The Daily: Ethena's taking on neobanks with its own money app, and more

The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.

Happy Tuesday! Bitcoin is holding its local range near $77,500 despite rising oil prices and Fed rate hike bets, with analysts seeing resilient dip-buying after its best August since 2017.

In today's newsletter, Ethena launches Ethena Pay on Avalanche, Strategy hits back at MSCI's latest proposal, Payward partners with the London Stock Exchange on tokenization, and more.

Meanwhile, Ark Invest bought $37 million worth of shares in Jack Dorsey’s Block.

P.S. Don't forget to check out today's reader poll on Strategy later in the newsletter.

Ethena launches Ethena Pay app on Avalanche, offering up to 6% yield and 10% cashback

Ethena Labs, the team behind the synthetic dollar project USDe, launched the beta of Ethena Pay, a self-custodial money app built on Avalanche and rolling out across 48 countries.

• Ethena founder Guy Young called it the first neobanking app vertically integrated with a stablecoin issuer's own product, rather than relying on USDC or USDT, letting users hold USDe as a dollar balance and move money via IBAN, crypto, or bank transfer.
• The app enables "instant fee-free transfers" by username and USD, EUR, and GBP bank transfers, with other transfers carrying 0.05% to 0.1% fees.
• The app offers rewards including up to 6% APY on balances and up to 10% cashback at select brands like Uber, Spotify, and Claude.
• U.S. and EU markets are excluded at launch but are expected later during the beta, coming after German regulator BaFin ordered Ethena to wind up its USDe business there in 2025.
• Amid Ethena's push into payments, the USDe supply sits around $4 billion, down sharply from a roughly $15 billion peak in September 2025.

Strategy hits back at MSCI proposal, calling it 'discriminatory' against DATs

Strategy formally opposed MSCI's proposal to exclude "non-operating asset" companies from its Global Investable Market Indexes, calling it a disguised effort to remove digital asset treasury firms.

• In a letter signed by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le, the firm said MSCI's proposal is "discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided" and should be withdrawn.
• Strategy argued that MSCI wrongly treats bitcoin as a non-operating asset, even though it reports its treasury as an operating segment and records related gains and losses as operating expenses after discussions with the SEC.
• The pushback follows MSCI's May simulation flagging Strategy, Metaplanet, and uranium investment firm Yellow Cake for deletion, with feedback open until Sept. 30. Results are due Oct. 16, and any changes would become effective in December.

Kraken parent Payward to tokenize 100 London-listed stocks, with LSE 24 trading planned

Payward is teaming with the London Stock Exchange to tokenize the 100 largest LSE-listed companies as 1:1-backed xStocks, with the first expected on Kraken in the coming weeks.

• The LSE also plans to list the tokens on LSE 24, its new extended-hours venue, subject to regulatory approval.
• Payward and the LSE will also explore native equity tokens issued through LSE infrastructure, with the same rights and full fungibility as traditional shares.
• Launched in June 2025, xStocks have processed over $40 billion in volume across 200,000-plus holders, including nearly $20 billion settled onchain.

Binance adds options on 1,000 US stocks and ETFs as monthly TradFi perpetual volume hits $433 billion

Binance is adding physically settled options on more than 1,000 US stocks and ETFs, deepening its push into traditional finance.

• The products are routed through its Abu Dhabi-regulated broker, Nest Trading, but won't be available to U.S. users, Binance said.
• Upon exercise, users receive or deliver the underlying shares of supported U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, held in custody by Alpaca on behalf of Binance users.
• The launch follows Binance's June rollout of trading in 7,000-plus U.S. stocks and ETFs, and adds to its bStocks tokenized securities and equity-linked perpetual products.
• Meanwhile, Binance's TradFi perpetual volume hit about $433.4 billion in August, roughly 15 times January's total, led by equity-linked perps.

Cango shares plunge 20% after bitcoin miner reports $81.6 million Q2 loss

Bitcoin miner Cango's shares dropped more than 21% on Tuesday after it posted an $81.6 million second-quarter net loss and continued to scale back its mining operations.

• Revenue fell roughly 50% quarter over quarter to $50.8 million as Cango phased out older S19 rigs and shifted some capacity to a hosted leasing model, reducing its overall hashrate to 27.58 EH/s.
• The miner is also pushing further into AI, converting its Georgia site to GPU computing with revenue expected to start in the third quarter.

In the next 24 hours

• U.S. mortgage data are due at 7 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
• Access Protocol, Ethena, and IOTA are among the crypto projects set for token unlocks.
• NFT.NYC and Real-World Asset Summit Brooklyn continue.

Reader poll

Strategy just bought bitcoin again after a two-month pause. One-off, or the start of a buying streak?

YES, BUYING CONTINUES

NO, IT PAUSES AGAIN

One click records your pick. We'll share the answer in a later edition.

*Some 52% of respondents in last Tuesday's poll correctly said PCE would come in hotter or in line with expectations.

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