Home Blog Page 590

American Bitcoin (ABTC) Surpasses 7,000 Bitcoin

info@uweb3.io
-
0
American Bitcoin (ABTC) Surpasses 7,000 Bitcoin

ABTC has crossed 7,000 BTC in corporate reserves, marking more expansion of its Bitcoin treasury following its Nasdaq listing. The company reported its holdings have nearly tripled since launch, while “satoshis per share” have more than doubled over the same period. 

ABTC now ranks among the top publicly traded Bitcoin-holding firms globally, coming in at #16, according to bitcointreasuries.net. 

American Bitcoin has been aggressively expanding its mining operations, purchasing over 11,000 ASIC machines this month to significantly boost hashrate capacity. 

The company plans to scale its fleet toward ~89,000 rigs and ~28 EH/s, focusing on self-mining BTC at lower costs rather than market purchases. 

Executives say this strategy is designed to increase Bitcoin holdings efficiently, with strong reported mining margins.

ABTC co-founder Eric Trump also took to X earlier this month and said that major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, are lobbying in Washington to restrict higher-yield crypto and stablecoin products through legislation like the CLARITY Act, aiming to protect traditional banking profits.

ABTC’s rough stock performance

The company reported a challenging fourth quarter earlier this year as bitcoin’s 23% price decline triggered a $227 million non-cash mark-to-market loss and a $59 million net loss. Revenue for the quarter was $78.3 million, slightly below estimates but up from $64.2 million a year earlier, with full-year revenue of $185.2 million. 

The firm ended last year with 5,401 BTC and has since grown holdings above 6,000 BTC through mining and open-market purchases. 

The company said roughly one-third of its bitcoin came from mining, the rest from acquisitions. It operates at a 53% mining margin, indicating profitability despite volatility. 

Since its Nasdaq debut in September of 2025, shares have fallen sharply from peak levels, down over 90%.

Industry peers such as MARA and Riot are diversifying into AI infrastructure, while Hut 8 supports American Bitcoin and expanded credit facilities to $400 million, alongside a $200 million revolving line from Two Prime, strengthening liquidity. 

At the time of writing, shares of ABTC are near $0.90 a share.

Editorial Disclaimer: We leverage AI as part of our editorial workflow, including to support research, image generation, and quality assurance processes. All content is directed, reviewed, and approved by our editorial team, who are accountable for accuracy and integrity. AI-generated images use only tools trained on properly license material. In Bitcoin, as in media: Don’t trust. Verify.

Bitcoin payments go mainstream as Square auto-enables BTC for small businesses

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Bitcoin payments go mainstream as Square auto-enables BTC for small businesses

Jack Dorsey’s Square on Monday announced it began automatically enabling bitcoin payments for millions of eligible U.S. small businesses, marking one of the most aggressive pushes yet to integrate crypto into mainstream commerce.

The Block (XYZ) subsidiary said businesses can now accept bitcoin with no additional setup requirements and with transactions instantly converted into U.S. dollars at checkout. The feature includes near-instant settlement and zero processing fees through 2026, it added.

“Automatically enabled bitcoin payments are rolling out to eligible U.S. Square sellers,” the company wrote on its X post.

“Start accepting bitcoin that instantly converts to cash at checkout, with no additional setup.” The roll-out builds on Square’s broader “Square Bitcoin” initiative announced recently, but signals a significant change, as bitcoin acceptance is now being integrated directly into existing payment systems instead of needing merchants to activate it.

Merchants who accept bitcoin for the goods and services they are selling will receive U.S. dollars by default, removing exposure to price volatility and eliminating the need for custody or accounting changes, the company has said in previous statements.

Miles Suter, Block’s head of bitcoin product, on X said, “we’re making it easier for millions of businesses to accept bitcoin. This is how bitcoin as everyday money begins.” CEO Dorsey confirmed the roll-out with a succinct “today” comment on X.

The move comes as PayPal recently rolled out its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, PYUSD, to tens of thousands of its users in 70 markets worldwide, as part of its strategy to push deeper into digital payments, while Square’s BTC payments roll-out is a major milestone for the cryptocurrency industry. Dorsey, a bitcoin purist, has repeatedly expressed his aversion to stablecoins, though he recently said his company would support these USD-pegged tokens due to increasing customer demand.

Square’s user-base are currently 78% from U.S. and 22% from international markets, according to its recent investor presentation.

Square’s market breakdown (Square)

Bitcoin for the masses

In a separate X post, Suter said “bitcoin as everyday money is a long term journey” for Block and the world, adding that “many moves to make and many pieces to get in place for this to all come together the right way, and sustainably.”

