Ripple Wins Final OCC Charter Backing $2.5 Billion RLUSD

Ripple received final approval from the OCC to launch Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised platform that will support its RLUSD stablecoin and offer digital asset custody to enterprises. Approval arrived less than a year after conditional sign-off on December 12, 2025, following a July 2025 application.

The bank will manage the segregated reserves backing RLUSD, act as collateral trustee for holders and provide fiduciary custody, while issuance stays with Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple's NYDFS-regulated entity. National trust charters bar deposit-taking and lending, distinguishing them from full-service commercial bank licenses.

RLUSD, launched in December 2024, has grown to a $2.5 billion market cap and serves as collateral within Ripple Prime. CEO Brad Garlinghouse said crypto and banks work better together, calling the charter real innovation and real accountability under federal oversight layered on existing state supervision.

Circle won final OCC approval for its USDC reserve in July and BitGo in December 2025, while Coinbase, Crypto.com and World Liberty Financial hold conditional approvals. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says the charters violate the National Bank Act, a claim The Digital Chamber rejects as mischaracterizing limited fiduciary licenses.

Crypto.com and OG.com Launch US Crypto Perps at 5x

Crypto.com and derivatives partner OG.com began rolling out crypto perpetual futures to eligible US traders, offering up to 5x leverage on contracts with no expiry that trade around the clock. Positions support take-profit and stop-loss orders plus isolated margin, though eligibility requirements were not specified.

Crypto.com registered as an introducing broker with the National Futures Association, routing trades through OG.com's CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse. The launch follows the CFTC opening US markets to crypto perpetuals in May and approving Kalshi's bitcoin perps, after which Kraken debuted perps in June through its Bitnomial acquisition.

Ethereum Patches Glamsterdam Flaw That Risked Staking Deposits

Ethereum developers patched a Glamsterdam flaw that could have let an operator walk off with ETH that staking services meant for new validators, merging the fix a week after rejecting it. Client teams must still build the revised deposit rules into their software before the upgrade proceeds.

Researcher Avsetsin showed that if an operator registered as a builder with a public key, a staking service's later validator deposit under that key would be credited to the builder instead. Potential exposure at Lido, Origin and Rocket Pool was examined, though no losses have been reported.

NBA Becomes Third League in CFTC Prediction Market Pact

The National Basketball Association and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signed a memorandum of understanding to share information and protect game integrity in prediction markets amid insider trading concerns. The league named Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction market exchanges, following similar CFTC pacts with the NHL and MLB.

The NFL has stayed out, filing a Supreme Court amicus brief arguing sports contracts are gambling that states should oversee, while the CFTC claims exclusive jurisdiction over most prediction markets. Both platforms now require employment verification for traders in sensitive markets to deter insider trading.

Data of the Day

Galaxy Digital posted $323 million in net income for the third quarter, swinging from an $85 million loss as adjusted gross profit hit $569 million and adjusted EBITDA reached $455 million. Its board also authorized a fresh $200 million buyback after completing the previous program on October 15.

Trading volumes rose 12% and the average loan book grew 27% to $1.8 billion, while data center gross profit nearly quadrupled to $79 million on its CoreWeave lease. Michael Novogratz expects a $800 million to $850 million annualized leasing run rate by the end of 2027.

More Breaking News

• Anthropic made its IPO filing public, planning a Nasdaq listing under ANT after first-half revenue jumped to $16.3 billion from $1.2 billion, alongside an $80.7 billion net loss.
• Companies drove 78% of Mercado Bitcoin's election-day volume as USDT trading jumped nearly 800%, a day before the Ibovespa crashed 14% on Lula's surprise win.
• Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe proposed ending the 8% grants subsidy, redirecting it to the Network Sustainability Mechanism since the grants program holds over $125 million.
• Keystone will destroy 18,835 unsold wallets after a breach exposed 25,964 buyer records and a key that could let counterfeit devices pass its authenticity checks.
• Mizuho cut its Circle price target to $43, warning AI agents could steer holders from USDC, cutting supply by up to $9 billion and reserve revenue by 18%.
• Polymarket investigated dozens of midterm bets for possible insider trading, referring at least two cases to the CFTC, as its surveillance system logs hundreds of alerts a day.
• South Korea weighs delaying crypto tax a fourth time, eyeing a 2029 start to match US participation in the OECD's CARF framework, with a 22% rate on gains.
• OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Terra with standard API prices 50% below GPT-5.6 Terra, cutting factual errors at low reasoning effort to 16.7% from 53.6% in internal tests.