IBM Plugged Into Swift's Banking Blockchain Here's Who's Already On It: The world's biggest bank messaging network just quietly went blockchain and IBM wants in. On September 25 - 2026, IBM connected its Digital Asset Haven platform to Swift's blockchain-based shared ledger, currently in beta. The move lets banks move tokenized deposits across Swift's network using an ISO 20022 messaging adapter meaning banks can tap blockchain rails without ripping out their existing payment systems. Swift isn't a small player here. It connects over 12,500 financial institutions across more than 200 markets, moving the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days. So when Swift adds blockchain to that stack, banks pay attention. The First Live Transaction Already Happened HSBC and Standard Chartered beat everyone to the punch, completing the first live transaction on the ledger back in August proof the system works outside the lab. Meet the 17 Founding Banks Swift's ...

  Buying meme coins with a credit card came with an unexpected perk: some users could earn ordinary credit card points and cash back on their crypto purchases. Visa is now moving to close that loophole. The issue centered on how meme coin purchases were classified by payment processors . Some Crossmint-powered checkouts used merchant category code (MCC) 5815 , a category intended for digital media such as movies, music and audiobooks, rather than a crypto-specific category. That meant a meme coin purchase could look to the card network like a normal digital-media purchase. How the loophole worked Users of Robinhood Wallet and Fomo could purchase certain meme coins using credit cards through Apple Pay or Google Pay. According to The Block's testing, transactions made with Visa and Mastercard cards were classified as digital-media purchases and could earn normal card rewards, including points and cash back. The classification mattered because crypto purchases are generally t...

 "Bitcoin ETFs Go 5-for-5: Crypto Funds Hit Biggest Inflow Week of the Year" Digital asset investment funds pulled in $3.5 billion last week, according to CoinShares latest Digital Asset Bi-Weekly Digest the largest single-week inflow recorded in 2026. The surge pushed total assets under management across crypto funds to $173 billion globally. Bitcoin Led the Charge US spot Bitcoin ETFs were the standout performer, hauling in $2.39 billion and staying positive on all five trading days of the week. Ethereum products weren't far behind, adding $690 million over the same stretch. Together, these flows pulled year-to-date totals back into positive territory up to $8.6 billion for 2026 so far. What Sparked the Rally? CoinShares attributes the strength to the removal of uncertainty following the Federal Reserve's recent rate decision. Once the outcome became clear, investors who had been sitting on the sidelines started deploying capital again. The US Dominated But Who Else...

  The IPO market is getting busy again, with major private companies across AI, fintech, technology, space and consumer businesses moving closer to public markets. Names such as OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, Oura and Strava have appeared in the 2026 IPO pipeline, although the status and timing of individual listings can change. Some companies have filed, while others remain confidential filers or are simply being discussed as potential candidates. That creates an opportunity for investors to gain access to companies that were previously available mainly through private markets. But an IPO can also make it easier to buy into a company before the market has fully figured out what it is worth. The IPO price is not automatically a bargain One of the biggest mistakes investors can make is assuming that getting shares at the IPO price means getting in early at a cheap valuation. The IPO price is determined through the offering process and reflects what the company and its underwriters...

What if the same AI that helps hackers find vulnerabilities could also make your crypto harder to steal? That is the possibility Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is pointing to. He argues that AI could make software fundamentally harder to break by making formal verification practical at a much larger scale. Formal verification uses mathematical proofs to confirm that code follows specific security rules. Instead of relying only on testing to find bugs, developers can prove that certain parts of a program behave as intended. But Buterin says there is a bigger challenge. The Hardest Part Is Defining Security According to Buterin, defining what “secure” actually means is harder than verifying the code . A security definition needs to account for more than obvious bugs. It may also need to consider compromised servers, leaked keys, network attacks, metadata and hardware vulnerabilities. If an important threat is missing from the definition, a perfect mathematical proof will no...