Square’s bitcoin payment approach is part of a growing trend to abstract from crypto complexity by handling conversions in the background, out of users’ visibility. By defaulting settlement to fiat, Square lowers the barrier for small businesses that have historically rejected crypto.

The announcement drew attention from industry figures, including Lightspark CEO and former PayPal President David Marcus, who described the rollout as a potential “TCP/IP moment” for money.

Marcus compared the move to the early standardization of internet protocols, arguing that bitcoin could become a foundational layer for transferring value across systems.

“Enabling Bitcoin payments at scale could mirror how TCP/IP became the foundational protocol of the internet,” he said.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) underpins how data moves across the internet, allowing disparate networks to communicate through a shared standard. Marcus suggested bitcoin could play a similar role in financial infrastructure by creating a common framework for moving value between users and platforms.

Square’s integration could significantly expand Bitcoin’s real-world payment footprint. Rather than targeting crypto-native users, the company is integrating bitcoin payment tools systems already used by millions of small businesses for payments, inventory and payroll.

Read more: Stablecoin payments go ‘invisible’ in Southeast Asia as crypto card business surges

Aave V4 Launches on Ethereum Mainnet

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Aave V4 Launches on Ethereum Mainnet

Announced at EthCC in Cannes, the upgrade enables institution-specific borrowing environments, structured credit products, and RWA-backed lending within a unified liquidity system.

Aave V4 is now live on Ethereum mainnet, marking a fundamental architectural overhaul of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, which has over $24 billion in total value locked (TVL).

The upgrade introduces a hub-and-spoke design that allows markets to operate independently while sharing liquidity through a unified system — a shift the team says resolves a core limitation that has constrained DeFi lending since its inception.

“DeFi has built deep liquidity. Aave V4 shifts the focus to the demand side, putting that liquidity to work across real credit markets,” said Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov.

Modular Architecture

At its core, Aave V4 separates liquidity from borrowing environments. Liquidity is concentrated in shared hubs, while individual “spokes” define independent borrowing markets, each with its own collateral types, risk parameters, and repayment logic. Markets access shared liquidity through governance-controlled credit lines, keeping exposure explicitly limited.

New market types, including fixed-rate lending, borrowing against custodial assets held at qualified institutions, structured credit products, and non-standard collateral like LP positions, can be created without fragmenting Aave’s deep liquidity pool.

V4 also introduces mechanisms to deploy idle liquidity into governance-approved yield strategies, aiming to improve depositor returns without requiring changes to user behavior.

The initial deployment launches with conservative parameters and a deliberately narrow scope. Chainlink serves as the exclusive oracle platform at launch, with dedicated spokes for Lido, EtherFi, Kelp, Ethena, and Lombard. Supported assets include USDT and XAUt from Tether, USDC and EURC from Circle, cbBTC from Coinbase, frxUSD from Frax, and USDG from Paxos.

The original V4 roadmap was proposed in May 2024 as part of a three-year plan, with Aave Labs subsequently receiving a $12 million GHO grant from the DAO in July 2024 to fund development.

Governance Dispute

But the path from proposal to mainnet was far from smooth. In December 2025, a governance dispute erupted between Aave Labs and the DAO over fee distribution and tokenholder rights

BGD Labs, one of the main teams building and maintaining Aave’s technology, announced in February 2026 that it would stop working with the DAO, citing disagreements over the protocol’s direction, specifically what it described as overly aggressive criticism of V3 to promote V4’s new features. Weeks later, Marc Zeller’s Aave Chan Initiative — one of the largest delegated service providers in Aave governance — also announced it would wind down operations and depart the protocol.

Despite the upheaval, V4 passed its ARFC stage on March 23 and moved to final deployment.

The initial V4 deployment will be expanded progressively as governance observes liquidity behavior and market dynamics.

AAVE is trading at around $98, according to CoinGecko, up 3% in the past 24 hours but down roughly 40% over the past 12 months.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Bitmine buys 71,000 ETH as digital asset treasuries dial back purchases

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Bitmine buys 71,000 ETH as digital asset treasuries dial back purchases

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) made its largest weekly purchase of either (ETH) this year, adding 71,179 ETH and extending a month-long ramp-up in buying even as crypto prices remain under pressure.

The purchase, worth roughly $143 million at current prices, lifted the company’s total holdings to over 4.73 million ETH, about 3.92% of the token’s supply, according to a Monday update. BitMine has now increased its buying pace for four straight weeks, stepping up from a prior average of 45,000 to 50,000 ETH.

