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The startup killer: Ledger CTO says the EU’s crushing compliance costs are choking Web3 innovation

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The startup killer: Ledger CTO says the EU's crushing compliance costs are choking Web3 innovation

The European Union’s (EU) regulatory framework has redefined the competitive landscape of Web3, unintentionally shifting the advantage away from crypto startups, directly into the hands of legacy financial institutions, according to Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer (CTO) at wallet maker Ledger.

While the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation was designed to establish a unified, secure market, industry insiders warn its steep financial barriers are choking early-stage innovation. Under the framework, crypto companies face strict tiered minimum capital requirements. The costs range from 50,000 euros ($58,000) for advisory services to 150,000 ($174,000) just to operate a trading platform, on top millions of euros in mandatory legal auditing, insurance, and continuous compliance infrastructure.

An impact assessment by the EU Commission on MiCA estimated that each white paper could cost issuers between $4,500 and $87,000, depending on the complexity of the regime and the amount of legal advice required.

“I’m not sure that was the initial intent, but this is the result,” Guillemet said. “When it’s implemented, you have two kinds of companies: those who can pay for this compliance overhead, and the other ones that can’t. Smaller players cannot access the market, which creates a moat for the bigger players.”

While crypto startups view the high costs of MiCA compliance as a barrier to entry in the EU, European regulators have defended the rules, saying they are required to protect consumers and build mainstream institutional trust.

Institutional security

The widening regulatory gap comes at a critical time when traditional finance (TradFi) transitions from testing blockchain to full-scale adoption. Guillemet recalled the listing of spot crypto ETFs in early 2024 as a significant turning point, which sparked significant demand from traditional banks for enterprise-grade custody and asset tokenization.

“Before, banks mostly wanted to do small innovation projects,” Guillemet explained. “Now, it really changed. The main departments of banks really want to build around crypto, and they want to go all-in on blockchain technology.”

To capture this banking business, Ledger has been expanding past its retail roots into a dedicated business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure. Building these institutional security setups requires serious cash; Ledger has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to maintain a massive engineering team.

“First and foremost, Ledger is a security company,” Guillemet said. “We have around 200 to 250 engineers who are working at Ledger to build the technology. We have a dedicated security team, who spend 100% of their time improving the security of our product. Security is front and center in everything we do.”

Real-world risks

However, Ledger’s massive security budget is an indication of the challenges its executive team continuously faces: in Web3, even hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering defenses cannot guarantee absolute immunity.

While Guillemet introduces Ledger’s enterprise architecture to traditional banks, the firm’s historical vulnerabilities underscore the relentless operational risks public blockchains face.

Ledger previously reported a cloud breach involving a third-party processor. That incident followed a major 2020 data breach affecting 270,000 customers, and a 2023 exploit that drained $500,000 from decentralized applications.

As traditional banks rush to bring real-world assets onto public blockchains, they are leaning on native crypto security firms to handle these operational risks. The end result is a shifting landscape: while smaller startups are being priced out of Europe by high compliance costs, traditional financial institutions are moving in, using native crypto code to build the new plumbing of global finance.



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Your guide to managing crypto volatility with dollar-cost averaging

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Your guide to managing crypto volatility with dollar-cost averaging


Crypto is often more volatile than markets for more traditional assets such as stocks and bonds. A digital asset could soar or lose 10% of its value in a week, a day, or an hour. That volatility makes crypto a great candidate for dollar-cost averaging, a time-tested investment tactic that takes the guesswork out of investing in crypto — or any other market asset.

A dollar-cost averaging approach means you don’t need to divine how the market will react to events. You just buy a fixed dollar amount at a regular interval. Best of all, dollar-cost averaging naturally optimizes for lower prices. In a nutshell, you buy more of the asset when prices are low and less as prices rise.

In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how dollar-cost averaging works, and why it’s especially suitable when buying crypto. We’ll discuss the pros and cons and how to set up a plan that fits your budget if you think it’s the right approach for your portfolio.

