A Major Jump in Position Limits

NASDAQ’s proposal seeks to raise the current limit of 250,000 contracts to 1,000,000 contracts for IBIT options — a four-fold increase.
Such a dramatic expansion would place Bitcoin ETF options in the same category as the most liquid equity ETFs in traditional markets.

Position limits act as safeguards, preventing excessive concentration and reducing the risk of market manipulation. Increasing them indicates confidence that the underlying ETF has matured enough to handle larger volumes while maintaining market integrity.

Why the Proposal Is Important

This development is noteworthy for several reasons:

1. Spot Bitcoin ETFs Are Rapidly Growing

Since their approval, spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen strong inflows and consistently rising trading volumes. Investor participation has far exceeded early expectations, prompting exchanges to update risk controls, liquidity frameworks, and product limits.

2. Regulatory Clarity Is Improving

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently introduced updated guidelines for spot crypto ETFs, simplifying the listing process and aligning them with broader ETF standards.
This shift has boosted confidence across the financial industry, encouraging more issuers and enabling exchanges like NASDAQ to modernize crypto-linked derivatives.

3. Larger Limits Can Boost Liquidity and Institutional Use

Higher position and exercise limits on IBIT options could:

• Improve liquidity in the ETF options market

• Enable more efficient hedging by institutional investors

• Attract larger trading firms and asset managers

• Support more active options strategies linked to Bitcoin

Overall, the move reinforces the industry’s view that crypto markets — especially Bitcoin ETFs — are becoming more integrated into the mainstream financial ecosystem.

What This Means for the Future

If approved, NASDAQ’s proposal would mark an important milestone in the evolution of digital asset products. Higher limits suggest regulators and exchanges believe Bitcoin ETF markets are stable, scalable, and capable of supporting deeper institutional participation.

As crypto investment products continue to grow, more exchanges may follow with similar rule changes, shaping a more mature and competitive landscape for digital-asset-based derivatives.

Arise is the second major title in the CTA ecosystem, expanding the franchise beyond storytelling and trading card gameplay into a fully immersive real-time multiplayer experience. CTA and Animoca Brands established a strategic partnership in 2021, with Animoca now supporting the launch of Arise through its expertise in blockchain gaming, tokenomics and market strategy. Animoca Brands has also begun acquiring CTA tokens from the open market to reinforce the project’s long-term framework.

The free-to-play action RPG is set within the broader CTA universe and blends dungeon exploration, PvP combat, resource gathering and trading. Players can choose between roles such as fighter, builder or strategist, and progress through two core modes: Exploration Mode, which focuses on dungeon progression at the player’s pace, and Competition Mode, where players face traps, enemies and bosses while competing for rankings.

Arise is positioned as a continuation of CTA’s transmedia vision, which spans literature, animation, interoperable games, merchandising and global live events. The CTA ecosystem integrates physical and digital storytelling, enabling assets and characters to move seamlessly across titles. Community activities, live tournaments and conventions further connect players within the evolving universe.

Following the success of Cross The Ages: Blast, the card-based CTA game that has sold more than 40 million digital cards, Arise represents the next phase in CTA’s effort to bridge Web2 and Web3 gaming with an interconnected, immersive format.

Players can wishlist Arise on Steam or access the alpha exclusively through the Epic Games Store.

About Cross The Ages

Founded in 2020, Cross The Ages is a transmedia intellectual property combining futuristic fantasy with sci-fi narrative elements. The CTA universe leverages blockchain technology to merge free-to-play and play-and-earn mechanics across books, comics, gaming, esports, animation, collectibles and a gaming-driven investment model supporting renewable energy initiatives. CTA has partnerships with Ubisoft, Square Enix and other industry leaders.

The model adapts familiar P2P mechanisms to Kazakhstan’s regulatory structure. It integrates licensed financial institutions into the process and replaces personal bank-to-bank transfers with transfers routed through corporate accounts. The approach is intended to improve compliance, reduce fraud risk, and bring formal oversight to fiat movement.

Regulated structure with licensed institutions as Makers

Under the system, financial institutions licensed by AFSA act as Makers, while verified Bybit Kazakhstan users serve as Takers. All fiat transfers are conducted through corporate bank accounts held by these institutions. During the rollout phase, users must complete transactions using verified Halyk Bank cards. Each transaction undergoes identity checks, including verification of full name, IIN, and bank details, supervised by both Bybit Kazakhstan and the Maker institution.

