Gm frens, welcome to our final news roundup for September.
UK banks complete first tokenized deposit trades, Ethereum bulls eye breakout, as FC Barcelona partners with Cardano. AI agents cut costs for Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, while Privy boosts TRON developer tools, and Shiba Inu’s X account sparks buzz. Finally, Zypto integrates Bitcoin mobile top-ups.
Let’s get to it.
UK banks complete first tokenized deposit trades
The UK’s largest banks executed the world’s first customer transaction using tokenized British pound deposits on a share platform. The money movement included remortgage payments and a test of a consumer purchase, according to an announcement.
The project is testing whether regulated bank money can move in tokenized form between institutions and in retail payments. The deposits moving across a common system involving several banks differs from a recent initiative by Lloyds to use tokenized deposits to buy a tokenized gilt within its own arrangement.
Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander took part in the Great British Tokenized Deposit initiative. The platform was built by Quant, a distributed ledger technology (DLT) service provider.
The tests come as the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) prepare the UK’s financial systems for tokenization and longer settlement hours. Regulators want to support tokenized markets while considering stablecoins for institutional settlement. The group will next test the settlement of digital assets using tokenized customer money, according to the announcement.
For businesses and customers, tokenized deposits have the potential to speed up settlement, improve cash-flow management and provide more convenient, transparent and secure ways to pay.
Tokenized deposits are digital records of money already held in a bank account. Unlike stablecoins, they remain a liability of the issuing bank and retain the protections attached to conventional deposits.
Ethereum bulls eye major breakout
The major rally that started in August and intensified in September has finally flipped ETH’s higher-timeframe structure bullish. Several analysts agree that only one major resistance remains in the asset’s way. A decisive break above it could open the door to a much larger move toward $3,000 and beyond.
The largest altcoin has now reclaimed the 200-day moving average and pushed into the $2,800 region last week, where it was finally stopped. Daan Crypto Traders highlighted the change in its market structure, confirming that a weekly close above the 200 MA and EMA has solidified its bullish reversal.
However, he believes $2,800 is the major obstacle standing in front of ETH, and clearing it would leave relatively little high-timeframe resistance before the $3,000 - $4,000 region comes back into play. Aside from last week’s rejection at $2,800, the level has stopped ETH’s progress on several occasions in the past few years.
Michael van de Poppe is also bullish on ETH’s broader structure. In a recent tweet, he claimed that it is “literally a matter of time” before the asset sees another strong breakout to the upside.
Ethereum’s position is relatively straightforward at the moment. The higher-timeframe trend has improved substantially, but the market still needs to prove it can turn one of its most stubborn resistance zones into support.
Fellow analyst CW argued that the size of Ethereum’s high-leverage positions has fallen sharply recently. Longs dropped to roughly $2.1 billion, while shorts stood near $4 billion. This occurred after most of the previously accumulated high-leverage positions were wrecked. The analyst added that the reduced positioning leaves ETH vulnerable to a significant increase in volatility. This could be particularly important as Ethereum approaches $2,800.
Merlijn The Trader, who has been bullish on Ethereum for months, remains constructive on its market structure. Most recently, he called attention to an emptied validator exit queue and argued that much of the forced selling pressure had been absorbed during the earlier drawdown.
FC Barcelona partners with Cardano for new fan lab
FC Barcelona launched Barca Fan Lab, a Cardano-based digital platform that lets fans earn verifiable credentials by participating. The project was developed together with technology partner Andamio. It aims to transform the way millions of fans interact with the club.
Fans access the platform through BarcaID, the club’s existing digital identity system. Signing in automatically creates a personal Cardano wallet tied to that profile and stores credentials earned along the way.
The program covers four areas:
- One focuses on club history and values.
- Another covers sustainability and inclusion themes.
- A third bridges physical fan communities into digital participation.
- The fourth explores Web3 apps like collectibles and loyalty systems.
Notably, Cardano’s own community grant program, Catalyst Fund 13, helped fund the project. That funding source explains part of why FC Barcelona chose this specific blockchain over rivals.
