fin

a16z crypto released an analysis report titled "The New Stack of Global Finance: The Stablecoin Edition." The report points out that stablecoins have evolved from niche trading tools into fundamental financial pipelines, giving rise to a new type of "banking as a service" model that is driving the reconstruction of the financial system. The report believes that the transition to on-chain finance has "crossed the point of no return."The report categorizes blockchains into three types: general-purpose chains (such as Solana, Ethereum, and L2), payment-specific chains (such as Stripe's Tempo), and institutional networks (such as Canton). It also notes that the bottlenecks in the banking industry are easing, with a number of crypto-friendly banks actively connecting on-chain infrastructure with traditional fiat systems. The competition for stablecoin issuance has shifted to regulatory positioning, with issuers vying to obtain OCC national trust charters.The report states that payments are the "first act," while credit may be the more important "second act." The large-scale issuance of stablecoins will give rise to a new on-chain credit market, allowing capital to form outside the traditional banking system. The report also emphasizes that stablecoins not only enhance the dominance of the dollar but also provide emerging market users with access channels to the dollar.

According to Bloomberg, a project by Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 Corp is issuing investment-grade secured bonds to fund its data center construction associated with Google (Alphabet Inc.).The bonds have a maturity date of 2042, with an initial price guidance of approximately 2.13 percentage points above the benchmark yield. Previous reports indicated that the project plans to issue at least $3 billion in high-grade bonds for the construction of a 245-megawatt facility located in St. Francisville, Louisiana. The issuance is being managed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley.The 600,000 square foot project will generate revenue through a 15-year lease agreement worth approximately $7 billion signed with cloud computing startup Fluidstack, with Google providing financial backing for the lease payments and other obligations. A subsidiary of Entergy Corp. will supply power to the project under a service agreement.Hut 8 is a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company that is transforming into an energy and digital infrastructure company and holds a controlling interest in a U.S. Bitcoin company (associated with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.).

SOL Treasury Company Solana Company has completed a targeted issuance, issuing 3,076,922 shares of Class A common stock at a price of $2.6 per share, expecting to raise approximately $8 million (net fundraising of about $7.9 million), with Mirae Asset leading the investment and HashKey Capital participating.The company plans to use the raised funds to increase its holdings of SOL and for daily operations. In addition, the company has signed a put option agreement with the subscribers, stipulating that when certain conditions are triggered, the subscribers have the right to request the company to repurchase shares at the original subscription price plus an annualized internal rate of return of 7%.

The Spark protocol released its financial report for the first quarter of 2026 on April 27.The report shows that the gross protocol return for the quarter was $31.5 million (a 31% decrease quarter-over-quarter), the net protocol return was $6.91 million (a 30% decrease quarter-over-quarter), and the net protocol surplus was $3.46 million (a 47% decrease quarter-over-quarter). The protocol treasury reached a size of $46.1 million at the end of the quarter (a 5.7% increase quarter-over-quarter). Additionally, Spark launched a SPK token buyback program, investing $986,000 to repurchase tokens from the open market.The revenue structure for this quarter has shifted, with distribution rewards becoming the largest net return contributor to the protocol ($3.31 million), surpassing the net income from Spark Liquidity Layer (SLL) for the first time. The average deployed capital for SLL was $1.93 billion, with an average annualized yield of 5.8%. SparkLend continues to support institutional-level lending operations, with its USDT savings treasury continuing to grow. The Spark institutional lending product deployed $150 million at the end of the quarter, with governance approving its $1 billion cap.The report noted that the current unfavorable conditions in the DeFi lending market have led to a narrowing of the SLL interest margin, but the protocol's distribution business has seen significant growth. USDS, as a scalable savings-based return mechanism in a poor market environment, is continuously expanding its distribution channels to multi-chain and various stablecoins.

According to Caixin, Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned that the Trump administration's push for financial deregulation, particularly the relaxation of bank capital requirements and regulatory transparency, is significantly increasing the risk of a systemic financial crisis in the United States in the future.Kenneth Rogoff pointed out that one of the important reasons supporting the relaxation of regulations is to allow traditional banks to maintain innovation and market competitiveness in the competition with cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins pegged to the dollar. If cryptocurrency regulations are relaxed simultaneously, combined with the deregulation of the traditional financial system, it could trigger a "double deregulation" risk, ultimately leading to systemic collapse. Although a comprehensive banking crisis may not erupt in the short term, the risks have clearly increased, and the regulatory balance between stablecoins and the traditional banking system is becoming a key hidden danger.