The move stands out as most other large digital asset treasuries (DAT) halted crypto accumulation or even sold tokens during the crypto market downturn. Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate bitcoin BTC$67,347.02 owner, was the only other major buyer in the recent months, and even the Michael Sayler-led company refrained, breaking a 13-week buying streak.

Bitmine Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee said the firm continues to see the current market as the final phase of a downturn as rising oil prices and geopolitical tensions keep risk assets under pressure.

The company’s total crypto and cash holdings stood at $10.7 billion. In addition to its ETH treasury, BitMine held 197 bitcoin, and $961 million in cash and equity stakes, including $102 million in Eightco Holdings.

Insights from PAY360 2026 That Will Shape UK Fintech’s Next Chapter

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Insights from PAY360 2026 That Will Shape UK Fintech’s Next Chapter

 As the industry moves away from “polished decks” and toward high-stakes debates involving regulators and senior leaders, three critical themes emerge shared fraud liability, the deployment of agentic AI, and the commercial evolution of Open Banking—that will dictate the next 12 months of execution for UK fintech.

Olga Dolzhenko, Founder&CEO, Financia Strategy Limited

Olga Dolzhenko, Founder and CEO of Financia Strategy Limited, reflects on an industry undergoing a significant “reality check”. Drawing on 25 years of experience in banking and international fintech, the Oxford Fintech Programme graduate and Edinburgh Business School MBA holder provides an exclusive analysis for The Fintech Times on the maturing sector.

Why this year felt less like a conference- and more like a reality check

Walking through ExCeL London last week felt less like attending a fintech event and more like watching the industry finally grow up. PAY360 2026 gathered 6,000+ attendees and 200 speakers – but what stood out wasn’t the scale. It was the honesty.
Gone were the overly polished decks and “we’re revolutionising everything” speeches. In
their place: senior leaders – from banks and fintechs to regulators to MPs- actually debating
real problems. Occasionally even agreeing. Frankly, that alone deserves a round of applause.
After many years in banking and fintech, you develop a sixth sense for what’s theatre and
what’s real. This was real. And three themes kept surfacing-each likely to define the next 12
months.

1. Fraud: No Longer Someone Else’s Headache

UK fraud losses hit £629 million in H1 2025. APP fraud is rising. Investment scams are up
55%. Romance scams up 35%. Grim reading-but not new.
What is new? Who’s talking about it.
Fraud has moved from compliance backrooms to centre stage. CEOs, policymakers, and
industry bodies are now treating it as a core business risk-not just a security issue.
One debate captured the shift perfectly: should social media platforms share liability for
scams originating on their platforms?
Banks and fintechs are currently plugging the hole-preventing £870 million in fraud in H1
2025 – while two-thirds of scams start online, largely outside their control. As one might put
it: we’re mopping the floor while someone else keeps the tap running.
Add AI to the mix, and things get properly spicy. Fraudsters are now using generative AI to
scale scams that are harder to detect and eerily convincing. The uncomfortable question
raised: are we regulating defensive AI more tightly than criminal AI?
Until responsibility is shared across the ecosystem, we’re playing defence in a game that’s
rapidly accelerating.

2. AI in Payments: Less “What If”, More “Are We Brave Enough?”

For years, fintech events have asked: What can AI do?
This year, the question was: What are we actually willing to deploy?
The conversation has shifted from hype to trust.

Banks and fintechs are no longer experimenting with chatbots-they’re testing agentic AI that
can make decisions, act autonomously, and interact directly with customers. The tech
works. The FCA sandbox proves it.
The real blocker? Confidence.
Incumbents are trying to graft AI onto legacy systems (a bit like installing smart home tech
in a Victorian house-charming, but complicated). Meanwhile, challengers are building AI-
native from day one.
The gap isn’t capability-it’s courage.
Who’s ready to let AI make decisions involving real money, in real time?
The winners won’t just be the most advanced-they’ll be the ones willing to trust their own
technology.

3. Open Banking: Brilliant Infrastructure, Modest Impact

Eight years in, Open Banking has over 10 million UK users. Sounds impressive-until you
realise most people barely notice it exists.
Usage is still largely limited to account aggregation and one-off payments. The real prize-
Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) remains underused.
Why? Complexity, risk concerns, and a slightly awkward truth: Open Banking was built for
compliance, not customers.
The industry is now trying to retrofit commercial value onto regulatory foundations. Never
the easiest starting point.
There’s also growing frustration around fairness. Banks must share data via APIs, while big
tech platforms sitting on vast payment data-face no equivalent obligation. Calls for “Open
Finance 2.0” are getting louder.
A new not-for-profit entity and the UK’s Payments Vision aim to unlock the next phase. But
the key question remains: will we finally build things people actually want-or just better
infrastructure no one notices?