What is dollar-cost averaging?

Dollar-cost averaging isn’t specific to crypto. But crypto’s volatility makes it a good tool for digital asset investors. Benjamin Graham, a famous investor, first coined the term in 1949 in his book, The Intelligent Investor. In the book, Graham defined a strategy for investing a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, regardless of an asset’s price.

For example, let’s say you invest $50 every Monday, or $200 on the first of every month. The specific day matters less than the consistency of investing on a fixed schedule.

Contrast this with lump-sum investing. With a lump sum, you put all your available money into an asset at once. If you have $1,000, you invest $1,000 today. That approach works well if you catch a low price, but it carries significant risk in a volatile market. If the price drops tomorrow, your entire investment loses value immediately.

Dollar-cost averaging works differently due to its core mechanic. When prices are high, your fixed money amount buys less of the asset. When prices drop, that same money buys more.

  • If a token costs $10, a $100 investment gets you 10 tokens.

  • If the price falls to $5, your next $100 investment buys 20 tokens.

If you had made your entire investment at $10, the drop to $5 is terrible news. If you’re scheduled to invest again, the $5 price is great news. It means you can acquire twice as much when you buy again.

Dollar-cost averaging removes the stress of guessing market direction. If you’re investing with the conviction that the asset will appreciate over time, the price only matters as a measure of how much you can buy. Over time, dollar-cost averaging smooths out your purchase price. You naturally accumulate more when the asset price falls, and less when it rises.

Why crypto volatility demands a strategy

Crypto markets move fast, and those rapid price changes often shake investors out of positions that could later become profitable. In traditional stock markets, a 3% daily move leads the news. In crypto, a 5% price move is just a typical Tuesday. Newer tokens can see even more dramatic swings due to lower market caps (total market value) and lower liquidity. In short, they have smaller markets, so the price can move more than assets in well-established markets.

These rapid price moves create stress for investors watching the price on a screen. In many cases, it causes them to panic-sell or panic-buy. The latter even has an acronym: FOMO (fear of missing out). Fear can push you to buy as prices peak, often right before a correction. Conversely, when prices crash, panic sets in. Watching your portfolio bleed value makes you want to sell everything just to escape the pain. You lock in your losses, only to watch the asset recover a month later.

This emotional cycle destroys portfolios. Trying to time the market by guessing the exact right moment to buy low and sell high rarely works. The reality is that we’re all busy with other demands in life. Even professional traders who have the time and tools to track the news and chart patterns struggle to anticipate crypto’s unpredictable twists.

Dollar-cost averaging acts as an emotional circuit breaker. Because you commit to buying a set amount on a set date, you don’t have to stare at charts or stress over news headlines.

By automating your decisions, you protect yourself from your own worst instincts. Instead, the focus shifts to choosing investments you think will perform well over the long term, and then staying disciplined in your investment schedule.

How dollar-cost averaging works in practice

Starting a dollar-cost averaging plan requires two basic decisions: how much to invest and how often to do it. Once you make those choices, you just follow your schedule.

Setting your schedule

As a first step, decide on a realistic investment amount. You may need to take a step back and plan a budget. How much can you afford to invest regularly, given your other financial obligations? That number might be $25 a week or $50, or it might be $500 a month, depending on your cash flow and other obligations. The important thing is to choose an amount you can maintain. Dollar-cost averaging benefits from consistency.

Next, choose your interval. For example, you might invest weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Often, the best approach is to align your schedule with your cash flow. This aligns with another investment and budgeting strategy: Pay yourself first. In short, you make your investment before you have a chance to spend the money on something else. For example, if you get paid every two weeks, make your dollar-cost averaging purchase on payday. Consistency is the approach’s engine. The specific day you choose matters far less than your commitment to showing up on that day.

