Gm frens, welcome to the third news roundup for September!
Billionaires donate $97M to Reform UK, trader bags $10M through HODL, while Elon Musk’s company is now valued at $23B. XRP eyes double-digit surge as Solana triples transaction size capacity in a new upgrade, and Ripple deploys AI agents to manage $1B treasury. Finally, Zypto turns crypto into gift cards inside its app.
Let’s dive in.
Crypto billionaires donate $97M to Reform UK
Two crypto billionaires have given Nigel Farage’s Reform UK £72 million ($97 million) in two days, more than every British party raised last year combined. Reform said the money would hire “the brightest and best minds to work on policy” and 400 campaign managers, one per target seat.
BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo went first, announcing £36 million on Friday, the biggest single donation ever made to a British party and more than four times the £8 million he had already given this year.
Christopher Harborne, the Tether investor who has given Reform £15 million since the last election, matched it Saturday. His “competitive spirit” prompted it, he wrote, adding that he expected “nothing personally.”
Neither of Delo and Harborne’s most recent donations, nor their previous ones, were made in crypto. Britain banned crypto political donations in March. The donations land as the government weighs tighter rules.
UK-based donors can give unlimited amounts, though Labour has capped gifts from Britons living overseas at £100,000 and plans the same for recent returnees. Since March, donors have needed 12 months on the electoral register to give more than £100,000 a year.
This occurrence comes as Reform is under criminal investigation over its funding, though not over either man’s gift. The Metropolitan Police opened an inquiry into allegations from footage of two senior aides discussing ways around the ban on foreign money. Reform reportedly denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate.
Trader bags $10M through HODL strategy
A crypto trader known as Point Farm Capital has turned a bet on the Solana-based meme coin STONK into more than $10 million in profit by sticking to an aggressive HODL strategy.
According to on-chain analytics from Lookonchain, the trader now holds 35.7 million STONK tokens, valued at roughly $10.55 million. This makes them the token’s largest single holder. The unrealized profit stands near $9.81 million on an initial investment of about $542,000, a return exceeding 1,800%.
The average entry market cap was around $12 million, while STONK has since climbed to roughly $255 million, delivering outsized gains for early accumulators who refused to sell. On-chain data shows consistent buying during the token’s early stages, followed by disciplined holding as price action turned bullish.
The approach contrasts with the high-frequency flipping common in meme coin markets, where traders typically take quick profits rather than let positions compound. Earlier data tracking the same account on the FOMO leaderboard showed that the position had swung sharply along the way.
As of September 8, the trader briefly lost $2.69 million within 24 hours before STONK’s rally reversed that loss into fresh profit, illustrating how volatile the underlying ride actually was.
The trade highlights the high-reward potential of meme tokens on Solana when conviction lines up with timing. Such outcomes, however, remain rare, and most participants who enter later or lack the discipline to hold through sharp swings end up taking significant losses.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company is now valued at $23B
The Boring Company has raised $3 billion in a Series D round led by the United Arab Emirates, according to an announcement. The deal lifts the valuation of Elon Musk’s tunneling firm to $23 billion.
The Emirati capital drove the deal. The company named the UAE and affiliated investment entities as the lead investor. The valuation sits at roughly four times the $5.68 billion the firm reached after its Series C in April 2022. That funding round drew $675 million.
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign funds already hold spot Bitcoin ETF exposure, while a state vehicle also backs a major crypto exchange with $2 billion. In return, the UAE gets scale. The tunnel partnership covers more than 150km and adds to the Dubai Loop project, which the company previously won.
It also named eight more backers. The list runs from Human Capital, Vy Capital, and Valor Equity Partners to Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Temasek, Shamal Holding, and Baron Capital.
The $3 billion investment will go a long way, as the company will hire across engineering, operations, and production. It also plans to build and scale its Loop networks in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Dubai.
The Boring Company, which accepts payments in DOGE, ranks among Musk’s larger private assets. He mentioned this month that his fortune sits in SpaceX and Tesla stock rather than cash.
