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Wall Street heavyweight Cantor among investment banks pitching crypto trading firm FalconX for its potential IPO

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Wall Street heavyweight Cantor among investment banks pitching crypto trading firm FalconX for its potential IPO

Wall Street financial services firm Cantor is among investment banks that are pitching cryptocurrency trading platform FalconX for its potential IPO, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The company has held preliminary talks with possible advisors, but FalconX has not yet formally appointed bankers for its initial public offering, the people said, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private.

FalconX declined to comment. Cantor did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Investment banks often pitch companies for an IPO by presenting themselves as the best partner to take the business public, combining valuation analysis, market timing advice, and distribution strength.

The goal is to win the mandate by convincing the company that they can maximize valuation, ensure a smooth listing process, and generate strong aftermarket performance. While some firms might lead the IPO process, most deals are done through a syndicate of multiple banks.

Last year, Decrypt reported in June that FalconX had held informal talks with bankers and consultants about going public. Later in the year, the company’s CEO, Raghu Yarlagadda, told the Wall Street Journal that the firm was considering an IPO.

However, the crypto market has been under pressure since then, with the bitcoin price falling from an all-time high of $126,000 in October to near $70,000. Recently, CoinDesk reported that crypto exchange Kraken has put its IPO plans on hold after confidentially filing with the SEC in November, with sources saying the process will likely restart once the environment improves. To date, digital asset custodian BitGo (BTGO) is the only crypto native firm to list this year. The shares have fallen around 40% since their IPO.

Despite this tough market backdrop, crypto firms such as FalconX and Copper are continuing talks about potential public listings. Last year, several crypto exchanges, including CoinDesk parent Bullish (BLSH) and Gemini (GEMI), went public, and industry observers say that in 2026, financial infrastructure firms could be next in line for IPOs.

Cantor connection

Cantor and FalconX already have an existing relationship centered on institutional crypto lending, with the investment bank providing one of the first major credit facilities to the crypto prime broker.

In 2025, Cantor launched a $2 billion bitcoin-backed financing program and extended an initial credit line of over $100 million to FalconX, allowing it to borrow against bitcoin BTC$69,902.09 collateral and access liquidity without selling assets. The deal is part of a broader partnership aimed at building institutional-grade credit infrastructure in digital assets, reflecting growing convergence between traditional finance and crypto markets.

If Cantor wins the IPO mandate, it would likely be due to the existing relationship with the trading firm.

FalconX is a U.S.-based cryptocurrency trading and brokerage firm that primarily serves large institutional clients, including hedge funds, asset managers, and market makers.

Founded in 2018, the company operates as a digital asset prime broker, offering services including trade execution, liquidity access, credit and clearing. The company raised $150 million in a Series D financing round in June 2022, valuing the platform at $8 billion.

While no formal announcement has been made, FalconX has been scaling up ahead of a potential listing and has pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy over the past year as it builds out a full-service institutional crypto platform.

In 2025, the firm acquired derivatives specialist Arbelos Markets and took a majority stake in Monarq Asset Management, before striking a deal for crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) issuer 21Shares, its third major transaction of the year. Together, the deals expand FalconX’s reach across trading, derivatives, and asset management, reflecting a broader push to consolidate infrastructure and offer more regulated, institutional-grade investment products.

Cantor has steadily expanded its footprint in digital assets, positioning itself as one of the more active traditional finance firms in crypto markets. The Wall Street firm manages Tether’s U.S. Treasury reserves and has backed several crypto ventures, while publicly signaling support for blockchain infrastructure and trading businesses.

Its growing involvement reflects a broader push to bridge institutional capital with the digital asset ecosystem, particularly as more crypto companies explore public listings.

Cantor is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1945, it’s best known as a major player in fixed-income trading, particularly U.S. Treasuries, as well as investment banking, brokerage, and asset management.

Read more: Crypto custody firm Copper in early talks for IPO as crypto ‘plumbing’ becomes new Wall Street favorite

Dogecoin (DOGE) Hits 52-Week Low, Why Taurox (TAUX) AI Agents Are Your Best Choice

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Dogecoin (DOGE) Hits 52-Week Low, Why Taurox (TAUX) AI Agents Are Your Best Choice

Dogecoin hit a 52-week low of $0.08833 in late February, marking the bottom of a range that stretched from $0.08 to $0.30 over the past year. The bounce since then has been weak, with sellers defending every resistance level and volume fading on each attempted rally.

