News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
Standard setters have agreed the reference framework (FSB recommendations, the Basel cryptoasset standard, the FATF travel rule and IOSCO's conduct expectations) and their own reviews find implementation of it uneven.
International standard setters supply the reference framework that national regimes implement. The Financial Stability Board's global stablecoin and crypto-activity recommendations were supplemented by a thematic peer review published on October 16, 2025 that found significant gaps and inconsistencies in implementation. The Basel Committee's prudential standard for cryptoasset exposures (SCO60) had its implementation date deferred to January 1, 2026, announced on May 13, 2024, alongside a disclosure framework. The FATF's seventh targeted update, published on July 16, 2026, reported that 83% of surveyed jurisdictions had travel-rule legislation, up from 73% a year earlier, while flagging weak enforcement and growing criminal use of stablecoins. IOSCO's policy recommendations for crypto and digital asset markets and for DeFi set market-conduct expectations. The Bank for International Settlements devoted a chapter of its 2026 Annual Economic Report, released on June 23, 2026, to the singleness of money and a unified ledger, and published findings from Project Agora on May 27, 2026.
| Framework | Status | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| FSB high-level recommendations for the regulation, supervision and oversight of global stablecoin arrangements | In force | 17 July 2023 | Revised recommendations covering governance, reserve management, redemption rights and cross-border cooperation for global stablecoin arrangements. |
| FSB high-level recommendations for crypto-asset activities and markets | In force | 17 July 2023 | Same-activity, same-risk approach to crypto-asset service providers, conflicts of interest and cross-border data sharing. |
| FSB thematic peer review on implementation of the crypto-asset and stablecoin recommendations | In force | 16 October 2025 | Found significant gaps and inconsistencies in national implementation, particularly for stablecoin arrangements and cross-border cooperation. |
| Basel Committee prudential standard for cryptoasset exposures (SCO60) | In force | 1 January 2026 | Group 1 and Group 2 classification with a 1% Tier 1 exposure limit for Group 2 assets; implementation deferred from January 2025 to January 1, 2026 in the May 13, 2024 announcement, with an accompanying disclosure framework. |
| FATF Recommendation 15 and the travel rule for virtual assets | In force | 21 June 2019 | Requires licensing or registration of virtual asset service providers and transmission of originator and beneficiary information for transfers. |
| FATF seventh targeted update on implementation of standards for virtual assets and VASPs | In force | 16 July 2026 | Reports 83% of surveyed jurisdictions with travel-rule legislation, up from 73% in 2025, with persistent enforcement gaps and rising criminal use of stablecoins. |
| IOSCO policy recommendations for crypto and digital asset markets | In force | 16 November 2023 | Eighteen recommendations on conflicts of interest, market manipulation, custody, cross-border risks and retail distribution. |
| IOSCO policy recommendations for decentralised finance | In force | 19 December 2023 | Applies existing standards to DeFi arrangements by identifying responsible persons and addressing governance and disclosure. |
| BIS Project Agora (tokenized correspondent banking on a unified ledger) | In force | 27 May 2026 | Findings published with seven central banks and more than 40 private financial firms on tokenized wholesale settlement and cross-border payments. |
| BIS Annual Economic Report chapter on the next-generation monetary and financial system | In force | 23 June 2026 | Sets out the singleness of money, elasticity and integrity as tests for tokenized systems, and argues for tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank money on a unified ledger. |
| CPMI-IOSCO application of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures to stablecoin arrangements | In force | 13 July 2022 | Clarifies that systemically important stablecoin arrangements are subject to the PFMI, including governance, settlement finality and money settlement. |
Every development we have evidenced under Global standard setters, newest first.
Tether announced on 13 August 2026 that KPMG US had audited the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended 31 December 2025 and issued an unqualified opinion, with reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814bn. The statements and the auditor's report were not published.
Google's revised Chrome Web Store Developer Program policies came into force on 1 August 2026, the Regulated Goods and Services section stating that extensions facilitating or enabling real money transactions on predictive outcomes are not allowed. The change was published on 1 July. It names no venue and reaches extensions rather than the markets themselves; no removal has been reported.
Tether published its second-quarter 2026 attestation on 31 July, examined by BDO as of 30 June. Total liabilities were $183,622,105,630 against total assets of $187,751,426,411, leaving excess reserves of $4,109,529,196, against $8.23bn three months earlier. The company reported net operating profit of about $1.5bn for the quarter, gold holdings above 146 tonnes after adding 14 during the period, and a reduction of about $2.38bn in secured lending exposure.
Coinkite published a security advisory on 30 July 2026, updated on 1 August, saying Coldcard devices had generated seeds with insufficient entropy: about 72 bits rather than 128 on later models, and weak seeds on Mk2 and Mk3 firmware 4.0.1 to 4.1.9 unless dice rolls were used. The advisory confirms no thefts; outside analysts attributed large automated sweeps of bitcoin to the flaw the following day.
Uniswap Labs launched Earn on 30 July 2026, letting users deposit USDC, USDT or ether on Ethereum mainnet into lending vaults built on Morpho infrastructure with risk parameters curated by Gauntlet. The product is self-custodial, has no lockup or cooldown, and carries no Uniswap fee at launch beyond network costs.
