The Kobeissi Letter said on July 16 that companies in the Russell 2000 with negative earnings per share have climbed 154% since mid-2025, far ahead of the 34% gain posted by companies with positive EPS over the same period. The divergence has also held up this year: unprofitable Russell 2000 companies are up 45% year to date, compared with an 18% rise for profitable firms. According to the post, that strength has helped lift the Russell 2000 by 20% so far this year, putting the index on track for its best annual performance since 2003. Over the same stretch, the S&P 500 has gained 11%, while the Magnificent Seven are up just 4%. The strongest-performing small-cap names are mainly technology and infrastructure companies seen as potential beneficiaries of AI spending. The Kobeissi Letter said the market is rewarding AI exposure regardless of whether those companies are currently profitable.

E*TRADE, the online brokerage owned by Morgan Stanley, has rolled out spot cryptocurrency trading on its platform. Eligible clients can now buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL) directly through E*TRADE. The service is powered by digital asset infrastructure provider zerohash, with users trading through linked zerohash accounts while viewing their crypto holdings alongside traditional investment portfolios inside the E*TRADE interface. E*TRADE said spot crypto trading is priced at 50 basis points, or 50 bps, and added that asset transfer functionality is expected to arrive later this year. The launch adds to Morgan Stanley’s digital asset push and follows a series of product updates at E*TRADE, including retirement planning tools, fractional share trading, upgrades to its IPO center, and enhancements to Power E*TRADE Pro for active traders. The development was cited by Odaily, which referenced Businesswire.

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s legal theory still effectively treated XRP as a security, even though the agency had acknowledged that XRP itself is not inherently a security. In his view, the SEC’s position relied on the idea that holders expected to profit from Ripple’s efforts. Former SEC San Francisco regional office director Marc Fagel pushed back, saying the case was about Ripple’s conduct in selling XRP rather than the token itself. He said the SEC’s argument was limited to claims that Ripple sold XRP as a security. Schwartz disputed that framing, arguing it could not fully explain the SEC’s position on programmatic exchange sales. He said buyers in those transactions typically did not know who the seller was and may not have been exposed to statements from Ripple. The court ultimately drew a line between different types of sales. It found that some institutional sales amounted to investment contracts, while Ripple’s programmatic sales on exchanges did not. Schwartz said that outcome showed the court had narrowed the SEC’s broader legal theory.

Injective said in a post on its official blog that it has formally filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to register as a transfer agent, a move tied to its push to advance a regulated risk-weighted asset, or RWA, initiative. The company said transfer agents are responsible for maintaining official ownership records for securities and processing changes in ownership, work that is usually handled off-chain by specialized institutions in traditional markets. Injective said the filing is meant to move that function onto blockchain rails so that the token itself can serve as the ownership record. In its description, that structure would allow tokenized securities to be registered and transferred within seconds while cutting down on intermediary reconciliation steps. Injective also said the SEC filing is part of a broader effort to bring institutions on-chain. Separately, it has published a MiCAR white paper aimed at supporting regulated business expansion across European Union member states.

T. Rowe Price has launched an actively managed cryptocurrency ETF, trading under the ticker TKNZ, adding a new multi-asset product to the growing lineup of institutional digital asset offerings. The fund is designed to give investors exposure to a basket of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Hyperliquid. Unlike passive crypto ETFs that track a fixed benchmark or single asset, TKNZ will be managed dynamically by portfolio managers, who can adjust allocations based on market conditions, asset performance and risk considerations. The stated aim is to capture opportunities across the digital asset market while managing volatility. The launch also points to a broader shift on Wall Street, where major asset managers are expanding their presence in crypto investment products. According to the report, demand from institutional investors for diversified crypto vehicles has continued to build as spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs gain wider market acceptance.

Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, said x402 has handled about $19 million in adjusted onchain volume across roughly 134 million transactions since May 2025, citing a Visa and Artemis report he referenced in a Wednesday thread on X. x402 is described as a payments protocol for agent- and machine-initiated onchain transactions. The figures were adjusted to remove identified wash activity and test transactions using Artemis Analytics onchain data as of April 21, 2026. Sheffield said the exercise was meant to isolate what activity was “actually real” before drawing conclusions. The report also notes that cumulative raw onchain totals are higher than the adjusted figures. His post included a chart titled “Cumulative x402 Volume (Adjusted),” powered by Artemis, but the chart appeared to show cumulative volume reaching about $15 million by April 21 and starting around October, which does not match the thread’s text citing about $19 million since May 2025. Sheffield did not explain the discrepancy in the post. He also said activity is highly concentrated: the top 1% of x402 buyers, about 4,000 wallets, account for about 90% of adjusted volume and around half of adjusted transactions, while 422,000 wallets have paid for something onchain. By chain, Base accounts for about 90% of adjusted transactions and 93% of adjusted volume, followed by Solana and Polygon. Sheffield added that MPP, a related protocol, has been live since March and is averaging about 20,000 transactions per day, though he did not define it or cite a data source in the thread.

1inch co-founder Anton Bukov has left the project, according to a post on X cited by Odaily and attributed to Pagga co-founder Alex. Bukov was described as the architect behind several core parts of 1inch, including the 1inch Router, Fusion and its cross-chain swap design. Despite stepping away, he will keep his status as co-founder and retain a 50% equity stake in the project. The update also said he will no longer be involved in operations, product architecture or security-related work at 1inch. Separately, Bukov has launched a new independent DeFi infrastructure company called Second Tier. The new venture is focused on building systems that connect users’ economic intent with on-chain execution. No other details were provided in the source material.

Zama said its confidential USDC vault on Morpho’s Ethereum platform has reached $23.23 million in deposits, making it the eighth-largest USDC vault on the platform. The vault uses fully homomorphic encryption to keep user balances and transaction details private while still offering DeFi yield. Strategy management is handled by Steakhouse Financial, while Morpho provides the underlying infrastructure. After users deposit cUSDC, funds are routed into lending markets backed by assets including cbBTC. Zama also said the vault went live on June 23 and is currently running a 12-week incentive program. The update was cited by Techub, which attributed the information to crypto.news.