The Daily: Ripple, Circle and BitGo win conditional approval for US banking charters, Hex Trust to issue and custody wrapped XRP, and more
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.Happy Friday! Bitcoin's brief rebound toward $93K masked growing fragility beneath the surface, BRN analysts told The Block, with thin liquidity, mixed ETF flows, and rising unrealized losses driving two-way volatility as prices slipped back to $90K.In today's newsletter, five crypto firms secure conditional U.S. bank charter approvals, Hex Trust plans a wrapped XRP launch with $100 million in TVL, YouTube allows U.S. creators to receive payouts in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, and more.Meanwhile, after roughly three years of development, Firedancer is now live on Solana mainnet and has been running in production on a handful of validators for around 100 days, the project announced at Breakpoint in Abu Dhabi.P.S. Don't forget to check out The Funding, a biweekly rundown of crypto VC trends. It's a great read — and just like The Daily, it's free to subscribe!Ripple, Circle and BitGo secure conditional approval for US banking chartersThe U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted conditional approval for national trust bank charters to Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, marking a major step toward crypto firms becoming federally regulated banks.Circle's approval for First National Digital Currency Bank would allow it to custody its own reserves and hold crypto assets for institutions, though not take deposits or issue loans under this charter.Ripple's conditional approval would bring its RLUSD stablecoin under direct OCC oversight, adding federal supervision alongside its existing NYDFS state regulation.The approvals reflect a more accommodating regulatory stance toward crypto banking under the Trump administration, encouraging deeper integration with traditional finance.Other major crypto and fintech players, including Coinbase, Stripe-owned Bridge, and Crypto.com, have also applied for U.S. federal banking charters.While conditional, the charters signal growing momentum for crypto-related firms to operate within the U.S. banking system pending final regulatory sign-off.Hex Trust to issue and custody wrapped XRP to expand DeFi utility across multiple chainsHex Trust plans to issue and custody a 1:1-backed wrapped XRP token, wXRP, to extend XRP's use in DeFi and cross-chain applications beyond the XRP Ledger.The firm said wXRP will launch with more than $100 million in total value locked, providing a strong initial liquidity base for smoother trading and more reliable pricing.Hex Trust aims to enable regulated minting, redemption, and DeFi yield access for XRP holders, while allowing wXRP to trade alongside Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin on chains like Solana, Optimism, Ethereum, and HyperEVM initially.The move adds to a broader push to expand XRP's utility, following other wrapped XRP products, new staking protocols, and recent U.S. spot XRP ETF launches.YouTube now allows US creators to receive payouts in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoinYouTube now allows U.S.-based creators to opt into payouts in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin.The move deepens YouTube's partnership with PayPal and gives PYUSD access to a massive creator economy that claims to have paid out more than $100 billion over the past four years.PYUSD, launched in 2023, has grown into one of the larger dollar-pegged stablecoins outside of market leaders USDT and USDC, with a market capitalization of about $3.9 billion.The rollout comes amid accelerating stablecoin adoption globally, driven by supportive U.S. regulation and expanding use cases across payments platforms.Aave community probes CoW Swap integration and Aave Labs 'stealth privatization' of protocolAn Aave governance delegate raised concerns that a new CoW Swap-powered interface may be diverting swap fees away from the Aave DAO and toward Aave Labs, prompting questions over revenue sharing and transparency.Aave Chan Initiative called the situation "extremely concerning," arguing the changes could amount to the "stealth privatization" of roughly 10% of the DAO's potential revenue.The dispute expanded beyond swaps to include scrutiny of Aave Labs-linked products such as Vaults, Horizon, and the planned Aave v4 liquidation engine.Aave founder Stani Kulechov defended the move, saying Aave Labs is entitled to monetize its own frontend and that the CoW Swap integration aims to improve user experience without altering the core protocol.Lucky solo bitcoin miner beats 1-in-82-year odds to win $285,000 block rewardA solo bitcoin miner using CKpool beat roughly 1-in-82-year odds to mine a block and collect the full 3.133 BTC reward, worth about $285,000.The win came from just 270 TH/s of hashpower (around 0.00002% of the total network capacity), split over three bitcoin mining machines with around 90 TH/s each — roughly consistent with the output of common Bitmain Antminer S19 air-cooled ASICs.However, it's not the first time a solo miner has picked up an entire block reward, nor one of the luckiest, with another solo bitcoin miner with a hashrate of just 6 TH/s beating odds of 1-in-180 million to mine a block last month.Looking ahead over the next 7 daysU.S. nonfarm payroll figures are released on Tuesday. UK and Eurozone CPI inflation data follow on Wednesday. The Bank of England's latest interest rate decision is due on Thursday alongside U.S. CPI numbers and jobless claims.Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey will speak on Thursday ahead of the ECB's press conference.Arbitrum, Sei, Starknet, ZKsync, ApeCoin, and Melania Meme are among the crypto projects set for token unlocks.Solana Breakpoint concludes in Abu Dhabi.Never miss a beat with The Block's daily digest of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.Disclaimer: This article was produced with the assistance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and reviewed and edited by our editorial team.Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.