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UK NCA freezes $13.6 million in Premier League funds amid investigation into Sorare crypto fantasy game
According to Decrypt, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) froze approximately $13.6 million (around £10.02 million) in Barclays' account for the Premier League under the Proceeds of Crime Act. This amount represents the initial sponsorship payment made by crypto fantasy football card game Sorare to the Premier League, stemming from a four-year sponsorship agreement worth roughly $163 million (£120 million) signed by both parties in January 2023. The NCA stated that the freeze was implemented to prevent the transfer of funds while investigating its link to "potential third-party criminal activity," with the Premier League itself facing no allegations of misconduct. Concurrently, Sorare is confronting a separate prosecution from the UK Gambling Commission, which alleges it provided gambling services without a valid operating license. The trial has been postponed until June 2027. Sorare denies that its product falls under gambling regulations, firmly asserting that gameplay is centered on skill rather than chance.
Decrypt
June
Sorare
UK's National Crime Agency Freezes Over $13.6 Million in Sorare Sponsorship Funds from Premier League Accounts
Odaily News The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) has frozen over $13.6 million in funds held in Barclays bank accounts belonging to The Football Association Premier League Limited, the operating entity of the Premier League. The agency obtained a court order from Westminster Magistrates' Court in January 2025, freezing the funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act.The funds represent the first installment of a four-year sponsorship agreement with Sorare, announced in January 2023, which allowed Sorare to issue digital player cards for the 20 Premier League clubs. Sorare's partnership with the Premier League has concluded as of the 2025-26 season.Sorare also faces prosecution by the UK Gambling Commission, accused of offering gambling facilities without an operating license. The company has entered three not-guilty pleas, with the trial scheduled for June 2027. Sorare maintains that its game rewards skill rather than chance and denies that it constitutes a gambling product under UK law. (Decrypt)
Decrypt
June
Sorare
Barclays: Hot Chips 2026 Signals Shift in AI Race From Peak Compute Power to Energy Efficiency Optimization
According to Chaoxiang research, a Barclays report released on August 31 notes that the core theme of the Hot Chips 2026 conference has shifted from "who has the strongest compute" to "who can deliver the most output with the least power," making token/watt the most critical metric for measuring AI hardware success. Constrained by data center power supply, hardware vendors and hyperscalers alike are pushing system performance to its limits within fixed power budgets. Inference workload partitioning has emerged as a key architectural divergence: NVIDIA and Cerebras employ a partitioned approach that decouples prefill and decode stages, delivering roughly an order-of-magnitude improvement in the token/kW metric, whereas OpenAI's Jalapeno integrates prefill, speculative generation, and decoding entirely on a single chip. Barclays anticipates that both approaches will coexist long-term, with the partitioned strategy likely capturing a larger share over time.
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NVIDIA
Barclays: AI Lab Gross Margin Gap Exceeds 50 Percentage Points; The Secret Lies Entirely in API Revenue Mix
Barclays expects inference profits to gradually surpass training costs, boosting AI labs' own profit margins. However, AWS, Azure, and GCP will still account for the bulk of AI labs' compute expenditure over the next two years. Starting in 2028, the deployment of self-built infrastructure by AI labs will gradually shift this dynamic. Barclays holds that when benchmarking AI labs, investors should look beyond top-line revenue figures and drill down into underlying variables such as product mix, the share of API and subscription revenue, and revenue recognition methodologies.
Agentwood Studios
Ondo Finance Appoints Former Global Financial Markets Association Executive Allison Parent as Chief Policy Officer
According to Crowdfund Insider, Ondo Finance has appointed Allison Parent as Chief Policy Officer to engage with policymakers and regulators and advance regulatory and industry standards for tokenized assets. Parent previously served as an Executive Director at the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA) for nearly 10 years. Her career also includes roles as Head of Global Policy and Strategy at Barclays, Senior Policy Advisor and Market Legal Counsel at the Bank of England, and General Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, where she contributed to landmark post-financial crisis legislation such as the Dodd-Frank Act.
