TheChek News Flow

World’s second-biggest stablecoin grew in late 2025, defying a crash in bitcoin and other digital assets

Circle Internet Group CRCL 29.72%increase; green up pointing triangle said its fourth-quarter profit jumped after crypto investors continued to flock to its stablecoin despite the late 2025 meltdown in digital-asset prices.

The company’s shares jumped 20% in midmorning trading.

Circle, the issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin, reported a net income from continuing operations of $133.4 million, or 43 cents a share, in the fourth quarter. The company earned $4.4 million in the year-earlier period, according to a regulatory filing. Total revenue surged 77% to $770 million. Wall Street analysts expected the company to earn 16 cents a share on revenue of $747 million.

Circle had a blockbuster stock-market debut in June last year, with shares surging far above its initial offering price. The shares have since tanked nearly 80% from their peak amid a crypto downturn that pummeled token prices and dampened investor sentiment.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies typically pegged to the U.S. dollar and have a fixed value of $1. They are considered a critical foundation of the crypto ecosystem, enabling people to quickly trade in and out of positions and move money across borders.

On Wednesday, Circle said its flagship stablecoin, USDC, ended 2025 with $75.3 billion in circulation, up 72% from a year ago.

“Circle typically benefits when you see increased volatility in the market because people liquidate their tokens and then they go into USDC,” Citigroup analyst Peter Christiansen said.

The company has also profited from the pro-crypto stance of the Trump administration, which enacted the stablecoin bill known as the Genius Act into law last year. Circle now sits at the heart of a fight between crypto firms and the banking lobby that has stalled the Clarity Act, a measure that would provide the first comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. The impasse centers on stablecoin rewards, yield-bearing token products that banks claim are unregulated deposits that threaten traditional savings accounts.

Circle Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he was “cautiously optimistic” the legislation would pass in April or May. “My view is it’s a critical and necessary piece of legislation to fulfill the president’s goal of making the United States the crypto capital of the world,” he said.

For the full year, Circle reported a loss of $70 million on revenue of $2.7 billion. The loss was mainly driven by expenses for stock-based compensation unlocked by its initial public offering.

Circle generates interest income on short-term Treasurys and other cash-equivalents that back its USDC stablecoin, leaving it vulnerable to the volatility of interest rates.

To make its business less reliant on interest income, the company launched a payments network and its own blockchain, called Arc. It is also spending a lot of time on artificial intelligence, including helping developers who are building AI agents and building systems to better support agentic payments, Allaire said on Wednesday’s earnings call.

Circle paid $461 million in distribution and transaction costs to partners such as Coinbase Global and Binance to facilitate USDC’s use and adoption. The figure rose 52% from a year ago as Circle expanded its strategic partnerships with other companies.

Analysts and investors have noted that competition is likely to intensify in the stablecoin sector as traditional players enter the market. Tether’s stablecoin, the world’s biggest, boasts a $184 billion market value that is more than double USDC’s. Smaller rivals, including USD1, the $4.7 billion stablecoin launched by the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial, have also emerged.

Allaire said he is confident about Circle’s position.

“Importantly, it’s a market that, despite the efforts of many other firms to enter and compete, is really a market of two major issuers,” he said. “And this reflects the very durable network effects that we maintain that are significant barriers to entry and adoption.”

The Galaxy S26 phones will hit the shelves in the U.S. and other markets on March 11

SEOUL—Samsung 005930 1.75%increase; green up pointing triangle Electronics said the artificial-intelligence features on its latest flagship Galaxy smartphones unveiled Wednesday were designed to work effortlessly without the user needing to figure out the technology.

“AI provides exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, without you having to go looking for it,” said Kang Min-seok, a Samsung executive vice president who leads smartphone product planning.

In one example, users of the new phones can press the side button to call up an Uber ride, entering the destination by voice or text. In partnership with Google’s Gemini AI, the phone will take care of opening the Uber app, inputting the address and finding a driver.

