Business
The people and companies shaping the crypto industry.
SoFi Launches Tokenized Deposit That Earns 4.4% and Converts to a Stablecoin
SoFi is giving its customers a way to earn bank-grade interest on digital dollars without giving up the speed of crypto, launching what it calls the first national bank-issued tokenized deposit for consumers. Announced Thursday, the product, SoFi Earn, trades under the ticker SOFIE, with each token representing $1 held on deposit at SoFi Bank. Holders earn 4.40% annual percentage yield, and the funds are FDIC-insured up to applicable limits, a key distinction from ordinary stablecoins. Myriad: W...
Oct 20, 2026
Business
The Midterms Are the First Real Test of Whether Markets Beat Pollsters
In 2024, election contracts became legal in the U.S. only a month before the presidential vote. This time, Kalshi's head of politics growth Benjamin Freeman told CNBC, "there's a much longer runway to plan." The platforms arrive at the November 3 vote far larger than in 2024. Combined monthly trading volume on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket more than doubled from $26 billion in May to $53 billion in July, mostly on sports, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Politics is a sma...
Oct 20, 2026
Business
Mastercard Opens Up AI Agent Payments With Early Access and Live Demo
Mastercard is moving its vision of AI agents transacting on their own from concept to live demo, opening early access to a system called Agent Pay for Machines that lets autonomous software discover services, agree to terms and pay for them, all within limits a human sets. The company first announced plans for the system in June and today unveiled the milestone at Cloudflare’s Connect conference, where Mastercard’s Jorn Lambert demonstrated a live transaction. Myriad: Which company will IPO next...
Oct 20, 2026
Business
Mt. Gox Pushes Repayment Deadline to 2027 With $2.8B in Bitcoin Still to Distribute
Mt. Gox's rehabilitation trustee has pushed back the deadline for repaying creditors of the defunct crypto exchange by another year, to October 31, 2027, according to a notice dated Friday. Trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said the base, early lump-sum and intermediate repayments have largely been completed for creditors who finished the necessary procedures and did not run into problems along the way. But "many rehabilitation creditors still have not received their Repayments because they have not co...
Oct 20, 2026
Business
BlackRock Files for 'Buffer' Bitcoin ETF as IBIT Draws $665M in a Day
BlackRock has filed to launch a "buffer" Bitcoin ETF that would cap investors' gains in exchange for limiting their losses, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The iShares Bitcoin Managed Protection ETF, which would trade under the ticker PBIT, "seeks to provide upside exposure to the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) and/or similar bitcoin exposure up to an approximate limit, while seeking to provide a level of downside protection," the filing says. The m...
Oct 19, 2026
Business
Strive Buys $335 Million in Bitcoin After Investors Pour In $369 Million
Strive, a Nasdaq-listed company that holds Bitcoin as a treasury asset, bought 4,045 BTC between October 12 and 16, according to a regulatory filing published Monday. The average price was about $82,803 per coin, meaning the stash was worth about $335 million, and the purchase lifts its holdings to 36,818 BTC, up from 32,773 a week earlier. That’s a total just north of $3 billion worth of Bitcoin at today’s prices. Myriad: How high will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction. The money comes...