Weekly Top Stories - 9/26/25
In this week's newsletter, Will Owens explains AsterDEX’s overnight success; Thad Pinakiewicz explains why CFTC blessing stablecoins as derivatives collateral is a big deal; and Lucas Tcheyan considers why the already wildly lucrative Tether wants to raise more money.
Aster’s Astronomic Rise
The talk of crypto over the past week has been CZ’s latest venture, AsterDEX. $ASTER, the decentralized exchange’s token, launched just a week ago and has already vaulted into the top echelon of revenue-generating protocols in the crypto space. Data from DefiLlama on Sept. 24 showed Aster pulled in $9.93 million in 24-hour revenue, surpassing Circle and Hyperliquid and trailing only Tether ($21.99 million). That is extraordinary, considering most people didn’t know what AsterDEX was before last week.
AsterDEX was born from the late-2024 merger of Astherus (a yield infrastructure provider) and APX Finance (a perpetual futures exchange). Aster offers a suite of services: an advanced orderbook perpetuals exchange (Aster Pro) on BNB Chain, Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum; one-click, MEV-resistant perps (with 1001x leverage); a companion spot exchange (Aster Spot); and yield infrastructure (Aster Earn), including a yield-bearing stablecoin (USDF). The roadmap stretches further to include a purpose-built Aster Chain designed for low-friction trading.
The market is clearly paying attention. On Sept. 17, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) tweeted about Aster when the token was trading at $0.17; at the time of writing, it’s $1.90, a whopping +1,015% gain.
OUR TAKE:
Aster’s perps business slots directly into one of crypto’s largest market opportunities. Perpetuals are now a trillion-plus dollar monthly volume product, with activity overwhelmingly concentrated on centralized exchanges (CEXs) including Binance, Bybit, and OKX, according to Coinglass data. By contrast, spot trading has seen DEX/CEX ratios rise steadily. Hyperliquid has already proven that lean perps infrastructure could scale quickly; it’s been one of the biggest winners of the cycle. If a perps DEX offers massive revenue potential relative to the cost to build, new competitors will inevitably pile in.
That’s exactly what we’re seeing. Lighter, BULK, edgeX, Drift, Pacifica, and Zeta are all taking different approaches to execution and fee routing. Expect more "vampire attacks” on Hyperliquid and more new entrants. Given the massive attention surrounding onchain perps, the DEX/CEX ratio for derivatives is likely to climb.
In that context, Aster’s strategy appears to be widening the moat through integration. By keeping perps, spot, yield, and stablecoin settlement in one place, the project, backed by YZi Labs (Binance Labs’ venture arm), aims to capture the entire user “session,” not just the trade. More broadly, the attention this project has drawn has ignited user activity on Binance’s BNB Smart Chain.
There are competitive knock-on effects already. Hyperliquid’s $HYPE token has fallen ~30% since Aster’s launch. Not even the kings are safe from competitors that can attract significant mindshare. Aster’s breakout is very much driven by narrative and speculation around what lengths CZ and YZi Labs might go to in order to promote the project. But it’s also real. Flipping Circle in 24-hour revenue is no joke.
The challenge now is durability. Revenue spikes are easier when narratives are fresh and hot, but sustaining traction will be harder. – Will Owens
No Wire Room, No Cry: CFTC Blesses Crypto Collateral
This week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced a pilot program to accept tokenized non-cash collateral for derivatives trades, explicitly including stablecoins and even bitcoin, under its risk frameworks. While this is a little different from other regulatory sandboxes the CFTC has carved out for innovation in the past, it is the first time that native digital assets would be eligible as collateral at CFTC-regulated entities. But the real story is what this unlocks: the next step in the evolution of settlement systems. Wires batch, banks close, and custodians get jammed at month-end. Collateral that once crawled through wire transfers restricted to banking hours can now move instantly, with settlement finality guaranteed by code, without the need for a banker to answer the phone at 2 a.m.This isn’t the first time the CFTC has broached the topic. Last year, the agency’s Global Markets Advisory Committee expressed the view that tokenization was simply a new wrapper for already-eligible collateral, and not a fundamental change in the risk of an asset. From this perspective, the CFTC isn’t blessing new risk; it is sanctioning faster movement of already eligible risk. The benefits flagged were mostly operational: faster transfers, cleaner asset segregation, and fewer human touch points. That message is now codified into a pilot, with no special favors and no special exemptions, just permission to operationalize a new settlement rail inside the existing rulebooks.
