Tether Investments participated in a $134 million funding round for Stablecoin Development Corporation, aimed at enhancing stablecoin infrastructure. Global stablecoin circulation has surpassed $300 billion, with Tether's USDT user base reaching 570 million.

In Q1 2026, the Ethereum-to-Bitcoin price ratio reached a three-month high at 0.0313. Ethereum added 284,000 users and surpassed $180 billion in stablecoin supply. Bitcoin remained strong above $74,000, driven by significant ETF inflows.

Rakuten Wallet has launched XRP as a payment method, allowing users to buy XRP with Rakuten Points and spend it at millions of merchants in Japan. This integration expands XRP's reach to a vast, non-crypto user base within Rakuten's extensive ecosystem.

Solana co-founder toly noted that the industry needs a stablecoin that can only be frozen under a court order, opposing other freeze factors. He suggested that the protocol issue a stablecoin with custom freeze strategies on the base layer and strengthen security measures. This view stems from a recent response by Circle to the Drift protocol hack incident, sparking discussions about centralized stablecoins.

A trader used Uniswap on Ethereum to buy low and sell high, spending 1.1 ETH to buy DOT and searching for different liquidity pools; ultimately, they successfully bridged 503k DOT tokens to the Base network and sold for a profit of $150k.

Zcash’s core development team, ZODL, has released the latest strategic roadmap, focusing on post-quantum security, scalability, and user experience, and moving into the Zcash IV phase. The new version is now live, improving user experience and advancing key development. Meanwhile, ZODL is actively involved in industry cooperation, but due to regulatory issues it has temporarily taken down the Russian app store.

Over the past 7 days, net inflows of funds across Ethereum cross-chain bridges reached $11.11B, ranking first among public chains. Solana and Polygon saw net inflows of $497 million and $397 million, respectively, while other chains such as Base, Avalanche, and others also had varying degrees of fund inflows.

Benchmark reaffirmed its bullish stance on Securitize (SECZ) in its latest research report, setting a $16 price target, and believes the company will benefit significantly from the tokenized asset wave. If it were to capture 0.01% of the NYSE’s market cap, its asset base could double. Securitize has full regulatory credentials and has become the digital transfer agent for the NYSE’s tokenized securities platform. It has also partnered with BlackRock, with the size of its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund nearing $3 billion, but it faces regulatory and technology risks.

Social app Giggles announced on April 9 that it has completed more than $1 million in Pre-Seed funding, led by 1kx. The funds will be used to improve the product and scale its user base. The app combines a prediction-market mechanism, allowing users to “buy in” early to help turn “content discovery” into an economic activity.