MARA Holdings (MARA) now holds 49,940 bitcoin (BTC), a trove that puts the public miner near the 50,000 threshold and makes it the second-largest publicly traded bitcoin holder behind Strategy (MSTR).

At current prices, the stack is worth close to $5.3 billion. Out of its treasury, 15,534 BTC are “pledged as collateral or held in a separately managed account” for the firm’s benefit, said the company in its June production update.

“This milestone reflects our disciplined approach to accumulating bitcoin through both mining and strategic purchases,” said MARA’s Chairman and CEO, Fred Thiel.

As for operations, MARA won 211 blocks in June, a 25% decline from the previous month thanks mostly to «weather-related curtailment and the temporary deployment of older machines in Garden City while storm-related damage was being remediated,» said the company.

The bitcoin miner is looking to expand its hash rate to 75 exahash by year-end, representing a 40% rise from last year’s year-end hash rate.

Shares are lower by 2.7% premarket alongside an overnight dip in the price of bitcoin to $106,400.

Securitize, one of the largest tokenized asset issuers, and oracle provider RedStone have released a whitepaper they say introduces a new model for securely verifying Net Asset Value (NAV) data on-chain, tailored specifically for tokenized private funds.

The model, dubbed the Trusted Single Source Oracle (TSSO), is designed to address a key gap in decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure: how to reliably prove that each NAV update really comes from the trusted source — and hasn’t been tampered with once it’s on-chain.

In traditional crypto markets, oracles pull data from multiple price feeds to guard against manipulation or errors. But for private funds, the NAV is calculated by a single fund administrator. That creates a unique problem: there’s no way to double-check the number through market aggregation. For DeFi protocols that rely on accurate collateral values, this single point of trust has been a sticking point.

The TSSO framework solves this by creating a cryptographically linked chain of NAV updates, according to the whitepaper. Each update includes a secure digital signature, a timestamp, a reference to the previous record, and a hash that locks the sequence together. The system uses two keys: a cold-stored “root key” for major updates and a “chain key” for small, routine changes that stay within tight thresholds. This design aims to balance high security with the practical need to refresh NAV data without constant manual work.

“We need to make sure that we can fully authenticate the information, that we can check that no one is compromising with the data, and we can only rely on a single source. That’s why the whole process needs to be taken to the next level – so that’s the challenge,” said Jakub Wojciechowski, the founder of RedStone, in an interview with CoinDesk.

According to Wojciechowski, Securitize is taking the lead on the development of the product, “building sort of like an internal blockchain, which is a chain with the price updates,” he said. “We know that they will not miss any single price update, because the next price update is cryptographically connected to the previous one.” After that, “once everything is properly signed, we gather the ability to verify that the data truly comes from the source.”

Tokenized funds are widely seen as one of the next big growth areas for blockchain. But their success depends on bridging the trust gap between traditional finance and crypto infrastructure.

While still early, the effort highlights the growing push to build institutional-grade infrastructure for DeFi. If widely adopted, models like TSSO could make it easier for tokenized funds to integrate with on-chain tools.

Securitize said that it is already piloting TSSO with some of its clients, and that it hopes to make significant progress and have it more widely available soon.

“This is open to the industry, but for Securitize, it’s very natural for the assets that we’re dealing with,” said Jorge Serna, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Securitize. “We have been issuing treasury funds and credit funds for which either we’re the transfer agent or the fund admin or perform both functions, and we are already, for those in particular, publishing the price feeds via Redstone. And so this is something that definitely we want to secure between Securitize and Redstone.”

Read more: Securitize’s Tokenized Credit Fund Set for Solana DeFi Debut as RWA Trend Expands

Circle (CRCL) has the opportunity to be a prime facilitator of stablecoin adoption, Wall Street bank Citigroup said in a research report Monday assuming coverage of the stock.

Despite the stock’s outsized rally since going public, Circle’s valuation is not stretched, the report said. The stablecoin issuer priced at $31 a share in its initial public offering (IPO), and hit a record high of $299 last week before slipping back to $181 since.

The bank’s analysts initiated coverage of the shares with a buy/high risk rating and a $243 price target, or about 34% upside from last night’s close.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is tied to another asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold. They play a major role in cryptocurrency markets and are also used to transfer money internationally.

Circle benefits from «scarcity value, a ‘winner takes most’ construct, a large addressable opportunity, legislative momentum» and «significant operating leverage potential,» the report said.

The company’s «key competitive strength is its neutrality,» analysts led by Peter Christiansen wrote, adding that «Circle’s defense against the risk of stablecoin fragmentation — being best of breed will be crucial.»

Due to the company’s weighty operating leverage and low capital intensity, the stablecoin issuer can achieve large excess returns given the potential addressable market, the report added.

Rival Wall Street bank JPMorgan is not as bullish, beginning coverage of Circle with an underweight rating yesterday, citing the stock’s valuation.

Read more: Circle Valuation Is ‘Outside Our Comfort Zone,’ Initiate at Underweight: JPMorgan