London edition

Robinhood Chain is Robinhood's own Ethereum Layer 2, built with Arbitrum technology and live since 1 July 2026. It was pitched for tokenized stocks and onchain finance. Third-party apps, especially the Pons memecoin launchpad, have driven much of the early trading. That is separate from this Arc plan. Arc is Circle's public Layer 1. Fees are paid in USDC, settlement is described as sub-second, and the validator set starts permissioned, with firms such as BlackRock, DTCC, Visa and Mastercard named as founding validators in phases. Public mainnet opened on 16 September 2026. Robinhood's wording is limited: support is coming "soon," and USDC deposit and withdrawal would be available "right on the network where supported." That leaves product surface, eligibility and go-live date unstated. Circle's launch release names Robinhood in a long list of trading, liquidity and execution names. That is not the same as a live Robinhood deposit flow. Readers who want Arc USDC now still have to use Arc Portal, a supporting wallet or exchange, or wait for Robinhood to ship the transfer path.

peaq is a machine-economy network. Its peaqOS stack gives a robot an identity, a wallet, a performance record and tools to pay for services or earn from unused capacity. Doosan Robotics builds collaborative robots used in manufacturing, logistics and similar work in 45 countries. The companies say robots are financed today against the buyer's balance sheet, not against the machine. The partnership is meant to change that by producing proofs lenders and insurers can check, while keeping raw workcell data on the customer's controller. Phase one is the first A-Series robot in testing, shown on peaq's machine explorer. Phase two is a supervised student cohort at the Technical University of Munich and an October hackathon. Later phases call for more robots and joint financing pilots, including Initial Machine Offerings. Doosan's Michael Ryu said the company intends to put the capability in customers' hands after successful testing. peaq's own docs also say Economics 2.0 machines can be homed on Solana as of 16 September 2026. That does not mean every Doosan unit is already a Solana product, or that a reader can buy, lend against, or rent a Doosan cobot onchain today.

Column is a U.S. bank (Member FDIC) that sells banking infrastructure to other companies. CEO William Hockey said the firm rebuilt its core so a customer's bank account and stablecoin address sit on the same ledger. That is the claim that matters: conversion is an internal book entry, then a chain send or a fiat rail payout, rather than a wait for a correspondent bank's wire window. Supported assets in the launch materials are USDC and USDT. Networks named by Column are Solana, Ethereum and other major chains. Solana's own post framed the news as USDC and USDT on Solana, convertible to and from dollars 24/7. Column's public API samples set network=solana. The company also says card authorizations can hit the live stablecoin balance and that Visa and Mastercard settlement can be done in stablecoins. Column wrote that it built the product with large fintech customers, naming Slash and Brex, and that stablecoin volume on the stack is already running at tens of billions annualized. Those figures are company-reported. Users never hold the private keys. Access is through Column's APIs and its banking customers, subject to bank compliance.

Phoenix Trade is a Solana-native perpetuals exchange that runs an onchain order book. It has listed crypto, U.S. equity and commodity markets and previously described USDC as the margin asset. Solflare already routes some users into Phoenix from a self-custodial wallet. The 16 September change is collateral, not a new contract list. Official wording is that SOL can back perpetual positions directly and that USDC is not required to do so. Secondary write-ups described an 80 percent collateral weight and USDC settlement of profit and loss. Those mechanics were not in the Phoenix post reviewed here, so they remain unverified. The linked trading URL is live in some locations and blocked in others. Phoenix still labels the venue as live in beta. Anyone using SOL as margin is taking both the perpetual's market risk and SOL's own price risk against the maintenance threshold.

Account abstraction is the effort to make crypto wallets feel closer to normal apps: sign in with a passkey, let an app pay the fee, and batch several steps into one confirmation. Base pushed EIP-8130 for scale, customization and compliance. Ethereum's EIP-8141, also called Frame Transactions, is aimed at censorship resistance, privacy and post-quantum readiness. After months of talks, that merge attempt failed. CoinDesk's 16 September write-up is why the split is still the live watch item: multi-chain wallets may need two transaction formats. EIP-8141 remains a must-ship candidate for Ethereum’s Hegotá upgrade. EIP-8130 has been exercised on Base’s Vibenet test network. An earlier assumption that EIP-8130 would ride Base's September Cobalt upgrade does not match Base's current Cobalt documentation, which instead lists B20 token-standard improvements, validity transactions that execute only when onchain conditions match, dynamic node upgrades in metrics-only mode on mainnet, and a move of Base infrastructure into a Trusted Execution Environment. Those Cobalt dates are published targets, not a guarantee, and the official page does not give a clock time. B20 itself has been live on Base mainnet since the June Beryl upgrade. It is a native, ERC-20 compatible token type with issuer controls. That is separate from the wallet-standard fight.

