Author: David Bold

Soneium, the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain developed by Sony Block Solutions Labs, is preparing to launch its native $SONEIUM token as part of a broader expansion into tokenized intellectual property, entertainment royalties, and blockchain-based investment products. The initiative marks a shift for Soneium from blockchain infrastructure toward an entertainment-focused economy where creators, studios, fans, and investors can participate in the commercial value of intellectual property.

The network, developed by Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture between Sony Group and blockchain infrastructure company Startale Group, plans to introduce tokenized entertainment assets spanning Japanese character franchises, K-pop concert royalties, and music catalog investments. The expansion comes as blockchain technology increasingly finds applications beyond cryptocurrencies, with tokenization opening new possibilities for financing and distributing revenue from traditionally illiquid assets.

Soneium Moves Into Tokenized Entertainment Assets

Central to the strategy is a new framework called Tokenized IP, which allows intellectual property owners to represent the economic value of creative works onchain. The model is designed to help creators raise capital directly from supporters while allowing fans and investors to participate in the commercial growth of entertainment properties. Soneium’s first initiative involves Moriusa, a Japanese character franchise owned by Super State Holdings, a Tokyo-based entertainment company.

Through tokenization, supporters can participate in the franchise’s expansion into merchandise, animated productions, and licensing opportunities, with potential revenue-sharing arrangements built into blockchain-based agreements. The network is also partnering with K-pop intellectual property company DayOneDream to explore tokenizing concert business royalties from established K-pop artists.

The partnership aims to give participants exposure to revenue generated by live entertainment, an investment category traditionally accessible through private commercial arrangements. Beyond individual entertainment properties, Soneium plans to introduce two additional investment products: IP Vault, offering indirect exposure to opportunities such as music catalog funds, and IP Bond, a proposed bond product backed by entertainment businesses. The company has not disclosed specific investment terms, expected returns, or launch dates for these products.

Native $SONEIUM Token to Support Ecosystem Expansion

Alongside its entertainment initiatives, Soneium plans to introduce $SONEIUM, a native ecosystem token intended to connect creators, developers, intellectual property owners, and users within its growing network. The token is designed to serve as an economic coordination mechanism, aligning participants with the broader development and adoption of Soneium’s entertainment ecosystem. However, the project has not yet disclosed the token’s full utility, tokenomics, supply, or distribution structure.

Further details about the token generation event will be announced at a later date. Soneium currently hosts more than 250 applications spanning music, gaming, anime, film, digital collectibles, and fan experiences. Its planned Soneium Portal will serve as a centralized entry point for discovering tokenized entertainment assets, participating in initial offerings, and eventually accessing fan engagement opportunities and royalty distributions. The Startale App will complement the platform by providing users with a way to manage digital assets and access applications across the ecosystem.

Building Intellectual Property Infrastructure for the AI Era

Another component of Soneium’s expansion focuses on how intellectual property is managed as artificial intelligence transforms content creation and distribution. The network is developing an Onchain IP Architecture designed to make licensing agreements, ownership relationships, and royalty payments programmable through blockchain infrastructure. The system includes an IP Registry for recording creative assets, an IP Graph for tracking relationships between original and derivative works, and an IP Execution Layer for managing licensing and revenue distribution. The approach could allow creators to establish predefined terms governing how their work is reused, adapted, or commercially exploited, including by AI-powered applications.

For example, when a character appears across games, merchandise, animation, and other formats, programmable agreements could help distribute revenue among the relevant rights holders and participants. Soneium also plans to support ERC-8432, a proposed Ethereum standard for registering intellectual property and publishing machine-readable licensing terms. The proposed standard aims to enable software applications and autonomous AI agents to discover creative works, verify licensing conditions and execute agreements without relying on a single proprietary platform.  Although the infrastructure could simplify certain licensing processes, its effectiveness will depend on adoption by rights holders, developers and entertainment businesses, as well as how onchain records correspond to legally enforceable intellectual property rights.

