Author: Chain Wire

Miami, USA, June 28th, 2026, FinanceWire

Gold Advisor, a leading educational resource focused on precious metals investing and retirement diversification, has released its annual rankings of the Best Gold IRA Companies for 2026, naming Augusta Precious Metals as the organization’s Best Overall Gold IRA Company following an extensive evaluation of leading providers serving retirement investors nationwide.

The rankings come as interest in Gold IRAs continues to rise among investors seeking diversification beyond traditional stocks and bonds amid ongoing concerns about inflation, government debt, market volatility, and long-term retirement planning challenges.

Gold Advisor’s research team reviewed numerous precious metals IRA providers using a methodology designed to evaluate the factors most important to retirement investors. The review process considered company reputation, customer satisfaction, years in business, educational resources, account setup assistance, rollover support, buyback programs, transparency, precious metals selection, and overall customer experience.

Best Gold IRA Companies of 2026

1. Augusta Precious Metals – Best Overall Gold IRA Company
2. Goldco – Best for 401(k) Rollovers
3. American Hartford Gold – Best for Precious Metals Selection

According to Gold Advisor, Augusta Precious Metals distinguished itself by delivering strong performance across virtually every major category evaluated during the review process.

Augusta Award Highlights

In addition to earning the top overall ranking, Augusta Precious Metals received recognition in several key categories:

• Best Overall Gold IRA Company.
• Best for Investor Education.
• Best for Retirement Rollovers.
• Best Reputation.
• Best Gold IRA Onboarding Experience.

Researchers noted that Augusta’s strength stems from its ability to provide a highly guided experience for retirement investors while maintaining a strong reputation within the precious metals industry.

Among the factors cited in Augusta’s top ranking were:

• Extensive experience assisting investors with retirement account rollovers.
• Educational resources designed for both new and experienced investors.
• Streamlined account setup and rollover processes.
• Dedicated account representatives.
• Strong customer review profiles across multiple platforms.
• Transparent educational approach to precious metals ownership.
• Ongoing support throughout the life of the account.
• Established relationships within the self-directed IRA ecosystem.

“Many investors exploring Gold IRAs are doing so for the first time and often have questions about rollovers, storage options, IRS rules, and eligible precious metals,” said a spokesperson for Gold Advisor. “The companies that stand out are typically those that make the process easier to understand while providing strong support throughout the account setup process. Augusta consistently performed well across the categories we believe matter most to retirement investors.”

Why Investors Continue to Explore Gold IRAs

Gold IRAs have become an increasingly popular retirement diversification strategy over the past decade.

Unlike traditional retirement accounts that may primarily hold stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or ETFs, a self-directed Gold IRA allows investors to hold certain IRS-approved physical precious metals within a tax-advantaged retirement account structure.

Supporters of Gold IRAs often point to several potential benefits:

• Diversification beyond traditional financial assets.
• Potential protection against inflation.
• Reduced dependence on stock market performance.
• Ownership of tangible assets.
• Long-term wealth preservation objectives.
• Portfolio risk management strategies.

While Gold IRAs are not suitable for every investor, Gold Advisor notes that many retirees and pre-retirees view precious metals as a potential complement to traditional retirement investments.

Growing Interest in Retirement Diversification

Recent years have seen heightened investor interest in alternative retirement assets as market volatility, inflation concerns, geopolitical uncertainty, and questions surrounding long-term debt levels continue to shape investor behavior.

Many retirement savers approaching retirement are increasingly focused on diversification strategies designed to reduce concentration risk within their portfolios.

Industry observers have noted that investors frequently research Gold IRAs after experiencing periods of stock market volatility or when evaluating ways to balance traditional retirement holdings with assets that historically have demonstrated different performance characteristics than equities.

According to Gold Advisor, retirement diversification remains one of the primary reasons investors begin researching precious metals IRAs.

Why Goldco Ranked Second

Goldco secured the second position in Gold Advisor’s rankings and received recognition as the Best Gold IRA Company for 401(k) Rollovers.

Researchers highlighted the company’s strong rollover support, educational resources, and longstanding presence within the precious metals industry. Goldco was also recognized for helping investors better understand the role precious metals may play within a diversified retirement strategy.

