The country’s biggest bank has applied for a trademark related to digital currency with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The move has led some to speculate the application for “JPMD” reflects the bank’s growing interest in stablecoins—a type of cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a value in line with the U.S. dollar. 

The application was filed by JPMorganChase on June 15, according to the USPTO’s website. The application listed “JPMD” as a good or service that would provide “trading, exchange, transfer and payment services for digital assets,” among other categories related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. 

While the bank has not confirmed its intent to launch a new cryptocurrency, some X users believe that “JPMD” is a reference to an upcoming stablecoin offering. “Stablecoin by JPMorgan is incoming,” one user wrote in a post on X. “$JPMD is the ticker.”

Another X user wrote, “ The world’s biggest bank embracing stablecoin is your sign to stay ultra bullish.”

The social media posts did not offer any additional evidence about the bank’s plans, and JPMorganChase did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune. 

The speculation comes amid renewed interest in stablecoins as President Donald Trump embraces the industry. A number of companies have been exploring ways to implement stablecoins, which are often used to settle cross-border transactions and to protect fiat-currencies from inflation, into their payment infrastructure. 

In March, asset manager Fidelity announced that it was “actively testing” a stablecoin but had no plans to launch the product at this time. 

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorganChase was involved in conversations with Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and other commercial banks about potentially issuing a joint stablecoin, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Companies outside of the world of finance are considering stablecoins, too. In May, Fortune reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta was in talks with crypto firms to integrate stablecoins to manage payouts. Earlier this month, Fortune reported that in addition to Meta, Apple, X, AirBnB and Google were all exploring the use of stablecoins. 

Whether “JPMD” is a stablecoin or some other type of cryptocurrency, it is not the bank’s first foray into the digital assets space. JPMorgan launched JPM Coin, a cryptocurrency used for the bank’s wholesale payments business, in 2019. The company announced in 2023 that JPM Coin was handling $1 billion of transactions daily. 

Until recently, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon has been a staunch critic of the crypto industry. In 2021, Dimon called Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, “worthless.” In 2023, he told Congress that the only true use case for crypto is for “criminals, drug traffickers…money laundering, tax avoidance.”

However, as the regulatory environment in the U.S. warms to the idea of digital assets, Dimon has changed his tune. Last month, Dimon announced that JPMorganChase would allow clients to buy Bitcoin but would not custody it.

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As the first large-scale military parade in decades made its way down the streets of Washington, DC on Saturday, organizers gave thanks to the country’s men and women in uniform—and also to various corporate sponsors, including the giant crypto exchange Coinbase. Not everyone was comfortable with the spectacle of the crypto industry—which was founded in opposition to government power—being so closely aligned with a display of force by the U.S.

Coinbase was one of a slew of corporations that sponsored the parade, according to a statement from America250, the official body organizing the events to honor the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Other corporate sponsors included data firm Palantir, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, and household names like Walmart, Coca-Cola and Chrysler. 

Kara Calvert, Coinbase’s vice president of U.S. policy, represented the company at the parade. 

“It was an absolute personal honor to attend the 250th celebration of the @USArmy with my son and mom,” Calvert said in a post on X. “I was also honored to represent @coinbase at the event, a proud sponsor of @America250.”

While some saw the sponsorship as a way to bring awareness to crypto, others saw it as a major break from the industry’s ethos as a financial system independent from a centralized entity.

“What Coinbase did by sponsoring this army parade feels like an insult to everything our industry stands for,” one user wrote on X. “Crypto emerged from ideals of decentralization, individual sovereignty, and freedom from oppressive state control.” 

Adam Cochran, managing partner at blockchain venture capital firm Cinneamhain Ventures, said that as a result of the sponsorship, he would sell his shares in the company and withdraw his crypto assets from the platform, in a post on X. 

Cochran pointed out that the sponsorship went against Coinbase’s policy on political causes. “We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission,” the company says on its website.

“Sponsoring a military parade, in a divided country, with already split views of crypto isn’t true to this policy,” Cochran said. “It’s just bad marketing that hurts this industry’s adoption.”

It is unclear how much money Coinbase spent on the sponsorship or if any top-level executives, like CEO Brian Armstrong, were in attendance. A spokesperson for Coinbase declined to comment when contacted by Fortune.

However, some people argued that the military is an apolitical institution and therefore, Coinbase’s sponsorship of the event is not an endorsement of any political party. 

“$COIN supporting our military in no way implicates their political affiliation,” one user wrote in response to Cochran’s post. “Military should always be apolitical for the good of the nation.”

Despite the criticism, Coinbase shares are up 5% since the market opened on Monday, growing from $248 to $256.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Shares of GameStop, the video game retailer that recently pivoted to Bitcoin investment, plummeted on Thursday after the company announced plans to raise $1.75 billion in debt financing from investors, it’s second such plan in the past few months. 

GameStop shares have tumbled 20% since the announcement, falling from $28.50 to $23.

While the company did not name Bitcoin specifically as a reason for the capital raise, it did say that the money would be used for “general corporate purposes, including making investments in a manner consistent with GameStop’s Investment Policy and potential acquisitions,” in a statement on Wednesday. 

In March, GameStop announced in March that it would be pivoting towards a business strategy that involved investing in “Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.”

GameStop did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.

“A portion of our cash or future debt and equity issuances may be invested in Bitcoin,” the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. “We have not set a maximum amount of Bitcoin we may accumulate, and may sell any Bitcoin we may acquire.”

This $1.75 billion financing round comes after GameStop made its first Bitcoin purchase last month. The company acquired 4,710 Bitcoins—worth over $500 million at its current price—with funds raised in a similar debt financing round in April in which GameStop raised $1.5 billion. 

