Securitize will become the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-based securities on NYSE’s upcoming Digital Trading Platform
The New York Stock Exchange and real world asset (RWA) tokenization platform Securitize have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on tokenized securities infrastructure, the two companies announced on Tuesday.
Under the deal, Securitize will become the first digital transfer agent — a transfer agent that uses a blockchain-based ledger and smart contracts to process transactions — eligible to mint tokenized securities for issuers on NYSE’s upcoming Digital Trading Platform.
Per the release, NYSE plans to work with Securitize as a premier design partner to develop a digital transfer agent program supporting on-chain settlement of tokenized securities transactions. The two firms will also collaborate on setting regulatory, operational, and technology standards for the emerging digital transfer agent category — effectively writing the rulebook for institutional-grade tokenized securities infrastructure.
“As we explore how tokenization can enhance capital markets, it is critical that new infrastructure is developed in a way that preserves the trust, transparency, and protections investors expect,” said NYSE Group president Lynn Martin in the announcement.
Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo framed the tie-up as proof that tokenization is maturing beyond experimentation. “This is about building tokenization in a way that works within real market structure,” he said.
As part of the broader collaboration, Securitize Markets is expected to join the NYSE’s Digital Trading Platform as a broker-dealer participant, supporting liquidity for issuer-sponsored tokenized securities.
The deal comes amid a period of rapid growth for the wider tokenized RWA sector. RWAs became Wall Street’s gateway to crypto in 2025, with on-chain tokenized assets tripling to nearly $19 billion over the course of the year — a figure analysts project could reach $2 trillion by 2030.
Securitize is the tokenization platform behind BUIDL, the U.S. Treasuries fund from BlackRock, with a market cap of over $2 billion. Securitize is the tokenization platform for RWAs totaling over $3 billion in distributed asset value across ten blockchain networks, with over $1 billion on Ethereum per RWAxyz. Last year, the firm partnered with risk manager Gauntlet to bridge private credit funds into DeFi protocols.
NYSE first announced it was planning to launch a platform for 24/7 tokenized securities trading in January, as The Defiant reported.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
The change is structural. The Bitcoin mining industry has professionalized in ways that raise the baseline for everyone. Companies like Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Platforms, and CleanSpark now operate with dedicated data centers, long-term power procurement contracts, and hardware refresh cycles tied to financial quarter schedules. MARA is targeting 75 EH/s of capacity. CleanSpark reached 50 EH/s in 2025. Together, publicly traded mining companies hold more than 120,000 BTC – roughly $12 billion at current valuations.
The numbers behind this expansion are significant. Hashrate sat at around 800 EH/s at the start of 2025 and climbed to an all-time high of 1.15 ZH/s by October – up 25% over the year. Much of it came from the mass rollout of Antminer S21 rigs running at 13-16.5 J/TH. Mining difficulty rose 35% over the same period, peaking above 155 trillion hashes. Bitcoin first hit 1 EH/s in 2016. In 2025, that milestone was multiplied 1,000 times.
The capital commitment behind this growth is also worth noting. Miners’ aggregate debt rose sixfold in 2025, from $2.1 billion to $12.7 billion. That’s the competitive backdrop any small operator is working against today.
The Math Behind Small-Scale Mining
All of this still leaves room for small mining to work, but the specifics matter a lot. Electricity cost is the first thing to look at – and that’s really a geography question. Industrial farms in regions like Russia and Kazakhstan operate at around $0.045/kWh. The Cambridge CBECI methodology puts the global average at $0.05/kWh. In the US, miners using commercial grid power paid an average of $0.141/kWh as of late 2025, translating to roughly $130,000 to mine a single Bitcoin at that rate. At US residential rates, home mining at current difficulty levels is a loss-making exercise.
The hardware picture has shifted too. Machine prices dropped from around $80 per terahash in 2022 to roughly $16/TH in 2025, which lowers the CapEx barrier to entry. Profitability, though, still requires electricity costs of around $0.05/kWh or below. For operators with access to cheap or subsidized power – in parts of Central Asia, certain US states, or specific markets in the Middle East and Africa – the economics can genuinely work.
There are real advantages to staying small. Industrial farms have capital tied up for years and can’t easily change course – a small operator can swap hardware, switch pools, or walk away from a position without anyone’s approval. There’s no large workforce to manage, no real estate financing, no investor relations to worry about.
The headwinds are just as real, though. As larger players keep expanding, difficulty-adjusted returns keep shrinking. And running even a small operation takes more than people expect – firmware, pool strategy, hardware maintenance. At this scale, time cost can easily outweigh the revenue.
Hash Rate as a Financial Position
For miners whose energy costs fall on the wrong side of profitability, or who want exposure to Bitcoin mining economics without the operational weight, hash rate markets offer a different entry point.
The underlying logic is direct: if your cost structure makes running hardware unprofitable, you can still participate in block reward economics by purchasing hash rate from operators who run at lower cost. This separates the financial exposure from the day-to-day operational complexity.
One example of this model is NiceHash EasyMining. A user explaining the appeal described their thinking this way: “I’m gonna pay you for the water, but if you catch any fish – I get the fish.”
It’s worth being clear-eyed about the trade-off, though. Buying hash rate carries service fees, and expected returns may run lower than direct mining in an efficient low-cost setup. It’s a different risk/return profile, calibrated to different circumstances.
Your Situation, Your Math
There’s no single answer to whether small mining makes economic sense in 2026. The relevant question is whether a specific situation – electricity cost, capital position, time available, risk tolerance – aligns with what the current market requires.
The structural changes of the past few years have made that calculation more demanding. Industrial players have raised the competitive baseline significantly. At the same time, hardware has become cheaper, hash rate is available to purchase directly, and the decision between running your own operation and participating through a platform is now a genuine strategic choice.
What has changed is the precision required to make that choice well. The conditions under which each path makes sense are distinct, and understanding those conditions is what the current market actually asks of anyone still paying attention.
Crypto finance is only now beginning to provide an environment that matches traditional finance: ways to earn steadier, more predictable returns — similar to bonds or savings products, according to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov and Ethena CEO Guy Young.
“Most fixed income is like the distribution of risk in different formats … basically just slicing and dicing and distributing risk,” Young said during a panel at Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in New York. “This piece of DeFi was probably the least featured two years ago.”
Until recently, crypto users mostly traded tokens or borrowed against them, often chasing high, unpredictable yields. New tools make it possible to lock in returns, even in a market known for big swings.
“What you’re doing with Pendle is providing a fixed-to-floating rate swap,” Young said, referring to a system that lets users choose between more stable or more variable returns — similar to choosing between fixed or adjustable interest rates.
That’s not easy in crypto. “It’s very difficult to know three months out what the market is actually going to look like,” he said.
Kulechov said Aave has helped support this shift by providing deep pools of capital that other projects can tap into. “Aave is sort of acting as a liquidity sink,” he said, helping “bootstrap a lot of the new coming products in DeFi.”
For now, much of the money being made still depends on trading rather than traditional lending. “A lot of DeFi yield … is largely still based on … leverage,” Kulechov said.
Over time, that could change as more real-world assets move onchain, a process known as tokenization.
“A lot of the yields and a lot of the economics will come from the traditional finance,” he said.
Read more: Ethena-backed suiUSDe stablecoin goes live on Sui with $10 million yield vault launch
Ledger is rolling out Wallet 4.0, a broad upgrade to its all-in-one crypto app that aims to make self-custody feel more like a trading platform without dropping the company’s hardware-first security model.
The update begins with a limited release now, with additional features scheduled to arrive in April 2026. Ledger says the new version brings faster navigation, upgraded portfolio tools, expanded earn features, clearer swap fees, and real-time transaction notifications, while keeping sensitive actions tied to a Ledger signer.
The release builds on a product shift Ledger first unveiled at Ledger Op3n in Paris on October 22 and 23, 2025, when the company rebranded Ledger Live as Ledger Wallet and introduced the Nano Gen5 touchscreen signer. That move signaled a broader repositioning for Ledger from a hardware wallet maker to a platform combining devices, app-based services, and secure digital identity tools.
Wallet 4.0 is designed to make that platform more usable. Ledger says the app now features a redesigned home screen with market intelligence, including trending tokens and the Fear and Greed Index from CoinMarketCap, plus revamped portfolio analytics and a rebuilt earn section that shows users what assets can generate rewards and how those positions are performing. New users can also download the app before their hardware arrives, though private key generation and transaction signing still require a Ledger device.
Ledger wants to narrow the convenience gap between self-custody and centralized crypto apps while keeping signing on dedicated hardware. That matters in a market where wallet providers are increasingly competing on trading, swaps, yield access, and discovery rather than just cold storage.
Ledger says it has sold more than 8 million devices globally, and the company has repeatedly framed its newer wallet stack as the next stage of growth beyond one-time hardware sales.
Ledger expanded further into the US this month by appointing former Circle executive John Andrews as CFO and opening a New York office, moves the company described as part of a larger push in its biggest market. That expansion comes after reports earlier this year that Ledger was exploring a possible US listing, underscoring why recurring revenue from trading and services is becoming more important to its story.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stablecoin issuer Circle’s (CRCL) shares tumbled on Tuesday, after a draft version of U.S. stablecoin legislation raised concerns about limits on yield.
The stock of the USDC issuer fell as much as 18% in the early U.S. session, snapping a weeks-long rally that saw more than 100% gain. Meanwhile, crypto platform Coinbase (COIN), which shares revenue coming from the stablecoin, dropped about 8%.
The key catalyst behind the move was the latest version of the Clarity Act, as reported by CoinDesk, which would restrict offering rewards on stablecoin balances, analysts pointed out.
“Clarity Act could potentially ban yield payments for simply holding a stablecoin (e.g. passive balances) and restrict any approach that makes the program in any way equivalent to a bank deposit,” said Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev.
According to Dolev’s analysis, a potential ban could reduce the use case for Circle in the near-term, while not paying rewards would reduce the long-term attractiveness of holding USDC on Coinbase’s platform.
Stablecoin yield — whether through onchain lending or platform incentives — has been a big part of the pitch to investors. Taking that away makes it harder for tokens like USDC to evolve beyond simple payments.
“That weakens a key part of the bull case,” said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, arguing it limits USDC’s path toward becoming a true store-of-value product.
The stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act banned issuers from paying yield directly to users, but they’ve built ways to pass through income earned on reserves. Circle collects interest on USDC’s backing assets and shares it with Coinbase, which in turn funds rewards for users.
The latest draft of the Clarity Act targets that structure by banning anything “economically equivalent to interest,” effectively cutting off a key incentive for holding stablecoins, according to Amir Hajian, a digital asset researcher at Keyrock
“It pulls the rug on the pass-through model that has been driving stablecoin adoption,” Hajian said.
There was another development in the background. Tether, issuer of the USDT stablecoin and main rival of Circle, said it has hired one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms to conduct a long-promised full audit of its reserves. If successful, the audit could improve USDT’s image among institutional users by demonstrating stronger risk management, potentially eating into USDC’s market share.
Not ‘as bad’
The selloff comes after a strong run, during which Circle shares gained 170% since early February, far outpacing other crypto stocks and the struggling broader stock market. That setup left the stock vulnerable to a sharp pullback on any negative headlines.
Still, analysts aren’t seeing this as an existential crisis.
According to Mizuho’s Dolev, recent outperformance of USDC’s volume means “use cases [for stablecoins] are starting to proliferate, which is a positive for the long-term” for Circle. Meanwhile, Coinbase could see a boost in profitability in the near-term as USDC accounts for about 20% of Coinbase’s revenue, and a large part of it is paid out as rewards.
In fact, Owen Lau, an analyst at Clear Street, said that “the actual situation doesn’t appear to be as bad as the headline indicates. “It looks like an overreaction, but the market tends to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at digital asset manager Bitwise, agreed that investors should see past today’s short-term headwinds. Circle is still up more than 30% this year after Tuesday’s drop, and remains a major player in a fast-growing market, he noted. “There will be workarounds,” such as loyalty programs that could replicate similar incentives as yield, Rasmussen said.
