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Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Payward to Expand Crypto Infrastructure Partnership

Nasdaq has made a $100 million strategic equity investment in Payward, Inc., the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, expanding a partnership aimed at integrating traditional financial market infrastructure with digital asset platforms. The deal follows Deutsche Börse's $200 million Kraken stake in April 2026 and reflects growing direct equity participation by major exchange operators in crypto infrastructure.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom3Sep 10, 2026

All Reports

Press ReleaseDeFiSep 9, 2026

Tether and Fasanara Capital Launch $400 Million Stablecoin-Enabled Private Credit Fund

Tether and Fasanara Capital have jointly launched a $400 million private credit fund using USDT stablecoin infrastructure for settlement and collateral, targeting mid-market borrowers across Europe and Asia with loan origination beginning Q4 2026. The fund aims to reduce settlement cycles from T+2 to T+0, positioning stablecoin rails as operational infrastructure for institutional credit markets.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom3

Press ReleaseDeFiSep 8, 2026

Forus Raises $150M at $3B Valuation to Automate Healthcare's Prescription-to-Treatment Workflow

Forus has closed a $150 million funding round at a $3 billion post-money valuation to build blockchain infrastructure automating the prescription-to-treatment workflow in US healthcare. The equity round targets a workflow segment estimated to generate $290 billion in annual inefficiency costs.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom3

Deep DiveDeFiSep 8, 2026

Crypto-Native AI Tokens Are Priced for a Future That May Never Arrive: A Framework for Sustainable Inference Economics

The crypto-native AI sector has built a $14.2–20.1 billion market cap on top of $18–24 million in daily on-chain inference volume — a ratio that exposes severe valuation decoupling from utilization fundamentals. Drawing on documented DePIN subsidy cliff dynamics from Helium, Render, and Akash, this report argues that Bittensor, io.net, and peers face a structural inflection point within 18–36 months as commodity inference pricing collapses toward $0.010 per 1,000 tokens and fixed token emission schedules erode operator economics. The path to sustainability runs through specialized inference markets, verifiable compute attestation, and dynamic tokenomics — not commodity price competition with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom18

Press ReleaseMarketsSep 7, 2026

Strive CEO Matt Cole Announces Purchase of Over 1,100 BTC

Strive Asset Management CEO Matt Cole has announced the firm's intention to purchase more than 1,100 Bitcoin, representing approximately $50–65 million in capital deployment. The move arrives amid global regulatory convergence and growing institutional participation in digital assets.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom2

Press ReleaseDeFiSep 6, 2026

Ethereum Upgrade Targets 50–80% Fee Reduction as Institutional Capital Mobilizes Around Tokenized Assets

Ethereum is preparing a major protocol upgrade targeting 50–80% fee reductions and a 3–5x throughput improvement, arriving as BlackRock's $50–200 billion tokenized fund launch, Vietnam's regulated crypto framework, and $8.7 billion in prediction market ETF accumulation signal accelerating institutional demand for scalable blockchain settlement.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom4

Press ReleaseDeFiSep 4, 2026

Liquid Mercury Announces Initial Closing of ACQUA1 Offering, Targeting DeFi Liquidity Fragmentation

Liquid Mercury has completed the initial closing of ACQUA1, a structured capital pooling mechanism targeting liquidity fragmentation across decentralized finance infrastructure. The offering enters a market where cross-chain swap slippage has risen 160–340% since 2024 despite more than $500 million in venture capital deployed toward fragmentation solutions.

Blockchain Academics Newsroom3