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 phones, the company’s flagship lineup, will hit the shelves in the U.S. and other markets on March 11.

Reflecting higher memory-chip prices, the price of the base model will rise $40 from the prior generation to about $900. The larger-screen Galaxy S26 Plus costs about $1,100, an increase of $100. The top-line Galaxy S26 Ultra is priced at $1,300, the same as the prior year’s model.

Samsung says it has the most AI-enabled mobile devices of any company. It said roughly 800 million of its mobile devices—including smartphones, tablets, wearables and laptops—would be AI-enabled by the end of this year.

The South Korean company has often been ahead of Apple in bringing generative AI features to smartphones, such as the “circle-to-search” feature offered with Google that lets users search an image on the screen by circling it.

Samsung’s internal research has found more than 80% of consumers think AI will be useful or necessary but the same proportion feel actually using it is hard. The Galaxy S26 phones deploy AI “without you even having to think about it,” Kang said.

He said he expected the smartphone to be the main vehicle through which people make use of AI because its tools and hardware such as the screen make it hard to be fully replaced by AI-dedicated devices such as AI glasses.

With the Galaxy S26, photos can be edited directly in the gallery app by entering a prompt, such as a command to make a rainy day look sunny. If someone asks in a message about making lunch plans on a certain date, the user’s schedule for the date will automatically appear on the side.

Some AI features are offered by connecting to outside services via the cloud, while others run locally on the device using Samsung’s proprietary generative AI model called Gauss, Kang said. The company is continuing to develop Gauss for products and internal company systems, he said.

Our whole lives flash across our mobile display—bank balances, passwords and much, much more. This new tech could keep us safer.

I tried a new Samsung 005930 1.75%increase; green up pointing triangle smartphone feature called Privacy Display—and I’m convinced that every device needs it. The tool obscures what’s on your screen from the people around you. It’s the first security screen built into a mobile device, the new Galaxy S26 Ultra, announced Wednesday.

Someone who can see your screen can learn a lot about you: how much is in your bank account, what corporate secrets lurk in your email or—most sensitively—the code you type to unlock your phone. We’ve reported that thieves who spied on people entering their passcodes could use them to lock victims out of their digital lives.

Samsung’s Privacy Display would defend against those intruders. After a few hours playing with it, I see how it could be an essential security tool—and also shield your fellow airplane passengers from that graphic HBO binge-watch. Apple and everyone else making smartphones should adopt this.

How it works

When you’re looking directly at the screen, everything looks…normal. When I picked up the S26 Ultra at a demo in San Francisco, I had to ask if the Privacy Display was active. Then, as I tilted the phone to the side, the display went dark, like it was turned off.

This isn’t a software trick but an innovation of the physical OLED display itself. Wide pixels, which emit light to the sides, are separated from narrow, front-pointing pixels. In privacy mode, the device dims those wide pixels, while the narrow pixels emit light only at your face. Within a 30-degree viewing angle, the screen is visible. Beyond that, it’s dark.

The result emulates those cheap plastic screen privacy filters, but without the downsides: A plastic filter might only block snoopers from side to side, not from all angles, and can get in the way when you don’t want them. Because Samsung’s software can control which pixels to disable—and when—it can selectively obstruct parts of the screen, then turn off the shield when you don’t need it.

You can set Privacy Display to turn on only when you’re typing your device’s passcode, or using certain apps, such as your password manager. It can shield incoming notifications—just the pop-up and nothing else. You can also create routines to, for example, disable Privacy Display when you get home.

The feature doesn’t protect you from all prying eyes. I could still see the PIN pad as I stood directly behind a representative holding a protected screen.

Samsung product manager Charles Uptegrove said the technology was five years in the making. The feature could extend battery life, because shutting off the wide pixels means less power is needed. The company isn’t making that claim but I am going to try it out in my own testing.