 

A 52-week low means every buyer from the past twelve months is underwater or gone. When a meme coin loses all of its yearly gains and sits near its floor, the narrative that carried it is dead. New catalysts would need to materialize, and DOGE has none on the horizon. 

 

Taurox (TAUX) is a decentralized hedge fund where AI agents will trade pooled capital across exchanges once the presale concludes and the pool goes live. Performance comes from systematic execution, not from waiting for a dead narrative to revive.

Risk Controls That Protect Every Dollar in the Pool

 

Taurox enforces layered risk controls at both the agent and pool level. Each agent operates under a 2% daily stop-loss that halts trading if breached. At the pool level, a 5% drawdown threshold triggers an automatic halt across all active agents. The protocol maintains a 15% stablecoin reserve at all times, providing liquidity even during volatile conditions. 

 

A kill switch allows instant shutdown of any agent or the entire pool if conditions deteriorate beyond acceptable parameters. No single agent can hold more than 5% of pool capital in a single position. These controls will run continuously once the pool goes live. Stakers keep 80% of net profits at the standard tier. DOGE dropped to a 52-week low with zero protective mechanisms for holders. 

 

Taurox will layer five independent risk controls between staker capital and market exposure. One token lets drawdowns run unchecked. The other will enforce hard limits at every level of the system.

Taurox

The Presale Clock Is Running

 

Phase 1 of the TAUX presale sold out in under 24 hours at $0.01. Phase 1 buyers are up 20% at the current Phase 2 price of $0.012. The presale has raised $329.8K, and Phase 2 is 28.8% filled. Each phase has a fixed allocation that closes permanently when sold out. The price steps up, and the previous entry is gone. No extensions. No repricing. No second attempt at a lower number. Every day that passes brings Phase 2 closer to closing. DOGE touched its lowest point in a year, and holders had no mechanism to protect their position or generate yield from the drawdown. TAUX Phase 1 buyers locked in at $0.01 and hold a 20% gain before the pool launched. 

Staking activates at the end of the presale, and agents begin trading real capital once the pool goes live. The $0.012 entry exists only while Phase 2 allocation remains. Once this tranche sells out, the next tier is higher. Hesitation is a cost that compounds with every closed phase.

 

TAUX at $0.012: What the Numbers Say

 

Phase 2 is live at $0.012. Listing at $0.08 delivers 6.67x. A $1 post-listing price means 100x from the current entry. At a $1 billion pool with 30% gross returns, implied TAUX price reaches $1.85, or x154 from today. Zero management fees. The 5% protocol fee applies only to profits. Thirty percent of collected fees burn permanently as TAUX. The remaining 70% funds the DAO treasury. Supply is fixed at 2 billion tokens. 

 

No minting function exists. Each fee cycle compresses circulating supply against a cap that cannot expand. DOGE hit a 52-week low with no yield, no burns, and no protective mechanism. TAUX burns supply with every profitable trade. Phase 2 is filling and will not reopen at this price.

Learn More

Buy TAUX: https://taurox.io/
Whitepaper: https://docs.taurox.io/
Official Telegram: https://t.me/tauroxlabs

 







Crypto Clarity Act inches toward Senate hearing as lawmakers weigh legislative trades

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Crypto Clarity Act inches toward Senate hearing as lawmakers weigh legislative trades

The negotiation to get a crypto market structure bill through its next stages in the Senate have hovered over an almost-there status for weeks, and Republican lawmakers met on Thursday to figure out how to bridge the final gaps.

The White House was expected to get some updated legislative language on Thursday, reflecting the ongoing work on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, according to people familiar with the situation. But the talks are still going, and even if the previously uncertain senators (such as Republican Thom Tillis) become satisfied with the bill’s stablecoin yield treatment, other distinct compromises (such as the approach to decentralized finance) also need to be secured before the Senate would be able to send the crypto industry’s top policy priority to President Donald Trump for a signature.

The longstanding debate that had focused on stablecoin yield — on which bankers and crypto businesses have been divided over the structure of stablecoin rewards programs — is close to a finish, the people said, though lawmakers have been discussing what else the community bankers might be offered to get their support while resolving some of their other priorities. That could include some unrelated provisions tied to Congress’ recent housing legislation, according to reporting from Politico.

Officials from Trump’s administration were said to be involved with the meeting of Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, which is the second panel that needs to advance the bill before it would be repackaged into a final version that can get a vote of the overall Senate. Even if the effort advances from the committee by the end of April, as Senator Cynthia Lummis predicted this week, a couple of further hurdles may be out of lawmakers’ hands.