Why American Hartford Gold Ranked Third

American Hartford Gold earned the third position and was recognized as the Best Gold IRA Company for Low Fees.

Gold Advisor noted that American Hartford Gold’s low-fee positioning, accessible onboarding experience, and strong presence in the precious metals industry contributed to its placement in the rankings.

The company was also recognized for helping investors better understand how precious metals may fit into a diversified retirement portfolio.

Evaluation Criteria

Gold Advisor’s rankings were developed using a proprietary review process designed to evaluate the factors most commonly cited by retirement investors when selecting a Gold IRA company.

Review categories included:

• Company reputation.
• Customer reviews and satisfaction.
• Industry experience.
• Educational resources.
• Precious metals selection.
• Rollover assistance.
• Account setup process.
• Transparency.
• Buyback programs.
• Overall customer experience.

The organization emphasized that no single Gold IRA company is necessarily the best fit for every investor and encourages consumers to perform their own due diligence before making retirement-related decisions.

About Gold Advisor

Gold Advisor is an independent educational resource dedicated to helping consumers better understand Gold IRAs, precious metals investing, retirement diversification strategies, and self-directed retirement accounts. The organization publishes company reviews, rankings, educational guides, and market commentary designed to help investors make informed retirement planning decisions.

Contact

CMO
Michel Owen
Gold Advisor
info@gold-advisor.com

Palo Alto, United States, June 26th, 2026, Chainwire

Toss users can now contribute real-world data to train AI and get paid for it, in a first-of-its-kind model launching in Korea ahead of global expansion.

Poseidon, the data infrastructure built to source and license real-world data for AI, today announced a partnership with Toss, the mobile financial platform operated by Viva Republica, to let everyday users contribute to AI training and be paid for what they provide. It is Toss’s first move into AI data, and it opens that market to its roughly 30 million users.

Frontier AI has run out of internet to scrape. The next generation of models depends on real-world data, the kind that captures how people actually speak, move, and react, which does not exist on the open web and has never had a clean way to be sourced, licensed, or paid for. Poseidon is building the infrastructure to change that, and Toss brings the reach to do it at scale.

Through the partnership, Poseidon’s contributor app, Numo, launches inside the Toss app. Toss users can help build Korean-language training data across voice, image, and video, and receive payment tied directly to what they contribute. Poseidon provides the infrastructure that tracks each contribution and its value, while Toss provides the user base and the financial experience that turns participation into payment. Together they offer a working answer to a question the AI industry has struggled with, which is how to compensate the people whose data makes models better.

Every contribution made through Numo is registered on DATA, the AI data network that Poseidon refines data for. DATA gives each record a verifiable provenance trail through Trace, its public audit layer, so a buyer can see where a piece of training data came from and a contributor can see that their work was counted and paid. DATA Foundation, which launched this week from the rebrand of Story, is building this layer alongside integration partners including the human data marketplace Kled, and Poseidon is one of the largest sources of refined data flowing into it.

What Numo collects is first-person data, recorded by real people in real environments, which is among the hardest and most valuable categories to obtain. It is the raw material for physical intelligence, the AI that has to operate in the physical world across robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other applications. Demand from global AI labs for this kind of data is climbing, and Korea is positioned to supply it, with its dense real-life data and Toss’s user base. Poseidon and Toss intend to prove the model in Korea, then expand to global markets.

Changhoon Seo, Executive Director of New Business at Toss, said: “As the AI industry grows, demand for high-quality data is rising just as fast. Toss plans to build an environment where users can take part in the data economy more easily and naturally, and to expand a structure in which the value they contribute is rewarded transparently.”

SY Lee, Chief Strategy Officer and Chairman of Poseidon, said: “Korea is one of the few markets where the strategic importance of AI data, a mature financial system, and world-class mobile experience all exist at once. Toss is the right partner to turn user-contributed AI data from an early idea into a standard the rest of the world can adopt.” Lee previously founded the web-novel platform Radish and sold it to Kakao Entertainment, co-founded Story, the IP infrastructure that recently rebranded as DATA Foundation, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum this year.