Sony’s Blockchain Initiative Expands Beyond Infrastructure

Soneium’s latest strategy reflects a broader effort to connect blockchain technology with established entertainment industries, particularly in Japan, where character franchises, anime, gaming and music represent significant intellectual property markets. Rather than focusing exclusively on digital collectibles, the network is attempting to establish financial infrastructure around the ownership, funding, and commercialization of creative assets. The approach also introduces potential questions around investor protections, revenue entitlements, and the regulatory treatment of entertainment-linked tokens, particularly where participants are offered exposure to commercial earnings.

“Entertainment starts with creators. Today, Soneium enters a new stage built to stand behind them,” said Yuji Kumagai, Head of Soneium Protocol. “We will help them fund their next work at a new scale, try new forms of expression and find fresh ways to connect with fans.”

With its planned native token, initial IP partnerships and proposed royalty-based investment products, Soneium is positioning itself at the intersection of blockchain finance and entertainment. The next test will be whether tokenized intellectual property can attract sustained participation from creators, rights holders and investors beyond the cryptocurrency market.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has added support for NEXO, the native token of digital asset wealth platform Nexo, introducing three trading pairs and expanding access to the token through one of the industry’s longest-running exchanges.

The listing went live on October 22, 2026, at 3:00 PM UTC, enabling users to trade NEXO against the U.S. dollar, Tether’s USDT, and Circle’s USDC.

The token is available through both Kraken and Kraken Pro, giving retail and professional traders another established platform through which to access the asset.

For Nexo, the listing represents an expansion of the market infrastructure supporting its native token, which has been part of the company’s digital asset ecosystem since 2018.

While the announcement centers on exchange availability, it also brings renewed attention to the token’s role within Nexo’s loyalty program, where eligible holders can receive benefits linked to the company’s financial services.

NEXO Gains Access to Kraken’s Trading Infrastructure

The introduction of NEXO/USD, NEXO/USDT, and NEXO/USDC pairs allows traders to choose between direct dollar trading and stablecoin-based markets.

These options can be particularly relevant to users who maintain balances in different currencies or prefer to execute trades using stablecoins rather than fiat.

The availability of NEXO on Kraken Pro also provides an additional trading option for more experienced market participants who use professional trading interfaces.

For existing NEXO holders, the listing creates another venue for buying and selling the token. For users who have not previously held NEXO, it offers a way to access the asset through Kraken’s established exchange infrastructure.

“Kraken adds another established venue for our native NEXO Token and brings it to a broad base of consumer and professional traders. Clients now have yet another established place to trade NEXO, and we are proud to have our token on one of the most respected exchanges in the digital assets space.”

—Yasen Yankov, Chief Product Officer at Nexo.

The announcement did not include projections for trading volumes or liquidity following the listing.

What Is the NEXO Token and How Does It Work?

NEXO launched in 2018 as the native token of Nexo, a platform focused on digital asset wealth services.

Rather than functioning solely as a tradable cryptocurrency, the token is integrated into Nexo’s loyalty program, which offers benefits to eligible customers who hold it.

Among the available benefits are reduced borrowing rates and fee-free transfers, alongside other advantages offered through the platform.

This gives NEXO a role beyond secondary-market trading, as the token is connected to the services available within Nexo’s ecosystem.

The distinction is important because the token’s use within Nexo and its availability on external exchanges serve different purposes.

Within Nexo, holding the token can provide access to loyalty benefits. On Kraken, the listing enables market participants to trade the token through an additional venue.

The new exchange support does not introduce changes to the loyalty program or announce new token functionality. Instead, it expands the options available to those seeking to acquire or trade NEXO.

Why Exchange Availability Matters for Utility Tokens

For cryptocurrencies associated with established platforms, access through major exchanges can be an important part of their broader market presence.

A token may have utility within a particular ecosystem, but external trading venues allow users to access it independently of the platform where those benefits are offered.

In NEXO’s case, the Kraken listing adds another route for market participants to acquire or sell the token while maintaining its existing function within Nexo’s loyalty program.

The inclusion of both fiat and stablecoin trading pairs also accommodates different approaches to cryptocurrency trading.