Democrats involved in the talks have said they still want senior government officials and lawmakers from profiting off of personal crypto interests — most pointedly aimed at Trump. And they want Democrats appointed to the party’s vacant seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before the agency adopts new crypto rules. Those are both points that could require concessions from the White House, and crypto insiders are expecting those controversial points to be the last matters settled once the lawmakers are working on a final bill.

On the yield issue, Lummis has said that stablecoin rewards programs that steer clear of bank-line language on savings and interest may survive the compromise, insisting they’re more akin to credit-card rewards than interest from bank-account deposits.

Lummis said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose opposition to a previous draft bill helped derail an earlier effort to get to a Senate hearing, has been more flexible in recent talks. The company didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on its position.

As Congress works, the Securities and Exchange Commission spent much of the week issuing and discussing new crypto policy points, including a first-ever taxonomy that sets out regulatory definitions for U.S. crypto assets. In a CoinDesk op-ed on Thursday, Chairman Paul Atkins and the two Republican commissioners suggested they’re eager to have a new law back up the policy they’re working on.

“Only Congress can rewrite the law, and we stand ready to work with [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] Chairman Michael Selig to implement the CLARITY Act,” they wrote. “In the meantime, we are providing the responsible regulatory approach that markets demand.”

Crypto ETFs Reverse Course as Bitcoin Sees $164 Million Outflow

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Crypto ETFs Reverse Course as Bitcoin Sees $164 Million Outflow

Crypto ETFs lost momentum on Wednesday as bitcoin’s seven-day inflow streak ended sharply. Ether followed with notable outflows, while solana dipped slightly and XRP remained inactive. Bitcoin, Ether ETFs Post Sharp Outflows, Ending Weekly Momentum A week of steady optimism in crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) gave way to a decisive pullback, as investors hit pause […]

Celo Proposes Shifting Opera to ‘Long-Term Stakeholder’ with 160M CELO Grant

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Celo Proposes Shifting Opera to ‘Long-Term Stakeholder’ with 160M CELO Grant

The move would replace quarterly CELO grants to Opera, which each required Celo governance approval, to a one-time token payment for a three-year partnership.

Publicly traded web browser Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) announced that it has committed to being a long-term holder of Ethereum Layer 2 Celo’s native token, CELO, according to press release published today, March 19.

Celo Core Co., the primary developer and steward of the L2, submitted a governance proposal today outlining the plan to restructure its five-year-old partnership with Opera, namely proposing to shift the browser giant “from a distribution partner to a long-term network stakeholder.”

If approved by the Celo community, the new structure has Opera set to receive an allocation of 160 million CELO tokens — worth about $13 million at current prices — from the network’s “unreleased treasury,” meaning the tokens would not be purchased from the open market.

CELO rallied over 7% on the day on the news, bucking a broader market slump, though the token remains 99% below its 2021 highs and was trading around $0.08 at time of writing.

CELO 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinGecko

Quarterly to One-Time Grant

Under the proposed deal, Opera would swap its existing quarterly grant arrangement for a one-time token payout that initiates an additional three-year partnership between the two organizations.

In December 2023, the Celo community approved a proposal to pay Opera $568,182 per quarter in CELO — dubbed strategic grants, with each grant put before a governance vote on a quarterly basis — through Q1 2026, for a total of nearly $5.7 million, calculated at the time. The approved 2023 proposal emphasizes that Opera intends to hold and stake CELO, and has the ability to participate actively in governance.

These grants were effectively a marketing deal to increase the adoption of Celo DApps, namely MiniPay, specifically across Africa, where Opera Mini was the most popular browser at the time, per the proposal.

The 160 million CELO allocation in today’s proposal, also presented as “a grant for distribution services,” represents what both firms note is a shift to a more long-term partnership and commitment to the Celo ecosystem.

The allocation makes up approximately 27% of CELO’s current circulating supply and 16% of its 1 billion maximum supply. The one-time token transfer would come from Celo’s treasury into an Opera-controlled wallet, with Opera’s governance influence capped at 10% of total staked CELO under normal circumstance, per the governance proposal.