“With that in mind, Circle’s long-term outlook has never been better; they hold a 30% share of a market projected to grow 10x over the next four years,” he added.
Momentum is building across US states to regulate or restrict prediction markets, with multiple legal actions targeting platforms such as Kalshi.
On March 20, Carson City District Court Judge Jason Woodbury in Nevada made his state the first to issue a temporary ban on prediction market Kalshi from operating. Gaming officials said that the platform violated state gambling laws.
Nearly a dozen other states have also issued various forms of legal proceedings. Most have filed cease-and-desist letters, while Arizona has even brought criminal charges against Kalshi. Other states are considering new legislation for prediction markets.
The patchwork enforcement across states has brought national attention, and regulations at the federal level are looming.
Nevada bans Kalshi while Arizona opens criminal charges
In 11 states across the US, local authorities have taken legal action against prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.
The state of Nevada managed to initiate a temporary ban, which blocked Kalshi from operating in the state for 14 days. The motion was initially put forward by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The board’s chair, Mike Dreitzer, said that prediction markets “facilitate unlicensed gambling” and are therefore illegal in the state. “We have a statutory duty to protect the public,” he said.
Sports betting and gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach wrote that the order prevents Kalshi from offering “event-based contracts relating to sports, politics and entertainment to people within Nevada without first obtaining all required licenses.”
Just a few days earlier, the neighboring state of Arizona filed criminal charges against the firms behind Kalshi. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office filed a complaint, alleging that Kalshiex LLC and Kalshi Trading LLC were “running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law.”
The announcement claimed Kalshi ”accepted bets from Arizona residents on a wide range of events in violation of Arizona law. These events included professional and college sporting contests, proposition bets on individual player performance, and whether the SAVE Act would become law.”
Betting on sports requires a gaming license, and Arizona law outright bans bets on elections.
Other states have either put forward or are considering new regulations. In Utah, State Representative Joseph Elison put forward HB243, which would define proposition betting as “a gambling bet on an individual action, statistic, occurrence, or non-occurrence.”
HB 243 in the Utah legislature. Source: Utah State Legislature
In Pennsylvania, Representative Danilo Burgos announced plans to introduce legislation that would regulate prediction markets and put them under the regulatory purview of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. The bill will propose:
a 34% state tax and 2% local share assessment on gross revenue,
to ban underage users,
to include self-exclusion lists for user protection, and
strict Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.
Numerous other states have issued cease-and-desist letters to prediction markets and attempted to block their activities through the courts. Not all of them have been successful. In Tennessee, Judge Aleta Trauger of the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee blocked a state injunction that would prevent Kalshi from operating there. The court concluded that the event contracts were “swaps” under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), which gives the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) exclusive jurisdiction.
Kalshi did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment at publishing time.
Who should regulate prediction markets?
The patchwork of different enforcement actions — and varying reactions to them by different courts — has brought into question who should regulate prediction markets and how. Prediction markets and their proponents believe that the power should lie with the federal government and the CFTC.
Elison, the sponsor of the law in Utah, told local media, “It’s a huge gray area and there’s lots of lawsuits all over the country right now […] debating this very thing, trying to find out what are the actual definitions.”
“They’re flying under what’s called prediction markets, and prediction markets are regulated by the Federal Commodities Exchange [sic]. That’s why they’re able to do it,” he said.
A Kalshi spokesperson previously told Cointelegraph, “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it. As other courts have recognized and the CFTC affirms, Kalshi is subject to federal jurisdiction.”
“It’s different from what sportsbooks and casinos offer their customers, and it should not be overseen by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws,” they stated.
Aaron Brogan, founder of crypto-focused law firm Brogan Law, wrote, “Prediction markets’ ‘crime,’ the reason that so many states have pursued and will continue to pursue action against them until they win or are stopped, has nothing to do with the merits of these markets.”
