Blockchain Capital, Paxos back compliance startup Predicate in $8M funding round. Predicate raises $8 million in a Series A led by Blockchain Capital, with Paxos, 1kx and Tribe Capital backing its onchain compliance technology. Published by Key Highlights * Predicate has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with Paxos, 1kx and Tribe Capital participating. * The startup uses cryptographically signed attestations to enforce compliance rules through smart contracts. * Predicate says its platform has screened over $1 billion in transaction volume and blocked more than 100,000 non-compliant transactions. Onchain compliance startup Predicate has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with stablecoin issuer Paxos, 1kx and Tribe Capital also participating. Founded in 2023 by Nikhil Raghuveera and Jesse Sawa, Predicate is building technology that allows digital asset companies to set rules around who can hold or transfer their assets. Its platform helps businesses restrict sanctioned wallets and block transactions that violate their policies. It is addressing a major challenge for companies that are bringing stablecoins, tokenized funds and other regulated products onchain. What does Predicate do? Compliance allows the companies to follow processes required to abide by applicable laws and regulations, including anti-money laundering requirements, sanctions restrictions and customer verification rules. For digital asset businesses, enforcing these requirements become more complicated when tokens move between wallets on public blockchains. Your crypto brief. Delivered every week. * Insights that move markets * Trusted by top investors and builders * Stay ahead every week. Want BitcoinBIZZ to cover your story?

XRP breaches safety net as Ripple deepens Wall Street footprint. Breaching its support on Friday, XRP's price fell below $1.40 following a flood of bearish trading activity in the cryptocurrency market amid Ripple's growing partnership deals. Stock market analysis The token price has slumped to $1.37 at the time of writing, driven by profit-taking amid a broader market downturn, which has clouded optimism about Ripple's deals. Ripple entered the leveraged ETF financing business through Ripple Prime, the prime brokerage it built from its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, providing swap-based funding to multiple ETF issuers and planning to expand to hedge funds. The unit has secured up to $475 million in credit facilities and corporate notes since May, with the notes rated BBB, and one disclosed arrangement charges a fund a financing rate of about 8% a year. The move puts the crypto firm in direct competition with Wall Street banks that have long dominated the financing behind leveraged ETFs, a US market exceeding $256 billion in assets. Stock market analysis Still, the top altcoin has remained highly volatile despite growing partner deals and a cross-border payment drive that Ripple has been pushing worldwide. Ripple has lately inked major deals, and market analysts said only one directly involves XRP, highlighting a persistent gap between corporate deals and token utility. In its latest additions, Ripple announced three institutional agreements on October 8, 2026, with South Korea's Meritz Securities, the Canton Network, and stablecoin issuer Paxos. The deals centre on custody and tokenisation services. Crucially, only Paxos's integration - adding XRP to its brokerage and custody offerings - directly involves the token. Crypto analysts said the others utilise Ripple's technology without a stated requirement to transact in XRP. This is neutral for XRP because it demonstrates continued enterprise demand for Ripple's infrastructure, which builds the ecosystem. However, it underscores that business growth does not automatically translate to buy-side pressure on the token, as most partners are not obligated to purchase or use XRP. Observable demand hinges on whether Paxos reports significant trading volume or other partners name XRP as a settlement asset. Ripple secured a multi-year partnership with the University of Florida's athletic program, the Florida Gators, announced on September 4, 2026. The deal places the XRP logo on the football field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and across digital assets for the 2026 season. It also includes financial technology education for student-athletes, following a similar earlier deal with Kansas Athletics. This is bullish for XRP's long-term brand recognition, as it introduces the cryptocurrency to millions of sports fans and a young, tech-savvy demographic. The focus on education could foster broader understanding and acceptance of digital assets. However, such marketing partnerships have historically had little immediate impact on XRP's price, as seen after the Kansas announcement, reminding investors that brand exposure and token utility are different drivers. XRP's trajectory is being shaped by expanding institutional reach and mainstream branding, yet the core challenge remains bridging the gap between partnership announcements and verifiable on-chain utility. Julius Alagbe is a senior financial journalist and Editor at MarketForces Africa with nearly two decades of experience in finance, accounting, and economics reporting.He is one of Nigeria's most prolific financial market reporters, covering capital markets, monetary policy, corporate earnings, banking, telecoms, and macroeconomic developments across Africa.Julius has built a strong footprint reporting on Nigeria's leading corporates and financial services sector, including coverage of the Nigerian Exchange Group, Central Bank of Nigeria monetary operations, MTN Nigeria, GTCO, and major investment banking transactions.He regularly monitors the CBN's open market operations, interbank FX markets, and equity market movements, providing readers with real-time intelligence on Nigeria's financial landscape.His reporting draws on direct access to institutional research from firms including Moody's Ratings, CardinalStone Securities, Fitch, and other leading African investment houses.Julius brings analytical depth and editorial rigour to every story, making complex financial data accessible to professionals, investors, and policymakers across Africa.Julius Alagbe is based in Lagos, Nigeria. Financial News Subscription

Paxos adds XRP support for institutional trading and custody. 8 October 2026 updated 8 October 2026 Paxos has added XRP to its Crypto Brokerage platform, giving financial institutions using its infrastructure access to trading, custody, deposits and withdrawals for the asset. The October 7 integration makes XRP available through the same brokerage stack Paxos uses to provide crypto services to banks, brokers and fintech platforms. XRP Ledger transactions are now fully supported across the Paxos platform, including native deposits and withdrawals. Partners can integrate XRP without building separate custody and execution infrastructure. Paxos handles underlying services such as custody, trade execution and settlement, while participating companies control the customer-facing product and decide which supported assets to make available. XRP was held across more than 8.1 million wallets when the integration was announced, while its market capitalization stood near $95 billion. XRP joins Paxos' expanding brokerage stack. Paxos has accelerated the number of assets available through Crypto Brokerage during 2026. The company had already expanded support to 29 crypto assets by June and said it was working toward covering much of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The platform combines trading, custody and settlement behind a single institutional integration. Its order-routing system also aggregates liquidity across multiple venues rather than relying on one exchange for execution. PayPal, Venmo, Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab and Mercado Libre are among financial platforms that have worked with Paxos infrastructure. Their existing relationships with Paxos do not automatically mean that each platform has launched XRP trading for customers. Individual partners control which supported assets they enable and when. Paxos has operated as an OCC-supervised national trust bank since completing its federal charter conversion in December 2025, giving its digital asset infrastructure a federally regulated custody framework. Ripple expands further into institutional finance. The Paxos integration arrives as Ripple continues expanding the institutional infrastructure surrounding XRP, RLUSD and the XRP Ledger. Ripple Prime recently expanded its relationship with Brevan Howard, adding multi-asset prime brokerage, clearing and financing services for funds managed by the global investment firm. Its institutional financing business has grown beyond crypto spot execution. Ripple Prime launched a Delta One platform in August supporting total return swaps across U.S.-listed equities, indices and digital assets, adding financing and cross-margining functions traditionally handled by large prime brokers. Ripple has also increased the balance sheet available to that business. A $200 million financing facility secured in May was designed to expand lending capacity for institutional clients across traditional and digital markets. The XRP Ledger itself is being developed for a wider range of institutional credit products. A proposed XRPL lending protocol would bring standardized loan execution to tokenized assets while leaving underwriting, legal agreements and borrower assessment outside the blockchain. Paxos' XRP integration adds another regulated distribution route to that institutional stack, with trading and custody now available through infrastructure already connected to major financial platforms. 1362 posts Bogdan is a genuine outside-the-box thinker. His philosophy is never to settle and always evolve. Since the very first moment, he heard of Bitcoin, he knew it would revolutionize the world.