The proposal has already drawn scrutiny from some in the Celo community. One member of the governance forum, under the username Ginsburg, left a comment on the proposal earlier today, raising concerns about the deal’s structure and requesting further clarity from the team:

“This proposal effectively allocates ~160M CELO to Opera in lieu of a cash payment, which introduces meaningful dilution (or at least supply overhang) for existing token holders. I understand the strategic intent—aligning Opera as a long-term stakeholder and scaling MiniPay distribution—but the key question seems to be whether the expected user growth justifies the size of this allocation. If this were a market purchase, it would clearly signal demand. In this case, it’s more akin to CELO using its token as equity to acquire distribution.”

The vote remains pending before the Celo community governance forum. Opera and Celo also announced plans for a joint roadshow in Southeast Asia and Latin America “to drive grassroots adoption and grow the Mini App ecosystem,” starting next month.

Five-Year Partnership

The original partnership between Celo and Opera began in June 2021, when Opera first integrated CELO and Celo’s native stablecoins into the browser’s built-in crypto wallet, bringing cUSD and cEUR to millions of users.

That relationship deepened significantly in September 2023 with the launch of MiniPay, Opera’s self-custodial stablecoin wallet built directly on Celo, which has since grown to 14 million account registrations and processed 420 million transactions across 66 countries, according to the release.

Celo’s stablecoin activity and user base began surging in late 2024 as MiniPay drove adoption globally. Stablecoins more broadly crossed into mainstream fintech in 2025, with total market cap rising 50% even as broader crypto declined.

According to L2Beat, Celo has approximately $247 million in total value secured, making it the largest chain in the validiums and optimiums category — but a fraction of the scale of major rollups like Arbitrum or Base, which each hold over $10 billion.

Where Celo stands out is in user activity: per Token Terminal, the network currently leads all Ethereum Layer 2s by daily active users, with roughly 660,000 DAUs — a figure Celo attributes largely to MiniPay’s global reach.

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

EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

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EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

EtherFi has allocated $25 million to Plume’s real-world asset (RWA) protocol Nest, marking a move to integrate tokenized RWA yield directly into its platform as it looks to expand beyond crypto-native sources of return.

According to Thursday’s announcement, rollout will begin with exposure to Plume’s nBASIS vault, which is tied to Superstate’s USCC crypto carry fund, with plans to add a dedicated real-world asset vault directly into EtherFi’s interface in a later phase.

The initial allocation gives EtherFi users indirect exposure to a strategy combining crypto basis trades, staking rewards and government securities, a structure traditionally available only to institutional or sophisticated investors.

The integration will extend RWA exposure across EtherFi’s more than $6 billion in user deposits. According to Plume, the vault structure is designed to simplify access by handling execution and reporting onchain, while incorporating predefined risk controls and compliance features.

EtherFi is a crypto yield platform that began with Ethereum liquid staking and has since expanded into broader yield offerings, while Plume provides infrastructure that packages institutional investment strategies into onchain vaults, giving users exposure to institutional strategies managed offchain through integrated crypto platforms.

Plume has also taken steps toward integrating with traditional financial systems, including registering as a transfer agent with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in October.

Related: Babylon-Ledger tie-up expands access to Bitcoin Vaults for collateral use

Tokenized real-world assets activity surges

Unlike traditional DeFi yield, which is generated within crypto markets, real-world assets strategies derive returns from income streams such as interest on government securities and lending activity.

According to data from RWA.xyz, the value of tokenized real-world assets has surged to more than $27 billion from about $5.7 billion at the start of 2025. Much of that growth has been driven by tokenized US Treasury products, which account for over $11 billion in onchain value.

Real-world assets onchain. Source: RWA.xyz

Tokenized Treasurys give investors onchain access to government-backed debt instruments, combining blockchain-based settlement with yield from short-term bills and money market funds. 

Products from companies including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Circle account for a significant share of the market, with Circle’s USYC holding about $2.3 billion, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund around $2 billion and Franklin Templeton’s onchain fund over $1 billion in assets.

Tokenized Treasurys. Source: RWA.xyz

Plume reports 262,325 RWA holders holding more than $348 million in tokenized assets, with distributed asset value up 69% over the past 30 days, according to RWA.xyz data. Its Nest vault products are already live, including a basis-focused vault with more than $26 million in assets

In November, Plume co-founder and CEO Chris Yin told Cointelegraph that the tokenized real-world asset market could grow as much as fivefold this year.

He added that while most RWA value is currently concentrated in US Treasury bills, a maturing market and shifting interest rate environment are driving users to seek higher-yield opportunities elsewhere.

Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?