About Poseidon

Poseidon is the data infrastructure for AI, built to source, refine, and license the real-world data that frontier models need and the open internet cannot supply. Incubated by the team behind The DATA Network, Poseidon bridges the gap between data supply and AI demand by enabling access to high-quality, IP-safe, and composable training datasets. Poseidon raised a $15 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Poseidon’s contributor app, Numo, has recorded more than 711,000 data registrations worldwide and is available and is now available on the Toss app.

Contact

HV
henri.vies@piplabs.xyz

Victoria, Seychelles, June 26th, 2026, Chainwire

MEXC, a pioneer in 0-fee digital asset trading, releases its observations on equity-related futures trading activity around Micron’s (MU) earnings report. Micron posted quarterly revenue of approximately $41.4 billion, significantly exceeding market expectations. Following the earnings release, capital concentrated into AI memory and storage, with notable increases in trading activity across related instruments.

Micron was the most-traded stock and equity index futures instrument on MEXC, with trading volume up approximately 142% from the previous day. SanDisk, SK hynix, and DRAM ETF also recorded volume increases of approximately 83%, 28%, and 35%, respectively. Together, these four AI memory and storage instruments accounted for 44% of the day’s Top 10 equity-related futures volume, underscoring the market’s heightened focus on the sector.

Beyond memory and storage, AI compute and semiconductor names such as NVIDIA and SOXL, as well as index futures including SPX500, NAS100, and US30, also maintained elevated trading activity. The momentum sparked by Micron’s earnings was not confined to AI memory and storage, but extended across compute, semiconductors, and broader U.S. equity indices.

Ahead of the earnings release, thematic trading patterns were already visible on the MEXC platform. From June 22 to 24, AI memory and storage individual stocks (+28%), DRAM ETF (+92%), and SOXL (+51%) all recorded meaningful volume increases, while broad-based U.S. equity index futures declined approximately 55% over the same period. This indicates that capital was not indiscriminately going long on U.S. equities, but had already concentrated on the supply-constrained memory and storage segment ahead of the earnings announcement.

For high-profile macro or earnings events, MEXC futures trading enables users to extend trading opportunities across the full cycle of anticipation, realization, and follow-through — positioning ahead of earnings and responding or hedging immediately after results are released. MEXC offers more than a single-instrument entry point: within a unified account and USDT-margined system, users can flexibly adjust positions across single-stock futures, related supply-chain names, sector and thematic ETFs, and index futures as market themes evolve, without transferring capital between platforms. Combined with a 0-fee structure, the friction cost of switching across instruments is further reduced. Notably, the AI memory and storage sector itself spans three markets — Micron is U.S.-listed, SK hynix and Samsung are Korea-listed, and Kioxia is Japan-listed. MEXC currently covers futures across all three markets, enabling users to build positions across national markets along the same industry logic.

Beyond earnings-driven secondary market trading, MEXC also extends asset discovery to the pre-IPO stage of technology companies. SpaceX (PRE), the first instrument on the platform’s Pre-IPO Launchpad, attracted cumulative subscription volume exceeding US$173 million across two rounds. Since SpaceX completed its IPO on June 12, secondary market prices reached as high as 217 USDT, approximately 67% above the subscription price. This demonstrates that from Pre-IPO subscription through secondary market trading, the entire process offers continuous and sufficient liquidity. Through MEXC, users can participate across different stages of a single core asset on one platform.

As market trading demand becomes increasingly cross-asset and cross-regional, MEXC bridges Pre-IPO, secondary market, and futures trading, connecting globally sought-after instruments to offer users a one-stop U.S. equity trading platform. Going forward, MEXC will continue to identify high-quality assets, enabling global users to capture unlimited opportunities with minimal friction and maximum capital efficiency.

About MEXC

MEXC is the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange, trusted by more than 40 million users across 170+ markets. Built on a user-first philosophy, MEXC offers industry-leading 0-fee trading and access to over 3,000 digital assets. As the Gateway to Infinite Opportunities, MEXC provides a single platform where users can easily trade cryptocurrencies alongside tokenized assets, including stocks, ETFs, commodities, and precious metals.

MEXC Official Website｜ X ｜ Telegram ｜How to Sign Up on MEXC

For media inquiries, please contact MEXC PR team: media@mexc.com

Risk Disclaimer:

This content does not constitute investment advice. Given the highly volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors are encouraged to carefully assess market fluctuations, project fundamentals, and potential financial risks before making any trading decisions.

