Prominent hardware wallet maker Ledger has delayed its plan to go public in the US market due to unfavorable market conditions, which may weaken investor appetite for crypto listings.

The development was reported Wednesday by CoinDesk, based on sources familiar with the issue.

Ledger, which has sold more than seven million devices and secured over $100 billion in client assets, had been eyeing a US IPO that could value the company at more than $4 billion, the Financial Times reported in January. That would have doubled the $1.5 billion valuation it reached in a 2023 funding round.

According to reports, the Paris-based crypto hardware firm had engaged with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays on the potential IPO.

The company never actually filed a draft S-1 with the SEC. Sources said Ledger may instead pursue a private capital raise.

CEO Pascal Gauthier said in an interview that New York has become the global hub for crypto capital, stating that “money is in New York today for crypto.”

While the IPO is on hold, Ledger continues to build its US operations, including hiring John Andrews as Chief Financial Officer in March and establishing a New York office for its institutional business.

Market conditions behind the decision

Bitcoin fell from around $100,000 in late 2025 to roughly $75,000 by mid-April 2026, a 25% decline, while Ethereum was hovering near $2,340 as of May.

The downturn in prices came alongside weakening market activity, with spot trading volumes dropping by 19% between February and March alone. At the same time, venture capital inflows into crypto contracted sharply, plunging 74% from March to April.

Against this backdrop of deteriorating market conditions, Kraken also paused its multibillion-dollar IPO plans earlier this year, despite having confidentially filed with the SEC in late 2025.

BitGo, the crypto custody firm, went through with its January 2026 listing. BitGo priced its IPO at $18 per share, raised about $213M, and saw a debut-day pop of more than 20%. By May, BitGo shares were trading around $11.78, roughly 36% below the IPO price.

Where Ledger stands now

Founded in 2014, Ledger has grown into an infrastructure provider for both the person stashing a few thousand dollars in Bitcoin and the institution managing billions.

The company posted record revenue in 2025 amid rising demand from security-focused crypto investors and has sold over 7 million devices globally. Founded in 2014, it was valued at $1.5 billion in its 2023 funding round, backed by investors including True Global Ventures and 10T Holdings.

The IPO plans come as a wave of crypto firms go public in the US, including BitGo’s recent listing and earlier IPOs from Circle, Gemini, and Bullish following President Donald Trump’s return to office.

Social media platform X has launched its smart cashtag feature on iPhones in the US and Canada, letting users view stock and cryptocurrency data directly from the app as part of Elon Musk’s plan to shift X into a financial platform.

The new feature allows users to select a specific asset or smart contract address when posting a ticker. Tapping a tag displays live price charts and related posts.

Canadian users will be able to trade stocks and crypto through a deal between X and Wealthsimple, an online brokerage. The trading feature has not yet rolled out in the United States.

“Cashtags are just the first step in our commitment to be the best destination for the finance and crypto community,” said X’s head of product Nikita Bier, in a post on Tuesday.

The development is part of X’s “everything app” push, which Musk has previously said will include messaging, social networking, peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce.

It’s part of a wider trend among digital platforms to consolidate diverse services into a single cohesive experience. Crypto exchange Coinbase announced its intent to build a “super app” last July.

The announcement comes less than a day after Bier hinted on Tuesday that the platform could launch a crypto-related product, prompting speculation about what it could be.

Musk previously said that X Money, a peer-to-peer payments feature with yield-bearing accounts and a cashback debit card, would launch in April.

has always been the best source of financial news for traders and investors. Billions of dollars are allocated every day based on what people read on Timeline.

Today we’re launching our new Cashtags feature in the US and Canada on iPhone, bringing real-time financial data to… pic.twitter.com/c8s7X9gHTO— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) April 14, 2026

Canadians trading on X sets stage for rollout

The integration with Wealthsimple to allow direct trading on the app sheds some insight into how it could work in other regions.

“Users in Canada will see a button on cashtags so they can trade seamlessly from X. This is just a small preview of what’s to come,” said Bier.

Bier also indicated that a rollout for web and Android devices, along with a global release of these features, is planned for the near future.

Related: X mulls new rules for first-time crypto posts amid tortoise scam

Bringing the WeChat Pay model to Web3

Tat Thang, a partner at prediction platform Polymarket, suggested X is trying to build a Web3 equivalent of WeChat Pay, which is embedded within the Chinese app WeChat and allows users to make mobile payments and transfer money between contacts.

Source: Tat Thang

Thang argued that crypto transaction fees could be the key revenue driver for Musk’s ambitions for his “everything app”, since revenue and subscription fees can fluctuate, and person-to-person fiat transfers carry zero margin.