Polymarket is launching a bar where patrons can monitor predictions on its platform. Source: Polymarket
Since they are currently regulated under the CEA, and therefore under the oversight of the CFTC, “states will not be able to control them, and more importantly, may not be able to tax them,” Brogan said. According to the American Gaming Association, at stake is billions of dollars in tax revenue across the 40 states where online sports betting is legal.
Some state lawmakers aren’t so shy about this. Burgos wrote that the “regulatory arbitrage” of prediction markets skirting state laws “leaves our constituents vulnerable and deprives the commonwealth of significant tax revenue.”
Speaking to local media, he said that the state should have the ability to tax an activity, particularly when it can harm constituents. “It’s another opportunity to expand the tax base. […] And like everything else that has a potential harm for our community, for our communities. It can create bad habits or worse habits in our communities. That’s one of the dangers that I see.”
There is also pressure at the federal level on prediction markets. Senator John Curtis of Utah introduced a bill called the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act. This would amend the CEA to prevent “event contracts involving sports and casino-style games.”
Curtis told Utah state media that the act would put power back with the states. “Our bipartisan legislation clarifies regulatory jurisdiction, ensuring that states can maintain their authority over sports betting and casino gaming. The Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act is about respecting states’ authority, protecting families and keeping speculative financial products out of spaces where they don’t belong.”
In the meantime, the CFTC is seeking public input on its rulemaking for prediction markets. The CFTC currently has just one sitting commissioner, Chair Michael Selig. He has previously stated the agency would defend prediction markets.
According to Brogan, if the CFTC further liberalizes prediction markets, and the issue of preemption goes to the Supreme Court, “all that counts, through all the sound and fury, is counting to five.”
Magazine: Banks want to run Vietnam’s crypto exchanges, Boyaa’s $70M BTC plan: Asia Express
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NEW YORK — Amy Oldenburg, the head of digital asset strategy at Morgan Stanley (MS), rejected the idea that Wall Street is only now embracing crypto due to fear of missing out, arguing that large banks are acting after years of preparation.
“TradFi is getting FOMO and is now getting involved … it really isn’t accurate,” Oldenburg said during a panel at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday. “We’ve been on a journey around the entire modernization of financial infrastructure for years.”
Her comments come as major U.S. banks, long seen as cautious on crypto or latecomers to the industry, begin to expand their offerings. For years, firms like Morgan Stanley restricted activity to indirect exposure, such as offering wealthy clients access to bitcoin BTC$69,757.61 funds.
More recently, that’s included spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on its E*Trade platform and the bank this month even filed to launch its own spot bitcoin ETF.
Broader participation was slowed by regulatory uncertainty and concerns around custody, compliance and market structure. That stance has started to shift, and Morgan Stanley has now outlined a more defined digital asset strategy, with efforts spanning trading, asset management and infrastructure.
Oldenburg said the bank is preparing to support tokenized equities trading on its alternative trading system.
“One of the things that we are planning for the second half of 2026 is turning on our trajectory cross … to support tokenized equities later this year,” she said. The platform already handles equities, ETFs and American depositary receipts (ADRs), which she described as a natural base for expansion.
Inside the firm, the transition requires reworking core systems. “We are having to re-teach ourselves what legacy infrastructure, pipes and plumbing look like,” Oldenburg said, pointing to the challenge of upgrading decades-old financial architecture to support faster settlement and continuous trading.
She also highlighted a gap between crypto startups and large institutions.
“There’s so many other connectivity points that we need to plug in around it,” she said, noting that founders often underestimate how complex bank systems are.
Even so, areas like stablecoins are gaining traction as a way to move money faster and at lower cost than traditional systems.
Adoption, however, depends on coordination across the financial system. “We can’t just modernize on our own,” Oldenburg said. “This is an incredibly complex, integrated global network.”
Despite weak token prices, she said activity continues to build. “It really is very early innings,” Oldenburg said, signaling that Wall Street’s deeper integration with crypto may be gradual, but its underway.
US stocks opened down on the day, with the Nasdaq Composite Index losing nearly 1%, while gold failed to pass $4,450. Oil inched toward $95 per barrel after an initial drop to start the week on the back of Iran peace rumors.