Executing your purchases

Once you set your schedule, the execution is simple. Let’s say you decide to invest $100 into bitcoin every Monday. When Monday arrives, you log into your crypto exchange account and buy $100 worth of bitcoin. You don’t need to look at the chart to decide if it’s a good day. It’s always a good day because you have a predetermined amount of money to invest. Don’t check social media for market sentiment. Don’t bother with the news. Just execute the trade. Discipline.

  • If bitcoin’s price dropped over the weekend, your $100 buys more satoshis (the smallest unit of bitcoin).

  • If the price surged, your $100 buys less.

Either way, you follow the plan: a fixed investment amount in dollars and a fixed interval.

When it’s time to buy, you have two primary options. You can set up an autobuy or invest manually. The latter is often more cost-effective, but requires additional steps.

For example, many crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, offer automatic recurring purchases. This feature lets you set up an amount and frequency for your dollar-cost averaging buys.

However, you’ll pay the “spread.” Effectively, this spread acts as a markup on the transaction and can be more costly than buying directly on the exchange using the advanced trading platform. Fees and spreads for autobuy can reach 2% or more. Funding your purchase with a debit card can drive the cost up further. These added, but not always obvious, costs create a headwind for your future investment gains.

Alternatively, you can fund your account with an ACH transfer from your bank account. The transfer is typically free. Once the funds clear, you can use your balance to buy crypto directly on the advanced trading platform. For simplicity, a market order is the easiest way to place your buy. Here’s why:

  • A market buy order fills immediately from the open sell orders on the exchange.

  • A limit buy order waits until the market reaches your price. It might never happen, and using limit orders puts you in the position of trying to outguess the market.

Market orders often cost more than limit orders, but the costs pale in comparison to using autobuy.

Some trading platforms, including Coinbase, offer ways to automate part of the transaction with automatic deposits or purchases of a stablecoin like USDC. Stablecoins track the value of other assets. For example, the USDC stablecoin token is pegged to $1 USD and backed by cash and cash equivalents, such as Treasury bonds.

Automatic ACH bank deposits and automated USDC purchases are often free when using exchanges. However, each exchange has its own fee schedule. If you choose an auto-deposit, set a calendar reminder to log in and make your dollar-cost averaging purchase manually.

The math behind dollar-cost averaging

Let’s look at how dollar-cost averaging works with an example. Imagine you decide to invest $100 per month in a token for 6 months. In this example, the market falls after you buy, then recovers. You’re buying on a fixed schedule throughout.

Here is how the price moves each month:

  • Month 1: $50 per token

  • Month 2: $40 per token

  • Month 3: $20 per token

  • Month 4: $25 per token

  • Month 5: $40 per token

  • Month 6: $50 per token

If you invested a $600 lump sum in month one, you would have bought 12 tokens. By month three, your portfolio value would have dropped to $240. That is a stressful 60% loss.

However, if you used dollar-cost averaging, your results look different. You invested $100 each month, buying tokens at whatever the current price happened to be:

  • Month 1: $100 buys 2 tokens

  • Month 2: $100 buys 2.5 tokens

  • Month 3: $100 buys 5 tokens

  • Month 4: $100 buys 4 tokens

  • Month 5: $100 buys 2.5 tokens

  • Month 6: $100 buys 2 tokens

After six months of using the approach, you invested $600 and now hold 18 tokens total. That brings your average purchase price to $33.33 per token. The market price in month six is $50.

Through dollar-cost averaging, you bought more tokens when the price was low. As a result, your average cost per token is now below the market price. You didn’t have to follow the news or time your purchases perfectly. Dollar-cost averaging automatically optimizes your average cost by buying more when prices are low. However, the key is consistency: the same amount invested, on a fixed schedule.

Benefits and trade-offs of using dollar-cost averaging for crypto investing

The approach offers clear advantages, particularly in taming crypto volatility, but it also comes with trade-offs. You won’t catch the lowest price, and sometimes you’ll pay more than you would have liked.

