Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson: There are currently no plans to hold a high-level meeting between the United States and Iran.

Nasdaq-listed company Sharplink (ticker: SBET) announced it purchased 10,000 Ether at an average price of approximately $1,611, bringing its total ETH holdings to 886,725 units. The holdings consist of 632,719 native ETH, 181,299 ETH redeemable via LsETH, and 72,707 ETH redeemable via weETH. Separately, the company repurchased 2,132,773 common shares on the open market at an average price of $4.69, bringing total repurchases since the launch of its buyback program in August 2025 to 4,071,223 shares. This week, the firm also raised $75 million through a registered direct offering of common stock and warrants.

Goldman Lampe Private Bank, headquartered in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, announced it has capitalized on the recent crypto market pullback to acquire approximately €120 million worth of Bitcoin. The bank claims to be the world’s first financial institution to launch cryptocurrency time deposit products. Its board chairman stated that this dip investment aims to strengthen institutional holdings and solidify the bank’s leading position in the integration of traditional private banking and crypto assets. Founded in 1934, the bank’s core businesses include private banking, wealth management and gold trading.

Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya TV cited sources as reporting that Iranian and U.S. delegations will hold indirect talks in Qatar tomorrow with the participation of mediators. The negotiations will focus on the Strait of Hormuz and overall regional stability. Sources also noted that Iran will receive $3 billion in frozen assets by the end of this week. Both delegations are expected to meet separately with Qatar’s Prime Minister and Pakistani mediators in Doha today. Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei stated that the release of the frozen assets is underway.

New York Life Investment Management (NYLIM), the asset management division of life insurance giant New York Life, which oversees $807 billion in assets, announced a partnership with tokenization platform Centrifuge to launch its first blockchain-based investment product: the NYLIM Anemoy U.S. High-Yield Corporate Bond Separate Portfolio (HYB), bringing its U.S. high-yield corporate bond strategy on-chain. Eligible investors can use Circle-issued USDC stablecoin to subscribe for and redeem shares, while the underlying portfolio remains managed by New York Life. This collaboration expands Centrifuge’s roster of partner asset managers; the platform has previously provided tokenization services to institutions including Apollo and Janus Henderson, with its related assets increasingly integrated into DeFi protocols such as Aave and Morpho. Centrifuge is also Coinbase’s preferred tokenization partner and has received strategic investment from the crypto exchange. According to data from rwa.xyz, the current market size of tokenized real-world assets (excluding stablecoins) has surpassed $300 billion. Citi forecasts the tokenized asset market could reach $5.5 trillion by the 2030s, while Standard Chartered projects it will expand to $2 trillion by 2028. Institutional focus in this space is shifting from early-stage tokenized U.S. Treasury bond funds to a broader range of asset classes including private credit, equities, and corporate bonds.

Crypto KOL Ansem has responded to the controversy surrounding the recent "creator token" trend. He admitted he was previously cautious about celebrities issuing tokens because he mistakenly assumed they would share his moral standards and wouldn’t "rug pull" for millions of dollars. "That assumption was wrong, but I won’t make the same mistake again," he said, stressing he is not a celebrity and has no plans to rug pull. Ansem noted he believes there is a mutually beneficial way to issue tokens: attract new users to the crypto industry, let people participate via tradable assets, provide liquidity for veteran crypto traders at the bear market bottom, and then channel the resulting attention to truly meaningful projects and teams in the space. He cited Dogecoin and BONK as examples: Dogecoin, which started from zero, still boasts a $11 billion market cap today and was a major user acquisition milestone for crypto; BONK revived the Solana ecosystem at the lowest point after the FTX collapse and airdropped tokens to core developers and teams. Ansem also disclosed he entered the crypto space in 2017, quit his software engineering job in 2021 to focus fully on crypto, and now co-founded trading app Bullpen.fi and hosts a podcast. He emphasized this is the first project he has led, where he controls the majority of token supply; multiple "degen coins" he previously supported were "dumped" after anonymous teams hoarded tokens in advance and hyped them using his influence.

According to Bitget market data, US-listed crypto-related stocks were broadly down in pre-market trading, with: MSTR down 3.62%; COIN down 2.08%, CRCL down 1.04%; SBET down 1.83%; BMNR down 1.38%, and PURR down 1.24%.