Trump stated in a post: "What happened last night (referring to the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting incident) is exactly why our great military, Secret Service, law enforcement, and past presidents over the last 150 years have demanded the construction of a large, secure banquet hall within the White House. If it weren't for the military's top-secret banquet hall currently being built at the White House, this incident would not have occurred. The sooner it is built, the better!It is not only beautiful but also equipped with all the highest-level security facilities. Furthermore, it does not have upstairs rooms that allow unauthorized personnel to enter freely, and it is located within the gates of the safest building in the world—the White House. The absurd lawsuit regarding the banquet hall raised by a woman walking her dog must be withdrawn immediately; she is not qualified to file such a lawsuit. Nothing should interfere with the construction of the banquet hall, which is well within budget and progressing far ahead of schedule!"It is reported that the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner occurred at the Washington Hilton. In July 2025, the Trump administration launched a renovation plan for the East Wing of the White House, intending to demolish the existing building and construct a large banquet hall of approximately 8,300 square meters, capable of accommodating about 1,000 people, along with supporting facilities such as an underground hospital and air raid shelter, with a budget of $300-400 million entirely funded by private donations (from tech giants, etc.) to address the severe space shortage of the current state dining room.After the project quickly demolished the East Wing, it faced lawsuits from organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation for bypassing congressional authorization, national historic preservation review, and public opinion solicitation procedures. Federal Judge Richard Leon has repeatedly ruled that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally undertake large-scale renovations of historically significant White House buildings, ordering a suspension of above-ground construction, currently in a legal tug-of-war state of "underground safety facilities may continue, above-ground banquet hall construction suspended."

a16z released the latest research indicating that stablecoins are gradually evolving from their initial role as transaction settlement tools and stores of value into global financial infrastructure. Data shows that following the regulatory clarity driven by the U.S. GENIUS Act, the stablecoin market has accelerated its growth, with adjusted trading volumes reaching approximately $4.5 trillion.The report shows that consumer-to-business (C2B) stablecoin transactions grew by 128% year-on-year, reaching 284.6 million transactions. The monthly collateral deposits for stablecoin card projects also increased from nearly zero at the end of 2024 to over $300 million by early 2026, reflecting the rapid expansion of stablecoin payment scenarios. Meanwhile, the velocity of stablecoins has increased from 2.6 times to 6 times since early 2024, indicating a shift from being "held" to being "frequently used." a16z believes that the focus of stablecoin applications is shifting from cross-border payments to local payment infrastructure, particularly evident in markets such as Asia and Brazil.

Robin Markets tweeted that it has completed a $475,000 angel round of financing, led by Fabric VC, with joint leads from Animoca Brands, ATKA Incubator, John Lilic, and Stefan D. George, and participation from several institutions and angel investors including Hilbert Capital, Layer Zero, and Gnosis.Robin Markets has simultaneously opened its V1 staking product to the public. Robin Markets is a DeFi platform focused on Polymarket position yields, with its core product allowing users to earn yields on their positions in Polymarket.

AI digital asset trading agency platform Fere AI announced the completion of a $1.3 million financing round, led by Ethereal Ventures, with participation from Galaxy Vision Hill and Kosmos Ventures.The platform supports cross-chain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, and Base, allowing users to describe trading objectives in natural language, with AI agents handling trade execution. The new funds will be used to accelerate platform feature development and optimize trading execution strategies.

According to Jinshi, the final value of the one-year inflation rate expectation in the United States for April is 4.7%, lower than the market expectation of 4.8% and also lower than the previous value of 4.8%.

The decentralized computing platform VORAN announced the successful completion of a $3 million seed round financing. The participating institutions in this round of financing include IBC Group, CGV, All In Club, Harbor Digital Ventures, and several senior figures in the Web3 field.It is reported that VORAN aims to provide scalable decentralized computing services globally. The official statement indicates that the funds raised in this round will mainly be used to accelerate the development and iteration of platform applications and further expand its underlying infrastructure.

According to data from Hypurrintel, HYPE Treasury Company HypeStrat has increased its holdings by 186,877 HYPE in the past 4 days, worth 7.6 million dollars.HypeStrat currently holds 19.15 million HYPE, valued at approximately 780 million dollars, along with 112 million dollars in cash.

Web3 AI infrastructure AIW3 announced the completion of a $2 million seed round financing. This round of financing was led by Buffalo Capital, with participation from GalaXin Capital and Three-stones Ventures.It is reported that AIW3 is committed to transforming into an AaaS (Agent-as-a-Service) on-chain execution paradigm, providing callable strategy services, autonomous agent orchestration, and native vault collaborative funding flows, aiming to build a system-level next-generation on-chain execution layer. The official statement indicates that its core protocol infrastructure has officially entered a fully verifiable real-time operational phase, laying the foundation for the long-term development of a scalable decentralized agent network and ecosystem.

The vault protocol 3F, built on the decentralized lending protocol Morpho, has completed a total financing of $4 million, led by Maven 11, with participation from institutions such as F-Prime, GSR, and Gate Ventures. The company did not disclose a specific valuation.It is reported that 3F is built on top of Morpho, aiming to provide users with RWA leveraged exposure through a "one-click operation." Users only need to select the target asset and leverage multiple, and the protocol will automatically complete the entire position-building process: including purchasing the underlying asset through short-term bridge financing, depositing it as collateral in Morpho, and borrowing stablecoins to repay the financing. This mechanism essentially simplifies the "looping" process in traditional DeFi, which involves repeatedly buying assets, collateralizing, lending, and reinvesting.While this process can be efficiently completed in pure crypto assets through flash loans, it is usually more complex and inefficient in RWA scenarios due to issues such as settlement delays. 3F is expected to officially launch in the second quarter of this year.