Kappa Lab

2025 marked a pivotal year in Kappa Lab’s operations and performance. We’re proud to have supported some of the industry’s most ambitious protocols and builders. We expanded to Dubai, added 4 new business verticals, 13 new partnerships, 18 new exchange integrations, and sustained $15B in monthly trading volume. Together, these milestones reflect a broader trend: institutional-grade crypto infrastructure is scaling rapidly. Now in 2026, we’re building on this momentum with new initiatives already underway. Stay tuned.

@hibachi_xyz @kiranxyz_ Hibachio

@KappaLab_io @kiranxyz_ kappa lab

FX does not just need faster settlement. It needs better price discovery. Our CBO @kiranxyz_ framed it simply: if stablecoins improve FX settlement, and onchain rails improve speed, where does @hibachi_xyz create its edge? Varun’s answer: price discovery. “You basically pay what they tell you to pay.” That’s how Varun @GandalfTheBr0wn, co-founder of Hibachi, describes the legacy structure of FX. Pre-stablecoin, the market was more of a walled garden, with access concentrated around the major banks and interbank rails that handled settlement. There was no single transparent orderbook for FX in the way Nasdaq or LSE has for equities. If you were a broker, a PSP, or anyone outside that network, you often took the quotes you could access. Hibachi is rebuilding this onchain: a stablecoin-native FX exchange with a transparent CLOB, designed to bring open, orderbook-based price discovery to global currency markets. 👉 Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/MrOASZ1TIo4

FX is in severe need of an upgrade. Today, access to real pricing is a private members club of 72 banks who are able to dictate pricing in the market completely. One way or another, you are being spread from the real underlying price, which you likely will never even see. Now, with stablecoins underneath, we can create an alternative price discovery venue for FX markets that also settle instantly. The F(X)uture is faster, cheaper, and better. We're building it.

@StratiumX @kiranxyz_ @hibachi_xyz Stratium

@KappaLab_io @kiranxyz_ @hibachi_xyz Kappa Lab

@feibendepangzi @hibachi_xyz @GandalfTheBr0wn @ayotibo Hibachio 🔥

@KappaLab_io @hibachi_xyz @GandalfTheBr0wn @ayotibo Hinachiooo

Partner Spotlight Series, Episode 3 is live! We sat down with @hibachi_xyz co-founders Varun ( @GandalfTheBr0wn ) and Thibault ( @ayotibo ). Hibachi is a ZK-secured onchain exchange, originally built for perpetuals, and now building the first stablecoin-native FX venue on @circle 's @arc. 🚨 The framing that anchored the conversation: "FX is the largest market in the world." And crypto has barely served it. Varun's take: a lot of what gets lumped into "RWA" deserves to be its own category. FX in particular is massive and structurally underserved. In this episode we cover: → Why Hibachi pivoted from perps to FX → The legacy structure of FX: a "walled garden" with no real price discovery → Hibachi's hybrid CLOB + ZK architecture, and why institutional FX needs privacy → The Fire Liquidity Provider (FLP) vault, operated by Kappa Lab → The Circle x Arc partnership and what USDC as gas unlocks 👉 Watch the full episode here: youtu.be/MrOASZ1TIo4 #crypto #defi #hibachi #fxexchange

