Wall Street increases BMNR stock; DeFi lenders are loaded with illiquidity
Large institutional investors continued to increase their exposure to crypto treasury companies in the past week, although bear-market illiquidity forced another round of shakeouts on decentralized finance (DeFi).
Bitmine Immersion Technologies' largest corporate shareholders, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, increased their exposure to the Ether (ETH) treasury in Q4 2025 despite a broader market selloff.
Still, ongoing bear-market volatility is forcing some protocols to shut down, including the shutdown of DeFi lender ZeroLend. Crypto analytics platform Parsec was also shut down, citing crypto market volatility as the main reason.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) and ETH each rose 2.6 percent last week, as bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) out of the U.S. space traded $165 million for three straight days of selling through Thursday, data from Farside Investors showed.
Ether ETFs started the week with $48 million in inflows on Tuesday, but recorded two consecutive days of outflows, including $41 million on Wednesday and $130 million on Thursday.
Morgan Stanley, other top holders increase Bitmine exposure amid sell-off
The largest shareholders of Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) stock increased their investment in the leading Ethereum treasury in the fourth quarter of 2025 despite the broader crypto market decline and weak stock price performance.
Morgan Stanley's top reporting holder rose about 26 percent to more than 12.1 million shares worth $331 million at the end of the quarter, according to a Form 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ARK Investment Management, the second-largest shareholder, increased its stake by about 27 percent to $256 million worth of shares worth more than $9.4 million.
Several other large institutional holders also increased exposure. BlackRock increased its holdings of BMNR by 166 percent, Goldman Sachs by 588 percent, Vanguard by 66 percent and Bank of America by 1,668 percent.
Wall Street has a 48% stock slide, but BMNR increases exposure
In Q4 2025, each of 11 major shareholders increased exposure to BMNR, including Charles Schwab, Van Eck, Royal Bank of Canada, Citigroup and Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.
The stock came in despite a sharp drop in Bitmin's stock price. BMNR is down about 48% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and about 60% over the past six months, trading at $19.90 in premarket action Thursday, Google Finance reported.
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DeFi lender ZeroLend shuts down, blames illegal chains
Decentralized lending protocol ZeroLend has said it is shutting down entirely after experiencing low user numbers and liquidity on the blockchains it operates on.
After three years of building and using the protocol, we've made the difficult decision to simplify operations, Zeroland's founder, known as “Riker,” said in a post shared to X on Monday.
“Despite the group's continued efforts, it has become clear that the protocol is unsustainable in its current state,” he added.
ZeroLend focuses its services on Ethereum Layer-2 blockchains, which was once considered a central part of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's plan to keep the network scalable and competitive.
However, Buterin said earlier this month that Layer 2's scaling view “doesn't make sense anymore,” that many fail to properly follow Ethereum's security, and that scaling should increasingly come from the original and native wrappers.
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DerivaDEX is launching a licensed derivatives DEX in Bermuda
DerivaDEX has launched a Bermuda-licensed crypto derivatives platform, which it says is the first DAO-managed decentralized exchange to receive formal regulatory approval.
According to a statement from the platform, the exchange has received a T license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority and has begun offering crypto-persistent swap trading to select advanced retail and institutional participants.
A BMAT, or license to test, is issued to a digital asset business that wants to test a proof-of-concept.
At launch, DerivaDEX will support major crypto derivatives and says it plans to expand into additional markets, including futures markets and traditional securities. The company says the platform combines onchain settlement with Ethereum, allowing users to maintain hands-free control of funds.
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Parsec closes amid crypto market volatility.
Onchain Analytics company is shutting down after five years, as crypto trader flows and onchain activity don't match their past structures.
The company told X-Post on Thursday that “parsec is closed” and CEO Will Sheehan said “the market is saturated”.
Sheehan added that Parsec's primary focus on decentralized finance and intangible tokens (NFTs) has fallen short of where the industry is headed now.
“Post FTX DeFi spot leverage leverage never came back the same way, it changed, it changed into something we understand,” he said, adding that onchain activity has changed in ways it has never known.
NFT sales are expected to reach $5.63 billion by 2025. It represents a 37% decrease from the $8.9 billion in 2024. The average sale price also decreased year-over-year, falling to $96 from $124, according to CryptoSlam data.
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Kraken's xStocks are worth more than $25 billion with more than 80,000 onchain owners holding them.
Kraken's tokenized stocks platform, xStocks, surpassed $25 billion in total trading volume less than eight months after its launch.
Kraken said Thursday that the $25 billion figure includes transactions on centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges, as well as generating and redeeming activities. The peak represents a 150% increase since November, when xStocks surpassed $10 billion in total trading volume.
xStocks tokens are backed by Backed Finance, a 1:1 tokenized regulated asset provider that creates publicly traded stocks and exchange-traded funds. Kraken serves as the main distributor and exchange, while Backed is responsible for setting up and issuing tokens.
xStocks in 2010 Launching in 2025, it offers more than 60 tokenized stocks, including stocks associated with major US tech companies such as Amazon, Meta Platforms, Nvidia and Tesla.
Kraken has been a key growth driver of the onchain movement since its inception, with xStocks generating $3.5 billion in onchain trading volume and surpassing 80,000 unique onchain owners.
Unlike transactions that only occur in the internal order books of centralized exchanges, onchain activity takes place directly on public blockchains, where transactions are transparent and wallets hold the assets themselves.
Growing onchain participation suggests that users are not only trading tokenized shares, but also integrating them into broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.
According to Kraken, eight of the 11 largest tokenized stocks by specific holder count are now part of the xStocks ecosystem, indicating increased market share in the growing tokenized equities sector.
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Overview of the DeFi market
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The layer-1 blockchain Kite (KITE) token rose 38% as the biggest gainer among the 100, followed by the stable coin payment ecosystem token (STABLE), which rose more than 30% last week.
Thanks for reading this week's roundup of the most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and lessons about this dynamic and evolving space.