The benefits

The method reduces the stress that often leads to emotional trading decisions. You don’t need to watch the market constantly or worry about missing the perfect entry point. Your schedule eliminates the need to time the market. Instead, you buy on time, every time.

Dollar-cost averaging also builds a pay-yourself-first investing habit. Regular investing grows your portfolio steadily over time. You treat your investments like a recurring bill, which takes the guesswork out of building wealth.

Lastly, it lowers your average cost in down markets. When prices fall, your fixed investment amount buys more tokens. You turn market dips into an advantage without needing to watch the charts.

The trade-offs

However, dollar-cost averaging has trade-offs. It requires discipline. The math often breaks if you stray from the plan. Even when the market looks terrible and you want to stop, the method requires you to keep buying. If you pause your investments out of fear, you lose the benefits of the strategy.

Also, you probably won’t catch the absolute lowest price. Dollar-cost averaging buys at the average price, not at the bottom. In a market that only goes up, lump-sum investing easily outperforms the approach. If you invested all your money on day one, you would own more tokens, assuming you timed the bottom or bought before the masses. If you were lucky enough to discover bitcoin at $13 (now high five figures) or you timed a dip-buy perfectly, lump-sum investing always comes out ahead.

Finally, transaction fees can take a big bite out of your portfolio balance. Note the trading fees for the platform you’re using to be sure the fees don’t create a headwind. Fee-free methods like ACH transfers keep deposit fees out of the picture, and buying on an advanced trading platform usually keeps trading fees low.

Bottom line

Although well-established assets like bitcoin and ethereum are less volatile than they once were, their prices still move faster than those of traditional investments, such as broad-market funds. Newer tokens, including memecoins and other altcoins, can be even more volatile. Dollar-cost averaging lets you navigate that volatility by just ignoring it.

There’s no need to time your trades or read the market tea leaves. Instead, you research your picks. Then you buy a fixed dollar amount on a regular schedule. If you choose well and invest for the long term, your average cost will likely be lower than the current trading price when it’s time to exit your position.

Dollar-cost averaging doesn’t eliminate risk, and it won’t catch the absolute bottom. Instead, it replaces emotional reactions with a disciplined and time-tested process to reduce your average cost.



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MetaMask launches AI agent wallet with built-in security for every crypto trade

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MetaMask launches AI agent wallet with built-in security for every crypto trade

MetaMask launched a new self-custodial wallet designed for AI agents, allowing autonomous software to trade across decentralized finance while keeping users in control of their funds, the Consensys-owned wallet provider said Monday.

The new MetaMask Agent Wallet gives AI agents access to swaps, perpetual futures, prediction markets and liquidity provisioning across Ethereum-compatible blockchains.

The launch comes as AI agents increasingly emerge as participants in crypto markets, executing trades and managing capital on behalf of users. MetaMask is pitching security as the wallet’s key differentiator.

The product is available through a limited early-access program, with a broader rollout planned in the next few months.

According to the company, every transaction initiated by an agent is automatically subjected to transaction simulation, threat scanning powered and MEV protection before execution. Transactions flagged as malicious will require human approval through two-factor authentication.

MetaMask said transactions deemed safe are covered by its Transaction Protection program, which provides up to $10,000 in protection against losses.

Users can choose between a default “Guard Mode,” which enforces spending limits, protocol allowlists and approval requirements, and an opt-in “Beast Mode” that reduces prompts while still requiring approval for potentially malicious transactions.

“The next great expansion of the onchain economy won’t be driven by humans alone,” Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin said in a statement. “Agents will manage real capital and make real financial decisions, and the infrastructure underneath has to be worthy of that.”

Read more: MetaMask expands debit card across U.S. after year-long pilot



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Market Correction: Why This S&P 500 ETF Becomes a No-Brainer Buy at a Discount

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Market Correction: Why This S&P 500 ETF Becomes a No-Brainer Buy at a Discount


With the S&P 500 hovering near all-time highs and its valuation at its highest level since the 2021 tech stock boom, investors need to be prepared for a correction.

