A €22 trillion giant just opened its doors to 6 altcoins

Altcoin investors just got a quiet but important win. A European financial giant that safeguards around €22 trillion in assets has expanded its crypto offering from just Bitcoin and Ethereum to six more major altcoins. At the same time, several other projects have rolled out upgrades, integrations, and adoption milestones that could shape their next bull run.

Swift’s new blockchain move: big for banks, not for altcoins (yet)

Swift, the global messaging network used by over 11,500 banks, has launched a blockchain-based ledger pilot with 17 banks across six continents. These banks can now tokenize portions of their deposits and move those tokenized assets across borders using Swift’s own infrastructure.

For now, this is a closed system. No Chainlink, no XRP, no Stellar, and no other public altcoin networks are involved. It’s essentially Swift modernizing its own rails, not plugging into open crypto ecosystems. Over the long term, this kind of tokenization could make banks more comfortable with digital assets in general, but there is no direct benefit today for specific altcoins.

Sui: record-breaking tests, gasless stablecoins, and a discounted price

Sui has been in the spotlight after headlines claimed it hit nearly 8 million transactions per second (TPS) in stress tests. The nuance is important: this figure comes from “Sui Tunnels,” an experimental system that processes transactions and computations off the main Sui chain, then settles them back on-chain.

That means the 8 million TPS number is not the mainnet’s real throughput. Sui’s actual on-chain TPS record is around 6,000 from 2023, which is still very strong by industry standards.

Gasless stablecoin transfers on Sui

More meaningful than headline TPS is Sui’s push for adoption. The network recently introduced gasless stablecoin transfers, allowing users and businesses to move stablecoins on Sui with negligible fees. Unlike Ethereum, where gas costs rise as the network gets busier, Sui’s design aims to keep these transfers cheap and simple.

This is attractive for:

• Businesses that want to cut payment and settlement costs
• Traders who move stablecoins frequently
• On-chain AI agents and automated systems that need low-cost transactions

Early adopters include INS Pay, a small IoT and vending machine payments provider. It’s a modest start, but stablecoin liquidity often acts as a leading indicator: when stablecoin balances grow on a chain, total value locked (TVL) and DeFi activity tend to follow as that idle capital gets deployed.

Sui’s team is widely regarded as strong executors, and even Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has publicly praised their innovation. Despite that, Sui’s price has been hit by the broader bear market and two back-to-back outages of around 14 hours. History shows outages don’t necessarily kill a chain—Solana had multiple in the past and still recovered strongly. For believers in Sui’s tech and roadmap, the current drawdown may look like a discounted entry.

Hedera (HBAR): staking, institutional demand, and Fireblocks support

Hedera has quietly been punching above its weight with institutions. Several recent developments highlight that trend:

• Binance now offers HBAR staking at around 2%, matching the native network rate.
• A 21Shares exchange-traded product (ETP) for HBAR offers staking as well, though it currently manages only about $0.5 million.

The more impressive product is a US-based HBAR ETF sponsored by Canaccord Genuity (often referred to as “Canary” in the transcript), which has roughly $50 million in assets under management and has never had a month of net outflows. For comparison, Litecoin—ranked slightly higher than Hedera by market cap—has only about $5 million in AUM in a similar product from the same issuer. Avalanche, with a similar market cap to HBAR, has around $33 million. That puts HBAR ahead of both in terms of institutional product demand relative to its size.

Fireblocks integration for Hedera Token Service

Another key milestone is that tokens created using Hedera Token Service (HTS) can now be custodied by Fireblocks, one of the most widely used institutional crypto custody platforms, trusted by over 2,400 major clients.

HTS lets institutions issue programmable tokens—such as stablecoins or compliant digital assets—with built-in controls for security and regulation. Fireblocks support makes it much easier and safer for banks, fintechs, and large enterprises to hold those tokens, strengthening Hedera’s pitch as an enterprise-grade network.

Bittensor (TAO): AI subnets reach exchanges and prove a key technical milestone

Bittensor, an AI-focused network built around “subnets,” also saw important progress. One of its major subnets, Shūts, achieved a technical first in distributed AI:

• In distributed GPU networks, you typically choose between speed and quality—either models are slow but accurate, or fast but less capable.
• Shūts demonstrated that it can deliver high speed without meaningful quality loss, effectively breaking this trade-off.

On the adoption side, subnet tokens are starting to reach major exchanges. Kraken has listed subnet assets like Shūts, and more subnets are expected to follow. Previously, getting exposure to a subnet required buying TAO, locking it in a specific subnet, and then receiving that subnet’s tokens—a process that limited participation to more advanced crypto users.

Exchange listings lower the barrier to entry and should help the subnet ecosystem grow. Additionally, Yuma has launched a “total market” fund that gives investors one-stop exposure to TAO and a diversified basket of subnets, removing the need to pick individual subnet winners.

The €22 trillion Clearstream move: 6 altcoins join Bitcoin and Ethereum

The biggest structural news of the week comes from Clearstream, a major European custodian and settlement provider holding around €22 trillion in assets, processing about a million transactions per day across 61 markets.

Until now, Clearstream only offered Bitcoin and Ethereum to its clients. It has just added six altcoins:

• XRP (Ripple)
• Cardano (ADA)
• Solana (SOL)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Stellar (XLM)
• Avalanche (AVAX)

Clearstream operates under the EU’s MiCA regulatory framework, so these assets are now available in a fully compliant environment for a wide range of European institutions and professional investors.

