21Shares has filed a second amended registration statement for its proposed Hyperliquid exchange-traded fund, and is seeking to list the product on Nasdaq under the ticker THYP.

Ripple has entered a partnership with Kyobo Life Insurance aimed at enabling settlement for tokenized South Korean government bonds.

Ripple has partnered with Kyobo Life Insurance to support South Korea's first blockchain-based settlement of tokenized government bonds. The initiative is designed to compress the standard two-day (T+2) settlement cycle to near real time, highlighting the potential for faster post-trade processing using tokenization.

XRP has mounted a sharp rebound in April after a bruising multimonth decline that erased 63% of its value. The move is being underpinned by a shift in institutional flows, new privacy capabilities on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), and a major retail distribution boost in Japan. Cryptorank data shows the token is tracking toward its first positive monthly close since September 2025. As risk appetite improved, XRP rose more than 2% in April to $1.35 at press time. Flow data points to a clear turn in positioning. SoSoValue estimates U.S.-based XRP exchange-traded funds took in about $12 million of net inflows in April, reversing March's first net outflows of more than $31 million amid heightened macro anxiety. CoinShares data also indicates global XRP exchange-traded products attracted roughly $20 million in net inflows this month. Retail sentiment, by contrast, has deteriorated. Santiment reports negative social sentiment (FUD) on XRP has climbed to its third-highest level in two years. Historically, extreme bearishness among retail participants has often coincided with contrarian opportunities, and analysts say the nine-month washout has helped set up the current relief rally. Even after the late-2025 to early-2026 downturn, CoinShares data places XRP as the third-best digital asset by global institutional inflows year-to-date, behind Bitcoin and Solana. Market watchers attribute the renewed backing to changes in XRPL's fundamentals, led by native privacy features and an expanding retail utility footprint. XRPL adds programmable privacy, aims for institutional use A longstanding barrier for traditional finance has been public-blockchain transparency, where transactions and balances can be tracked by competitors and automated strategies. XRPL has now integrated native zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, allowing transaction validity to be proven without revealing underlying details. XRPL Commons and infrastructure firm Boundless deployed a RISC-V ZK verifier directly on-ledger. The upgrade positions XRPL as the first public blockchain to offer programmable privacy with compliance controls natively at the protocol layer. The rollout is staged, with "Smart Escrows" planned for the second quarter of 2026, requiring a valid ZK proof before funds can be released. "Smart Vaults" are slated to follow, enabling fully private financial environments. The design is intended to let institutions validate transactions against Know Your Customer and sanctions databases prior to settlement while keeping sensitive data hidden from the public, yet auditable by regulators upon request. Supporters say the infrastructure broadens enterprise use cases such as stablecoin payments, over-the-counter trades, and cross-chain swaps, with confidential amounts and counterparties. It also enables ZK identity tools like zkPassport for compliance checks without exposing personal data. "XRPL has always been built for institutional finance…we are making confidential, compliant execution native infrastructure on XRPL, unlocking a category of enterprise use cases that simply wasn't possible before," said Odelia Torteman, director of corporate adoption at XRPL Commons. Rakuten integration puts XRP in front of 46 million users While privacy features target institutional adoption, XRP's utility case has been strengthened by retail integration in Asia. Earlier this month, Japanese e-commerce and financial services group Rakuten integrated XRP into Rakuten Wallet. The rollout reaches 46 million active users and allows XRP purchases using accrued loyalty points. The integration also expands spend utility: users can spend XRP at more than 5 million affiliated merchants across Japan. With an estimated $23 billion in loyalty points circulating in the Japanese economy, the move links closed-loop rewards to everyday commerce and turns previously siloed points into liquid crypto purchasing power. Separately, reports circulating among XRP proponents claim a consortium of Japanese banks completed a live pilot comparing XRP settlement with SWIFT for remittances between Japan and Southeast Asia. CryptoSlate said it could not independently verify the pilot by press time. Proponents claim the test showed settlement in under four seconds at 60% lower cost than legacy rails. Advocates argue that bypassing correspondent banking could improve capital efficiency by reducing the need for large prefunded overseas accounts. Regulatory positioning and security hardening The timing also intersects with U.S. regulatory scrutiny. The Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Trading and Markets recently issued strict guidance on broker-dealer registration requirements for decentralized finance interfaces. XRPL developers argue the network's architecture reduces exposure to that framework because it includes a protocol-level decentralized exchange rather than relying on third-party smart contracts and centralized frontends. Vet, an XRPL network validator, wrote on X that the network functions as a "shared public square," managing order books and routing at the protocol layer without taking custody of user funds. To prepare for higher expected volume and new features, Ripple and blockchain security firm Sherlock launched a $550,000 audit contest on April 13. The two-week effort is intended to stress-test upcoming protocol components, including batch transactions, permission delegation, and confidential transfers. Quantum risk: audit suggests limited near-term exposure Developers are also addressing quantum-computing risks, as concerns grow that future machines could use Shor's algorithm to derive private keys from exposed public keys. A recent XRPL vulnerability review argues the ledger is comparatively insulated in the near term because a user's public key is only revealed when an outbound transaction is made; receive-only accounts remain shielded. Vet's audit found roughly 300,000 accounts holding 2.4 billion XRP have never sent a transaction, making them quantum-safe by default. Dormant whale accounts that exposed keys more than five years ago reportedly hold about 21 million XRP, around 0.03% of circulating supply. XRPL also supports native signing-key rotation without moving funds to a new address. "The XRP Ledger is account-based and allows for signing key rotation, so you can rotate keys that sign on behalf of an account without switching the account," Vet said, calling it a practical stopgap ahead of eventual quantum-resistant cryptography. Taken together, April's mix of institutional inflows, retail capitulation, privacy-centric protocol upgrades, and broad distribution efforts has shifted the discussion around XRP away from pure speculation and toward its role as integrated financial infrastructure.

