21Shares Launches First ETF to Track on Canton Network

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In Today's Note

• BTC retraced below $80K: After trading close to $83K mid-week, BTC failed to sustain that level and is now down more than 2% over the past 24 hours.
• Macro conditions turned more cautious: The recent rally in US equities paused, while Brent crude moved back above $100 per barrel amid renewed geopolitical risk.
• Crypto market structure continues to broaden: Today’s DeFi & TradFi section highlights continued development across exchange infrastructure, stablecoin payments, AI-agent transaction rails, Layer 1 ecosystems, prediction-market analytics, and crypto ETF access.
  

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• After trading close to $83K mid-week, BTC struggled to stay at that level and is down more than 2% over the past 24 hours, back below $80K. 
• The imperial rally in US equities to a number of record highs over the past week also paused, as the still-fragile ceasefire in the Middle East showed signs of faltering. 
• After its biggest advance in a month, the S&P 500 ended yesterday at 7,337.11, down 0.38%, while losses in the Nasdaq-100 were slightly smaller at -0.12%.
• Brent crude oil briefly settled around $97, though is now back above the $100 mark per barrel. 

• In late hours last night, it was reported that the US had struck military targets in Iran after the country fired on three US Navy destroyers (warships) sailing in the Strait of Hormuz. 
• The US military responded sharply by eliminating “inbound threats” and targeting Iranian missile and drone launch sites and other intelligence facilities that were deemed “responsible for attacking US forces”, according to the US Central Command. 
• The renewed violence between the two sides comes as the US waits on Iran’s response to its one-page memorandum to end the war. 

• President Trump claimed on Truth Social that there was “no damage done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers”. He added that “just like we knocked them [Iran] out again today, we’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!”
• He later told reporters that despite the escalation, the ceasefire agreed back in April was still in effect — “They trifled with us today. We blew them away. I’ll let you know when there’s no ceasefire. You’re not going to have to know, you’ll just have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran”, he warned. 

• A federal trade court announced yesterday that President Trump’s 10% global tariffs invoked in February last year under Section 1222 of the Trade Act of 1974 were unlawful. 
• For now the court has only immediately blocked the administration from enforcing the tariffs against the two companies that sued Washington and it made it clear that it was not issuing a so-called “universal injunction.” 
• When asked about the ruling yesterday, Trump told reporters that “we had two radical left judges who voted against it. So nothing surprises me with the courts. So we always do it a different way. We get one ruling and we do it a different way.”

DeFi & TradFi

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• Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, has restored trading services after an AWS-related infrastructure outage forced the platform to suspend order matching and place markets into “Cancel Only” and auction modes, where orders accumulate without immediate execution before reopening at a calculated clearing price.
• The disruption, linked to elevated temperatures in AWS’s US-EAST-1 availability zone, affected web and mobile trading functionality and caused delays in Solana and ALEO transfers, while fiat deposits, withdrawals, and basic buy/sell services remained operational.

• Coinbase also reported a Q1 net loss of $394.1M as falling crypto prices contributed to $482M in investment-related digital asset losses held on its balance sheet.
• Total revenue declined 31% year-over-year to $1.41B, with transaction revenue falling 40% to $756M, while subscription and services revenue declined 14% to $584M and adjusted EBITDA dropped to $303M from $930M a year earlier.
• CEO Brian Armstrong said Coinbase is shifting away from reliance on spot crypto trading toward a broader multi-asset platform spanning derivatives, commodities, prediction markets, AI payments, and regulated stablecoin infrastructure, with stablecoin revenue rising 11% to $305M.

• Amazon Web Services, Coinbase, and Stripe have launched preview support for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments, enabling AI agents to autonomously pay for APIs, web content, MCP servers, and other agent services using stablecoin micropayments executed inside the agent workflow itself.
• AgentCore integrates Coinbase’s x402 protocol and wallet infrastructure alongside Stripe-owned Privy wallets, allowing developers to set spending limits, manage authentication, and execute machine-to-machine payments in real time when an agent encounters a paid endpoint returning an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response, with transactions settled through stablecoin payment rails.
• AWS said the system is designed for emerging “agentic” commerce workloads where autonomous AI systems transact independently and future expansion into broader commercial use cases including booking services, merchant payments, and AI-driven financial transactions.

• Aptos, a Layer 1 blockchain built using the Move programming language, and Aptos Labs have committed over $50M across ecosystem development, including funding for protocol infrastructure, trading systems, AI-focused applications, research, and strategic partnerships.
• The network is positioning itself as infrastructure for institutional trading and autonomous AI-driven transactions, highlighting technical features including sub-second finality, parallel execution, low transaction fees, encrypted transaction capabilities, post-quantum cryptography support, and MEV-resistant roadmap upgrades such as encrypted mempools and multi-leader consensus.
• Aptos said stablecoin market cap on the network has grown nearly 10x since late 2024 to $1.93B, RWAs have reached $1.2B with firms including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton deploying products on-chain, while trading platform Decibel has surpassed $1B in cumulative volume with all on-chain order execution and APT token burn mechanics tied to network usage.

• Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun said the Sui network has processed more than $1T in stablecoin volume since August, as the project looks to position itself as a core settlement layer for digital payments.
• Speaking to The Block at Consensus 2026, Abiodun said Sui’s next phase will focus on making stablecoin transfers cheaper, more private and better suited to large-scale money movement. 
• Planned upgrades include zero-fee stablecoin transfers and private payments, both expected to roll out this year.
• The network is also testing post-quantum signatures on testnet, with Mysten aiming to prepare Sui ahead of expected future regulatory requirements around quantum-resistant infrastructure. 

• Arkham has announced the launch of Prediction Markets, expanding its analytics platform to cover prediction market activity, trader performance, and real-time market flows.
• The new product lets users track top traders by PnL, review their open and historical positions, and analyse metrics such as ROI, win rate and trade-level profitability. 
• Users can also monitor live markets across politics, sports and crypto, view Yes/No share holders, overlay individual trader activity on price charts, and set alerts through Arkham Intel.

• 21Shares has launched the first U.S. exchange-traded fund offering direct exposure to Canton Coin (TCAN), the native utility token of the Canton Network.
• The new fund, the 21Shares Canton Network ETF, began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker TCAN. 
• According to 21Shares, institutional interest in Canton has been driven by its focus on privacy-preserving infrastructure for capital markets. 

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