How the system works

When buying cryptocurrency such as USDT, users select an offer and send KZT from their Halyk Bank account to the Maker’s corporate account. After payment confirmation, the Maker releases the crypto to the user’s Bybit Kazakhstan wallet.

For selling, users initiate an order and receive KZT directly from the Maker into their verified card. Once the transfer is confirmed, the digital assets are released to the Maker. While the flow mirrors traditional P2P trading, the counterparties are licensed entities rather than individual traders.

Key features

• Fiat transfers processed exclusively through corporate accounts of licensed financial institutions

• Full AML and KYC compliance, including verification of identity and payment details

• Dual supervision by Bybit Kazakhstan and the Maker institution

• Complete transaction traceability and reporting

• Joint customer support from Bybit Kazakhstan and the participating institution

Participation and limits

Bybit Kazakhstan operates under AFSA regulation, while Makers must hold AFSA licenses to handle fiat settlement. Users must complete KYC verification. The platform sets a maximum transaction size of 2.5 million KZT and a daily limit of 5 million KZT. Bybit Kazakhstan charges no commissions on P2P trades.

Launch campaign

To support the launch, Bybit Kazakhstan is running a promotional campaign from November 17 to December 13, 2025, offering rewards for eligible new users making their first P2P deposits. Details are available through the company’s official channels.

A new milestone for Kazakhstan’s regulated crypto market

The introduction of the fully regulated P2P platform marks a significant development for Kazakhstan’s digital asset ecosystem. By combining P2P flexibility with institutional oversight, Bybit Kazakhstan aims to provide predictable settlement, transparent fiat flows, and a structure aligned with national regulatory requirements. The exchange plans to continue working with local financial institutions as the market evolves.

About Bybit Kazakhstan

Bybit Kazakhstan is authorized by the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA) under License No. AFSA-A-LA-2024-0027 to operate a digital asset trading platform, provide custodial services, conduct investment activities as principal and agent, and manage digital-asset-related investments.

The alliance said ASI:Chain is designed to address key challenges arising from the rapid growth of the AI sector, including limited compute infrastructure, centralization-driven security risks, and concerns around data sovereignty. While blockchain has been positioned as a solution to some of these issues, most legacy networks were built for token transfers and basic smart contracts rather than the high-performance coordination and reasoning demands of autonomous agents.

ASI:Chain integrates a blockDAG architecture with MeTTa, a programming language developed under the Hyperon AGI framework by SingularityNET and ASI CEO Dr. Ben Goertzel. MeTTa enables on-chain implementation of advanced reasoning and agentic logic. These contracts are largely compiled into Rholang — a language designed for concurrency and distributed systems — ensuring coordinated execution of autonomous agents at scale.
MeTTa contracts also compile into large-scale graph operations executed via MORK, the MeTTa Optimal Reduction Kernel, which the alliance describes as a highly efficient in-RAM graph database technology.

The platform uses a sharded architecture that allows different shards to operate with customized consensus mechanisms depending on workload. According to Dr. Goertzel, this approach aims to solve the blockchain “trilemma” by hardwiring decentralization and security into the base infrastructure while achieving scalability through workload-specific shards.

The DevNet launch comes as enterprise adoption of agentic AI accelerates. Gartner forecasts that one-third of enterprise software will incorporate agentic systems within the next 36 months. The alliance noted that current blockchain networks do not meet these technical requirements, creating an opportunity for ASI:Chain’s tailored infrastructure.

During the DevNet phase, developers can deploy applications in a live environment, validate the blockDAG consensus, and stress-test the system under real workloads. The ASI team will use this period to collect feedback ahead of a future testnet launch.

To support early adopters, the alliance has released documentation, opened its GitHub repository, and provided a block explorer, test-token faucet, developer portal, and tools for validator setup and shard configuration. Developers and node operators can join DevNet through the ASI:Chain portal.

About the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance

The ASI Alliance is a collaboration between Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and CUDOS. Positioned as one of the largest open-source entities in decentralized AI research and development, the alliance aims to accelerate progress toward decentralized Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence.