $19.69 billion in volume and generated about $32.64 million in fees, according to DefiLlama data.

Near Intents TVL, fees, revenue, and DEX volumes. Source: DefiLlama

The bullish case has also strengthened ahead of NEAR’s expected June network upgrade, which is set to introduce dynamic resharding.

The feature is designed to automatically add network capacity as demand rises, improving scalability without requiring users or developers to manage the underlying infrastructure.

BitMEX Co-Founder Arthur Hayes predicted that NEAR’s price will grow 20x in the long term.

EdgeX Blames Outsider for EDGE Token Crash as ZachXBT Alleges Insider Manipulation

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EdgeX Blames Outsider for EDGE Token Crash as ZachXBT Alleges Insider Manipulation

Decentralized exchange edgeX has attributed a more than 40% collapse in its EDGE token to ‘deliberate’ market manipulation by an unnamed external party, a claim that onchain investigator ZachXBT has dismissed.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows edgeX (EDGE) plunged from roughly $1.20 to an intra-day low of $0.3663 on Tuesday, a drop of around 70%. The token is currently trading at $0.6474, down by around 45% over the past day.

In a post on X, the edgeX team acknowledged the sudden collapse in its native token, telling its community it had “observed a sudden and irregular price movement” and was actively investigating.

In response, ZachXBT claimed edgeX’s supply had been controlled by a small number of insiders operating with a low float, making the token inherently vulnerable to these types of events. He also demanded that the project publicly disclose the counterparties and market-maker agreements that contributed to the crash.

Only 350 million EDGE tokens are currently in circulation out of a maximum supply of 1 billion, meaning more than two-thirds of the total supply has yet to hit the market. A low circulating float can make a token more vulnerable to sharp price moves, especially if liquidity is concentrated or large holders sell into thin order books.

Related: Verus bridge exploiter returns $8.5M after bounty offer

EdgeX says project not hacked

In a follow-up statement, edgeX said the platform had not been compromised in any way. “What we have identified so far suggests deliberate attempts by certain external party to manipulate the market price of EDGE,” the project wrote, calling it a market integrity issue.

However, ZachXBT was unconvinced. “We investigated ourselves and did not find ourselves guilty even though we control nearly the entire supply,” he sarcastically wrote.

Source: CoinMarketCap

EdgeX is the 16th largest DEX in terms of trade volume over the past day, according to data from DefiLlama. The project has a total value locked (TVL) of $137 million.

Related: Recovery hopes fade as Kelp DAO hacker launders nearly all $220M in stolen funds

DEX trading volume declines

DEX trading volume across all chains has also pulled back sharply from its peak levels.

The broader pullback in DEX activity can make thinly traded tokens more vulnerable to sharp moves, though EDGE’s crash also involved project-specific questions over supply, market makers and insider control.

After hitting a spike close to $45 billion in early 2025, aggregate decentralized exchange volume has trended lower and largely stabilized in the $5 billion to $20 billion daily range through the first half of 2026, with a secondary peak around $30 billion in October 2025 before fading again, according to data from DefiLlama.

DEX trade volume. Source: DefiLlama

The cooling activity reflects a broader retreat in onchain trading appetite following the frenzy of early 2025, leaving DEX markets thinner and more vulnerable to outsized price impacts.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions

Securitize Brings Hamilton Lane’s HLSCOPE Private-Credit Fund to TRON in First Issuance on the Network

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Securitize Brings Hamilton Lane’s HLSCOPE Private-Credit Fund to TRON in First Issuance on the Network

The tokenized Senior Credit Opportunities feeder fund — already live on Polygon, Ethereum and three other chains — becomes the inaugural Securitize-issued asset on a network with 383 million accounts and roughly $90 billion in circulating stablecoins.

Securitize on Tuesday launched a tokenized version of Hamilton Lane’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, known as HLSCOPE, on the TRON blockchain, the first asset the tokenization platform has ever issued on the stablecoin-heavy network, the two companies said in a joint announcement.

The launch puts a Reg D-gated private-credit feeder fund, managed by Securitize Capital into Hamilton Lane’s evergreen senior-secured loan vehicle, onto a chain that, by TRON’s own count cited in the announcement, hosts more than 383 million accounts and roughly $90 billion in circulating stablecoins.

Hamilton Lane (Nasdaq: HLNE) is a private-markets firm with $1 trillion in total assets under management and supervision as of March 31. Securitize itself has $4 billion-plus in AUM across funds with Apollo, BlackRock, BNY, KKR, VanEck and Hamilton Lane.

The deal extends the institutional RWA-tokenization arc to a chain whose volume is dominated by stablecoin settlement rather than DeFi activity, in contrast with Ethereum and Polygon, where Securitize-issued products have largely lived. It follows DTCC’s selection of Stellar for its tokenized-securities rollout and Franklin Templeton’s tokenized Treasury fund crossing $2.5 billion in AUM in May.

“Tokenization reaches its full potential when institutional-grade assets can operate on blockchain networks built for global scale,” Carlos Domingo, Securitize co-founder and chief executive, said in the announcement. “Bringing HLSCOPE to TRON marks an important milestone not only because it is the first Securitize asset launching on the network, but because it expands access to private markets through infrastructure designed for continuous, global financial activity.”

HLSCOPE Fund Specifications

HLSCOPE has been live since May 2023, when Securitize first deployed it on Polygon with a $10,000 minimum investment, down from the $2 million minimum on the underlying institutional fund, monthly subscription windows and on-demand redemptions at the previous quarter’s NAV.

The fund charges a 1.75% management fee with no performance fee, according to RWA.xyz data, and currently shows a NAV of roughly $1,228 per token across about $4.4 million in token value. Access is restricted to accredited investors under a Reg D exemption; that gating travels with the token across chains, enforced at the smart-contract layer by Securitize’s transfer agent.

Securitize’s Multi-Chain Footprint and the Wormhole Layer

HLSCOPE is already issued on Polygon, Ethereum, Optimism and Plume per RWA.xyz, with the bulk of supply on Polygon. TRON becomes the fifth network. Cross-chain transfers run through Wormhole, which Securitize designated as its official interoperability provider in September 2024 and which already routes BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money-market fund across five networks.

“TRON supports fast, efficient and scalable global settlement,” Justin Sun, founder of TRON, said in the announcement. “Welcoming Securitize and HLSCOPE to the TRON ecosystem represents an important step in bridging traditional finance with blockchain infrastructure.”

The TRON launch comes as Securitize is in a proposed business combination with Cantor Equity Partners II (Nasdaq: CEPT) that values the firm at $1.25 billion and would list the combined entity under the ticker SECZ. The two parties filed a Form S-4 on January 28, 2026; the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

What the TRON Distribution Test Will Hinge On

HLSCOPE’s $4.4 million in current token value sits well below TRON’s stablecoin scale, and the network’s existing user base, which is heavily weighted toward retail USDT transfers, does not on its face overlap with the accredited-investor pool the fund is built for. The token’s reach on TRON will depend on whether the chain’s stablecoin liquidity meaningfully attracts qualified subscribers, or whether TRON mostly serves as a settlement venue for transfers Securitize Markets controls on either end.

The pace of follow-on Securitize issuances on TRON, and any updated supply breakdown showing the network capturing share from Polygon or Ethereum, will signal whether this is a one-product expansion or a wider tilt.

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