Sports clubs partnering with crypto projects has become a familiar playbook, one that has produced mixed results elsewhere. Fan tokens tied to major clubs have occasionally struggled with weak liquidity and underwhelming actual utility once initial hype faded.
FC Barcelona isn’t new to this space either. In 2025, Barca Media launched Barca.Pass, a separate Web3 wallet built with Futureverse, reaching over 11 million existing BarcaID users at the time.
Whether Barca Fan Lab delivers meaningful fan engagement, or simply adds another underused digital wallet, will likely depend on adoption numbers the club has not yet disclosed.
AI agents cut costs for Quantum-Safe Bitcoin
The price of building a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has plunged nearly 80% in a single week, after developers and AI models competed to optimize the code behind it. According to StarkWare, which ran the competition alongside Yukon Research and Eigen Labs, the estimated cost of constructing such a transaction fell from about $320 to roughly $67 in GPU compute.
The figure comes from the dashboard of the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, an open contest launched to see how far outside solvers could push the number down.
The first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction was mined on mainnet last month, a construction StarkWare developed to protect coins without requiring a network-wide fork. That initial transaction took roughly 3,100 GPU-hours and cost around $320 to build. One week of open competition cut most of that away. The savings come from raw speed.
The expensive part of the process is a brute-force search that happens on a user’s own hardware before anything reaches the blockchain, which is why it shows up as a GPU bill rather than a Bitcoin fee. The construction slots a hash where Bitcoin expects a signature, and because only about one in 70 trillion hash outputs takes the required shape, finding a valid one means hashing inputs over and over until one fits.
Faster code means GPU-hours for the same result. Solvers made dramatic progress. One core benchmark jumped from 146 million verified candidates per second to over 820 million on a standard RTX 4090, with 62 improvements promoted across two tracks. Notably, the leading records were held by developers running AI models. StarkWare cited Anthropic’s Opus 5 and Fable 5.1 at the top, with OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, Grok 4.6, and Kimi close behind.
Yet, StarkWare stressed that none of these make Bitcoin quantum-safe on its own. The transactions are nonstandard and must be sent directly to a miner. The construction only shields coins whose public key hasn’t been exposed. StarkWare maintains that a soft fork remains the better long-term fix.
Privy boosts TRON developer tools
TRON DAO announced that Privy is expanding its support for the TRON blockchain, giving developers and businesses more tools to build and operate financial applications at scale on the network.
With the expanded integration, developers can use Privy to build and manage wallets and financial applications on TRON with enhanced transaction, policy, transfer, and monitoring capabilities. Developers can programmatically construct, sign, and broadcast supported TRON transaction webhooks, and use policy controls to set spending limits, recipient allowlists, and transaction approval or restriction rules.
Transfer APIs also enable supported assets on TRON to be moved programmatically.
Together, these capabilities give businesses the infrastructure to build and operate stablecoin payment solutions, treasury workflows, wallets, and other on-chain financial products on TRON.
TRON has become a major global rail for stablecoin transfers, with the total transfer volume on the network approaching $30 trillion. Its infrastructure is increasingly being used for payments and treasury operations, as Paystack is already building treasury use cases.
The expanded integration builds on growing demand for stablecoin infrastructure that can support real-world financial operations. By combining Privy’s wallet and developer infrastructure with TRON’s stablecoin ecosystem, businesses can build applications designed for payments, treasury management, and other on-chain financial workflows.
Shiba Inu’s X account sparks buzz
According to reports, the official Shiba Inu X account now follows WOOF, a new Ethereum meme coin that trades mainly against SHIB. WOOF’s price on that SHIB pair rose 971% in 24 hours, according to DEX Screener.
The WOOF account joined X this month and has fewer than 700 followers. A single follow from Shiba Inu pushed the little-known token into the spotlight. Notably, the WOOF account follows only one profile itself. Its bio describes the token as paired with SHIB, and its pinned post shares the contract address.
