Ripple is trying to put XRP and RLUSD into the market for AI-agent payments in an environment that is still mostly paying in the dollar-pegged USDC stablecoin.
The company introduced the XRPL AI Starter Kit earlier this week, a set of developer tools for building AI agents that can send payments on the XRP Ledger, per a release shared with CoinDesk.
This kit includes XRPL documentation access through an MCP server (which connects a service’s AI tools to external data sources), Claude skills for wallet creation, balance checks and payments, and support for x402 payments using XRP and Ripple USD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin.
The pitch is that if AI agents are going to buy API access, pay for model inference, settle invoices or move value between services, they need payment rails that are cheap, fast and easy to trigger without a human clicking approve each time.
Ripple says XRPL can do that with three-to-five-second settlement, predictable fees, native payments, escrow, multisig and a built-in decentralized exchange.
But turning that into actual usage is where challenges lie, with the novel x402 system in focus.
NEW YORK (AP) — While you might want to ignore all the hubbub around SpaceX, Elon Musk and IPOs, your 401(k) likely can’t.
SpaceX is now worth $2.1 trillion after its stock launched 19.2% higher in its debut on Wall Street. Whether or not you believe it deserves to be worth more than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined, the collective market does. And if SpaceX maintains that big a value, it will join some high-profile stock indexes.
Many of these indexes don’t care about how realistic a company’s growth plans are or who its CEO is. They’re simply trying to show how slices of the market, or the whole thing, are performing. And if SpaceX is big enough to meet the qualifications to join those indexes, whether it’s in a few weeks or a year, it will gain entry.
That matters for investors and their 401(k) accounts because they’re depending more than ever on funds that simply mimic these indexes. It’s a lower-cost way to invest, allowing savers to keep more of their investments. Partly because of that, such index funds have usually proven to be better performers than funds that try to pick and choose individual stocks.
Just one in five actively managed U.S. stock funds survived and beat their average index peer over the last decade, at 21%, according to Morningstar’s data through 2025. Such disparities in performance meant investors had more money invested in U.S. index funds than actively managed ones beginning in 2024, and the gap has only grown since then.
Here’s a look at what’s going on:
What indexes are
They’re things the investment industry has created to answer the question: What is the market doing? It’s otherwise tough to answer quickly when the U.S. market has thousands of stocks moving in different directions at any moment.
The S&P 500 is perhaps the most famous and influential index. It tracks 500 of the biggest U.S. stocks, and trillions of dollars in investments are either directly mimicking it or at least benchmarking themselves against it.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is well known because it’s been around since the 19th century, but it tracks only 30 big stocks so Wall Street pays it little attention.
Companies want to be in indexes
Because index funds are the way so many investors put money into the stock market, companies want to be part of indexes. Stocks can see a big jump in their prices after S&P Dow Jones Indices, Nasdaq, FTSE Russell or other companies announce they’ll be joining their indexes.
The investment industry has created funds, including both traditional mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, to track almost every kind of index. More than 1,000 index funds were available at the end of last year, according to the Investment Company Institute. Of them, 185 tracked the S&P 500.
SpaceX could soon be in indexes
Nasdaq changed its rules to allow some huge companies to join its Nasdaq 100 index after just 15 trading days. That’s a break from the past, where it would wait until each December to add new members in an annual reconstitution to make sure it includes the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq.
Some popular funds track the Nasdaq 100 index, including the QQQ exchange-traded fund from Invesco that has roughly $477 billion in total investments. That means QQQ holders could soon own shares of SpaceX, without doing anything on their own.
Other AI giants could as well
Anthropic and OpenAI are two other huge AI-related companies looking to sell their own stocks soon on a U.S. exchange for the first time. Their IPOs could potentially make each worth close to $1 trillion.
It used to be that companies would have an IPO long before they got that big. But SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI swelled to tremendous sizes thanks to dollars from private investors, including pension funds, companies and rich investors, away from the public market.
That’s forcing the reconsideration for the investment industry about how quickly to add companies to indexes that they say track the biggest companies.
Not every index is making changes to fast-track big IPOs
The company behind the S&P 500 is not making changes to allow SpaceX and other “mega” IPOs faster entry into the index. For it, a stock needs to trade on an eligible exchange for at least 12 months before it can join the index.
Not only that, S&P Dow Jones Indices also requires companies to have made a profit in its most recent quarter and over the sum of its last four quarters.
SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and another $4.3 billion through the first three months of 2026. It acknowledges that it “may not achieve profitability in the future.” Over the long term, a stock’s price tends to track with how much profit the company is making.
Not everyone is happy about SpaceX’s IPO entry to indexes
Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying its corporate governance, including how much power Musk will hold over the company through his ownership of a special class of stock with more voting power.
They said they could become owners of SpaceX stock because they hold index funds.
If Musk is able to control so much of the voting power on the board of directors, it would make him tremendously powerful atop SpaceX, “essentially making him unfireable without his own consent,” the CEO of California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the New York state comptroller and the New York City comptroller wrote in their letter.
If an investor doesn’t like certain companies in the index
Index funds track indexes. And if a stock is in an index, the index fund will buy it, even if investors may not like it.
Tesla has remained in the S&P 500 even though critics called it overvalued for years, for example, and Musk’s electric-vehicle company has grown to become one of Wall Street’s 10 biggest companies.
Some indexes say they will not include companies that have poor corporate governance standards or other narrowed criteria, but investors need to look for them.
Strategy also sold about 800,000 shares for $128 million through its at-the-market program in the same week. If the bitcoin sale did not matter, traders were left asking why it needed to happen at all.
One possible answer is the S&P 500.
Strategy met the technical requirements for index inclusion in September 2025 but was passed over. Some market commentators have argued that the company’s refusal to sell bitcoin could make it look more like an investment vehicle than a treasury company, which would hurt its chances. Selling a small amount of bitcoin may help Strategy show it can use BTC as a corporate treasury asset, not just hold it forever.
The market reaction was real, however, as bitcoin was already trading into weak risk appetite. Iran tensions had pushed oil higher and revived higher-for-longer rate worries. Tech stocks were under pressure. Bitcoin traded more like a high-beta Nasdaq proxy than an independent store-of-value trade.
But the rebound came from the same macro channel.
President Donald Trump said the U.S. had effectively ended the war with Iran, while officials pointed to progress toward a signed accord. Brent crude fell toward $85. Stocks rallied. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on Friday and closed at $161, up 19% from its $135 offer price, giving risk traders another reason to step back in.
For smart contract platforms, liquidity movements are one of the clearest signals of real on-chain activity.
The logic is simple: When large amounts of stablecoins like USDC or USDT move into a network or between protocols, it usually isn’t random.
Instead, it typically means participants are putting capital to work, deploying it into trading, liquidity pools, borrowing, or other on-chain strategies.
As shown in the chart below, Arkham Intelligence spotted Circle transferring over $4 billion in USDC to a Coinbase-linked address on HyperEVM (an Ethereum-style smart contract environment within Hyperliquid), marking one of the largest stablecoin transfers on record.
Source: X
To put it into perspective, Circle issues USDC, while Coinbase plays a key role in distributing and managing it.
Notably, over 95% of Hyperliquid’s [HYPE] stablecoin supply is USDC, which is up 20% this month, bringing total USDC deployed on HyperEVM to over $6 billion, compared to just $192 million in USDT on the chain.
Against this backdrop, Circle’s $4 billion USDC transfer to a Coinbase-linked address becomes more meaningful, as it likely reflects “strategic” liquidity movement within the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
Now, to figure out if that’s actually the case, the key thing to look at is “timing.”
Large USDC flows prompt debate on Hyperliquid’s next growth leg
The timing of this $4 billion USDC transfer to Coinbase is far from random.
From a market perspective, momentum across risk assets continues to build. The recent SpaceX IPO has added to that momentum, drawing fresh attention to speculative assets.
Against this backdrop, activity on Hyperliquid has continued to accelerate, with perpetual futures open interest climbing above $8 billion.
Grayscale’s latest data further reinforces this trend. As shown in the chart below, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 ecosystem has grown rapidly since launching in October 2025, reaching a peak Open Interest of $3.2 billion and generating over $200 billion in cumulative trading volume.
Source: X
More importantly, this growth has coincided with Hyperliquid’s stablecoin supply jumping nearly 20% to a record $7.04 billion in early June.
That suggests liquidity is entering the ecosystem alongside rising trading activity, rather than traders simply increasing leverage on existing capital.
That naturally makes the $4 billion USDC transfer to a Coinbase-linked address on HyperEVM more significant. On its own, the transfer could look like routine fund movement.
