Crypto markets produced two notable weekly snapshots in mid-September 2026: a $151 million disclosed venture-funding total across five deals, and a 6.8% increase in NFT sales to roughly $46.78 million. The funding week was led by Nasdaq Ventures' agreement to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken, announced on Sept. 10. Latitude's $35 million Series A for stablecoin-based cross-border payments ranked second, followed by Antarctic Exchange's $7 million derivatives platform round, RealGo's $6 million Web3 gaming raise, and TINA's $3 million geospatial data network financing.
The Nasdaq-Payward transaction is an investment agreement rather than a completed payment. It builds on existing work between the two firms on tokenized equities, with plans to connect Nasdaq's proposed Equity Tokens design to Payward's xStocks infrastructure. Payward will also adopt Nasdaq market surveillance technology. Oak HC/FT led Latitude's Series A, highlighting that Latitude holds money-transmitter licenses or approvals across 45 U.S. markets and provides settlement through stablecoins while delivering local-currency payments via banking networks. Antarctic Exchange's financing was structured as a SAFE-plus-token deal at a $70 million valuation, with Republic Crypto handling the token component. TRM Labs announced a Series C expansion at a $2 billion valuation but did not disclose the round size. Robinhood also said it would hold equity stakes in Crypto.com and OG.com through a prediction-markets partnership, although no dollar amount was disclosed.
In the NFT market, sales reached $46.78 million for the seven days ending Sept. 12, up 6.8% from the previous week, according to CryptoSlam. The increase came amid a divergence in activity: buyer addresses fell 84.67% to 41,959, while transactions rose 48.75% to 917,549. Ethereum remained the leading NFT blockchain with $16.83 million in sales, down 6.36%. Bitcoin ranked second with $9.44 million, a 50.12% jump driven by a small number of high-value BRC-20 NFT trades. Polygon followed with $7.71 million, BNB Chain with $4.02 million, Base with $2.48 million, and Solana with $2.30 million.
On the collection level, Polygon-based Courtyard led with $6.67 million in sales across 104,404 transactions. Ethereum's Argonauts ranked second at $4.36 million, while Bitcoin's $X@AI BRC-20 NFTs generated $2.90 million from only nine transactions. The largest individual sales were all Bitcoin BRC-20 NFTs, including a top sale of about $2.10 million. The five largest Bitcoin NFT trades totaled roughly $4.61 million, nearly half of the network's weekly NFT volume.