Frank
Insider
Market
Ondo Finance
Strategy
Barclays: U.S. Voter Backlash Could Intensify Regulatory Pressure on AI Infrastructure, Posing Political Risks for AI Trades
Bloomberg reported that Barclays' equity strategy team stated that the ongoing expansion of AI infrastructure is sparking a bipartisan voter backlash in the U.S., and markets may be underestimating related political risks ahead of this November's midterm elections. Strategists Jenny Yang and Alex Altmann noted that voter concerns over AI build-outs could trigger stricter regulatory scrutiny, with policy pressure expected to focus primarily on the regulation of data center construction and operations. This could introduce uncertainty into the heavily favored AI investment theme.
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Jenny
Bank of America Continues to Expand Its Technology Banking Team
: According to an internal memo, Bank of America has hired two managing directors to further expand its technology business. Asad Mahmood, formerly a managing director at Barclays, will join in the fall, focusing on the semiconductor and quantum computing sectors, and will be based in Palo Alto, California. Gregory Reider will join Bank of America's Brazil technology investment banking team this week, responsible for technology and fintech business in Latin America. The memo shows that Reider was previously a co-founder and managing partner of Volpe Capital, a venture capital firm focused on Latin America. A Bank of America spokesperson confirmed the contents of the memo. (Bloomberg)
Alto
Alto
based
Crypto.com Appoints Former Barclays Investment Banking Executive as Managing Director
Crypto.com announced the appointment of Iskandar Vanblarcum as Managing Director of its exchange, responsible for expanding the customer base and driving the development of new products and services for institutional clients, including regulated prediction markets and real-world asset-related business. Its near-term focus is on launching event contract products for institutions, with plans to gradually open compliant access to global customers.
Crypto.com
Barclays shifts from its long-standing bullish stance, warning retail investors that the S&P 500 index could face a total correction of 6%-7%
The shift of the most steadfast bulls often represents the most noteworthy signal in the market. Alex Altmann, Barclays' global head of equity strategy, who has repeatedly called for "holding stocks steady" during market volatility and accurately timed rebounds, has recently issued a rare cautious warning.In his latest market analysis, Alex Altmann stated that due to multiple pressures from technical overbought conditions, excessive sentiment, and macroeconomic headwinds, he has turned bearish on the short-term outlook for U.S. stocks. He believes the U.S. stock market is currently in the "middle of a hill" of a structural correction, with the biggest concern being the significant disconnect between retail investor sentiment and macroeconomic reality. He drew a comparison to the speculative frenzy of 2021: during that year's market mania, real yields were negative, and cheap money flooded the market. In contrast, financing costs have now surged sharply, and real yields remain high, creating clear pressure on equity valuations.However, the frenzy among retail investors has even surpassed that of 2021. Alex Altmann bluntly stated: "When the market cannot find a single institutional bear, the return curve for the S&P 500 has often already run its course."
Alex
Revolut seeks $115 billion valuation and plans multiple secondary transactions before IPO
: According to sources, London-based digital bank and financial super app Revolut is quietly seeking a round of secondary equity transactions, targeting a valuation of $115 billion. If successful, this valuation would surpass Barclays and Deutsche Bank, and approach the scale of BNP Paribas.Founded in 2015 and led by CEO Nik Storonsky, Revolut plans to conduct multiple rounds of secondary transactions before its IPO to provide liquidity for internal shareholders while gauging the market's tolerance for its valuation. Storonsky has stated that an IPO is still at least two years away.Based on current revenue of $600 million and profits of $2.3 billion, the $115 billion valuation would give it a price-to-earnings ratio similar to high-growth technology companies. If the transaction goes through, Storonsky's stake would be worth at least $36 billion, placing him among the world's wealthiest fintech founders.Previously, Revolut was already Europe's most valuable private technology company at a valuation of $75 billion. A $115 billion valuation would now propel it into the ranks of top global financial institutions, setting a high bar for its future IPO and signaling investors' optimistic outlook on the company's valuation. (Bloomberg)
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BNP Paribas
Revolut
Bybit Weekly Report: Probability of Rate Hike Rises to 60%; Peace Talks Cannot Rescue the Crypto Market; DVOL Hits All-Time Low—Caution Advised
Bybit’s latest options weekly report states that BTC rebounded after finding support at the dense $74,000 level last week and is now consolidating near $77,000. A key macro turning point: Nomura has withdrawn its rate-cut expectations, and the CME FedWatch tool shows the probability of a rate hike rising to 60%, completely breaking the “ceasefire → rate cuts → BTC rally” logic chain. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, ING, and JPMorgan all confirm that the rise in long-end yields is driven by three structural factors—debt expansion, AI-related investment, and an increase in the neutral interest rate—unrelated to geopolitical tensions. Bullish catalysts continue to accumulate (SpaceX holding 18,712 BTC, the ARMA reserve proposal, and the CLARITY Act), yet price remains unmoved. DVOL has fallen to ~35%, a historical extreme; no strategy is recommended for now—await DVOL’s recovery above 45% before entering.