GameStop’s pivot to Bitcoin follows in the footsteps of Strategy, a veteran software company that began buying Bitcoin and holding it as a treasury asset in 2020. Since then, the company has seen its share price skyrocket more than 3,000%. 

But while Bitcoin purchases have been a boon for other companies, GameStop has problems that other companies don’t have. GameStop has struggled for years to keep up with customer’s shifting appetite from physical to digital video games. Because of this, the company’s sales decreased 28% between 2023 and 2024, falling from $5.3 billion to $3.8 billion. GameStop also shuttered a quarter of its locations last year and plans to continue closing stores throughout this year. 

GameStop investors have also repeatedly expressed skepticism about the company’s crypto plans. After GameStop’s initial announcement of its shift in strategy, the company’s shares slid 23%. After the company announced its first Bitcoin investment, the company’s shares slid 10%. 

As Bitcoin reaches new highs and is adopted as a treasury asset by the U.S. government, a growing number of non-crypto companies are pursuing Bitcoin investment as a way to boost their share price. Last week, K-pop media company K-Wave Media’s share price surged over 130% after it announced plans to acquire Bitcoin. More than 60 non-crypto companies are pursuing a “Bitcoin treasury strategy,” according to a recent report from the international bank Standard Chartered. 

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Dogecoin, a crypto memecoin that tends to fluctuate on Musk-related news, rebounded on Wednesday after tech billionaire Elon Musk backed down from an escalating feud with President Donald Trump. 

“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week,” Musk posted on X early Wednesday morning. “They went too far.” 

Dogecoin popped 3% in the minutes that followed Musk’s apology, jumping from 19 cents to above 20 cents, according to Binance. The currency has pulled back slightly since the post but remains up 2%. By comparison, Bitcoin is up less than a tenth of a percent since the post. 

The price rebound comes after Dogecoin fell 11% to 17 cents last week, as Musk and Trump entered into a public feud on social media. The dispute between the world’s two most powerful people happened after Musk, who had concluded his time at the White House, took issue with the president’s spending bill, calling it “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination” in an X post on June 3. 

Trump fired back saying that the easiest way to mitigate government spending would be to “terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” on Truth Social on June 5. 

In a since-deleted post, Musk responded by saying that his aerospace company SpaceX would begin “immediately decommissioning” its Dragon aircraft which shuttles people to and from the International Space Station. Musk walked back the statement later that day, but the two men continued to exchange barbs. 

The same day, Musk dropped what he called “a really big bomb,” claiming that Trump “is in the Epstein files,” in another since-deleted post on X. The “Epstein files” refers to documents the U.S. government collected during their investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that supposedly contained the names of his high-profile associates. Musk did not provide evidence to support his claims. 

Trump responded to Musk’s claims by posting a screenshot of Epstein’s former defense attorney David Shoen denying that Epstein had any information that would “hurt” the president. 

“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer for 9 days before he died,” Shoen wrote on X on June 5. “I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he has no information to hurt President Trump.”

Trump has also previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Last year, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social: “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.”

Musk-related news has a history of influencing the price of Dogecoin, the crypto industry’s first and most popular memecoin. The Tesla founder has repeatedly expressed his affinity for the currency over the years, proclaiming himself “Doge father” on SNL in 2021 and titling a federal agency the Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.G.E. 

Dogecoin isn’t the only Musk-affiliated enterprise that took a hit in value during his war of words with the sitting president. Tesla’s share price dropped around 17.3% after Musk began feuding with Trump. It has rebounded since then, but still remains below its previous price. 

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OneBalance, a London-based crypto software company, has raised $20 million in a Series A led by venture capital firms cyber•Fund and Blockchain Capital, the company announced on Wednesday. The round included participation from Mirana Ventures and L2IV and brings the company’s total funding to $25 million. OneBalance declined to disclose its valuation in this round. 

OneBalance, founded in 2024, aims to build software that will make it possible for non-crypto native software engineers to build applications that use crypto, CEO Stephane Gosselin told Fortune. The company’s main product, which launched on Wednesday, is a toolkit—a collection of software tools and libraries—that lets developers integrate into applications the ability to trade memecoins, swap tokens, and facilitate peer-to-peer payments, among other things. 

“They [developers] can focus on their product and how to create the user experience, while having a reliable way to do transfers, swaps and earning yield,” Gosselin said.

With an increasing number of non-crypto companies—including Meta and Google—considering integrating stablecoins in some manner, Gosselin says software like his will make it easier for companies to add blockchain technology to their services. 

“They don’t necessarily know how to be able to execute reliability on-chain and the last thing they want to do is start to expose a lot of that complexity to their users,” Gosselin said.

The toolkit launched with support for Ethereum, Polygon, and other ethereum-virtual machine blockchains. OneBalance will introduce support for Solana at the end of this month, the company said. 

OneBalance will charge a fee on each transaction processed by a platform that integrates the toolkit, Gosselin said. “We want to make money when our customers make money,” Gosselin said. “If our customers decide to monetize and to do this with us, then we will keep a small fee on top of that.” 

OneBalance is among a number of crypto companies seeking to make application development simpler. Reown and Privy, for instance, both offer standard developer kits, or SDKs, that aim to make it easier for engineers to integrate crypto wallet functionality into their applications. Another example is Helius, a developer platform focused on eliminating complexities for application engineers trying to build on the Solana blockchain. 

Gosselin says his company will use the money raised in this round to expand the capabilities of its flagship product by integrating functionality for additional blockchains.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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