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Bitcoin tested $65,000 on Tuesday as two Wall Street institutions deepened their cryptocurrency commitments. BlackRock reiterated its recommendation for a 1–2% portfolio allocation to Bitcoin, arguing the recent selloff stemmed from forced selling rather than weakened fundamentals. The asset manager's iShares Bitcoin Trust held over $47 billion by March 2026. Meanwhile, Citi unveiled Custody+, a new platform that will offer Bitcoin custody alongside traditional assets later this year. The bank is investing over $2 billion annually in platform infrastructure covering more than 100 markets. Amit Agarwal, head of custody at Citi Investor Services, said the platform matches clients' strategy speeds. Bitcoin traded near $64,708 at press time, roughly 50% below its October 2025 peak.

Institutions get their bitcoin on-ramp, but regulators keep hitting the brakes. Key takeaways. * - Goldman Sachs is paying up to $2.25 billion for NEOS Investments, adding the $1.1 billion BTCI fund to compete directly with BlackRock's bitcoin income ETF. * - Ripple's new MiCA CASP license from Luxembourg's CSSF lets it serve all 30 EEA states under one regulated framework. * - Bitcoin's 30-day trading range has narrowed to 5.6%, among the tightest on record, even as the SEC delayed its tokenized securities exemption and pulled a scheduled rulemaking meeting. Institutional infrastructure for bitcoin is expanding faster than the regulatory rules meant to govern it. Goldman Sachs' move to acquire NEOS Investments puts a Wall Street bank directly into the bitcoin income ETF race, competing with BlackRock's BITA product for a slice of a market that barely existed two years ago. The price tag - up to $2.25 billion - signals how seriously large asset managers now treat bitcoin-linked yield products as a durable business line, not a side bet. BTC: Goldman Sachs is buying its way into the bitcoin income ETF race. The bank is acquiring NEOS Investments for up to $2.25B, picking up the $1.1B BTCI fund and going head-to-head with BlackRock's BITA. pic.twitter.com/9isBoGLQav - CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) August 12, 2026 At 1 USD = 0.0000 BTC as of August 16, bitcoin's dollar price keeps it firmly in six-figure territory, and the asset's volatility has compressed sharply. CoinDesk data shows the 30-day trading range at just 5.6%, one of the tightest windows on record. Analyst James Check has flagged this pattern before - it tends to show up at inflection points, either late in a bear market or early in a new bull cycle. What's driving this move. Two forces are pulling in opposite directions. On one side, regulated on-ramps are multiplying. Ripple's MiCA Crypto Asset Service Provider license from the CSSF, paired with its EU electronic money institution license, lets the company collect, exchange and pay out across all 30 EEA nations through a single regulated relationship. Coinbase is expanding too, rolling out derivatives - futures, perpetuals and options across more than 170 contracts - to UK professional investors with leverage up to 50x. "Regulatory clarity is the foundation of institutional trust." Last month, Ripple received full EU authorization for a MiCA Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg's CSSF. 🇪🇺 With its EU EMI license, institutions across all 30 EEA nations can now collect,... pic.twitter.com/lyj9pOnpPH - Ripple (@Ripple) August 5, 2026 On the other side, US regulators are slowing down. The SEC delayed its planned "innovation exemption" for tokenized securities and canceled a scheduled meeting on proposed crypto offering rules. Shares of tokenization-focused firms - Bullish, Figure, Coinbase and Circle - all slipped Friday on the news. The contrast is stark: Europe is building unified licensing frameworks while US rulemaking stalls, pushing institutional product development toward jurisdictions with clearer timelines. MARKETS: Shares of tokenization-focused firms including Bullish (BLSH), Figure (FIGR), Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) slipped Friday as the SEC delayed its planned "innovation exemption" for tokenized securities and canceled meeting on proposed crypto offering rules. pic.twitter.com/qwvF5qFPoV - CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) August 14, 2026 What this means in practice. For a corporate treasurer converting dollar reserves into bitcoin exposure - whether through a spot allocation or an income ETF like BTCI - the calculus now includes which regulatory regime touches the transaction. A firm settling payments through Ripple's EU-licensed rails faces one compliance framework across 30 countries. A firm relying on a US tokenized security product faces regulatory uncertainty until the SEC clarifies its exemption timeline. At current rates, converting institutional-scale dollar positions into bitcoin means tracking a fractional BTC price per dollar that shifts by the hour. Anyone modeling exposure can check live figures through the USD to BTC converter rather than relying on stale screenshots from a trading desk. With volatility compressed to 5.6% over the past month, the entry price matters less than the regulatory path the capital takes to get there. Exchange rate data from Currency.Wiki. Track BTC rates and 170+ currencies. This article was generated with AI assistance using publicly available market data and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Exchange rate data from Currency.Wiki. Read its editorial standards and fact-checking process.