For now, Privacy Display is only available on S26 Ultra, the top-of-the-line $1,300 model shipping on March 11. The feature requires special hardware, so it can’t become available on other phones via software update.

I’m hopeful this essential, security-preserving technology will go beyond this year’s Ultra, maybe even beyond the company’s own line. Apple relies heavily on Samsung’s displays for iPhones, so it’s possible the functionality could cross over. Uptegrove said he couldn’t comment on that side of the business and any of the company’s future plans.

As a fan of iPhones and Google Pixel phones as well as Samsung’s Galaxy phones, here’s my plea: We carry our entire lives in our pockets, and that six-digit code protecting our phones is the master key. If every phone adopted this disappearing act, we could all be safer.

The prediction-market platform is cracking down on potential instances where users may have traded on inside information or manipulated markets

A former California gubernatorial candidate and a video editor to YouTube streamer MrBeast were fined by Kalshi for violating its rules for making prediction-market wagers on its platform.

Their fines were the first disciplinary actions to be disclosed publicly by Kalshi, the company said.

Kyle Langford, who ran for governor in California, was fined $2,246.36, including the amount related to his trades and penalties of $2,000, and banned on the platform for five years after posting a video on X seemingly showing him betting on his victory, according to a notice posted on Kalshi’s website.

Kalshi prohibits candidates of political race from making bets in markets related to their own elections, as well as those employed by political-action committees.

“As a candidate, Langford qualified as a direct decision maker for this contract and had direct influence on the outcome of the underlying event,” Kalshi said in the notice.

Kalshi also invoked disciplinary action against Artem Kaptur, who traded around $4,000 on markets tied to MrBeast’s videos while working for the YouTube star. Kalshi said it fined the user $20,397.58, including his profits and penalties of $15,000, and enacted a 2-year account suspension.

Kalshi was notified of the trades by its surveillance systems and users who noticed Kaptur’s “near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous”

“In both cases, our team collected evidence, applied Kalshi’s disciplinary process fairly, and concluded there was sufficient evidence that a trading violation occurred,” Bobby DeNault, head of enforcement, wrote in a post on Kalshi’s website.

A representative for MrBeast didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Tensions between the U.S.A. and Iran are at an all-time high and the media has chosen to cover a $200 campaign gimmick (aka betting on I, myself) from last year,” Langford said in a statement. “Is this really the state of our political discourse?”

The proliferation of prediction markets has raised concerns about users making trades using inside information and manipulating markets to score windfalls.

The prediction market platform said it reported both cases to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The fines were imposed by Kalshi, depending on the size of the trades and which rules they violated, which said it would donate them to a nonprofit organization. Neither trader withdrew their profits from their accounts.

Kalshi and Polymarket, a rival prediction-markets platform, let users bet on everything from election victories to the outcome of sporting events to how many inches of snow New York City will receive this week.

As prediction markets explode in popularity, Kalshi said that it has opened 200 investigations over the past year on potential cases of insider trading on its platform and that more than a dozen so far have been found to be possibly in violation of Kalshi’s rules.

“No financial exchange is immune from bad actors,” wrote DeNault. “We’re committed to deterring and finding the bad actors, manipulators, and those who willingly cheat.”

The prediction-market platform is cracking down on potential instances where users may have traded on inside information or manipulated markets

A former California gubernatorial candidate and a video editor to YouTube streamer MrBeast were fined by Kalshi for violating its rules for making prediction-market wagers on its platform.

Their fines were the first disciplinary actions to be disclosed publicly by Kalshi, the company said.

Kyle Langford, who ran for governor in California, was fined $2,246.36, including the amount related to his trades and penalties of $2,000, and banned on the platform for five years after posting a video on X seemingly showing him betting on his victory, according to a notice posted on Kalshi’s website.

Kalshi prohibits candidates of political race from making bets in markets related to their own elections, as well as those employed by political-action committees.

“As a candidate, Langford qualified as a direct decision maker for this contract and had direct influence on the outcome of the underlying event,” Kalshi said in the notice.