Markets remained on edge over the fate of oil passage through the Strait of Hormuz amid new Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting, trading company QCP Capital said that US President Donald Trump was seeking market stability despite the ongoing military action.
“Trump is navigating an increasingly complex geopolitical minefield and now has very little room to manoeuvre,” it wrote in its latest “Market Color” analysis.
“With equities hovering near key support and inflation pressures lifting rate-hike expectations, he cannot afford to unsettle markets.”
Nasdaq Composite Index one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
QCP said that BTC price action showed “surprising resilience” in the face of an escalating war.
“This resilience may reflect lower leverage across the system, but it could also signal the very early stages of a regime shift for BTC, where it no longer competes with traditional risk assets in the same way,” it added.
BTC price not “out of the woods entirely”
Continuing the cautiously bullish tone, crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe flagged a series of higher lows for BTC/USDT beginning late last month.
Related: Bitcoin value ‘off the chart’ as BTC price metric hits record lows in 2026
“Bitcoin constantly prints higher lows since the crash early in February. It’s a great sign and it shows that we’re about to witness more strength,” he told X followers on the day.
“It doesn’t say that we’re out of the woods entirely, as those higher lows trigger a lot of liquidity if the markets get there. However, overall, as long as we hold these levels, I think that we’re able to reach $77-80K.”
BTC/USDT 12-hour chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X
Others remained convinced that new lows were due, with trader Jelle warning of a “Bart Simpson” chart pattern playing out on low time frames.
Trader and analyst Rekt Capital meanwhile confirmed skepticism over the strength of nearby long-term trend line.
As Cointelegraph reported, the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $68,300 recently failed to act either as definitive support or strong resistance.
“The 200-week EMA is acting as both an unreliable resistance and an unreliable support, never truly confirming a clear role. Which thus could lend itself to further meandering in and around here before ultimately breaking down into additional Macro Downside over time,” he summarized on X.
BTC/USD one-day chart with 200-week EMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
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Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Fira said on Tuesday it was launching with about $450 million in deposits, highlighting demand for fixed-rate onchain credit.
Fira said the protocol’s fixed-rate credit market allows users to lock borrowing costs and lending returns for defined periods by organizing lending around maturities rather than floating utilization-based rates, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
The fixed-rate model differs from most DeFi lending protocols, where borrowers cannot lock funding costs, and lenders cannot predict returns, making long-term DeFi lending less predictable. Fira’s said its model organizes markets by maturity and determines interest rates by supply and demand mechanics, replacing utilization algorithms that fluctuate with borrowing activity.
Fira said the design is intended to create a more predictable onchain credit market by introducing yield curves and defined maturities, features that are standard in traditional fixed-income markets but rare in DeFi.
Fira is not the first DeFi lending protocol built around fixed-rate credit. Other protocols with similar structures include Notional Finance, IPOR and Term Finance.
Fira said it debuted with $450 million in deposits, which were “reallocated” from users of the modular lending platform Euler Finance during the pre-launch phase that started on Jan. 8, Pete Siegel, chief financial officer at Fira, told Cointelegraph.
“Fira was pre-launched in January. It opened with a first market called UZR, which enabled roughly a thousand users who were already on Euler, in a product available on Euler to migrate their assets at a fixed rate.”
Siegel said the deposits reflect user interest in fixed-rate lending products.
DeFi lending protocol rankings by TVL. Source: DeFiLlama
DefiLlama currently shows Fira with about $451.6 million in total value locked on Ethereum, compared with roughly $25.3 billion for Aave, the sector’s largest lending protocol.
Related: Maestro launches mining-backed Bitcoin credit market for institutions
Fira said its smart contracts have undergone six independent security audits conducted by Sherlock, Spearbit via Cantina, Hexens and yAudit between November 2025 and early 2026.
Fira’s bug bounty program through Sherlock offers up to $500,000 in rewards for users finding critical vulnerabilities in the protocol’s open-source Ethereum-based smart contracts.