The company frames the round as proof of a shift. Two years ago, it ran a single Loop system, and it now calls itself a multi-city tunneling program. Musk said in the announcement, “Defeating traffic is the ultimate boss battle. Even the most powerful humans in the world cannot defeat traffic.”
XRP eyes double-digit surge
Ripple’s cross-border token posted a modest 3% daily gain on Monday, which was enough for some analysts to suggest it “appears to be breaking out.” They also predicted a much larger increase. Meanwhile, institutional interest in the asset remains solid and could indeed set the stage for further upside.
Less than a month ago, XRP surged to almost $1.70 but quickly lost momentum and, at the time of writing, trades around $1.39. Still, crypto analyst Ali Martinez argued that the ongoing setup may be more bullish than it seems. He said a sustained close above $1.38 would confirm a breakout and could open the door to a rally toward $1.60.
Still, he hasn’t been entirely positive about XRP lately. Just a few days ago, he claimed that the asset’s pullback from $1.70 to $1.35 was likely driven in part by profit-taking.
Secondly, another crypto enthusiast noted the formation of a “cup and handle” pattern on XRP’s price chart and projected a potential ascent to $2.50. A third analyst suggested that the asset’s volatility appears to be stabilizing. They said they were highly confident a push toward /42 is next, followed by an expansion to a new all-time high.
Growing institutional demand may support the bullish long-term outlook for XRP. Recently, spot XRP ETFs smashed another all-time high, with total net inflows reaching $1.7 billion. Last week was the ninth consecutive week that finished in the green, attracting nearly $19 million.
Companies that have launched such products so far include Franklin Templeton, 21Shares, Grayscale, Bitwise and Canary Capital. The latter two have attracted $608 million and $490 million to date.
Meanwhile, T. Rowe Price, a global investment management firm, recently updated its crypto ETF filing. The update will provide exposure to multiple digital assets. Following the amendment, XRP sits at a 9.15% weight, while BTC leads at 39.54%.
Meanwhile, Exchange Listed Funds Trust filed the “CYBER HORNET S&P 500 and XRP 75/25 Strategy ETF” with the SEC. If the watchdog approves it, the investment vehicle will let investors gain exposure to both the stock market and Ripple’s native token in a 75/25 ratio.
Solana triples transaction size capacity in new upgrade
Solana raised its maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. This upgrade enables developers to fit more complex operations into a single transaction, including zero-knowledge proofs and new on-chain signature schemes.
The upgrade was activated on mainnet on Tuesday at around 01:00 UTC, per blockchain data shared by the Solana Foundation. It also introduced the v1 transaction format, which maintains full backward compatibility with legacy transactions. Existing transaction formats continue working for applications and wallet providers, but protocols that want to benefit from the size increase need to update to v1 transactions.
In August, Solana reduced its slot time from 400ms to 350ms. In June, Solana shared plans to reduce slot times further, from 400ms to 200ms, arguing it would improve latency and speed up confirmations on the blockchain.
This upgrade aims to address a major structural bottleneck and help the network narrow the gap with rival platforms like Ethereum. While Solana has always offered superior speed and lower costs than Ethereum, its transactions were previously throttled by a strict 1,232-byte hard cap.
By tripling the limit to 4,096 bytes, Solana is looking to narrow that gap significantly. Even so, Ethereum maintains a structural edge: it avoids rigid protocol-level size limits entirely, using a flexible block gas limit that accommodates massive operations as long as users cover the transaction costs.
Solana’s new extra space holds instructions, signatures, and other information needed to execute a transaction. The change affects how much each transaction can carry, not how many transactions Solana processes per second.
Ripple deploys AI agents to manage $1B treasury
Ripple is putting AI agents into the corporate treasury business it spent $1 billion to enter last year. This expands software that can monitor a company’s cash, risk, and forecasts and propose what its finance team should do next.
