Equities update - October 23rd 2026

Week 43 brought further volatility to the AI infrastructure trade as financing constraints and concerns over eventual overbuilding weighed on sentiment despite strong revenue growth and constructive demand forecasts. SpaceX reported robust growth, Western Digital cited demand visibility through 2030–31 across its largest customers, and Meta continued advancing its Muse AI rollout alongside substantial infrastructure investment. However, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang highlighted that capital availability is constraining neocloud expansion even as demand remains strong. This captures the central tension: accelerating demand can support infrastructure investment, but shareholder returns still depend on financing costs, delivery schedules and the price paid to build capacity. Elsewhere, demand for Treasuries pulled the US 10-year yield below 5% on the week, however, sharp upside moves in the VIX and MOVE indices reflected uncertainty across both equity and bond markets. Bitcoin and select crypto-native equities proved more resilient, with Bitcoin unchanged over the week. Corporate progress also remained constructive, Mastercard’s expanding stablecoin and agent-payment capabilities, alongside Coinbase’s partnership with Thunes, demonstrated continued investment in the distribution and services needed to turn digital-asset activity into practical financial applications.

Week 43 Key Developments in Blockchain Equities:

• Index Performance: Index Performance: The Index declined 1.6% over the week, while Bitcoin was unchanged, against a backdrop of elevated energy prices, uncertainty over monetary tightening and renewed scrutiny of AI investment returns. The US economic calendar was relatively light this week, although weekly labour-market data remained resilient, with initial unemployment claims falling by 6,000 to 194,000, providing little evidence of an acceleration in layoffs. Expectations increasingly centred on an October Fed pause followed by a December hike; a Reuters poll found that 94 of 100 economists expected unchanged rates at the 27–28 October meeting, while all anticipated an increase in December. Nevertheless, Treasuries rallied as weakness in technology shares encouraged demand for safer assets, pulling the 10-year yield below 5% on Thursday. Gold’s weaker performance over the week highlighted the uneven response across traditional safe-haven assets, underscoring the complexity of the current market environment.

• Block Index Key Movers: 7-day top performers: Sony Group (+5.9%), CME Group (+5.7%), Nextera Energy (+3.7%) 7-day worst performers: Cipher Digital (-17.1%), Riot Platforms (-16.8%), Galaxy Digital (-16.2%) 

• Mastercard’s developments this month highlight how established payment networks can capture value from stablecoin adoption while providing resilience within BLOCK amid equity market volatility - Mastercard has been a standout performer, gaining approximately 15% month-to-date and reaching new all-time highs. The company has made meaningful progress in developing its stablecoin capabilities this year, particularly through its acquisition of BVNK. This week, it launched Stablecoin Security, initially with Borderless.xyz and Keyrails, extending fraud and sanctions screening across traditional and blockchain payment flows. It also opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines, following pilots involving Coinbase, Base, Cloudflare and BVNK, allowing AI agents to purchase digital services within approved budgets and permissions.

• In our view, the significance lies in Mastercard broadening the services it provides around the movement of money. Banks and businesses adopting stablecoins still require conversion, merchant acceptance, local payouts and risk controls. Bringing these capabilities together could strengthen customer relationships and create opportunities to generate revenue across several stages of a payment. This builds on an established services franchise: value-added services and solutions revenue grew 18% on a currency-neutral basis in Q2, compared with 8% for the payment network. Services growth will therefore be a key metric to watch when Mastercard reports its Q3 results next week. The agent-payments initiative offers another potential avenue for growth, extending Mastercard’s spending controls and payment authorisation capabilities to software that increasingly transacts independently.

• For BLOCK, Mastercard combines an established earnings base with further growth opportunities in digital payments. Its strong performance also highlights the diversification available within blockchain equities as investors place greater scrutiny on the financing requirements of AI infrastructure.

• Earnings Recap – Key Holdings:

• CME Group – Positive

• Meta Platforms, Nextera Energy - Mixed

Other news - Index constituents:

• Coinbase and Thunes announced a partnership on 19 October combining Coinbase’s stablecoin infrastructure with Thunes’ connections to local payment systems, bank accounts and mobile wallets. The opportunity lies in completing the payment journey: a faster blockchain transfer has limited practical value if the recipient cannot readily receive and use the money locally. Thunes could help Coinbase address this constraint across supplier payments, gig-worker payouts and remittances, extending its infrastructure business beyond exchange trading.

• Circle and Proof announced a collaboration on 19 October demonstrating how AI agents can present verified identity credentials and make USDC payments from a Circle Agent Wallet. The demonstration addresses a practical obstacle to agent-led commerce: establishing who authorised a purchase and retaining evidence if it is disputed.

• SBI VC Trade and SBI XDC Network APAC announced an agreement with South Korea’s Shinhan Card on 21 October to explore blockchain-based payments. Planned work includes testing how yen-denominated stablecoins could connect with physical merchant payments, alongside potential cross-border trade settlement. The significance is the combination of SBI’s digital-asset capabilities with established merchant-payment infrastructure, potentially addressing acceptance and conversion barriers simultaneously.

• Strategy’s 19 October disclosure showed purchases of 267 BTC for US$22.1m,. Taking holdings to 848,517 BTC, alongside US$93.1m of STRC repurchases. It increased its preferred-securities repurchase authorisation to US$3bn, with 1.16bn remaining. As of 18 October, its USD Reserve was US$4.83bn, with a separate US$447.3m of USD Cash.

Other news – Non - Index constituents:

• OKXICE, the joint venture between OKX and NYSE owner ICE, filed with the SEC for a platform offering 24/7 tokenised US-stock trading. Its proposed structure uses permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on XLayer, with securities traded against supported payment stablecoins. This brings exchange infrastructure into closer competition with crypto-native trading platforms and creates another potential source of stablecoin settlement demand.

• Securitize launched tokenised exposure to 12 US stocks, initially on Solana, with USDC settlement. Each token is backed by a share and represents a security entitlement, with applicable economic and voting rights; holders become registered shareholders only if they convert where available. Initial trading uses its broker-dealer platform during extended hours.

• OCBC and Ant International launched a ‘tokenised-deposit’ solution on 7 October enabling 24/7 movement of SGD- and USD-denominated deposits between Ant’s entities in Singapore and Malaysia through WhaleRTP. The practical benefit is greater flexibility in deploying working capital outside banking cut-off times, alongside improved reconciliation. This is also relevant to the competitive landscape: banks are developing blockchain payment capabilities while retaining customer funds as commercial-bank deposits, giving corporate treasurers an alternative to transferring liquidity into stablecoins. Separately, HSBC and Ant International expanded tokenised treasury activity into the Middle East, following pilot transactions involving UAE-dirham transfers and cross-border dollar payments.