He also cited X’s hiring of Bier, a Solana advisor and Benji Taylor, former head of design at Base, along with a recent purge of crypto bots as indicators of X ramping up its financial ambitions because you can’t “drop a native wallet or trading terminal onto a timeline filled with drainer links.”

“It was a mandatory compliance sweep. You have to scrub the platform clean before you deploy consumer financial products,” Thang added.

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Cato Institute, a US-based think tank, argued that the government should remove capital gains taxes on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to open the door for more currency competition.

The capital gains tax (CGT) is discouraging the use of alternative currencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as it incentivizes long-term holding and adds extra burdens to reporting requirements, Nicholas Anthony, a policy scholar and research fellow at the Cato Institute, said in a report on Wednesday.

He said the simplest option is to end capital gains taxes completely; however, another option could be removing them on crypto and foreign currency use to “take the government’s thumb off the scale and let competition be the true decider of the best money.”

“Bitcoiners know the frustration of tax season all too well. It’s never been easier to use Bitcoin as money,” he said. “Yet, at the same time, the tax code puts an incredible burden on law-abiding citizens. Something as simple as buying a cup of coffee every day with Bitcoin can result in more than 100 pages of tax filings.”

The Cato Institute is a US public policy think tank that tries to influence policy through research and reports. Its members have testified before lawmakers advocating for crypto in the past.

Imagine every swipe of your card turning into a tax form.

That’s what happens when spending Bitcoin.

If you buy a coffee with Bitcoin, the government makes you pay capital gains taxes on top of sales taxes.

Spending Bitcoin daily can turn into 70 pages in tax filings. pic.twitter.com/4At19JCFey— Nick Anthony (@EconWithNick) April 15, 2026

No capital gains tax could create a more competitive economy

Using crypto to pay for goods and services can trigger a taxable event in some cases because it falls into the same broad category as stocks, real estate, and other capital assets, according to investment management firm VanEck.

Anthony argued another solution could be to remove CGT just for purchases of goods or services, but also warns it “risks creating its own compliance nightmare if people are required to prove the transactions. That’s better than being taxed, but the process would still be taxing.”

He also pointed to a de minimis tax as another possible avenue, where CGT is not triggered unless a specific threshold is met.

Related: Iran conflict hints Bitcoin’s addressable market could exceed gold: Bitwise

“The only thing worse than getting robbed would be having the robber demand endless forms about the money they are taking from you. Taxes are no different,” Anthony said.

“Congress should simplify the tax code so the average American can do what’s required with ease. Doing so would go a long way toward easing Americans’ stress each tax season and creating a more competitive economy.”

A 2025 National Cryptocurrency Association survey found that 39% of US crypto holders reported using crypto to purchase goods and services.

Meanwhile, the academic publishing company Springer Nature identified about 11,000 merchants worldwide using BTC Map data that currently accept Bitcoin as payment.

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Crypto.com, headquartered in Singapore with more than 150 million registered users, just became the first crypto company to secure a Stored Value Facilities (SVF) license from the Central Bank of the UAE. Residents in Dubai are now able to pay government fees with digital assets.

“We are now able to offer what no other digital asset platform can, by providing exclusive digital asset payment services for Dubai Government fees to residents in the UAE,” Mohammed Al Hakim, who serves as President and GM for the UAE and Bahrain, said in a statement, noting that the partnership with Dubai Finance would support the emirate’s cashless strategy while helping advance the future of digital payments in the UAE.

The license, granted this month, to Crypto.com’s regional subsidiary Foris DAX Middle East FZE, activates a partnership with the Dubai Department of Finance that funnels crypto payments into the emirate’s public coffers.

All settlements convert into UAE dirhams or central-bank-approved dirham-backed stablecoins, so the government never actually holds volatile crypto on its books.

Pending additional central bank sign-offs, Crypto.com plans to roll out payment integrations with Emirates Airlines and Dubai Duty Free.

Dubai’s cashless targets and the regulatory backstory

Dubai’s Cashless Strategy aims to digitize 90% of all transactions by the end of 2026. The emirate estimates the annual economic upside of going cashless at roughly AED 8 billion, or about $2.2 billion.

Crypto.com picked up a full VARA license before pursuing the stored value facilities approval, which the central bank first gave preliminary blessing to in October 2025.

The company also formed a partnership with DMCC, Dubai’s leading trade and business free zone, to explore tokenised real-world assets and blockchain infrastructure for commodities markets.

Additional efforts include joint programs with the DMCC Crypto Centre, such as workshops, hackathons, and training initiatives to support businesses adopting tokenised asset models.