Corrections, when the market drops at least 10%, are not necessarily a bad thing for long-term investors; they are just temporary drops that occur regularly and for a variety of reasons. They could be related to economic forces, like slow growth or high inflation, but they could also be a pullback due to an overheated market.

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »

If you invest for the long term, you don’t panic-sell when the market corrects, because over time, the S&P 500 has consistently produced double-digit returns. Over the past 10 years, for example, it has had an average annualized total return of 15%, and over the past 20 years, it has averaged 11%.

Image source: Getty Images.

Additionally, corrections are a fantastic time to buy great stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) at a discount. Warren Buffett, the former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, famously advised investors to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

Is it time to get greedy?

Given the meteoric run the market has been on over the past two months, this is definitely not the time to be greedy.

The S&P 500 has risen 16.4% since March 30 and reached an all-time high in early June of 7,620. It has dropped about 3% over the past few days, but the index was still sitting at around 7,385 as of June 5.

Certainly, every portfolio should have an S&P 500 ETF as a core holding, because of its track record and the exposure it provides to the largest stocks in the U.S. across sectors. All of the major shops have their own S&P 500 index funds, including the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: SPYM), which is essentially the retail version of the oldest ETF, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: SPY).

The SPYM ETF has the lowest expense ratio of the major S&P 500 ETFs at 0.02%. That means investors pay just $0.20 in fees for every $1,000 invested in the fund.

Look for a time to buy

Currently, the P/E of the S&P 500 is around 27, which is above the historical average but down from 29 in January.

However, the Shiller cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio, which looks at earnings over the past 10 years on an inflation-adjusted basis, is at 42. That is the highest since the dot-com boom in 1999. Many experts believe the Shiller CAPE ratio is the most accurate valuation metric because it takes a longer view and accounts for inflation. So, a Shiller CAPE of 42 should be concerning.

Should investors pile into S&P 500 index ETFs like SPYM now? Probably not. Certainly hold your allocations, but there might be a better time to get greedy when valuations fall a bit more. At that point, adding shares of SPYM will be a no-brainer.

Should you buy stock in State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF right now?

Before you buy stock in State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $443,191!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,258,838!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 941% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 206% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 8, 2026.

Dave Kovaleski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Market Correction: Why This S&P 500 ETF Becomes a No-Brainer Buy at a Discount was originally published by The Motley Fool



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Syscoin – How a validation flaw enabled 5 billion unauthorized SYS

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Syscoin - How a validation flaw enabled 5 billion unauthorized SYS


Syscoin’s bridge suffered an exploit after a transaction-proof validation flaw allowed manipulated data to pass verification checks.

According to the project’s preliminary postmortem, the bridge incorrectly accepted or interpreted a transaction proof. The error created roughly 5 billion unauthorized SYS through the UTXO bridge path.

The attacker later split the funds into two tainted addresses holding approximately 4 billion SYS and 1 billion SYS.

Source: Syscoin Explorer

The team stated that no private keys were compromised during the incident.

Instead, the exploit stemmed from a validation failure inside the bridge’s proof-verification process. Syscoin paused the bridge, identified the affected validation path, and deployed a fix while tracing the funds.

Why are bridge validation flaws so dangerous?



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Jenn Landis rebuilt Citi’s Wall Street credibility. Her reward: CFO of a $22 billion business

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Jenn Landis rebuilt Citi's Wall Street credibility. Her reward: CFO of a $22 billion business

Good morning. Jenn Landis always knew she’d want to return to a CFO role. After spending the past five years rebuilding investor confidence in Citigroup as head of investor and rating agency relations, Landis is getting that opportunity. 

Last week, Citi named her CFO of its Markets business that generated approximately $22 billion in revenue in 2025, and accounted for slightly above 40% of the firm’s net income.