Dollar-based markets can appeal to users who prefer trading directly against fiat currencies, while stablecoin pairs can provide alternatives for traders already active in digital asset markets.

However, exchange listings do not necessarily translate into higher liquidity or sustained increases in demand. Those outcomes depend on factors including trading activity, market conditions, and investor interest.

Nexo Continues to Broaden Token Accessibility

The latest listing adds another established exchange to the trading infrastructure surrounding NEXO.

For Nexo, the announcement reflects a focus on making its native token available through a wider range of platforms while retaining its existing utility within the company’s digital asset services.

The move also provides Kraken users with access to a token connected to a loyalty program that offers benefits such as reduced borrowing rates and fee-free transfers.

With trading now operational across NEXO/USD, NEXO/USDT, and NEXO/USDC, the immediate development is an expansion in where the token can be traded.

Whether the listing leads to increased trading activity or broader adoption of the token remains to be seen, but it establishes another market access point for NEXO holders and prospective buyers.

Crypto event markets allow investors to ask specific questions about digital assets and get prices for those questions. People don’t need to purchase and hold Bitcoin, for example, and wonder if it’s going to go up in price. They can instead take a position on the question, “Will the SEC approve a Bitcoin ETF before X date?”

With event markets, ownership of the underlying asset is irrelevant. In predicting the outcome of an event, a trader may have bought a contract about an Ethereum upgrade, but that doesn’t give them ETH. A trader may have taken a position on a contract about the completion of a DeFi project, but that doesn’t mean they also own that project.

It’s not uncommon for trader expectations to be the opposite of what the news says. A quote may show an upgrade is complete, but if a contract is NOT settled in the trader’s favor, then it doesn’t mean the upgrade actually happened. Trader expectations are not necessarily correct.

How Crypto Event Contracts Establish Expectations and Prices

Binary yes/no contracts, which make up the large majority of events markets, settle at 1/0. A yes share priced at $0.60 means that, based on the traders’ expectations, there’s a ~60% chance that share will settle at $1. If it’s a no share, it will settle at $0.

Readers can use this framework to examine the question, deadline, and resolution criteria in contracts listed on PUBS.com prediction markets. A contract could pose the question, “Will the ETF receive approval by (the deadline)?” In this case, the definition of approval could vary. An announcement, an approved exchange rule change, and the start of trading could be different milestones.

Consider a hypothetical purchase of 100 Yes shares at $0.60 each. The initial cost is $60 before fees. If the condition is met, each share pays $100. The buyer makes a $40 profit before fees. If the condition is not met, each share pays nothing, and the buyer loses the $0.60.

 Prices can change before the settlement. Shares can be bought and sold on the open market; for example, if the share price goes up to $0.75, that share can be sold for $0.75, before fees, for a potential gain of $0.15, but could also be sold for a loss if the share price goes down.

Bid and asks on an order book dictate the spread. In a prediction market, displayed probability could be different from the price used for execution.

Decisions About ETFs, Network Upgrades, and Price Targets

Decisions markets about ETFs require close reading of regulatory milestones. In the case of a U.S. contract, the traders should check official SEC filings and orders instead of just relying on social media. The contract should name the relevant product, decision, authority, and deadline. If a decision is postponed, an application remains active, and a deadline-contingent contract would still settle.

Network upgrades provide different conditions. The developers may announce a target date and write software. They might then activate a test network and subsequently make upgrades to the main network. Each of these events is significant. Contracts should stipulate which milestone is relevant and how delays or partial deployments affect settlement.

The same principles above apply to Price Target markets. The phrase “Bitcoin ends at $100,000” is distinct from “Bitcoin hits $100,000”. In the former case, a very brief spike may be significant, while in the latter case, a very brief spike would not be. Check the named exchange or index, observation window, time zone, and treatment of missing or abnormal price data.

These terms may be connected to credible evidence and research. Regulatory documents may illuminate ETF developments, and announcements may be made about upgrades. The specified price feed may evidence the level of the market. Confirm and distinguish actual events from speculation, and in the process, determine whether you think the price is correct.