Kalshi also invoked disciplinary action against Artem Kaptur, who traded around $4,000 on markets tied to MrBeast’s videos while working for the YouTube star. Kalshi said it fined the user $20,397.58, including his profits and penalties of $15,000, and enacted a 2-year account suspension.

Kalshi was notified of the trades by its surveillance systems and users who noticed Kaptur’s “near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous”

“In both cases, our team collected evidence, applied Kalshi’s disciplinary process fairly, and concluded there was sufficient evidence that a trading violation occurred,” Bobby DeNault, head of enforcement, wrote in a post on Kalshi’s website.

A representative for MrBeast didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Tensions between the U.S.A. and Iran are at an all-time high and the media has chosen to cover a $200 campaign gimmick (aka betting on I, myself) from last year,” Langford said in a statement. “Is this really the state of our political discourse?”

The proliferation of prediction markets has raised concerns about users making trades using inside information and manipulating markets to score windfalls.

The prediction market platform said it reported both cases to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The fines were imposed by Kalshi, depending on the size of the trades and which rules they violated, which said it would donate them to a nonprofit organization. Neither trader withdrew their profits from their accounts.

Kalshi and Polymarket, a rival prediction-markets platform, let users bet on everything from election victories to the outcome of sporting events to how many inches of snow New York City will receive this week.

As prediction markets explode in popularity, Kalshi said that it has opened 200 investigations over the past year on potential cases of insider trading on its platform and that more than a dozen so far have been found to be possibly in violation of Kalshi’s rules.

“No financial exchange is immune from bad actors,” wrote DeNault. “We’re committed to deterring and finding the bad actors, manipulators, and those who willingly cheat.”

1. Tap Mix on one of your playlists and then tap Edit to find Smart Reorder.
2. Tracks are now reordered with BPM and key so that your transitions sound better.
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Formula 1 naming rights deal raised concerns among investors about disposal by Canadian billionaire

Aston Martin chair Lawrence Stroll is not considering an exit from his investment in the UK luxury-car maker, its chief executive says, as the company haemorrhages cash and struggles to turn itself around.

In an interview, Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark defended the £50mn sale of its Formula 1 naming rights to AMR GP Holdings, the racing team’s holding company that is indirectly controlled by Stroll.

The deal, announced last week, had raised concerns among some investors that it paved the way for Stroll to sell the carmaker since he had secured perpetual rights to use the Aston Martin name for the racing team.

“I can’t speak for Lawrence directly but everything I’ve seen in the past 15 months demonstrates more commitment to this brand than probably any other shareholder in the history of this brand,” Hallmark said, adding that the sale of the F1 naming rights was “supportive and not an exit strategy at all”.

Last year, Aston Martin raised £52.5mn by selling 75mn new shares to Stroll’s consortium, which increased its stake in the group to 33 per cent from 28 per cent. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, China’s Geely and Germany’s Mercedes-Benz also own stakes in the carmaker. 

After the company raised another £50mn by selling its F1 naming rights to AMR, some shareholders questioned whether the valuation was low. Aston Martin had paid about £20mn a year to AMR — equivalent to 40 per cent of the sale of the naming rights — to put the Aston Martin name on its race cars under a sponsorship deal. 

Chief financial officer Doug Lafferty said the valuation was “independently verified” and that it was “a good deal” for both parties, allowing the group to monetise an existing long-term agreement under which AMR can use the company name in F1 until 2055. 

Despite repeated funding support from Stroll, there has been consistent investor speculation over the Canadian billionaire’s intentions with Aston Martin in the longer term. The company also faces future funding needs with a cash liability of £73mn from 2026 onwards related to a deal with US electric-car maker Lucid to use its technology.