Arc is Circle's Layer 1, opened to the public on 16 September 2026. Fees are paid in USDC, settlement is designed to be sub-second, and the chain is EVM compatible. Circle is running it with a permissioned set of institutional validators at launch. Phantom is a self-custodial wallet known for Solana that has expanded to other networks. Its 16 September post is a product-live claim, not a new chain. The 10% rollout detail matters: the feature is shipping through an app update, not as a chain-wide switch that every Phantom user received at once. Circle's launch materials also named other wallets, including MetaMask, Ledger, Rainbow and several exchange wallets. Those listings are day-one distribution claims, not proof that every listed wallet has the same Arc features. Anyone using Phantom on Arc should confirm the network is present, keep USDC for gas, and treat UK and other geo limits as in force until Phantom says otherwise.

Arc is Circle's EVM Layer 1, public as of 16 September 2026. Fees are in USDC. Circle describes sub-second finality and a permissioned validator set that will add named institutions in phases. Uniswap Labs said the same products people already use on other chains are wired to Arc: the AMM versions, UniswapX, the web app, the wallet and the API. A swap URL points at chain=arc. Uniswap also said it has processed a large share of onchain stablecoin volume, which is the market Arc is aiming at. cirBTC is Circle's wrapped bitcoin, not native BTC on Bitcoin. Circle says it is backed by BTC in Circle custody, convertible 1:1 from BTC, cbBTC or wBTC with no fees in Circle's own materials, and that reserves are verifiable onchain. Uniswap says anyone can swap or LP it; mint and redeem for institutions go through Circle Mint. That split matters for retail users who can only trade the token, not redeem the underlying. Day-one listing is not the same as deep books. Inspect the Arc pools on app.uniswap.org before assuming size.

Aave is a pooled lending protocol. Users supply assets to earn yield or borrow against collateral. V4 is Aave's current architecture. Arc is Circle's new chain, so this is a fresh instance, not a migration of Ethereum deposits. The official thread is specific: Core Hub, a main market (USDC, EURC, WETH, cirBTC) and a USDC/EURC forex market. Deployment was by Aave Labs on behalf of the DAO. LlamaRisk did the risk analysis. Chainlink is named for oracles. Circle's launch release had already named Aave as credit infrastructure alongside Morpho. cirBTC on this market is Circle's custodied bitcoin token. EURC is Circle's euro stablecoin. Borrowing across those two in the forex market is a stablecoin basis trade, not a crypto-beta loan. The explore link is the place to verify which reserves are enabled, what LTV applies and whether liquidity is still thin after genesis. Geographic and compliance screens on Aave's frontend may still apply.

The federal funds rate is the overnight rate U.S. banks pay each other, and it anchors borrowing costs across the economy. The Fed had not raised this target since 2023. In the 16 September statement it said activity is expanding, jobs have kept pace with the workforce, and inflation is still too high. It also pointed to geopolitical uncertainty. The implementation note directs the New York Fed's desk to keep the funds rate in the new 3.75% to 4% range from 17 September, with standing overnight repo at 4.0% and reverse repo at 3.75%. Crypto is not mentioned. The channel to digital assets is indirect: tighter dollar policy can reduce appetite for leveraged bets, ETF inflows and high-beta tokens. It can also support the dollar versus crypto. This edition's other U.S. stories, including the House tax bill from the prior catch-up and the Bitcoin reserve markup, sit in that same macro week. The rate decision is the one item with a fixed official clock time.

Perpetual futures are leveraged contracts with no expiry. Hyperliquid is a public blockchain and venue where those contracts trade onchain. HIP-3 lets a third party deploy its own perpetual market. HIP-3* is the permissioned version Payward named, so a deployer can restrict who may trade. Payward already offers U.S. perpetual futures through its regulated stack. The new claim is that the same clients could, if approved, trade new contracts that execute on Hyperliquid while Bitnomial remains the legal exchange and clearer. Access would not be the open Hyperliquid app: a client would open a futures account with Payward's registered broker, then be allowlisted by both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said no registered U.S. exchange or clearinghouse has deployed a market there yet and that Payward intends to be first. The release stresses that listing is subject to Bitnomial Exchange rules and remaining approvals. Readers should not assume HYPE, the Hyperliquid token, is a listed contract, or that existing offshore HIP-3 markets will be available in the United States.

The United States already holds bitcoin taken in criminal and civil cases. President Trump directed agencies in 2025 to keep that bitcoin rather than auction it. H.R. 8957, introduced by Rep. Nick Begich with Rep. Jared Golden as co-lead, would turn that into statute. The committee-approved substitute from Rep. Bryan Steil, who chairs the digital assets subcommittee, is the text that advanced. Reporting on that substitute says bitcoin placed in the reserve would be held at least 20 years from enactment, with annual public reporting instead of quarterly attestations, and that Treasury and Commerce would study budget-neutral ways to add bitcoin without new taxes, borrowing or deficit spending. Other digital assets would sit in a separate stockpile. States could keep title to bitcoin stored in segregated Treasury accounts. The committee rejected Ranking Member Maxine Waters' amendment. A similar bill has not passed the Senate. Readers should treat 28-21 as a committee result, not an enacted reserve, and should not assume the government will buy bitcoin on the open market. The official vote PDFs were posted on the committee repository when the markup record was last updated at 7:09 p.m. on 16 September 2026.