Review the liquidity, fees, maximum loss, and resolution process for a given position before you enter it. Thin markets make buying or selling expensive. Disputed outcomes may make the result of a trade challengeable and/or delay the settlement of a trade. Determine who will determine the result, what evidence they will consider, and whether there is a challenge process.

Confirm eligibility and withdrawal conditions before depositing. Just because you can see a market does not mean you can trade it from your current location or account.

Crypto event markets allow you to trade forecasts. To evaluate a position, you need to consider the rules and determine what is a reasonable estimate of the costs. Each position is subject to some degree of uncertainty until it is sold or the market resolves.

For years, banks have fought fraud by asking customers to prove who they are. With AI now able to fake faces, voices and documents convincingly, a more basic question is moving to the front: is there a real person on the other end at all?

That question sits at the center of World ID for banking and finance, unveiled on Monday at Money20/20 by World co-founder Alex Blania. The offering is pitched less as an identity product and more as a fraud control, aimed at the moments where a bank is most exposed: large transfers, new accounts and account recovery.

The pressure on the industry is growing. In 2024, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned that criminals were using deepfake photos and videos to get past checks on new account applications. The same year, an employee at engineering firm Arup wired about $25.6 million after a video call in which every other participant was a deepfake. Deloitte projects AI-enabled fraud losses in the U.S. could reach $40 billion by 2027, more than triple the 2023 estimate of $12.3 billion.

World’s approach is to stop trying to detect fakes and instead require proof of a verified human. A customer completes a one-time scan at World’s Orb device to obtain a Proof of Human, then stores it in the World ID app. From there, a bank can ask for that proof at sensitive points, such as approving an ACH or wire transfer, or regaining access to an account, a common entry point for account takeover. A separate Proof of Presence, done with a phone selfie, confirms the person is live in the moment.

The model also addresses a compliance headache. Banks must know more about their customers, but every document they collect becomes data they have to secure. World says institutions receive cryptographic proofs rather than the underlying information, so a bank can confirm a client’s age or nationality through a Proof of Attributes without storing a passport scan.

The next pressure point is AI agents. As consumers begin handing financial tasks to automated assistants, banks will need to tell an agent working for a real customer apart from anonymous bot traffic. World’s AgentKit, currently in beta, lets a person delegate their Proofs to an agent, which can then show a bank it is acting for a verified human without revealing who that person is. World argues this could become standard practice for agent-driven transactions that fall under consumer protection rules.

The same logic extends to internal risk. Through World ID for Zoom, a bank can require employees or counterparties to verify before joining a high-stakes call, with a Human Badge shown on screen once confirmed.

“World ID for banking and finance offers a suite of tools to add an AI-safe trust layer across their internal and external systems,” said Sandro Herbig, president of Tools for Humanity, which builds technology for World.

Bain Capital, OpenExchange and Outtake are early design partners. Adoption may depend on how many customers are willing to visit an Orb: World says more than 18 million people hold a Proof of Human so far, a fraction of the customer base at any large bank. To widen access, the company has placed Orbs at the New York Stock Exchange and is offering them for installation at corporate offices.

Back in 2014, Microsoft introduced Bitcoin for Xbox and Windows purchases, and the tech press treated it as proof the world was turning a corner. But it wasn’t. Microsoft dropped direct Bitcoin payments years ago, and now the option now only exists as a workaround through a third-party app. The headline outlived the product by a decade.

Why do companies keep making the announcement, then? Mostly because it makes them look current, wins a news cycle, and costs next to nothing to switch on through a payment processor. But what happens after that actually decides whether the adoption is real.

So let’s look at how Bitcoin is actually being used across a few different industries.

Retail: Wide, but mostly a payment rail

BitPay, Flexa and Coinbase Commerce let household names from Home Depot to AMC Theatres and Whole Foods take crypto at the till. For example, BitPay’s own settlement options let a merchant take payouts in nine fiat currencies or fifteen cryptocurrencies, split however they like. The flexibility exists because most retailers want the sale, not the coin. A processor converts the payment before the finance team ever has to think about volatility.