The sale of its F1 naming rights came as Aston Martin on Wednesday reported that its adjusted loss before tax and interest more than doubled from 2024 to £189mn in 2025, while its net debt increased 19 per cent to £1.4bn. The company issued a profit warning last week and confirmed plans to reduce its worldwide workforce by up to 20 per cent as it came under fresh pressure from higher US tariffs. 

For 2026, the carmaker projected that its wholesale volumes would probably remain flat at about 5,450 vehicles while its gross margin is expected to improve into the upper 30 per cent level compared with 29 per cent last year.

Since taking over as CEO in September 2024, Hallmark has promised to make the company more “boring” in operational terms to bring more stability and predictability to the business. But it has issued repeated profit warnings over the past year as it faced supply chain disruption and uncertainty caused by US President Donald Trump’s trade war. 

Pointing to improvements in cost discipline, quality and delivery of its products, Hallmark said he was optimistic about a turnaround for the company.

But he warned: “The volatility is still so high . . . so we’re optimistic but we’re on standby for anything that happens.”

Under the US-UK trade deal that took effect last year, Trump agreed to cut a 27.5 per cent tariff on cars imported from the UK to 10 per cent for the first 100,000 vehicles each year. But the system has created uncertainty since the quota is based on a first-come, first-served basis. 

“The challenge with [the quota system] is that if there is a crisis, the lead time to put changes in place is so long that it creates another crisis,” Hallmark said. “But at the moment, there is not a lot of demonstrable progress in coming to a better resolution.”

Members of parliament impose €1bn cap on deals with companies backed by Peter Thiel and Daniel Ek

German lawmakers have slashed the value of two flagship contracts to buy kamikaze drones from start-ups backed by tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Daniel Ek, striking a blow to Berlin’s plans to adopt unmanned weapons.

The Bundestag’s budget committee, which has the power to block or amend all significant arms deals, stressed the need for “moderation” in military spending as it cut the total expenditure on contracts with Stark and Helsing.

Berlin-based start-up Stark, backed by Thiel, had been set for a contract worth as much as €2.9bn, while Munich-based Helsing, whose backers include Spotify founder Ek, was in line for a deal valued at up to €1.46bn.

But the committee on Wednesday cut the maximum combined value of the two contracts by more than half, imposing a cap of €1bn per producer.

It also mandated the defence ministry to approve further drone purchases beyond an initial order, worth €269mn for each company.

A motion approved by the committee acknowledged the need for decisiveness and speed as Germany seeks to spend hundreds of billions of euros on overhauling its military in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Security demands decisiveness. Budgetary management demands moderation,” the committee said. “Where military urgency meets commitments of billions, it is the task of parliament to combine speed with responsibility,” it added.

The discrepancy in the price between the two companies had caused unease among some members of parliament, who also had concerns about committing billions of euros in taxpayer funds to two young companies whose products have yet to be fully proved as effective in combat. 

One person familiar with the details of the contracts told the FT that the Virtus drones produced by Stark were twice as expensive as the HX-2 made by Helsing. A person close to Stark said the two companies’ systems could not be directly compared and had different performance parameters.

Green members of parliament have also voiced concerns about Thiel’s role as a shareholder, though Wednesday’s motion made no mention of him.

Defence minister Boris Pistorius and his officials have stressed the importance of procuring drones from more than one company to ensure that the military was not over-reliant on a single start-up.

Officials also plan to award a contract for armed drones to Rheinmetall in the coming weeks or months, the FT reported this week.

Speaking ahead of Wednesday’s decision, Pistorius said the deal was “extremely important”. He said Berlin needed to “intensify” work on drone technology and learn from the experience of Ukraine.

The move to limit the value of the drone contracts is likely to deepen tensions between the defence ministry and the budget committee. They have already clashed over several other deals this year.

Stark said the approval of its contract marked “a new era in German defence policy and demonstrates trust in innovative companies”.

Asked about the cap on its value, a spokesperson said: “We are ready at any time to deliver additional systems if required.”