A Societe Generale unit has added a MiCA-compliant stablecoin to MetaMask, expanding access to the token via the widely used crypto wallet.

April 15 — Crypto data firm KaikoData estimates that South Korea now accounts for about 30% of global cryptocurrency trading volume. Activity is heavily skewed toward altcoins, which represent as much as 85% of trading, while Bitcoin and Ethereum make up just 9% and 6%, respectively. South Korean exchanges post average weekly turnover of $2.622 billion, underscoring a market dominated by altcoin-led speculation. Japan, by comparison, sees steadier monthly crypto volumes of roughly $2–3 billion—well below South Korea’s pace. Even so, Japan’s Bitcoin market depth is 3 to 5 times that of South Korea, pointing to meaningfully stronger liquidity.

Kaiko data show South Korea accounts for about 30% of global cryptocurrency trading volume. Altcoins make up roughly 85% of this activity, while Bitcoin represents 9% and Ethereum 6%. In Japan, yen-denominated crypto trading has been steady at about \u00242B\u2013\u00243B per month, well below South Korea\u0027s weekly average of around \u002426B. Despite the smaller turnover, Japan\u0027s market depth in BTC is estimated to be 3x\u20135x deeper.

Trading and investment platform eToro has signed an agreement to acquire Zengo, a self-custody crypto wallet provider, according to GlobeNewswire. The deal is intended to strengthen eToro's digital-asset offering and speed up its strategy of linking traditional finance with on-chain infrastructure. Founded in 2018, Zengo developed a keyless wallet architecture built on Multi-Party Computation (MPC) cryptography. The company says it serves more than 2 million users across over 180 countries and regions and has reported no wallet breaches since launch. After closing, eToro plans to integrate Zengo's technology to support additional decentralized trading use cases, including tokenized assets, prediction markets, and perpetual contracts. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed once those conditions are met.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) reported sharply widening losses in its latest quarterly results, underscoring the volatility of its Ethereum-centric treasury strategy even as operating revenue jumped. In its latest 10-Q filing, the company posted a net loss of $3.82 billion for the quarter ended Feb. 28, 2026, compared with a $1.15 million loss in the year-earlier period. Over the last six months, losses topped $9 billion, driven largely by $3.78 billion in unrealized losses on its digital-asset holdings. Bitmine continued to build its Ethereum position and said it now holds about 4.87 million ETH valued at roughly $10.7 billion, making it the world's largest corporate holder of Ethereum. The company's average purchase price is $2,206 per ETH. Chairman Tom Lee said management views the recent pullback as an accumulation opportunity and believes Ethereum is nearing the end of a "mini crypto winter." Revenue, meanwhile, climbed to $11.04 million from $1.5 million a year earlier, with most of the increase coming from staking rewards. With more than 68% of its ETH staked, Bitmine estimates annualized revenue of about $212 million at current yield levels. BMNR shares were little changed on the news, closing down 0.14% at $21.48. After-hours trading ticked slightly higher following modest intraday weakness that stabilized into the close.