The Bank for International Settlements published real-value testing results for Project Agora on 29 July 2026. Twenty-eight private sector institutions and central banks completed transactions across seventeen scenarios worth about CHF800,000 in total, settling in roughly eighty seconds on average on a platform where tokenized commercial bank deposits move alongside tokenized central bank reserves.
Tether's USAT, the dollar token issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act regime, went live on Celo on 29 July 2026, its first network beyond Ethereum. The deployment mints and burns natively rather than bridging a representation, and Celo's fee abstraction mechanism lets USAT pay transaction fees, so a holder can transact without first acquiring the network's own asset. The announcement ran through Celo's channels; Tether's newsroom carried no release of its own.
1inch opened Aqua to the public on 28 July 2026 across 13 EVM networks including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Chain. Providers authorise the protocol against tokens that stay in their own wallets rather than depositing them in a pool, and the same balance can stand behind several quoted positions at once. The 1inch Foundation allocated 10 million 1INCH to provider rewards, with a further 500,000 USDC proposed and pending governance approval, and the release says the protocol went through eight independent audits.
Ondo Finance introduced the Ondo Network on 27 July 2026, an execution layer running trades inside secure hardware enclaves with asset transfers settling on public blockchains and a set of attestors verifying the code in use. It replaces Ondo Chain, the institutional layer-1 announced in February 2025, and carries the firm's perpetual futures venue as its first application.
Lido began moving more than 265,000 validators onto consolidated post-Pectra credentials on 27 July 2026, a migration of over 8 million staked ETH that it expects to cut Ethereum's validator count from about 880,000 to roughly 628,000 and attestation messages by about 29% per epoch. The new module requires node operators to post ETH bonds for the first time.
HDR Global Trading said on 23 July 2026 that BitMEX would close at 04:00 UTC on 23 September, following a strategic review, and told users to withdraw funds before the deadline. The venue introduced the perpetual swap in May 2016, the contract design that went on to dominate crypto derivatives trading on centralised and onchain venues alike.
The Bank for International Settlements reported that the Project Agorá prototype showed tokenisation of central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits can support atomic multi-currency settlement across jurisdictions while leaving each central bank in control of its own money and preserving transaction privacy. Seven central banks and more than 40 private financial institutions took part, and the project said the work would advance to real-value transactions in certain currencies.
Uniswap governance activated the protocol fee switch on Ethereum, directing a share of swap fees to protocol revenue used to buy back and burn UNI. Governance subsequently extended protocol fees to further deployments, with temperature checks on Uniswap v4 fees and on extension to Robinhood Chain posted in July 2026.
Swift said it would build a blockchain-based shared ledger into its infrastructure stack, initially for round-the-clock cross-border payments and the movement of regulated tokenised value, with smart contracts used to record, sequence and validate transactions. More than 30 financial institutions across 16 countries are working on the design, and Consensys was appointed to build the prototype for the first phase.
Kraken began offering xStocks, tokenised US stocks and exchange-traded funds issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited of Jersey as SPL tokens on Solana, with 60 assets at launch. US persons were excluded from the offering, which Kraken said it intended to extend to more than 140 countries.
The central bank partners in Project mBridge announced that the cross-border multi-CBDC settlement platform had reached minimum viable product stage and invited further participants. The founding central banks were the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority; the Saudi Central Bank joined as a full participant and more than 26 central banks were observing members.
The Bank for International Settlements announced Project Agorá, a public-private effort to test tokenised commercial bank deposits alongside tokenised wholesale central bank money on a programmable platform. Seven central banks joined, working with private financial firms convened by the Institute of International Finance.
The Financial Stability Board published final high-level recommendations for the regulation of crypto-asset activities and of global stablecoin arrangements, built on the principle of same activity, same risk, same regulation. The framework was addressed to national authorities and set out expectations on governance, reserve assets and cross-border cooperation.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published its final standard on the prudential treatment of banks' cryptoasset exposures, splitting assets into a group eligible for existing capital rules and a group carrying a punitive treatment. The implementation date for member jurisdictions was set at 1 January 2025.
MoneyGram began letting customers convert cash to and from USDC at its retail agent locations, using the Stellar network for settlement. The service opened in Canada, Kenya, the Philippines and the United States, with wider availability planned.
KPMG US issued an unqualified opinion on the 2025 financial statements of Tether International, the entity Tether says is the only issuer of USDT, and found reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814bn at 31 December 2025.
Eleven institutions will secure the stablecoin issuer's own layer-one network before its 16 September mainnet, and the DTCC will make Arc a supported chain for tokenizing the assets it custodies from the second half of 2027.
SC Ventures, the Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital back the pan-African payments company's dollar-account business, taking its equity financing past $120m as it moves into Latin America and the Asia-Pacific.
From 1 August the Chrome Web Store refuses extensions that move real money on predictive outcomes, closing a distribution channel to venues such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Google Finance has carried their prices since November 2025.
BDO's attestation shows $183.6bn of USDT backed by $187.8bn of assets at 30 June—an excess of $4.11bn, down from $8.23bn a quarter earlier.
The largest DEX's front end now routes idle USDC, USDT and ether into Morpho vaults curated by Gauntlet, charging no Uniswap fee and keeping custody with the user.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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