Helsing declined to comment. The defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wayve’s self-driving tech has attracted a diverse set of investors in the company’s latest $1.2 billion funding round, including three automakers, top venture and institutional firms, and returning backers Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber. The total raise could reach $1.5 billion thanks to another $300 million from Uber contingent on deploying robotaxis, beginning in London.

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the U.K. startup, which is now valued at $8.6 billion. The funding round illustrates the eagerness among Big Tech, legacy automakers, and the investor community to profit from the burgeoning automated driving industry.

Wayve provides what founder and CEO Alex Kendall calls the “contrarian” option in automated driving — contrarian both in its approach to tech and its business model, he told TechCrunch in an interview Tuesday.

“I think the technology chessboard is set around where different companies have invested on the technology strategy, and now the commercial chessboard is being arranged,” Kendall said. “We took a very contrarian view on the technology side. We were the first to build end-to-end deep learning for autonomous driving, and we pioneered this approach. Now, when it comes to this phase of moving into commercialization, we’re also taking a contrarian business model approach.”

Wayve, which launched in 2017, uses a self-learning approach to its software. The company developed a software layer using an end-to-end neural network that doesn’t require high-definition maps and only uses data to teach the vehicle how to drive.

This data-driven learning approach underpins two products: an “eyes on” assisted-driving system and an “eyes off” fully automated-driving system that could be applied to robotaxis or consumer vehicles that can handle all of the driving in certain environments.

The company’s pitch to customers is the agnostic nature of its technology, which is not reliant on specific sensors or maps. The automated-driving software captures data from whatever sensors are on the vehicle and directs the system’s driving decisions. Wayve’s software can also run on whatever chip its OEM partners already have in their vehicles.

It should be noted, however, that Nvidia, which is also a backer, has had a close development relationship with Wayve since 2018. The startup’s Gen 3 platform, which was unveiled last fall, uses an in-vehicle compute autonomous vehicle development kit called Nvidia Drive AGX Thor. The Gen 3 platform will allow Wayve to offer eyes-off advanced driving-assistance systems and Level 4 — or fully driverless — features that will work on city streets and highways.

The company’s tech is somewhat similar to how Tesla has approached automated driving, although there are key differences in their business models.

Wayve doesn’t want to be the operator of its hands-free driving-assistance system or its “eyes-off” fully automated-driving system. (For comparison, Waymo is largely the operator of its robotaxis, although it does have partners.) Nor does Wayve want to build vehicles bundled with its own software, as Tesla does. Instead, it is selling its “embodied AI” to automakers and other tech companies like Uber.

Kendall argues that this is the business model with the largest addressable market, but he says it’s only viable because Wayve built an AI that generalizes across different hardware and environments.

“If you build an autonomy stack that’s specific to a sensor or compute architecture, [or] if you build it where it requires mapping or something like this, then you can’t take option three,” Kendall said, referring to the business model his company has chosen.

Nissan and Uber are both Wayve customers. Nissan said the startup’s self-driving software will be used to beef up the advanced driver-assistance system in its cars starting in 2027. Meanwhile, later this year, Uber plans to launch commercial trials in vehicles equipped with Wayve’s software.

Its relationship with Uber appears poised to stretch well beyond a pilot program, though. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s statement Tuesday hints at the scope of its partnership with and investment in Wayve.

“We are very proud to continue to deepen our partnership with Wayve, with plans to deploy together in more than 10 markets around the world. Wayve’s powerful end-to-end approach is purpose-built for scale, safety, and effectiveness, and we’re excited to work with them across multiple OEMs and geographies, which we’ll share more about soon.”

The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. New investors include the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital, and other global institutional investors, the company said.

Global automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis — all of which plan to use Wayve’s technology — also participated. Nvidia, which participated in Wayve’s $1.05 billion Series C round, said last year it was evaluating a $500 million strategic investment in Wayve’s next raise. While Nvidia did participate, Kendall wouldn’t disclose the exact amount of its investment or whether it came close to that $500 million figure.