Avalanche

Avalanche's AVAX token climbed to a six-month high Tuesday after Goldman Sachs made its roughly $100 billion Treasury money-market fund available through Lynq, an institutional settlement network built on Avalanche blockchain technology. AVAX rose as high as $11.99 and was recently up about 10% for the day, following Monday's announcement that Goldman Sachs' Financial Square Treasury Instruments Fund, known as FTIXX, can now be accessed by qualified U.S. participants through Lynq. The Goldman fund itself has not been tokenized; instead, tZERO Securities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, is facilitating access to the existing fund through Lynq, which tZERO described as roughly a $100 billion fund. Lynq was developed by Arca Labs, Tassat and tZERO as a real-time settlement network for institutional digital assets, launching in July 2025 with its first transaction recording client assets on the Avalanche blockchain, while Avalanche provides the open-source Layer 1 infrastructure and U.S. Bank serves as Lynq's qualified cash custodian. Lynq said in February that assets on the platform had surpassed $89 million and that it had partnerships with more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms, with existing partners and participants including Galaxy, Crypto.com, FalconX, Fireblocks, Wintermute and B2C2.

Kevin O'Leary said Bitcoin will reach $1 million, but only if the crypto industry resolves the quantum-computing threat known as Q-Day, the point at which a quantum computer could forge the signatures securing every Bitcoin wallet. Speaking at Avalanche Summit, O'Leary said no such machine exists and estimates for when one arrives run from the early 2030s to never, but that the doubt alone is why large funds cap Bitcoin exposure near 3%, treating it as a sliver of gold rather than a core holding. He also reversed his Ethereum thesis, saying his eighteen-month-old view that owning Bitcoin and Ethereum captured 97% of crypto's upside did not pan out, and that he now expects entire industries to pick their own chain, with whichever blockchain the first major exchange adopts for tokenization seeing that token soar. The interview came after the SEC approved its Innovation Exemption for tokenized stocks last week and as ICE evaluates Avalanche as the settlement layer for the NYSE's in-development trading system. O'Leary frames crypto as becoming the twelfth sector of the S&P because it services the other eleven.

Hyundai Card appears to be moving toward a much more ambitious phase of its blockchain strategy after successfully testing stablecoin-based corporate payments on Avalanche. The pilot, which used stablecoins to handle corporate payments, was completed successfully, according to the company. The card issuer is now eyeing an expansion of the effort, though no specific timeline, investment figure, or scope for the next phase was disclosed. The test marks a step beyond experimentation for Hyundai Card's blockchain work, which until now had not been tied to a live corporate payments use case. Avalanche, the blockchain network used in the trial, would host any broader rollout.

Hanwha Investment & Securities, a subsidiary of the Hanwha Group, one of South Korea's top five conglomerates, is building a tokenization platform to handle traditional assets such as stocks and bonds on the blockchain. Avalanche revealed this on September 7 via its official X account. Hanwha Investment & Securities aims to use the network as a bridge connecting institutional finance and blockchain, bringing traditional assets into the global on-chain market. South Korea is also advancing its regulatory framework for token securities. On September 4, the Financial Services Commission published a roadmap to gradually tokenize existing securities. The related amendments are scheduled to take effect on February 4, 2027, with the first phase focusing on tokenizing private placement money market funds and bonds for institutional investors, as well as unlisted stocks through trusts.

On September 1, Ethena released the beta version of 'Ethena Pay,' a global payment app that leverages the synthetic dollar stablecoin USDe for everyday payments, savings, and cross-border remittances. The app is self-custodial, allowing users to hold USDe as dollar-denominated balances and earn daily rewards of up to 6% annually. Funds can be spent via a Visa card, with cashback of up to 5% in Avalanche (AVAX). Fiat currency deposits and withdrawals are also supported, with the payment and remittance infrastructure unified on Avalanche. However, the 6% figure includes the base interest rate, and there are caps on balances eligible for the preferential rate: the free Standard tier offers 5% annually on up to $5,000, while the top VIP tier offers 6% on up to $50,000. Users must make at least one card transaction per month to qualify. The rollout is gradual, with an initial early access quota of 400 people, and the beta is planned to conclude by the end of September. According to DefiLlama data, USDe's market capitalization is approximately $4.1 billion, making it the sixth-largest stablecoin. Among the 49 countries where it is available, Japan is included, but USDe does not qualify as 'electronic payment instruments' under the Financial Services Agency, and it is treated as a crypto asset domestically.

Charles Schwab is expanding its spot crypto trading platform to include Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink, joining the previously announced Bitcoin and Ethereum offerings. The new assets will be available for purchase and holding on the platform, though transfers on and off are not supported, with fees set at 75 basis points. Schwab, which oversees more than $12 trillion in client assets across approximately 39 million active brokerage accounts, is adding these three established infrastructure plays rather than a broad range of speculative tokens. The move is seen as a defensive strategy to retain customers seeking crypto exposure, as traditional brokerages and crypto-native platforms converge to offer comprehensive services.

Kenedix, KDX ST Partners, Progmat, and Datachain have announced a collaboration to realize a new digital securities scheme utilizing public blockchains and stablecoins. In the first phase of the proof-of-concept, they verified DvP transactions that simultaneously exchange real estate security tokens on the Avalanche C-Chain and stablecoins on an Avalanche L1 without intermediaries. The second phase plans to test a mechanism allowing investors to borrow funds 24/7 using their real estate security tokens as collateral, and based on the results, a decision on commercialization will be made within 2026. This initiative goes beyond the issuance and sale of real estate security tokens, expanding into instant settlement and collateralized lending via stablecoins, representing an attempt to advance Japan's real-world asset tokenization from asset digitization to the expansion of financial functions.

Security token platform Progmat announced on the 13th that it has completed the migration of its distributed ledger from Corda5 to Avalanche L1. As a result, all security token projects handled by the company, totaling over 452 billion yen as of today, are now EVM compatible, achieving interoperability in a public chain environment. The company introduced a blockchain integration layer called mediator, shifting to an architecture that is not dependent on any specific chain. Rights transfer processing is now approximately three to five times faster than before, with finality on Avalanche L1 achieved in under two seconds. New client companies no longer need to build nodes, which is expected to reduce lead times and costs. Progmat CEO Tatsuya Saito commented, 'This is a symbolic achievement that truly connects Japan's security token market with the global RWA ecosystem.'

NEC has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs to begin joint exploration of next-generation on-chain services leveraging the Avalanche blockchain. The initiative aims to build a digital transaction platform that integrates NEC's biometric-based decentralized identifiers and verifiable digital credentials with the Avalanche infrastructure, unifying identity verification, stablecoin payments, and reward distribution. As a first step, a white paper targeting foreign visitors to Japan has been released, presenting a model where users obtain a FaceVC linked to facial recognition before arriving in Japan, and after arrival, complete instant stablecoin payments and receive rewards tailored to traveler attributes through a single tap approval with facial recognition at stores. The system employs three Avalanche chains with distinct roles: a permissioned Avalanche L1 manages DID documents and VC revocation information, the payment-dedicated network SETTL processes stablecoin payments, and the public C-Chain handles issuance and circulation of reward tokens and NFTs, all connected via Interchain Messaging. Going forward, the two companies will also explore expansion into financial institution identity verification, cross-border payments, and AI agent authentication.