News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News – River Markets, a startup building trading infrastructure for prediction markets, has announced the completion of an $8.5 million seed funding round, led by Haun Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, and Qube Research Technologies, among others. The new capital will primarily be used to expand the engineering team, enhance trading system speed and security, and grow institutional clientele, while also developing new tools to support large-scale capital management and cross-platform trading.In recent years, prediction markets have drawn attention from institutional investors. Data from industry platforms shows that institutional trading demand is growing rapidly. For example, prediction market platform Kalshi previously stated that its institutional trading volume increased by approximately 800% within six months. Meanwhile, market participants have begun using prediction markets for risk hedging, including building trading positions around real-world economic variables such as carbon emission allowances and GPU rental prices. (Fortune)
According to PR Newswire, crypto mining company and energy infrastructure platform Hut 8 Corp. (NASDAQ/Toronto Stock Exchange: HUT) released its second quarter 2026 earnings report. Key highlights are as follows: In terms of commercialization, the company completed the commercialization of its first gigawatt-scale AI data center campus, Beacon Point, and signed a second 352 MW IT lease after the quarter ended, with a total base period contract value of approximately US$26.6 billion, expected annual average Net Operating Income (NOI) to exceed US$1.75 billion, covering 949 MW of contracted IT capacity, with all lessors being investment-grade counterparties. In terms of financing, the company completed US$7.5 billion of investment-grade project financing in a single quarter, including US$3.3 billion for the River Bend campus and US$4.25 billion for Beacon Point Phase I, all being non-recourse non-dilutive financing, setting a precedent for investment-grade construction financing for single-sponsor data center projects. In terms of finance, total revenue for the second quarter was US$74.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 81% (US$41.3 million in the same period last year); net loss was US$177.1 million, primarily due to an unrealized loss of US$138.6 million on digital assets; adjusted EBITDA was US$10.45 million, a year-over-year increase of 149%. In terms of construction, the two major campuses, River Bend and Beacon Point, combined
Odaily Benchmark has raised its price target for Hut 8 (HUT) from $85 to $165, citing the company's accelerated commercialization of its AI data center business and a total of $16.8 billion in long-term contracts for AI infrastructure. Analyst Mark Palmer stated that the commercialization progress of Hut 8's Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas "has changed the company's valuation logic," significantly increasing the project's value.Currently, Hut 8's stock price is approximately $97, meaning Benchmark's new target implies roughly 69% upside. The stock had previously fallen nearly 30% over the past six weeks.According to Benchmark's estimates, the redesigned first phase of the Beacon Point campus will support 352MW of IT capacity, a 57% increase from the original 224MW plan. The base term value of the lease for this initial phase is approximately $9.8 billion, with an estimated annualized net operating income of around $655 million.Additionally, the lease agreement for Hut 8's River Bend data center, signed with Fluidstack and supported by Google, is valued at approximately $7 billion. The combined base term value of the two contracts reaches $16.8 billion. If tenants exercise the included 5-year renewal options, the potential total value could rise to $42.8 billion. (The Block)
According to PR Newswire, the Open Transaction Layer (OTL) officially launched on May 28 as an open industry initiative aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination standard for on-chain finance. OTL defines shared protocols among institutions, non-custodial wallets, and AI agents for identity verification, messaging, and transaction coordination—covering the entire transaction lifecycle, including discovery, compliance, and settlement. The founding alliance comprises over 25 members, including leading financial institutions, payment service providers, and blockchain foundations such as Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, MetaMask, Robinhood, Securitize, Wintermute, Solana Foundation, and Polygon. OTL’s technical specifications are built upon mature standards including W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and ISO 20022, and adopt a modular five-layer architecture covering Identity, Session, Transport, Messaging, and Application layers. The specifications have been published under an open-source license at otl.network, and the alliance is also open to additional institutional participation.
: Multiple institutions including Robinhood, MetaMask, and eToro, along with Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, Securitize, Wintermute, and others, jointly announced their participation in the "Open Transaction Layer (OTL)" initiative, aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination protocol layer for on-chain finance.OTL is positioned as an open protocol stack for coordinating identity verification, compliance validation, transaction messaging, and execution processes among wallets, institutions, and AI agents, addressing the integration fragmentation problem currently plaguing cross-institutional interactions in on-chain finance, where entities operate in silos.The current coalition members include payment companies, trading platforms, wallets, market makers, and custody and stablecoin infrastructure providers, including Robinhood, MetaMask, eToro, MoonPay, SoFi, Wintermute, among others, as well as foundations from multiple public chains such as TON, Solana, Stellar, and Polygon. (Financefeeds)
According to PRNewswire, Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 announced an agreement with West Feliciana Parish in Louisiana, U.S., to invest $16 million locally to support the construction of an AI data center. The funds will be used to expand the local water supply system for the River Bend AI Data Center campus.