Contact

MEXC PR team
media@mexc.com

Palo Alto, United States, June 25th, 2026, Chainwire

Story rebrands as The DATA Foundation, launches DATA Network with flagship Kled AI integration, registering 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the platform

The Foundation also introduces Trace, the first public audit layer for consent, licensing, and data provenance at scale

Today, Story announces a strategic transition to become The DATA Foundation (“DATA”) and launches Trace, an onchain registry for AI training data provenance and licensing. The launch includes a flagship integration with Kled, the world’s largest opt-in human data marketplace, registering 1.5 billion user-contributed records on the Network. Andrea Muttoni becomes CEO of The DATA Foundation, and Kled’s founder, Avi Patel, joins in an advisor position as the Chief Data Officer. 

AI’s Training Data Has Hit a Bottleneck

The shift to DATA reflects where the market is pulling hardest. AI training data has emerged as the most valuable and least solved category of IP. Frontier AI labs have hit a multi-billion-dollar data bottleneck, where the internet has been effectively exhausted for scraping. The remaining supply is either expensive and bespoke or legally undocumented, leaving labs without a way to source data at scale, prove its provenance, or guarantee its quality.

The legal stakes are rising, as frontier labs stake out market-defining products on data sourced through opaque networks, often without clear records of consent or jurisdiction. Scraped and undocumented data is no longer an option for enterprise-grade AI.

“The challenge in AI has shifted from compute and architecture to sourcing and provenance. As the scrapable web fractures, the question for labs now is who is keeping the receipts,” said Andrea Muttoni, CEO of The DATA Foundation. “With Kled, we combine full data transparency and auditability with the largest pool of AI training data on the planet.”

Building the Infrastructure for Trusted AI Data

DATA builds on the original mission to deliver a data and intellectual property (IP) layer for the internet, recognizing that the form of data and IP that is most critical in this era is AI training data. DATA Network brings essential infrastructure for training AI, anchored by a flagship integration with Kled. Starting today, Kled’s licensing rails and contributor receipts run on DATA Network with added support for stable coin payouts, which involves registering a staggering 1.5 billion user-contributed records with programmatic legal safeguards.

“Frontier labs have exhausted the supply of high-quality, human-generated public text available on the open web. Suppliers showing data-sourcing provenance will win the next decade of deals, and that’s our bet,” said Avi Patel, CEO and founder of Kled and part-time advisory CDO of The DATA Foundation. “Instead of sourcing data blindly, Kled’s data marketplace and DATA’s auditable chain of custody converge on what labs actually need to license data with confidence and transparency.” 

Trace Launches as the Public Audit Layer for AI Training Data

Trace, The DATA Foundation’s public audit and search platform, also launches today alongside the Kled integration. Trace generates immutable, confidential receipts for every contribution, allowing labs to verify the legitimacy of datasets in seconds. For every single record uploaded by users worldwide, a receipt on DATA will be generated, enabling upstream compensation for contributors’ data and intellectual property. This addresses an urgent need for a verifiable and compliant AI training data market, which has become a legal and operational minefield.

A Wider Contributor Network

DATA’s thesis was validated by Poseidon, the AI data processing project incubated by Story, which cleans, normalizes, and scores raw human data for authenticity and quality, ensuring every record that reaches a buyer is model-ready. Poseidon’s early traction with frontier labs proved the AI training data opportunity. Backed by a16z and now running entirely on DATA, its contributor app Numo is live today, bringing thousands of contributors into the AI economy in exchange for real-time payouts. 

“We started Story to build an IP layer for the internet, and the most important IP of this era is the data you can’t scrape: how a surgeon’s hands move, how a robot grips, how people speak, drive, and work in the real world,” said SY Lee, CEO of PIP Labs and strategic adviser to The DATA Foundation. “DATA is where that conviction goes next: an end-to-end network that proves real-world data’s origin, licenses it, and pays the people who made it. “

Token Migration and Ecosystem Continuity

The $IP token migrates to $DATA one-to-one with no action required from existing holders. Migration guidance, exchange timing, and an FAQ are available here.