On-chain data shows WOOF is an ERC-20 token with a fixed supply of 1 billion. Its main pool on Uniswap v4 opened on September 28. The pool pairs the token with SHIB rather than ETH or a stablecoin. As a result, buyers need SHIB to reach the deepest WOOF market.
The SHIB pair holds about $180,000 in liquidity. It recorded roughly $1.5 million in trading volume on Monday. Buy orders outnumbered sales, 2,653 to 1,875. The token’s market capitalization sits near $1.1 million, and Etherscan lists 882 holders.
Such a shallow pool can amplify price moves in both directions. The contract code includes buy and hold caps, along with a guard mechanism for the launch phase. For SHIB, the timing adds context. Shiba Inu’s layer-2 network saw Shibarium usage collapse earlier this year. Meanwhile, the team recently credited community posting for a SHIB rally that trailed the market. Against that backdrop, a buzzy new SHIB pair gives holders one more place to use their tokens.
A follow is not an endorsement, though. So far, the Shiba Inu team has not publicly explained why it follows WOOF. The key question for traders is whether demand for the token holds once the attention fades. A cooling hype cycle would hit a pool this shallow hardest.
Zypto integrates Bitcoin mobile top-ups
Zypto has expanded the utility of Bitcoin inside its crypto wallet app by allowing users to recharge prepaid mobile phones and purchase data bundles directly with BTC. The feature enables Zypto App users to send airtime and mobile data to another person without using a bank card, cash transfer service, or separate mobile-recharge platform.
Bitcoin mobile top-ups are available through the Zypto App Marketplace. In it, users select a country, enter a phone number, confirm the network operator and available plan, then pay from their crypto wallet.
The service supports prepaid mobile recharges in more than 170 countries and connects users to over 800 network operators globally. This includes providers such as Airtel, Digicel, Flow, Lyca, MTN, and T-Mobile. While Bitcoin is one payment option, Zypto’s mobile top-up feature supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies like XRP, ETH, SOL, as well as USDT and USDC.
Zypto said users can access the Mobile Top-ups feature by opening the Marketplace section of the app, entering the recipient’s number, selecting a recharge amount, choosing a crypto asset, and confirming the transaction.
Most top-ups are delivered shortly after the on-chain payment is confirmed, although final delivery times can vary by carrier and location. Zypto displays the payment details and applicable processing fee before the user confirms the transaction.
The feature also supports airtime, standalone data, and combined airtime-and-data bundles where an operator makes those options available. This gives users a way to support family members, friends, or their own mobile service across borders using crypto.
Find out more here.
Closing remark
Seven major UK banks completed the first live customer transactions using tokenized pound deposits on a shared platform. Ethereum’s recovery above its 200-day moving averages has improved its longer-term technical outlook, per analysts’ comments.
FC Barcelona has launched Barca Fan Lab with Cardano and Andamio, enabling fans to use BarcaID-linked wallets to earn verifiable credentials through educational, community, sustainability and Web3-focused experiences.
StarkWare’s open optimization contest cut the estimated GPU cost of creating its experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction from about $320 to $67 in one week. Privy’s expanded TRON integration gives businesses and developers wallet, transaction, policy-control, transfer, and monitoring tools.
Shiba Inu’s official X account followed the newly launched WOOF meme coin, driving sharp short-term interest in its SHIB-denominated trading pair. For users in markets where prepaid airtime and mobile data are essential, Zypto’s Bitcoin-funded recharges offer another way to turn crypto balances into real-world value.
FAQs
Which UK banks took part in the tokenized trades?
They include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander.
Who did FC Barcelona partner with?
FC Barcelona partnered with Cardano to launch the Barca Fan Lab.
How did the AI agents impact the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin?
The cost of building a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction fell from $320 to roughly $67.
What's the latest on TRON?
Privy supported the TRON blockchain by giving developers and businesses more tools.
Who did Shiba Inu's X account follow?
The official Shiba Inu X account now follows WOOF.