📆New week. New Monday Flow. Here's What Happened: Spot ETF flows (May 4 to 8): 🟢 BTC: +$622.75M 🟢 ETH: +$70.49M 🟢 SOL: +$39.23M 🟢 XRP: +$34M 1) Bitcoin trades near $81K to start the week. BTC opened last week near $77K and moved above $82K by Wednesday, its highest level since January 31. The 200-day simple moving average near $83K held as resistance. Price closed the week near $80K. 2) Spot BTC ETF flows split the week in two. Monday and Tuesday drew large inflows led by BlackRock and Fidelity. Thursday and Friday flipped to outflows as BTC moved below $80K. ETH followed a similar pattern, with early-week inflows reversed by a sharp Thursday outflow. SOL and XRP saw inflows every day. 3) BTC perpetual funding rates remained broadly negative across major venues last week, consistent with the multi-week pattern flagged by CoinDesk and Bloomberg in late April. Negative funding alongside positive weekly ETF flows continues to point to spot-led demand rather than leveraged positioning. 4) Strategy bought 535 BTC last week for about $43 million at $80,340 per coin, its smallest weekly purchase of 2026. Total holdings sit at 818,869 BTC at a blended cost near $75,540. The pace has stepped down sharply from 34,164 BTC the week ending April 19, to 3,273 BTC the following week, to a pause around Q1 earnings on May 5, then 535 BTC last week. 5) CME Group announced plans to launch bitcoin volatility futures (BVI) on June 1, pending CFTC review. The FOMC held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% at its April 29 meeting with four dissents, the most since 1992. The Senate Banking Committee advanced Warsh's nomination 13-11 the same day, and the full Senate voted 49-44 on Monday to advance the nomination to a final vote. The Week Ahead: 1) April CPI prints Tuesday at 8:30 AM ET. Consensus: headline +0.6% MoM, +3.7% YoY; core +0.3% MoM, +2.7% YoY. CPI is the week's main event. The core reading will shape how traders price the rate path heading into the June FOMC under a new chair. 2) April PPI lands Wednesday at 8:30 AM ET. April Retail Sales follow Thursday at 8:30 AM ET. Both feed into how the Iran-driven oil shock is moving through producer prices and consumer demand, which sets the macro tape for crypto positioning. 3) The Trump-Xi summit runs Thursday to Friday in Beijing, the first US presidential visit to China since 2017. Rare earth supply, chip export controls, and Iran are on the agenda. Any shifts in rare earth or chip flows carry direct weight for crypto mining costs. 4) Powell's term as Fed chair ends Friday. Warsh is expected to be confirmed this week. The transition sets the tone heading into the June 16 to 17 FOMC meeting.

👇 More from this week: • MoonPay acquired Solana trading infrastructure platform DFlow in a $100M all-stock deal, with DFlow having processed over $12B in Q1 2026 trading volume. • Hyperliquid launched HIP-4 outcome markets on May 2, with zero opening fees and unified margin across perps, spot, and prediction markets. • Kraken parent Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong stablecoin payments firm Reap for up to $600M and applied for a federal trust charter from the OCC, valuing Payward at $20B ahead of an IPO. • State Street and Galaxy launched SWEEP on Solana, a tokenized cash management fund using PYUSD with planned expansion to Ethereum and Stellar. • Securitize received FINRA approval to custody tokenized securities and run atomic settlement against stablecoins, with underwriting and selling group permissions for tokenized IPOs. • BNY launched digital asset custody in Abu Dhabi via Finstreet and ADI Foundation in ADGM, starting with Bitcoin and Ether before expanding to stablecoins and tokenized assets.

🗞️ On this week's Industry Catch-Up: 1) Ondo Finance, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Ripple completed the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund on May 6. Ripple redeemed a portion of its OUSG holdings on the XRP Ledger; the blockchain leg processed in under five seconds while Mastercard's Multi-Token Network routed instructions to Kinexys, which settled US dollars to Ripple's Singapore bank account. Cross-border settlements like this typically take one to three business days through correspondent banks. 2) Bullish announced on May 5 a definitive agreement to acquire global transfer agent Equiniti from Siris Capital in a $4.2B transaction, comprising $1.85B in assumed debt and roughly $2.35B in Bullish stock. Equiniti serves nearly 3,000 public companies and over 20 million verified shareholders globally. The deal is expected to close in January 2027, pending regulatory approvals. 3) Securitize, Jump Trading Group, and Jupiter announced on May 5 a collaboration to support regulated onchain trading of tokenized equities on Solana. Jump provides institutional liquidity via its PropAMM, Jupiter serves as the user-facing distribution layer, and Securitize handles the regulated stack as broker-dealer, transfer agent, and Alternative Trading System with KYC-enabled whitelisted wallets, operating within existing securities rules including Regulation NMS. 4) The Senate Banking Committee announced on May 8 an executive session on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act for Thursday, May 14 at 10:30 a.m. The session follows a stablecoin yield compromise from Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks that prohibits yield economically or functionally equivalent to bank deposit interest while preserving activity-based rewards. Coinbase, Circle, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and the Blockchain Association have endorsed the compromise; banking trade associations have flagged remaining concerns. More in the comments 👇 #cryptonews #digitalassets #fintech #defi