But alongside rising stablecoin supply, Open Interest, and trading volume, it appears to support a broader trend of fresh capital flowing into the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
As a result, these flows act as a key catalyst for HYPE’s move into price discovery.
Final Summary
The $4 billion USDC transfer suggests new liquidity is flowing into Hyperliquid.
As trading activity and liquidity continue to grow, these capital flows could help drive HYPE’s next move in price discovery.
According to rates from the Zillow lender marketplace, fixed and adjustable rates are moving lower compared to yesterday. The current 30-year fixed rate fell by 1 basis point to 6.35%, the 15-year fixed rate fell by 7 basis points to 5.78%, and the 5/1 ARM fell by 6 basis points to 6.30%.
These are today’s mortgage refinance rates, Saturday, June 13, 2026, according to the latest Zillow data:
30-year fixed: 6.34%
20-year fixed: 6.11%
15-year fixed: 5.82%
5/1 ARM: 6.25%
7/1 ARM: 6.35%
30-year VA: 5.79%
15-year VA: 5.33%
5/1 VA: 5.60%
Again, the numbers provided are national averages rounded to the nearest hundredth. Mortgage refinance rates are often higher than rates when you buy a house, although that’s not always the case.
Use the mortgage calculator below to see how today’s interest rates would affect your monthly mortgage payments.
Mortgage payment calculator
You can bookmark the Yahoo Finance mortgage payment calculator and keep it handy for future use, as you shop for homes and the best mortgage lenders. You also have the option to enter costs for private mortgage insurance (PMI) and homeowners’ association dues, if applicable. These details result in a more accurate monthly payment estimate than if you simply calculated your mortgage principal and interest.
30-year fixed mortgage rates: Pros and cons
There are two main advantages to a 30-year fixed mortgage: Your payments are lower, and your monthly payments are predictable.
A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has relatively low monthly payments because you’re spreading your repayment out over a longer period of time than with, say, a 15-year mortgage. Your payments are predictable because, unlike with an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM), your rate isn’t going to change from year to year. Most years, the only things that might affect your monthly payment are any changes to your homeowners insurance or property taxes.
The main disadvantage of 30-year fixed mortgage rates is the mortgage interest, both in the short and long term.
A 30-year fixed term comes with a higher rate than a shorter fixed term, and it’s higher than the intro rate to a 30-year ARM. The higher your rate, the higher your monthly payment. You’ll also pay much more in interest over the life of your loan due to both the higher rate and the longer term.
15-year fixed mortgage rates: Pros and cons
The pros and cons of 15-year fixed mortgage rates are basically swapped with those of the 30-year rates. Yes, your monthly payments will still be predictable, but another advantage is that shorter terms come with lower interest rates. Not to mention, you’ll pay off your mortgage 15 years sooner. So you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the life of your loan.
However, because you’re paying off the same amount in half the time, your monthly payments will be higher than if you choose a 30-year term.
Adjustable-rate mortgages lock in your rate for a predetermined period, then adjust it periodically. For example, with a 5/1 ARM, your rate stays the same for the first five years and then goes up or down once per year for the remaining 25 years.
The main advantage is that the introductory rate is usually lower than what you’ll get with a 30-year fixed rate, so your monthly payments will be lower. (Current average rates might not necessarily reflect this, though — in some cases, fixed rates are actually lower. Talk to your lender before deciding between a fixed or adjustable rate.)
With an ARM, you have no idea what mortgage rates will be like once the intro-rate period ends, so you risk your rate increasing later. This could ultimately end up costing more, and your monthly payments are unpredictable from year to year.
But if you plan to move before the intro-rate period is over, you could reap the benefits of a low rate without risking a rate increase down the road.
First of all, now is a good time to buy a house compared to a couple of years ago. Home prices aren’t spiking like they were during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, if you want or need to buy a house soon, you should feel pretty good about the current housing market.
Plus, despite the recent uptick, mortgage rates are lower than they were this time last year.
The best time to buy is typically whenever it makes sense for your stage of life. Trying to time the real estate market can be as futile as timing the stock market — buy when it’s the right time for you.
Why do 30-year mortgage rates vary by the source reporting them?