The new GSmart tools sit inside Ripple Treasury, the former GTreasury platform Ripple acquired in October, per a press release. Agents can monitor processes ranging from liquidity and forecasting to reconciliation, flag problems, recommend actions, and cite the company policy behind the recommendation. Nothing executes until a person approves it, Ripple said.
The distinction matters in finance, where letting a chatbot hallucinate its way into a multimillion-dollar cash movement would be less amusing than getting a restaurant recommendation wrong. Ripple said deterministic software handles financial calculations, while AI interprets policies, finds patterns, and explains recommendations.
GSmart predates Ripple’s ownership of GTreasury and was first launched in June 2025. The latest release expands it across more of the treasury workflow and adds a policy layer called Knowledge Studio alongside an Ask GSmart assistant for querying corporate financial data.
Ripple says 60% of eligible customers have already enabled its Risk Insights feature and 44% use Forecast Insights. The rollout also pushes further on the strategy behind Ripple’s GTreasury purchase.
Earlier this year, the company had begun putting digital assets directly inside its treasury software, allowing corporate finance teams to manage them alongside ordinary cash. The system can now manage both traditional and digital assets.
Zypto turns crypto into gift cards inside its app
Zypto has added a crypto-to-gift-card marketplace to the Zypto App, allowing users to spend supported digital assets on thousands of retail, travel, gaming, food, fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle brands.
The feature lets users select a gift card available in their country, choose a denomination in local currency, pay with cryptocurrency, ZYP rewards, or KuCoin Pay, and receive the card digitally through the app and by email.
The company’s gift-card catalog includes thousands of options across international brands and categories, including groceries, restaurants, gaming, travel, fashion, electronics, entertainment, mobile services, and other day-to-day purchases.
The process works in a few steps: users choose their country, select a retailer and card value, choose a supported payment method, and complete the crypto payment. Gift card codes or PINs are then delivered digitally, typically within minutes, subject to blockchain confirmation times.
The service is part of Zypto’s broader strategy to make crypto useful for real-world payments. Zypto App already combines self-custodial wallet functionality with crypto cards, bill payments, mobile top-ups, cross-chain swaps, and payment tools, allowing users to manage and spend assets from a single platform.
Zypto’s gift-card service is available across a broad range of markets, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Brazil, India, the UAE, Japan, and Australia, among others.
The move reflects growing competition among crypto wallet providers to connect digital assets with everyday commerce. Rather than limiting users to trading, holding, and DeFi activity, platforms are increasingly building payment options that let people use crypto for practical purchases while maintaining greater flexibility over how and where they spend their assets.
Find out more here.
Closing remark
Two crypto-linked billionaires donated a combined $97 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, giving the party unprecedented campaign firepower. A trader reportedly turned an early position in the Solana meme coin STONK worth about $542,000 into an unrealized gain of nearly $10 million.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has raised $3 billion in a UAE-led Series D financing round that values the tunneling startup at $23 billion. XRP’s modest rebound has prompted bullish technical forecasts ranging from a move toward $1.60 to a possible run at $2.50.
Solana has increased its maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes through its backward-compatible v1 transaction format. Ripple has expanded the AI capabilities of Ripple Treasury by adding governed agents that monitor liquidity, forecasts, reconciliations, and risk.
By bringing gift cards into its app-based marketplace, Zypto is expanding beyond wallet management and token swaps into everyday crypto spending, giving users a way to turn on-chain assets into purchasing power without first cashing out to a bank account.
FAQs
Which crypto billionaires donated to Reform UK?
They are Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.
How much did the crypto trader win via HODL?
Point Farm Capital turned a bet on STONK into more than $10 million in profit.
How much is The Boring Company valued at?
Elon Musk's tunneling firm is now valued at $23 billion after a $3 billion Series D round.
What is Solana's transaction size capacity?
Solana tripled its maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes.
What is the latest with Ripple?
Ripple deployed AI agents into the $1B corporate treasury business.
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