Ethereum Name Service gateway eth.limo has revealed that the domain hijacking on Friday was caused by a social engineering attack directed against EasyDNS, its domain name service provider.

According to a postmortem published by eth.limo on Saturday, an attacker impersonated one of its team members to initiate an account recovery process with easyDNS, granting access to the eth.limo account and allowing them to alter domain settings.

“The NS records were changed and directed to Cloudflare… Once we understood that a DNS hijack had taken place, we immediately notified the community as well as Vitalik Buterin and others. We then began contacting EasyDNS in an attempt to respond to the incident,” the company said.

Eth.limo serves as a Web2 bridge, providing access to around 2 million decentralized websites using the .eth domain name. Hijacking the service could allow an attacker to redirect users to malicious websites. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned users Friday to avoid his blog until the incident was resolved.

Mark Jeftovic, CEO of easyDNS, has publicly accepted responsibility for the incident in its own postmortem report.

“We screwed up and we own it,” said Jeftovic on Saturday.

“This would mark the first successful social engineering attack against an easyDNS client in our 28-year history. There have been countless attempts.”

Both companies have pointed to the Domain Name System Security Extension (DNSSEC) in thwarting the hacker’s attempts to do further damage.

The attacker couldn’t produce valid cryptographic signatures, so Domain Name System resolvers rejected the attacker’s forged DNS responses, causing users to see error messages instead of being redirected to malicious sites.

“DNSSEC was enabled for their domain when the attackers attempted to flip their nameservers, presumably to effect some manner of phishing or malware injection attack, DNSSEC-aware resolvers, which most are these days, began dropping queries,” Jeftovic said.

Source: eth.limo

In its postmortem, eth.limo noted that because the attacker lacked the signing keys, they were unable to bypass the safeguards, which likely “reduced the blast radius of the hijack. We are not aware of any user impact at this time. We will provide updates if that changes.”

easyDNS makes changes since the attack

Jeftovic described the social engineering attack as “highly sophisticated,” and said easyDNS is still conducting a post-mortem on how the breach occurred, and has already begun rolling out changes to prevent a recurrence.

Source: easyDNS

“In eth.limo’s case, we will be migrating them to Domainsure, which has a security posture more suited toward enterprise and high-value fintech domains, TLDR there is no mechanism for an account recovery on Domainsure, it’s not a thing,” he added.

“On behalf of everyone here, I apologize to the eth.limo team and the wider Ethereum community. ENS has always had a special place in our heart as the first registrar to enable ENS linking to web2 domains and we’ve been involved in the space since 2017.”

Related: RaveDAO denies manipulation as Binance, Bitget probe RAVE trading activity

The eth.limo incident is the latest in a series of domain hijackings targeting crypto projects. Days earlier, decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Swap lost control of its website after an unknown party hijacked its domain.

Steakhouse Financial, a DeFi advisory and research firm, similarly disclosed at the end of March that it had lost control of its domain to an attacker.

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Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor has hinted at another large Bitcoin purchase, just a week after the company disclosed that it bought around $1 billion of Bitcoin in the second week of April.

Strategy disclosed last Monday that it acquired 13,927 Bitcoin for $1 billion between April 6 and 12, at an average price of $71,902 per coin, posting “Think ₿igger” the day before the filing.

However, Saylor posted “Think Even ₿igger” on X on Sunday along with a chart of Strategy’s purchase history, something he has historically done to hint at another purchase announcement.

It comes just days after the Bitcoin treasury company proposed to increase the frequency of dividend payments to stockholders in the hopes of stabilizing the price and growing demand.

Source: Michael Saylor

In a video presentation to shareholders shared by Saylor on Friday, Strategy CEO Phong Le said the company hopes to pay dividends twice a month — on the 15th and again at the end of each month — for a total of 24 a year at the current rate of 11.5%.

“What do we think this will do, it should stabilize the price, dampen cyclicality, drive further liquidity and grow demand,” Le said.

A preliminary proxy filing was sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The definitive proxy filing is expected on April 28, when voting opens to approve or reject the measure. Voting closes on June 8 at the annual shareholder meeting, with the new schedule expected to start mid-July if approved.

Strategy is proposing to pay semi-monthly dividends on $STRC, instead of monthly. No change to the annual dividend obligations or dividend rate. These proposed changes are intended to stabilize price, dampen cyclicality, drive liquidity, and grow demand. pic.twitter.com/jHFRaDz6oP— Michael Saylor (@saylor) April 17, 2026

Demand plunging after dividend dates, said Le

Le said one of the main reasons for the proposed change was to address a drop in demand after investors were no longer eligible for the upcoming dividend, which cooled buying activity and slowed the pace of new share sales.