Bitcoin
Bullish
Bybit
Hike
Infinity Games
Market
Harvard University Liquidates Ethereum ETF; Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund Increases IBIT Holdings
several sovereign wealth funds, universities, and traditional financial institutions have recently disclosed their 13F holdings for the first quarter of 2026.Among them, Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, increased its holdings in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) from 12.7023 million shares to 14.7219 million shares. The newly added holdings are valued at over $90 million, bringing the total value of its position to nearly $660 million. Meanwhile, its subsidiary, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC), maintained its IBIT position unchanged at 8.2187 million shares, worth approximately $315.8 million.Regarding university funds, Harvard University's endowment fund held 3.0446 million shares of IBIT, valued at around $117 million, a reduction of about 43% compared to the end of 2025. Additionally, Harvard completely liquidated its position in the BlackRock Ethereum spot ETF, which was established last quarter and valued at approximately $86.8 million.Furthermore, Dartmouth College maintained its IBIT holdings unchanged and disclosed for the first time holding approximately 304,800 shares of the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF, valued at around $3.67 million, making it one of the first university endowment funds to publicly allocate to a Solana-related ETF.On the traditional financial institution side, institutions such as the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Barclays continued to increase or adjust their IBIT-related spot and options positions, while Hong Kong-based Laurore reduced its IBIT holdings from 8.7863 million shares to 6.8463 million shares. (The Block)
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Bitcoin
Bitwise
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Ethereum
Furthermore
Q1 13F Filings: Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund Significantly Increases IBIT Stake; Harvard University Fully Exits Ethereum ETF
According to The Block, several sovereign wealth funds, university endowments, and traditional banks disclosed their 13F holdings for Q1 2026: • Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, increased its position in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) from 12.7 million shares to 14.72 million shares—adding over $90 million—bringing its total holding value to approximately $566 million (a 16% increase quarter-on-quarter). Its subsidiary, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC), maintained its IBIT position unchanged at 8.21 million shares, valued at approximately $316 million. • University endowments’ crypto ETF holdings remained largely stable. • Traditional financial institutions actively rebalanced their positions: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) increased its spot IBIT holdings while hedging with put/call options; Scotiabank sold off Trump-related Bitcoin stocks and added 214,000 IBIT shares; Barclays held approximately 4.46 million shares of spot IBIT and deployed a large options position; Hong Kong–based Laurore reduced its IBIT holdings from 8.78 million shares to 6.85 million shares.
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Bitcoin
Block
Ethereum
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InfinityBit
Ledger suspends US IPO plan due to unfavorable market conditions
crypto wallet provider Ledger has suspended its US IPO plans, citing unfavorable current market conditions. (CoinDesk)
BitGo
CoinDesk
Kraken
Ledger
French crypto hardware wallet company Ledger has suspended its U.S. IPO plan due to unfavorable market conditions.
According to CoinDesk, French crypto hardware wallet company Ledger has suspended its U.S. IPO plans due to unfavorable market conditions. Sources familiar with the matter said Ledger was previously valued at approximately $4 billion and had engaged Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays as IPO advisors—but it has not yet filed any registration documents with the SEC. The company may instead consider private fundraising. Earlier, Kraken also paused its IPO citing market conditions, while publicly listed BitGo’s stock price has fallen roughly 36% from its offering price, indicating a broad cooling of enthusiasm among crypto firms for U.S. listings.
BitGo
CoinDesk
Kraken
Ledger