What It All Means
PAY360 2026 made one thing clear: UK fintech has the talent, regulation, and infrastructure
to lead globally. But the next chapter hinges on three choices in my opinion:
1. Shared responsibility for fraud, because criminals don’t respect industry boundaries
2. Deploying AI at scale, not just piloting it endlessly
3. Making Open Banking commercially useful, not just technically impressive
The tools are there. The demand is there. The framework is there.

Now it’s a matter of execution.

Bitcoin Price Teeters On Iran Talks As Geopolitics And Options Flows Trap Price In Narrow Range

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Bitcoin Price Teeters On Iran Talks As Geopolitics And Options Flows Trap Price In Narrow Range

Bitcoin price moved higher Sunday night into Monday after remarks from Donald Trump indicating the United States is engaged in discussions with a new leadership structure in Iran and that progress toward a potential agreement is underway. 

The comments helped lift risk appetite across digital assets after a weekend dip that briefly pushed bitcoin price toward the $64,000 area.

The rebound added to a broader pattern of rangebound trading, with bitcoin holding between roughly $65,000 and $70,000 as markets continue to digest geopolitical developments, macroeconomic signals, and shifting liquidity conditions. 

The latest move followed a period of uneven price action marked by late-week weakness and early-week stabilization.

Geopolitical risk tied to Iran remains a key driver of sentiment. Tensions around energy infrastructure, shipping routes, and potential escalation scenarios continue to feed uncertainty across global markets, with crypto responding to headline changes alongside equities and commodities.

The conflict between Iran and Israel has escalated sharply, with U.S. and Israeli strikes hitting Iranian targets while Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks across the region, including strikes that affected Kuwait and other Gulf states, pushing the regional death toll above 1,900 in Iran and over 1,200 in Lebanon. 

President Donald Trump has alternated between claiming diplomatic progress and issuing severe threats to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure, including oil facilities, desalination plants, and the strategic Kharg Island export hub if a deal is not reached soon.

The fighting has widened regionally, with Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intercepting incoming missiles and drones, while tensions over shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz continue to raise global energy concerns.

Diplomatic efforts remain uncertain, with Pakistan attempting to mediate indirect talks involving regional powers, even as leaders like U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggests regime change in Iran may be underway.

Bitcoin price reaction 

Bitcoin price has been stuck in a tight range around $70,000 since mid-February because multiple forces are offsetting each other. On one side, institutional investors have been selling covered call options on their Bitcoin holdings to earn extra income, which shifts “gamma” exposure onto market makers. 

Those market makers then hedge by buying when prices fall and selling when prices rise, which naturally dampens volatility and reinforces range-bound trading. 

At the same time, macro factors like safe-haven demand and rising U.S. yields are pulling Bitcoin price in opposite directions, keeping it trapped between roughly $65,000 and $75,000.

Investors continue to rotate toward yield-bearing and lower-volatility assets while reducing exposure to risk assets tied to global uncertainty. Crypto markets remain reactive to headlines rather than driven by sustained inflow momentum.

Despite softer institutional demand, underlying activity has not fully reversed. Prior weeks of inflows remain significant in scale, suggesting continued longer-term allocation interest even as near-term positioning shifts. 

For now, bitcoin price remains anchored in a tight trading band shaped by geopolitical developments, ETF flow trends, and expectations around upcoming U.S. economic data.

Square Begins Automatic Bitcoin Payment Rollout To Millions

info@uweb3.io
-
0
Square Begins Automatic Bitcoin Payment Rollout To Millions

Square, the payments platform owned by Block, has begun automatically enabling bitcoin payments for eligible U.S. sellers starting today, marking a major expansion in the company’s push to integrate bitcoin into everyday commerce.

The move, touched on by Square product lead Miles Suter on X, shifts the feature from an opt-in tool introduced in late 2025 to a default setting now activated across millions of merchants. 

Sellers will still receive USD as their default settlement currency, with bitcoin payments seamlessly converted in the background. 

Square first unveiled its “Square Bitcoin” initiative in October 2025, introducing integrated bitcoin payments and wallet functionality for small businesses. 

At launch, merchants could choose to enable bitcoin acceptance at checkout, with support for Lightning Network payments, instant settlement, and zero processing fees through 2027.

A broader rollout followed in November 2025, but adoption remained voluntary.

Today’s update removes that friction entirely. Eligible U.S. sellers now have bitcoin payments enabled automatically, without requiring manual activation in their Square settings. Merchants retain the ability to opt out or adjust preferences.