“If we were to move forward with paying STRC to semi-monthly, we would be in category 1, the only preferred in the world that pays semi-monthly dividends. We think this is unique and this is attractive,” he added.

The company went through dozens of iterations before settling on the semi-monthly schedule and had considered weekly and even daily dividend record dates. The NASDAQ stock exchange, which lists Strategy’s stock, follows industry rules requiring a minimum gap of ten days between the record date and the payment date, according to Le.

Related: Strategy’s Michael Saylor signals impending Bitcoin purchase

Strategy has the largest Bitcoin (BTC) stash among publicly traded companies with 780,897 coins, worth $58.2 billion, according to Bitbo. It’s also one of the most frequent buyers with regular weekly purchases.

The company’s stock (MSTR) jumped 11.8% on Friday to $166.52. It’s still down more than 47% over the past year, according to Google Finance.

Strategy’s Bitcoin buying comes despite the company sitting on significant unrealized losses on its holdings. Earlier this month, Strategy reported in its first-quarter financial results that its unrealized losses on digital assets amounted to $14.46 billion.

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Kraken parent Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for up to $600 million as the company expands into stablecoin payments and business-to-business (B2B) financial infrastructure.

The deal will be paid in a mix of cash and Payward stock, valuing Payward’s equity at $20 billion, the company said on Thursday. It would expand Payward Services, the company’s B2B infrastructure platform launched in March 2026.

The deal comes as crypto companies move beyond trading services into payments, treasury and settlement products built around stablecoins.

In a statement on Thursday, Reap co-founders said the platform would continue operating as a standalone platform, adding that the transaction remains subject to customary regulatory approvals, expected to close in the second half of 2026.

Reap expands Payward Services into global cards and payments

Payward Services allows companies to integrate trading, payments, funding and digital asset services through one system.

The acquisition of Reap extends that platform into the global cards and payments space, allowing partners to embed card issuance, cross-border payments, and stablecoin treasury services alongside Payward’s existing capabilities.

Source: Kraken

“Reap is the payments layer for what comes next. Card networks, banking rails, and blockchains on a single API, settling in stablecoins,” Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in the announcement.

Related: Kraken parent Payward closes Bitnomial deal to expand US crypto derivatives

The acquisition of Reap follows Payward’s acquisitions of Bitnomial exchange, futures broker NinjaTrader and xStocks issuer Backed, as the company continues expanding its platform through targeted acquisitions.

Reap deal deepens Asia push

Reap was founded in 2018 by Daren Guo, who previously worked for the Asia Pacific business at the payments firm Stripe, and former investment banker Kevin Kang, according to its website.

The company specializes in provisioning payment solutions to connect traditional financial systems with digital assets, aiming to enable cross-border money flows.

Sethi reportedly said that the deal marks Payward’s first infrastructure acquisition in Asia and one of its largest transactions to date.

“If you take Europe out, the fastest growing market is Asia, not just revenue but also asset-on-platform,” Sethi said, adding: “They have already done it in Asia. They can expand into the US overnight with us.”

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Bitwise Asset Management plans to take over investment management of Superstate’s Crypto Carry Fund, marking the crypto asset manager’s first move into tokenized funds.

The fund, known as USCC, will be renamed the Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund after the transition, which is expected to be completed on June 1, 2026. The fund will keep its USCC ticker, smart contracts, and token address, while Bitwise assumes investment management responsibilities.

USCC is available to qualified purchasers and seeks to generate yield through crypto cash and carry trades, a strategy that captures the spread between crypto spot prices and futures prices. The fund had more than $267 million in assets under management and has attracted hedge funds, venture funds, corporations, vaults, wealthy individuals, and protocols, according to Bitwise.

Superstate will continue to operate the fund’s onchain infrastructure, including tokenized issuance and digital transfer agency services. The company said the move reflects a shift away from fund management and toward FundOS, its infrastructure platform for onchain funds.

Superstate’s USCC page says the fund gives qualified purchasers access to crypto basis strategies across multiple crypto assets and US Treasury securities. Ownership is represented by USCC, which can be held as a token or through book entry records, with subscriptions and redemptions supported through USD or USDC and liquidity each market day.

The transition comes as tokenized investment products continue to gain institutional traction. RWA.xyz data shows the broader tokenized real world asset market has $31.4 billion in distributed asset value, up nearly 5% over the past 30 days. Tokenized US Treasuries account for $15 billion in total value across 76 assets, according to the same platform.

Bitwise said the broader tokenized asset market is projected to reach $18.9 trillion by 2031 as financial institutions look to blockchain infrastructure to improve liquidity, settlement efficiency, and investor access. The firm said it had $11 billion in client assets as of April 1, 2025.