About The DATA Foundation

Data is the biggest bottleneck in frontier AI. The data models need most either sits siloed with people and companies, or doesn’t exist yet, and won’t, until incentives are aligned to create it. DATA Network is the world’s AI audit rails built to answer the three questions every lab asks: can you source data at scale, prove where it came from, and guarantee its quality? Contributor apps including Numo and Kled supply opt-in human data; Trace gives every record a public, tamper-proof receipt; Poseidon turns it into model-ready datasets, so frontier AI can keep advancing on a foundation it can trust. $IP is now $DATA. More information available at datafdn.org. 

Contact

HV
henri.vies@piplabs.xyz

London, United Arab Emirates, June 25th, 2026, Chainwire

Solstice to launch aiUSX, a yield-bearing asset that lets companies help finance the buildout with the capital they already hold for AI.

TensorX and Solstice today announced a partnership to finance European sovereign AI infrastructure. TensorX and Solstice will work together to create a facility with up to $1 billion in capacity to finance AI hardware and data-center build-out to meet rising demand for sovereign compute across the EU. Solstice will provide the onchain financing for that buildout and will launch aiUSX, a potential yield asset that opens the same infrastructure lending to companies holding capital for AI.

TensorX owns and operates a fleet of NVIDIA GPUs and delivers AI models in EU data centres with zero data retention, predictable pricing with best-in-class performance. The company works with AI startups and enterprises across the EU block with plans to expand into other global jurisdictions.

“Europe wants AI that can run on its own terms, on its own soil, without handing its data to someone else’s cloud on the world stage,” said Tim Grant, Executive Chairman of TensorX. “Meeting that accelerating demand takes hardware, and a lot of it. The billion dollars going into GPUs and data center capacity is the first step, and we expect to keep buying as demand grows. Solstice gives us a financing partner that can keep pace with this incredibly fast moving market.”

aiUSX: Financing the AI Buildout With Capital Companies Already Hold

Companies hold growing piles of cash and stable assets for their AI spend while inference bills climb. These two pools sit apart, and the cash earns nothing while it waits. aiUSX closes that gap. The capital a company sets aside for AI goes into aiUSX, which opens access to the AI-infrastructure lending Solstice finances, the same deals large institutions fund. The company takes the position of an infrastructure lender without becoming one or underwriting anything itself; for example, USD.ai has brought capital to AI hardware across the wider buildout. At launch, aiUSX will be capped at $5 million, with yield generated by the lending it gives access to. The capital stays liquid and redeemable, and what it earns goes toward the cost of inference later.

“Every company is turning into an AI company, and every one of them watches its inference bill climb,” said Ben Nadareski, CEO of Solstice. “aiUSX puts the money they set aside for AI to work in the meantime. They get access to the kind of AI-infrastructure lending that used to sit with large institutions, the capital stays liquid, and what it earns goes toward inference later. It is treasury management for the AI era.”

“Sovereign AI is one of the biggest infrastructure buildouts of this decade, and it runs on capital as much as it runs on chips,” said Stuart Connolly, CIO of Deus X Capital. “TensorX builds the compute, Solstice brings the financing, and aiUSX lets more companies take part in funding it. Both companies are in the Deus X Capital ecosystem, which is why we’re uniquely positioned to deliver this to the market.”

About Solstice

Solstice is an onchain settlement and yield protocol and part of the Deus X Capital ecosystem. Its dollar-denominated asset, USX, and its treasury products provide institutions and businesses with capital that remains liquid and productive. Solstice has a three-year audited track record and more than $500 million in total value locked.

https://solstice.finance/

About TensorX

TensorX is a sovereign AI infrastructure company based in Dublin. It buys and operates AI hardware and data-center capacity across the EU, connects clients to private compute, and keeps prompts and data on European infrastructure with full data residency and zero retention.

https://tensorx.ai/ 

Contact

Laura
Conquista Ventures
laura@conquista.co

Zug, Switzerland, June 25th, 2026, Chainwire

Anyone can now execute mass payouts across EVM chains and Tron from a single platform and can choose between multiple wallet screening providers.

Just three weeks after releasing major upgrades for crypto payment collection, the Request Network Foundation today announced another expansion of its stablecoin payment platform. The release introduces one-click mass payouts on both EVM and Tron, alongside built-in bridging and token swapping across EVM chains. The update also expands compliance capabilities through the integration of Merkle Science as an additional wallet screening provider.