According to Zillow, the national average 30-year mortgage rate is 6.35% right now. Why are Zillow’s rates usually different than those reported by Freddie Mac (which reported 6.52% this week) and elsewhere? Each source compiles rates by different methods, and rates are reported for different time frames. Zillow obtains rates from its lender marketplace and reports them daily, while Freddie Mac pulls information from loan applications submitted to its underwriting system and averages them for the week. However, mortgage rates vary by state and even ZIP code, by lender, loan type, and many other factors. That’s why it’s so important to shop with multiple mortgage lenders.
Are interest rates expected to go down?
According to the latest available forecasts, the MBA expects the 30-year mortgage rate to be between 6.4% and 6.5% through 2026. Fannie Mae predicts a 30-year rate of 6.3% through the end of the year.
Are mortgage rates dropping?
Yes, all rates are dropping compared to yesterday. According to rates from the Zillow lender marketplace, fixed and adjustable rates are moving lower compared to yesterday. The current 30-year fixed rate fell by 1 basis point to 6.35%, the 15-year fixed rate fell by 7 basis points to 5.78%, and the 5/1 ARM fell by 6 basis points to 6.30%.
How do I get the lowest refinance rate?
In many ways, securing a low mortgage refinance rate is similar to the process you used when you bought your home. Try to improve your credit score and lower your debt-to-income ratio (DTI). Refinancing into a shorter term will also land you a lower rate, though your monthly mortgage payments will be higher.
The government told Anthropic it had become aware of a method to bypass, or jailbreak, Fable 5. Anthropic reviewed the technique and said what it saw was narrow, not a universal jailbreak, and involved identifying a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities. It said other publicly available models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, can find the same vulnerabilities without any bypass at all.
The company said the government has so far provided only verbal evidence of a potential narrow jailbreak, which it described as essentially asking the model to read a codebase and fix software flaws, a task defenders use every day.
It said applying this standard across the industry “would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”
Anthropic built its entire brand around safety-first AI development, and it is now publicly disputing a national security directive on the grounds that the government’s evidence does not clear its own stated bar.
The company will share more details about the specific jailbreak within 24 hours.
The crypto market is now pricing the shutdown as a negative for the IPO case, and the Anthropic perp’s drop from its post-launch highs reflects that. The first question for the company’s public listing ambitions is whether the government’s order gets reversed, narrowed, or extended to other model classes once Anthropic publishes its technical rebuttal.
Cypress Creek Energy has reached financial close on the first two phases of its Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas, securing $3.5 billion in financing to support construction and long-term operations of one of the largest solar and battery storage projects in the United States.
The financing package covers Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the three-phase development, which together will add 1.63 gigawatts (GW) of solar generation capacity and 1.9 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery storage to the regional power grid. Upon completion of all three phases, the project is expected to reach 2.45 GW of solar capacity and 2.9 GWh of battery storage by 2029.
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The transaction was fully underwritten by Barclays, BNP Paribas, Santander, and Wells Fargo, highlighting continued lender appetite for large-scale energy infrastructure projects. Cypress Creek also secured tax equity financing from a major investor and finalized a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with an investment-grade corporate buyer, providing long-term revenue visibility for the project.
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Smith said the financing demonstrates strong capital market support for utility-scale energy infrastructure as electricity demand continues to rise across the United States. The company said the project is designed to deliver reliable power while supporting economic development in Arkansas.
Steel River is being developed as a large-scale solar-plus-storage complex, a segment that has attracted growing investment as utilities and corporate buyers seek firmed renewable power supplies. Battery storage systems integrated with solar generation are increasingly viewed as critical for enhancing grid reliability, shifting renewable output into peak demand periods, and reducing exposure to power market volatility.
The project also emphasizes domestic manufacturing. Cypress Creek said Steel River will use 100% U.S.-made structural steel, much of it sourced from Mississippi County, Arkansas, and will deploy solar modules manufactured by First Solar. Additional project components will be supplied by Arkansas-based companies.
Beyond its energy contribution, the development is expected to generate nearly $300 million in tax revenue over its operating life and create approximately 700 construction jobs, alongside indirect economic benefits for local businesses and service providers.
Cypress Creek is one of the largest privately held renewable energy developers in the U.S., with more than 6.8 GW of operating and under-construction assets and a development pipeline totaling 19 GW. The company has commercialized 19 GW of projects since its founding and operates more than 8.6 GW of energy assets through its operations and maintenance platform.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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