The appointment was part of a broader senior leadership reshuffle announced by CEO Jane Fraser and CFO Gonzalo Luchetti. Fraser’s chief of staff for the past five years, Margo Pilic, will become head of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and investor relations, while Rafael Soeda, most recently chief operating officer for services, will become Fraser’s new chief of staff.

Citi is combining strategy and investor relations under Pilic, bringing together functions that were previously separate. The bank said the move reflects the increasingly close link between shaping its strategy and communicating it to investors.

In an internal memo, Fraser (No. 1 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list) and Luchetti wrote that “recognizing and rewarding colleagues for their hard work and dedication is a huge priority for us; this is how we build the next generation of Citi leaders.” The leaders said they believe in giving people opportunities that “stretch their abilities and push them toward exciting new possibilities,” with the goal of rewarding them for successfully executing in their roles and to “build their breadth and depth for the future.”

Since joining Citi in 2021 during a period of transformation and investor skepticism, Landis has rebuilt trust with investors and analysts through transparent communication and strong engagement, according to Luchetti. She also revamped the IR function, earnings processes and disclosures, helping lift buy ratings from around 45% to 85% and push the stock above $100 for the first time since 2008, he said.

“When I look back on my career, I was always up for a challenge, and transforming teams,” Landis told me about leading IR at Citi. “I was always curious, intellectually.” She continued, “It made sense for me to stay on to get the firm through the 2026 Investor Day, but I was very clear that I would really want to move to a CFO role, and markets would be the role I would ultimately want to do,” she said.

When leaving JPMorgan after almost 20 years to join Citi, she had never done an IR role before. At JPMorgan, she spent roughly eight years as a FIG investment banker covering banks and broker-dealers, before moving into corporate planning and analysis under then-CFO Marianne Lake—helping senior management think through strategy, capital allocation, and where to invest or exit businesses. She then served as CFO of JPMorgan’s middle markets banking and specialized industries division, a role she describes as bringing together everything she’d done previously: balance sheet and P&L ownership, strategic investments, and business management.

“The moment I went to be CFO, I knew that’s ultimately what I would want to do longer term,” she said.

Landis, who begins her new role in August, said In her first 90 days she plans to go deep into the markets business’s financials—balance sheet, P&L, and capital—with a particular focus on capital efficiencies and identifying where the business should continue to invest. She also wants to start thinking through how to present those financials in a way that better conveys the stability of the markets business to outside observers.

On the broader evolution of the role, Landis sees the CFO moving firmly in the direction of a strategic partner—a right hand to the business rather than a purely financial function.  

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

*Quick note: Later this summer we’ll be publishing our third annual list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Business. Think you know someone who should make the list? Nominate them here! You can also learn more about our methodology and see last year’s list.

Leaderboard

Yunhao Chen was appointed CFO of Pinnacle Food Group Limited (Nasdaq: PFAI), following the dismissal of CFO Wencai Pan, effective June 1. The company did not cite misconduct by Pan but instead framed the leadership change as a strategic shift in financial management. Chen brings public company finance experience to the position. She previously served as CFO of Massimo Group, where she led the company through its 2024 initial public offering. Before that, she served as CFO of Dogness International Corporation, where she led its 2017 IPO. Chen has served as an independent director of Pinnacle Food Group since April 2025. She will step down as a director in connection with her CFO appointment. 

Andy Lujan was promoted to CFO of Ontra, a legal technology company. Lujan joined Ontra in December 2017 as the company’s only finance and administrative employee and has served most recently as SVP of finance and accounting. Prior to joining Ontra, Lujan graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served six years as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, including a deployment to Afghanistan. He also held a role at JPMorgan Chase before joining Ontra and earned his MBA from the University of Southern California. 

Big Deal

BCG has published its fourth annual AI at Work report. The findings are based on a survey of 11,749 employees across 14 countries and suggest this is no longer just an AI adoption story.

