News linked to both this project and an event.
According to CoinDesk, the Bank of England (BOE) announced that its digital pound project has officially entered the second phase, focusing on testing whether public stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) can interoperate within a single payment stream to promote the modernization of cross-border trade finance. This experiment focuses on SME trade finance scenarios: exporters receive advance financing through stablecoin technology, while UK importers complete final settlement using the digital pound. Participants include UK fintech company NOBO Finance, global business data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet, and blockchain company Polygon Labs. The three parties will integrate wallet transaction data, open finance information, and business intelligence to build reusable credit assessment profiles for SMEs. Polygon will provide stablecoin settlement infrastructure through its Open Money Stack, encompassing fiat currency exchange, wallet, and smart contract functionalities. The BOE emphasized that the laboratory does not involve real customers or funds, does not represent a decision to officially issue the digital pound, and the experimental results will serve as a reference for the joint assessment of the digital pound by the Bank of England and the Treasury later this year.
According to official news, Prime Intellect announced the completion of a $130 million Series A financing round, led by Radical Ventures with participation from NVIDIA, Intel Capital, Dell Capital, and existing investors. The company stated that it will utilize the funds to continue building its "Open Superintelligence Stack" to support users in training, deploying, and continuously optimizing their own models.
Circle has released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. The data shows that as of the end of the first quarter, the circulating supply of USDC reached $77 billion, a year-over-year increase of 28%; on-chain transaction volume for USDC in the first quarter reached $21.5 trillion, up 263% year-over-year.The financial report indicates that Circle's total revenue and reserve income for the first quarter was $694 million, a 20% increase year-over-year; adjusted EBITDA was $151 million, up 24% year-over-year; net profit was $55 million, a 15% decrease year-over-year.Additionally, Circle disclosed that its ARC Token pre-sale raised $222 million, with a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion. Participants included institutions such as a16z crypto, BlackRock, and ARK Invest. The company also announced the launch of the "Agent Stack" infrastructure for AI agent scenarios, including products like Agent Wallets and Agent Marketplace, designed to support AI agent payments and commercial activities based on USDC.