📆New week. New Monday Flow. Here's What Happened: Spot ETF flows (April 27 to May 1): 🟢 BTC: +$153.87M 🔴 ETH: -$82.47M 🔴 SOL: -$1.24M 🔴 XRP: -$0.04M 1) Bitcoin trades near $81,500 to start the week. Price crossed $80,000 on Monday for the first time since January 31, moving above the Glassnode True Market Mean near $79,000. That follows last week's move from a Monday open near $77,000 to a post-FOMC low near $74,900, then above $78,000 by Friday. 2) The FOMC held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% on Wednesday in Powell's final meeting as chair. Four members dissented, the most since 1992. The Senate Banking Committee advanced Warsh's nomination the same day. 3) Strategy added about $255 million in BTC last week at an average price near $77,900, per 247wallst. That adds to the 815,061 BTC total disclosed the prior week and marks two straight weeks of large buys. 4) Spot BTC ETF flows tracked the FOMC story across the week. Monday posted about $263 million in outflows. Tuesday and Wednesday added roughly $90 million and $138 million in outflows. Thursday flipped to about $15 million in inflows. Friday reversed the week with $629.73 million in a single session. The week ended net positive, marking a fifth straight period of inflows. ETH ETFs posted their first net outflow week since early April. 5) The post-FOMC move lower triggered about $535 million in forced closures, with longs making up roughly 70% of the total. BTC perpetual funding remains broadly negative. CoinDesk and Bloomberg reported about 47 consecutive negative days as of late April, the longest run since late 2022, and the pattern held through last week. Negative funding alongside positive weekly ETF flows continues to point to spot-led demand rather than leveraged positioning. The Week Ahead: 1) ADP prints Wednesday at 8:15am ET. Initial Claims and Q1 Productivity follow Thursday at 8:30am ET. 2) April Nonfarm Payrolls land Friday at 8:30am ET with Michigan Consumer Sentiment at 10am ET. NFP is the week's main event. The hourly earnings number will shape how traders price wage-driven inflation. Michigan's year-ahead inflation reading has moved crypto positioning in recent months.

👇 More from this week: • @HyperliquidX launched HIP-4 outcome markets on mainnet, starting with BTC daily binary contracts. Permissionless builder-deployed markets are expected in a later phase with 1M HYPE staked. • @liquidtrading closed an $18M seed round co-led by Neo and @leftlanecap . The 24/7 multi-asset trading platform has processed over $3B in volume since August 2025. • @tether posted $1.04B in Q1 2026 profit and reached an all-time-high $8.23B reserve buffer, with U.S. Treasury-heavy backing. • @blockaid_ flagged live exploits on @wasabi_protocol ($4.55M drained via admin key compromise) and @ZetaChain (cross-chain GatewayEVM contracts). • @variational_io detailed plans to add RWA perps (US500, oil, gold, silver) to its 450+ crypto market platform in May, cross-margined under a single USDC account with 0% fees. • SBI Holdings is in talks to acquire a stake in Japanese exchange Bitbank.

On this week's Industry Catch-Up: 1) @tradexyz launched pre-IPO perps on @HyperliquidX via HIP-3 on May 1. Traders can go long or short on pre-listing prices via cash-settled contracts. Pricing draws from public signals like funding rounds and S-1 filings. The first market covers Cerebras, with a target listing date of May 15. 2) The Senate released new Clarity Act text on May 1. It covers a key stablecoin yield dispute that had stalled the bill. Passive yield on idle holdings would be banned. Rewards tied to platform use would still be allowed. @coinbase and @circle backed the deal. The change could help clear the way for a Banking Committee markup. 3) @OKX, @BlackRock, and @StanChart launched a joint margin setup on April 28. Clients can post BlackRock's BUIDL fund as margin on OKX while earning yield. Assets stay in Standard Chartered custody. BUIDL holds ~$2.5B. It marks the first G-SIB custody role in a tokenized collateral setup. 4) @Gemini announced a DCO license from the CFTC on April 30. Its Olympus unit can now clear trades in-house, starting with event contracts. The license follows a DCM grant from late 2025. Gemini said it will explore adding futures, options, and perps. More in the comments 👇 #cryptonews #digitalassets #fintech #defi #web3

Funny how this can be considered a RWA - tokenising preferred stocks - which is actually a wrapper for magic internet money. You can't ignore the yield, in fact if you believe in Strategy its one of the highest and safest stable yields in DeFi.

@mattdotfi Tokenize the 🌎

@KappaLab_io xStocks mentioned👀

Our main goal has always been to offer DeFi users the possibility of leveraging opportunities onchain with their holdings, from indexes to preferred stocks. “xStocks tokenizes another $53M as STRCx, an onchain version tradable on DeFi rails.” — @KappaLab_io 🤝

@Wajahat @spreads_fi 💜

@KappaLab_io Much love for the @spreads_fi mention!

@StayRoamer @Lighter_xyz 🤝💜

@KappaLab_io We're happy to offer a way to permissionlessly trade $STRC to @lighter_xyz users. Thanks for the mention!

@0xBobdbldr 🤝💜

@KappaLab_io Thanks for the mention!