More employees are using AI, including frontline/non-managerial workers, where regular usage jumped to 74%, up 23 percentage points from last year. However, usage still isn’t translating to value on its own. The companies pulling ahead are giving employees clearer direction on how work should actually change, not just more tools.

Seventy-one percent of employees say they receive little or no guidance on what to do with the time AI frees up, and more than half are not redirecting that time into strategic work. Meanwhile, employees with clear AI strategy but limited tool access report more measurable impact than those with strong tools but no clear direction—80% versus 60%. Another finding is 67% of regular AI users report higher job satisfaction, while 41% also report higher cognitive load.

Yet, there’s more work to do when it comes to training employees on AI. “The skills conversation is moving faster than many companies realize,” according to David Martin, global lead of BCG’s people and organization practice. “About nine in 10 respondents from our annual survey say they need major reskilling, but only 36% feel they have been sufficiently trained—the same share as last year.”

Going deeper

“SpaceX needs to grow at a rate no company has ever achieved to justify a $1.75 trillion valuation” is a Fortune article by Shawn Tully.

Tully writes: “The pending SpaceX IPO is generating lots of buzz by introducing the most valuable enterprise ever to go from privately-held to publicly-traded at an expected market cap of $1.75 trillion. Clearly, that gigantic number signals investors’ confidence in the future growth and profitability of AI. But it also sets the bar for what SpaceX must achieve going forward to reward the folks and funds who bought the pre-offering shares in the underwriting, and will rush to load up when the opening bell rings at the Nasdaq at its debut, slated for mid-June.” Read more here

Overheard

“The history of business tells us that the real money is where there’s unmet need. And that need is in unglamorous settings that the frontier labs aren’t pitching and most investors aren’t watching.”

—Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, writes in a Fortune opinion piece, “The short seller’s argument nobody on the coming mega IPO roadshow wants you to make.” Chakravorti is the founding chair of Digital Planet, which publishes the Digital Evolution Index.



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Bybit challenges Wall Street with a massive push into tokenized U.S. stock IPOs

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Bybit challenges Wall Street with a massive push into tokenized U.S. stock IPOs

Bybit, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has joined the tokenization race to capture the highly-anticipated public listing of SpaceX later this week with its new Bybit IPO Express service.

The Dubai-based exchange is the second crypto exchange to offer tokenized initial public offerings (IPO) following Kraken. Its parent company Payward said it would soon allow its Kraken customers and xStocks alliance members to participate in U.S.-listed IPOs through tokenized shares.

Binance, Bitget and Gate previously offered pre-IPO markets in the form of derivatives. That means investors are not actually buying the actual shares.price. Instead, they are betting on a prediction market or trading IOUs based on what they believed the company would be worth.

Bybit’sIPO services are powered by Payward Services’ xStocks and are eligible retail investors worldwide who can participate in blockbuster IPO projects by subscribing to tokenized representations of publicly traded equities.

“The launch marks a fundamental step in the convergence of traditional capital markets and crypto-native infrastructure, as exchanges increasingly compete to expand beyond digital asset trading into broader financial services,” Bybit said in its press release.

The aim of such services is democratize access millions of users to participate in IPOs that were previously only available to institutional investors, private banking clients, and select brokerage networks.

Bybit also said that through xStocks’ regulated blockchain, holders of tokenized listed stocks can access extended trading hours, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) composability and flexibility and crypto-native settlement.

“For Bybit customers, it is the first time cryptocurrency exchange users can purchase shares at IPO pricing outside of the competitive secondary market,” the press release added.

Bybit said the registration period for the SpaceX IPO is from June 7 to 11. Allocation follows on June 11 and 12, the day when the token also becomes publicly available for trading on Bybit spot. Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans a $75 billion IPO on June 12 at a $1.75 trillion valuation, ranking it among the largest ever.



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