What this does—and doesn’t—mean for prices

This does not mean that €22 trillion is about to flood into these six coins. In reality, allocations are likely to be gradual and modest, especially in a bearish or choppy market. However, the key change is accessibility:

• These altcoins are now on the menu for institutions that previously could only touch BTC and ETH through Clearstream.
• When market conditions turn bullish again, having that infrastructure ready can significantly amplify inflows.

The Bitcoin ETF story is a good analogy. Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US helped push total ETF Bitcoin holdings to around $170 billion at their peak. Without that wrapper, it’s unlikely that much institutional and retail capital would have flowed in so quickly. Similarly, Clearstream’s move doesn’t guarantee higher prices for XRP, SOL, ADA, LTC, XLM, or AVAX—but it makes large-scale participation far easier when appetite returns.

If you’re already following these assets, this development fits into the broader narrative of growing institutional access. For more context on how these coins have been performing versus traditional markets, you may find this analysis useful: altcoins to watch: can ADA, ETH, SOL and XRP beat the stock market after the dip?

Aerodrome: tokenized Treasuries and leading DEX volume

Aerodrome, a DeFi protocol focused on trading and liquidity, has also been gaining traction. One highlight is that a wrapped 0–3 month US Treasury bond ETF (iShares) is now eligible to receive AERO emissions on Aerodrome. In practice, this means:

• Users can bring tokenized short-term Treasuries on-chain.
• They can then earn additional AERO rewards on top of the underlying yield.

This is part of a broader trend of tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) and making them productive in DeFi. Aerodrome has also generated more BTC–USD spot trading volume than any other decentralized project in the last month, including Hyperliquid, which is widely seen as a leader in on-chain derivatives.

All of this is happening before Aerodrome merges with its sister network, Velodrome. That merger is expected to create a more competitive and unified liquidity hub.

ICP: building a fully on-chain Hyperliquid competitor

Internet Computer (ICP) is also targeting the decentralized perpetuals market, one of the most lucrative niches in crypto. It’s developing Multidex, a 100% on-chain derivatives exchange hosted on ICP’s decentralized cloud infrastructure.

ICP is known for its strong focus on decentralization and its ability to host full applications directly on-chain, not just smart contracts. If Multidex can leverage that to offer a smooth, fully on-chain trading experience, it could stand out from competitors that still rely on off-chain components.

However, Multidex is still in beta. The decentralized perps space is getting crowded, with established players like Hyperliquid and many new entrants. For ICP holders, the key will be watching whether Multidex can attract real trading volume and liquidity over the coming months.

Sei and Monaco: a trader-built perps DEX with strong testnet traction

Sei Network is another chain leaning into the perps narrative. A project called Monaco is building a decentralized derivatives exchange on Sei. While Monaco isn’t being developed by the Sei core team, the network is actively promoting it because a successful DEX would drive demand and usage for the SEI token.

Monaco’s team has deep trading experience: its founder previously ran GSR’s DeFi trading desk and worked at Goldman Sachs trading oil derivatives. The broader team shares a similar background, making this a group of professional traders building tools for traders.

On testnet, Monaco has already processed around $600 million in volume with about 27,000 signups. That’s a strong early signal, though testnet numbers don’t always translate directly to mainnet adoption. As with ICP’s Multidex, the real test will be how much liquidity and volume Monaco can attract once it’s fully live.

Sei’s mainnet upgrade: speed, finality, privacy, and MEV resistance

Alongside Monaco, Sei is rolling out a major mainnet upgrade focused on performance and institutional readiness:

• Higher TPS for more throughput
• Sub-250 millisecond finality, meaning transactions become irreversible extremely quickly
• Built-in privacy features
• MEV resistance to protect users from predatory transaction ordering

Finality is especially important but often overlooked. High TPS grabs headlines, but if it takes several seconds (or longer) for a transaction to be truly final, that can be a problem for traders and institutions. Sub-250 ms finality is closer to the latency expectations of traditional finance systems.

Combined with Monaco’s launch, these upgrades position Sei as a serious contender for high-speed, institution-friendly trading applications. As always, though, the deciding factor will be whether real users and capital show up.

Why accessibility and infrastructure matter for the next cycle

Across all these stories, a few themes repeat:

• Accessibility: Clearstream adding XRP, SOL, ADA, LTC, XLM, and AVAX makes it far easier for regulated institutions to allocate to these assets when they’re ready.
• Infrastructure: Sui’s gasless stablecoins, Hedera’s Fireblocks integration, and Sei’s low-latency finality all make their ecosystems more usable for real-world applications.
• Institutional-grade products: HBAR and others are seeing growing AUM in ETFs and ETPs, while tokenized Treasuries on Aerodrome and programmable tokens on Hedera show how traditional finance is slowly merging with DeFi.

None of these developments guarantee immediate price action, especially in a bearish or sideways market. But they do build the rails that capital can use when sentiment turns. For long-term investors in XRP, SOL, ADA, and similar assets, these structural shifts are worth tracking alongside shorter-term price moves. If you’re interested in how narratives and big numbers can sometimes get ahead of fundamentals, this deep dive on XRP’s long-term potential is a useful companion read: XRP news: is a $2,000 price target real or just hype?

For now, the key takeaway is simple: major institutions are quietly expanding their crypto toolkits, and several altcoin ecosystems are shipping real upgrades. When the next bull market arrives, the projects that already have these foundations in place are likely to benefit the most.