OUR TAKE:
Who are the potential winners and losers from the change? On the winning side, the operational edge for crypto-native dealers is clear. Firms can adjust margin more dynamically, tighten CSA (credit support annex) terms, reduce overnight liquidity needs, improve rehypothecation control via onchain attestations, and manage collateral intraday. This change should make over-the-counter (OTC) trading more approachable for crypto-native counterparties, but only if they are trading against a CFTC-regulated swap dealer. (FalconX and Galaxy Digital are the only two such firms that are native to crypto.) The regulation change could also improve capital efficiency if yield-bearing stablecoins are permitted, although those stablecoins would not be compliant with the GENIUS Act. Stablecoin issuers are the other obvious winners, with their AUC (assets under custody) growing as their tokens become fungible collateral with respect to Treasuries.
On the losing side of the change is anyone profiting from settlement latency: custodians, slower futures commission merchants (FCMs), or trading desks that arbitrage operational inefficiency. Ironically, this change may also be a headwind for crypto-native banks; while one would expect a growth in deposit base with an increase in stablecoin usage, the decreased settlement time with counterparties will hurt their net interest margins (NIM). Also on notice: unregulated venues reliant on opaque margin practices; once dealers can prove collateral movement and segregation onchain, opacity becomes a risk you don’t have to take.
The question that comes to mind for me is whether stablecoins should actually be treated as cash. The cypherpunk in me says the technology is secure and the risks are minimal, but the credit trader in me says I need to discount the tail risks. Cash at a Federal Reserve member bank (operational realities aside) is the zero-volatility benchmark. A fiat- and Treasury-backed stablecoin introduces layered risks: reserve asset quality and liquidity; custody of reserves; issuance/redemption frictions; legal enforceability of the claim; quality of the portfolio manager; and technological dependencies. As CFTC ponders allowing stablecoins as collateral, there is a reasonable case to haircut stablecoins vis-à-vis cash because of the aforementioned risks. This is not to demonize stablecoins, but to recognize that the technological and operational advantages afforded to them are counterbalanced by the layering of operational and technological risks. While traditional ratings agencies are still working on refining their digital asset frameworks, S&P Global has posted a Stablecoin Stability Assessment as a starting point. S&P’s framework outlines a risk ladder with a scale of 1 (very strong) to 5 (weak), with the regulated industry leader USDC sitting at 2 (strong), and its unregulated bigger brother USDT at 4 (constrained).
But if you zoom out, this is the long game. Markets don’t care about ideological debates. They care about who can deliver commoditized services quickly, at low cost. A Saturday night margin call that clears in seconds with a tokenized Treasury fund or USDC without waking a wire room will pry market share from anyone still waiting for Fedwire. The CFTC has just made it acceptable for the biggest dealers to try, and once the latency basis tightens, there’s no going back. – Thad Pinakiewicz
Tether’s Lofty Valuation Target Underscores Global Ambition
Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, is in talks to raise $15 billion to $20 billion via a private placement that would value the company around $500 billion, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed the possibility of a raise in a tweet on Wednesday, saying the company is “evaluating a raise from a selected group of high-profile key investors, to maximize the scale of the Company’s strategy across all existing and new business lines (stablecoins, distribution ubiquity, AI, commodity trading, energy, communications, media) by several orders of magnitude.”
The announcement follows a slew of other recent developments involving Tether as the company aggressively expands:
On Sept. 25, Plasma, a new stablecoin-optimized layer-1 backed by Bitfinex (Tether’s sister exchange) and with Ardoino as a seed investor, launched. Plasma aims to be a scalable settlement layer for Tether’s products.
On Sept. 24, Tether announced the hiring of Benjamin Habbel as chief business officer. Habbel previously founded a $1 billion private equity firm, Limestone Capital.
On Sept. 12, Tether announced plans to launch USAT, a U.S.-regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin with former Executive Director of the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets Bo Hines as CEO of Tether USA (covered by Galaxy Research here).
Tether’s flagship stablecoin, USDT, has nearly quintupled in supply since the beginning of 2023 to more than $170 billion. While far from finalized, a raise valuing the company at $500 billion would make it one of the world’s largest private companies, on par with tech innovation giants OpenAI and SpaceX. The deal is expected to close by year-end, Bloomberg reported.