That makes retail crypto’s biggest surface area and its shallowest use. A customer paying in Bitcoin at Chipotle is using it as a payment method. Nobody at Chipotle is pricing burritos in Bitcoin, holding Bitcoin overnight, or building a business around Bitcoin cash flow. 

It’s a rail, not a currency, and the roster of retailers using that rail turns over constantly. The list of “companies that accept Bitcoin” circulating online is mostly the same list from five years ago, with a few names removed and nobody updating the memo.

Travel: A real niche, with the same asterisk

Travel is smaller than betting but shows the same pattern of genuine, repeat operational use rather than one-off publicity. Travala, the crypto-native booking platform, reported that 80% of over $103 million in 2024 bookings were paid in crypto, and the company’s own August 2026 monthly report shows the business still running at meaningful scale, with monthly gross revenue north of $7.3 million and payments accepted across more than 100 cryptocurrencies.

That’s an airline seat or a hotel room being sold and paid for entirely on-chain, with no fiat step in the middle for the company that built its business that way. It’s a narrower slice of the travel industry than the “companies accepting Bitcoin” listicles imply, since most major airlines and hotel chains that trialed crypto in the past have let the pilots lapse. But where it survives, it survives because a platform was built around it rather than bolted onto it.

Online betting: The deepest and best-documented adoption

The picture of Bitcoin adoption changes in gambling because it’s more convenient and has fewer restrictions than fiat money. A crypto deposit clears in minutes instead of the days a card or bank transfer can take, the fees are a fraction of what a payment processor charges, and none of it depends on a bank deciding whether to wave a gambling transaction through. 

Betting is a business built on moving money quickly and often, so it’s the use case crypto was designed for. And that’s why a sportsbook like Sportbet.one, a soccer betting site that accepts Bitcoin, was built around crypto payments from the outset. 

The most current numbers come from Tanzanite.xyz, whose September 2026 report puts tracked deposits at $47.6 billion across 41 centralized crypto casinos over the trailing twelve months, with $4.23 billion in August alone from 7.68 million individual deposits. 

But there is a catch in Bitcoin adoption — it isn’t the main currency used for deposits. Stablecoins made up 75.5% of deposits in that same report, led by Tether at 55.4% and USD Coin at 20%. Tanzanite doesn’t even track Bitcoin’s native chain in its methodology, which is itself a signal of where the volume has gone. 

Betting is the sector genuinely running on crypto as working capital rather than a novelty. But it has just largely stopped being Bitcoin.

Gaming: Mostly a forecast, not yet a fact

Gaming is the sector most often grouped with betting and travel in these lists, and it’s the weakest of the three by evidence. Most numbers on blockchain gaming are market-research forecasts, like reports projecting the GameFi market’s size a decade out rather than data on transactions happening today. Major platforms have moved in the opposite direction. Xbox’s Bitcoin option is gone, and Steam never took it at all.

Genuine crypto-native gaming economies exist, mostly in play-to-earn titles with modest player counts, and in-game item marketplaces that settle in stablecoins or platform tokens. 

The closest thing to a mainstream bridge is streaming: Twitch takes crypto tips and subscriptions, which is real activity, but it’s a tipping rail sitting on top of a platform, not a game economy running on Bitcoin. Calling gaming an adopter alongside betting and travel is an overstatement. It’s a plausible future case study, not a current one.

So who’s actually using it?

Roughly 560 million people worldwide now own some form of crypto, about 6.8% of the global population, so the raw appetite exists. But ownership isn’t operational use, and the sectors that pass the operational test are narrower than the marketing suggests.

Online betting has the deepest, best-verified adoption of any consumer sector, run on public ledgers anyone can audit. Travel has a genuine niche built by platforms designed around crypto payment from the start. Retail has breadth without depth, a payment option layered on top of an otherwise unchanged fiat business. Gaming, for now, is mostly a projection.

And in the two sectors where the adoption is real, Bitcoin loses to stablecoins. So, even though Bitcoin is the most famous among cryptos, its use isn’t as wide as people might think.