BlackRock buys UNI

While Robinhood (HOOD) ended 2025 on a good note, reporting a Q4 profit of $605 million and revenue increasing 27% to a record $1.28 billion, crypto revenue was a drag on the business.

The highlight of the earnings report was the growth in prediction markets, but crypto-trading revenue dropped 38% YoY to $221 million. After the stock price more than tripled last year, HOOD is now trading at a 7-month low after dropping ~10% after hours. Read more →

BlackRock is bringing its $1.8 billion Treasury-backed token BUIDL to Uniswap's decentralized trading platform, marking the asset manager's first move into DeFi. BlackRock also purchased an undisclosed amount of Uniswap's UNI tokens as part of the deal. The move serves as a test case for broader institutional adoption of blockchain-based trading platforms. UNI token spiked more than 40% on the news but has since come back down to Earth. Read more →

Stripe just gave the x402 payment standard a big boost. In a preview launch, Stripe integrated x402 so developers can bill AI agents directly with USDC on Base for things like API calls and web requests. To catch everyone up, x402 is a protocol from Coinbase that turns a normal “payment required” response into a simple paywall. For example, a bot/agent requests data, gets told what to pay, sends a small USDC payment, then retries and gets access.

CoinGecko flipped it on for parts of its API just recently as well, charging $0.01 USDC per request. The big picture here? Crypto is slowly building out pay-a-you-go rails for the internet of tomorrow and, yes – that’s a huge narrative for the industry going forward. Read more →

📥️ Want to advertise in CoinSnacks? Learn More