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BlackRock has finally dusted off its crystal ball and offered its Q2 2026 Equity Market Outlook. 

In his scroll upon the digital town square, Pumpius declared: “A miracle! The first ZK privacy transaction hath danced upon the XRPL testnet!” He didst add, with a flourish, that this shall “change all things,” as if the stars themselves had aligned to bless XRP with the allure of secrecy. For what is money without mystery, pray tell?

The ruckus kicked off on an April Fools’ day, when Sirer pretended the banks were flocking to Ripple’s contraption, then tipped his hat and confessed it was a joke-though the joke wore the mask of truth like a mule wearing a saddle.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the OCC has deigned to grant its preliminary blessing to the Coinbase National Trust Company, an endeavor for which Coinbase filed on the third of October, 2025. The application, languishing in a state of suspense on the OCC’s Digital Assets Licensing Applications page, was at last resolved by Thursday’s proclamation.

The lawsuit, filed under case number 1:26-cv-03659 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, doesn’t just go after the state like a rogue vigilante. It brings in Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul, and five officials from the Illinois Gaming Board (IGB) as defendants. The whole squad is in the crosshairs.

Elliptic chimed in on Thursday, declaring the Drift Protocol exploit-the largest this year, don’t you know-to be a likely DPRK operation. “Multiple indicators,” they said, with all the gravitas of Jeeves announcing breakfast.

Welcome, darlings, to Crypto for Advisors-CoinDesk’s weekly attempt to make digital assets digestible for mere mortals in finance. Subscribe if you like your Thursdays with a dash of blockchain panache.

Permit me to inform you, dear reader, that Coinbase, Stripe, and Cloudflare have joined forces with the x402 Foundation to devise a payment standard so refined, it may yet cause the Post Office to reconsider its relevance. This grand endeavor seeks to enable applications and AI systems to transact funds online without the tedious intervention of humans-a feat as miraculous as a woman securing a husband without a single sigh.

A credibility win in traditional finance, they say, though one might wonder if “traditional” and “Ripple” belong in the same sentence like two mismatched horses in a harness. CEO Brad Garlinghouse, ever the optimist, recently declared Ripple Prime’s post-acquisition progress “stellar,” which is finance-speak for “we haven’t burned all the money yet.”

The contenders for its throne? A motley crew of digital alchemists, but Monero, with its $6 billion, strolls closer, grinning like a peasant who just won a lottery ticket. Yet, to claim the 13th spot, our XMR hero must conjure $2.5 billion from thin air-no small feat in a world where even the moon’s reflection in a puddle is taxed.