OUR TAKE:
What are the most valuable assets in crypto today? One is obviously bitcoin, which is volatile and prone to speculative run-ups, but also a multi-trillion-dollar asset increasingly adopted as a hedge against fiat debasement. Now, another may be Tether – not USDT, but the company behind it. The stablecoin itself can be viewed as the opposite of BTC: a non-volatile, dollar-pegged form of payment that has become the backbone of global crypto liquidity.
That juxtaposition helps explain why Tether is seeking a valuation on par with the world’s leading technological innovators. Where bitcoin earns its value from scarcity and conviction, Tether earns it from stability and scale, pulling in nearly $5 billion in quarterly profit at margins that would make a hedge fund blush. The reality is, if stablecoins are truly on their way to becoming the new rails for global finance and commerce, Tether is best positioned to benefit.
The $15–20 billion fundraise, then, may be less about cash and more about influence — recruiting partners and building legitimacy at a moment when crypto’s largest firms can no longer afford to operate in gray spaces. Two models are emerging for stablecoin legitimacy. Circle’s IPO this year put transparency at the center of its pitch. Tether, by contrast, appears to be using private capital and influence to entrench its dominance. It also likely aims to bolster credibility amid longstanding doubts about its reserves and corporate structure. Recently released Q2 2025 attestations confirm over $157 billion in issued USDT, backed by $127 billion in U.S. Treasuries and $35 billion in other assets. But the company’s scale and influence in the industry still lead many skeptics to call for full independent audits rather than attestations.
The fundraising announcement also reinforces Tether’s evolution into something more than just a stablecoin issuer. Beyond tokenizing dollars onchain, it wants to ensure those dollars circulate with the least friction possible. The company highlights AI, telecommunications, Bitcoin mining and energy, cloud computing, real estate, and even neurotech as other areas of expansion as it seeks to build a “resilient, long-term infrastructure for the digital asset economy.” In 2023, Tether invested over $600 million in Northern Data for AI infrastructure. In 2024, it paid $200 million for a majority stake in Blackrock Neurotech to advance brain-computer interfaces.
Whether this diversification is strategic foresight or wasteful mission creep, it signals Tether’s intent to anchor itself not just as a stablecoin issuer, but as an institution, one with influence across technology, energy, and global finance. The fundraising round, whether it closes at a $500B valuation or not, cements that ambition. – Lucas Tcheyan
Chart of the Week
Sunday brought a sharp deleveraging across crypto, with liquidations spiking to highs last seen in September 2021. More than 400,000 traders were forced out of their positions, and notional liquidations came in just under $1.7 billion. Leverage was extreme, with liquidation maps showing the heaviest clustering in the 50x to 100x buckets, leaving prices especially vulnerable to a cascade. The washout underscores how dependent recent price action remains on leverage and thin weekend liquidity.
Liquidations are forced closures of a margined or collateralized position when losses or collateral shortfalls push an account below its maintenance margin. Ethereum’s ETH led the washout, suffering roughly twice the notional liquidations seen in bitcoin. Longs incurred most of the damage while short liquidations were modest. Traders who had built aggressive long positions in anticipation of continued upside quickly found themselves on the losing side as cascading liquidations amplified the decline.
As of this writing, close to $1.03 billion in additional positions have been cleared, including about $401 million tied to ETH, which continues to lead the tally.
Traders have been preparing for a major options expiration on Friday. More than $23 billion in BTC and ETH contracts were set to lapse Friday morning, marking one of the largest expirations on record, Cointelegraph reported.
The market has entered a new period of uncertainty. The question is whether new demand will stabilize prices or whether ongoing selling will deepen the pullback. — Christopher Rosa
Other News
👀SEC and FINRA examining crypto Treasury company trades
👔 Vanguard said to prep crypto ETF client access in about-face
🦑Kraken closes $500m round, pushes toward IPO finish line
◀️Circle looks at ways to make stablecoin transactions reversible
🤝 Strive to buy Semler for $1.3b in stock, boosting BTC holdings
🇰🇷Naver, the ‘Google of South Korea,’ in talks to buy Upbit
💰ZeroHash secures $104m funding round led by IBKR
⛓️💥 SEC's Atkins: crypto 'innovation exemption' coming this year
💵 USDH launches on Hyperliquid, flips USDC after heated contest
📺 ‘South Park’ episode spoofs Polymarket
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