Magazine: DeFi will rise again after memecoins die down: Sasha Ivanov
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Crypto has gone mainstream as a financial asset class and TradFi institutions now feel obligated to dip their toes into the space, if only to show their existing clients that they aren’t afraid to handle innovative technologies.
The problem, for some of them, is that staking — one of crypto’s most basic primitives — is still considered too dangerous. It exposes institutions to risks they are structurally unwilling to accept, like slashing, downtime, operational failures and returns that resist forecasting. As a result, many firms have limited themselves to holding spot ETH or spot SOL or avoided the assets entirely.
That dynamic is now changing. A new generation of insurance-backed staking products, structured around the Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) benchmark and underwritten by regulated insurers, is reframing staked ETH as something closer to an institutional yield product than a speculative crypto experiment.
For cautious TradFi firms, this shift matters far more than marginal improvements in headline yield. It opens up a fundamental crypto vertical to a new set of investors.
The institutional appeal of staked ETH
Holding spot ETH offers pure exposure to price appreciation and drawdowns. But staked ETH introduces a recurring yield component that improves total return over time and partially offsets volatility. For institutions accustomed to thinking in risk-adjusted terms, this reframes ETH exposure closer to dividend-paying equities rather than growth assets.
Liquid staking tokens further strengthen the case, because they allow institutions to earn staking rewards while retaining balance-sheet flexibility. Positions can be rebalanced, used as collateral, or exited — without interrupting yield generation.
Just as importantly, staked ETH derivatives are increasingly accepted as transparent, over-collateralized instruments. For TradFi firms designing secured lending products, yield-enhanced notes, or delta-neutral strategies, staked ETH becomes usable in structure, not just in theory.
Yet despite these advantages, one obstacle has remained stubborn: risk.
How CESR and insurance change the equation
The CESR is a daily, standardized benchmark rate developed by CoinDesk Indices and CoinFund to measure the average annualized yield of ETH validator staking. It serves as a trusted reference rate for institutional staking and derivatives.
Thanks to this benchmark, a new method to earn a safe, long-term yield on ETH is emerging. Insurance companies like Chainproof (in partnership with IMA Financial Group) offer policies that essentially top up investors’ yield if their validator’s returns fall below the CESR benchmark and guarantee reimbursements if slashing occurs.
Benchmarking staking returns to the CESR — and wrapping that exposure with insurance — fundamentally alters how institutions perceive staking. Instead of open-ended technical risk, institutions get a defined, underwritten exposure. Downtime and operational failures are no longer existential threats to expected returns.
With insurance in place, CESR-linked staking begins to resemble instruments that TradFi already understands. The parallels are familiar: insured municipal bonds, enhanced money-market products, or short-duration credit with external credit support. These are not risk-free instruments, but they are priceable. Suddenly, staked ETH can be slotted into existing risk frameworks.
And once staking risk is benchmarked and insured, institutions can responsibly structure CESR-linked products. Capital-protected notes with staking yield, yield-plus strategies combining staking returns with basis trades, or delta-neutral ETH strategies with insured yield floors all become viable. Without insurance, compliance teams block these ideas.
TradFi firms cannot rely on informal assurances when dealing with regulators, LPs, or internal model validation teams. The CESR insurance model allows them to say: “Our exposure to ETH is benchmarked, insured, and underwritten by a regulated third party.” That single sentence materially changes how staking exposure is evaluated across compliance and fiduciary review processes.
Introducing ETH to the broader economy
With appropriate risk mitigation, CESR-linked staking begins to resemble infrastructure yield rather than speculative crypto return. That shift, more than yield itself, is why cautious TradFi firms are finally paying attention.
Ethereum’s long-term value proposition has always rested on its role as a global settlement infrastructure. Staking is the mechanism by which that infrastructure is secured and value accrues to participants. Insurance-backed staking does not change Ethereum’s economics; it translates them into a language institutions can understand.
Cautious TradFi firms are doing what they have always done: adopting new assets once risks are legible, bounded and transferable. They are not suddenly becoming crypto-native. CESR-linked, insured staking meets their needs, and that’s why they’re now quietly embracing staking, even though they once dismissed it.