The VC-backed fintech using AI to challenge BlackRock and start a new fee war in ETFs. Published Fri, Aug 14 202610:00 AM EDT 0 seconds of 3 minutes, 58 seconds Volume 90% Listen 3min Key Points * Corgi Insurance CEO Nico Laqua says that he expects the fintech to soon challenge BlackRock for the lead in total number of ETFs available to investors. * The fintech startup has launched a massive suite of exchange-traded funds in record time, which Laqua told CNBC's "ETF Edge" was only possible through the use of AI to speed the regulatory approval process. * While BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have been among the dominant forces in pushing down fees on core index products, Corgi is pressuring managers of trendy ETF strategies including buffered income and single-stock funds, in some cases at roughly half the price of competitors, or even steeper discounts. The fee war was supposed to be all but over in the ETF industry, with dominant fund companies led by Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street pushing fund fees as close to zero as they can get. But Corgi Invest, the new ETF arm of VC-backed fintech Cori Insurance, has other ideas. The San Francisco-based startup, which recently reached a valuation of $2.6 billion in its latest funding round, came out of seemingly nowhere staring last December to launch a massive suite of ETFs - 197 and counting. By the end of the year, it expects to have more ETFs than the largest issuer in the U.S., BlackRock, Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said on this week's "ETF Edge." In some cases, Corgi is going head-to-head with the largest ETF companies in core areas of the market - it has an ultrashort bond ETF, for example, which has been among the most popular recent core fixed-income strategies from the fund giants, as well as a handful of other bond options out farther on the treasury curve. And its ultrashort bond fund does come in at a lower expense ratio than the already low-cost offerings from the fund giants. But Corgi has also issued a challenge to ETF managers that have boomed in recent years with more trendy, niche strategies such as buffered income funds that limit downside risk in the stock market, as well as single-stock ETFs that allow for outsize bets on big names from Tesla to Nvidia - and all of which charge a lot more annually to investors than the core stock and bond index funds from the ETF giants. Corgi's approach to leveraged ETFs also includes outsize bets on sectors of the market and secular themes, such as AI-themed trades. Its buffered income funds are currently charging an annual fee of 30 basis points to investors. Recent research on buffered funds show expense ratios that typically average 70 basis points and above. Corgi's Tesla 2x ETF has an expense ratio of 20 basis points, versus competing products that charge fees as high as 95 basis points. As an insurance company, Corgi stands to benefit from the new ETF arms race it has started. It needs to invest what is known as "the float" from its premiums in the markets, and that became a big motivating factor for the company get into the fund business. It can serve itself and its insurance customers with lower fee ETFs as places to allocate the float rather than going out and investing in higher-cost products, Laqua said. But the fintech's focus on using technology, specifically AI, to build a more efficient business model within the insurance industry was also a significant factor leading Corgi to ETFs, which were not in the original business plan. Laqua said highly regulated businesses are often the ones that are the hardest to disrupt, but AI is knocking down the barriers to entry. Use of AI has been critical to the company's ability to launch so many ETF products in such a short period of time, he said. That's because the process of regulatory approval comes down to written language skills, and that is a task that AI is very good at, Laqua said, and he added it is among the reasons why he believes before long the company will be the largest issuer of ETFs in the U.S. He also says that no matter how long it takes, the company will patiently wait for investors discover it, and over time, Corgi is betting that it will benefit from the same asset-gathering force in the fund world that has led Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street to a combined $3 trillion: low-cost wins in the end. Watch the full "ETF Edge" show above to hear directly from Laqua on his company's plans to upend the ETF market. He also went deeper into Corgi's strategic thinking in this week's "ETF Edge" podcast.