Together, these capabilities reinforce Request Network’s vision of providing businesses with a simpler, more scalable, and more resilient way to operate stablecoin payments globally.

Users Can Now Disburse at Scale in One Click From a Single Wallet Without Bridging or Swapping

Stablecoins are already widely used to disburse salaries, commissions, affiliate rewards, bug bounties, supplier payments, and customer refunds or withdrawals across the world. While settlements are now faster and cheaper in stablecoins compared to fiat, the operational processes needed to send funds remain complex as recipients usually require payments on multiple chains and in multiple currencies. This has forced finance teams to initiate multiple transactions in separate currencies and from multiple wallets.

Request Network now abstracts away this fragmentation, allowing anyone to initiate mass payouts from a single wallet in a single currency to pay recipients across the top 6 EVM chains (Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and BNB Chain) in USDC and USDT.

Through a single signature, a mass payout can now be initiated even if the individual transactions need to be bridged and swapped to reach their recipient. Request Network protocol automatically retrieves and batches bridge and swap quotes in order to funnel every payment of a batch to its correct destination in just one approval.

To simplify the process further, Request Network also allows any recipient to set and update their payment preferences so payments are always routed to where they should go.

This represents one of the biggest breakthroughs in cross-chain and swapping abstraction, bringing payers and recipients closer than ever before, regardless of the blockchain or currency they trust.

Mass Payouts Now Available on Tron

Alongside EVM mass payouts, Request Network also announced the support of mass payouts on Tron, becoming the first protocol to combine both capabilities.

Thanks to this release, anyone can now send USDT to multiple recipients on Tron in a single transaction, unlocking large-scale payouts on one of the most used chains in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

With this release, anyone can now manage all stablecoin payouts globally from the Request Network protocol.

More Choice for Wallet Screening

Alongside mass payouts, Request Network also announced a partnership with Merkle Science to offer additional wallet screening providers on the protocol.

As a reminder, Request Network offers built-in wallet screening to protect its users from high-risk wallet interactions. When enabled, this feature allows payments to be executed only if the payer or recipient satisfies the preset screening policies, helping businesses to avoid exposure to high-risk wallets which may lead to asset freezing or difficulties off-ramping to fiat.

By expanding its integration of Merkle Science, Request Network just became one of the safest ways to receive crypto onchain, while accommodating for recipients’ preferences.

Tristan Wallaert, CEO of the Request Network Foundation, said: “Stablecoins allowed money to move globally without the usual fiat constraints, but executing payments at scale remains a bottleneck and is forcing users to rely on payment service providers. Anyone should be able to pay by himself hundreds of payments across chains in just a single operation.High risk wallets exposure has tarnished the crypto reputation recently, if we want to provide the best protection to blockchain users they need to be able to use the best screening providers. Sending and receiving payments must become intuitive and safe if we want stablecoins to be a real alternative to fiat.”

Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of Merkle Science, said: “As stablecoin payments become more global and cross-chain, compliance needs to become just as seamless as the payment experience itself. Our integration with Request Network helps businesses screen wallets with greater confidence, reduce exposure to high-risk activity, and scale onchain payments without compromising trust or operational efficiency”.

About Request Network

Since 2017, Request Network has developed, educated about, and promoted the use of open-source, decentralized and permissionless protocols that provide infrastructure for on-chain payments and related financial flows.

Request Network allows anyone to send and receive crypto at scale, across chains, without custodial intermediaries. The protocol is developed by a community-funded foundation whose mission is to make crypto payments accessible while protecting its participants.

To date, more than $2 billion has moved thanks to Request Network technology.

Press kit

About Merkle Science

Merkle Science provides blockchain analytics and crypto compliance solutions that help businesses detect, investigate, and prevent financial crime across digital assets. Its platform supports wallet screening, transaction monitoring, risk intelligence, and investigations, enabling crypto platforms, financial institutions, and payment providers to manage onchain risk and meet compliance requirements at scale.

Contacts

CEO
Tristan Wallaert
Request Network Foundation
press@request.network
Director of Business Operations
Álvaro García
alvaro.garcia@merklescience.com