Stablecoins
The Comptroller granted preliminary conditional approval on 14 August to charter World Liberty Trust Company, which will issue and redeem USD1, hold its reserve and custody digital assets as a fiduciary.
Prediction markets
The city filed two complaints in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on 13 August under an ordinance of its own, and the Kalshi case also names Robinhood, Webull and Coinbase, because each takes a fee on every event contract sold through its…
Stablecoins
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.
Regulation
A cancellation notice dated 13 August withdrew the open meeting called for 10 a.m. on the 14th, at which the Commission was to consider proposing a tailored offering regime for certain crypto assets. No new date was given.
Regulation
The Commission published the agenda on 13 August for the first meeting of its Innovation Advisory Committee, on 20 August.
Tokenized capital markets
The Division of Investment Management said on 12 August that it would not recommend enforcement action if Franklin Templeton's registered funds put cash and securities lending collateral into its blockchain-recorded government money fund.
Tokenized capital markets
The largest tokenization platform filed its first quarterly results as a public company on 12 August.
Prediction markets
A King County judge signed an order on 12 August requiring KalshiEX to stop offering event contracts on sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science and mentions in Washington, with geofencing by 2 September and $120,000 a…
Prediction markets
A twelve-page advisory issued on 12 August tells designated contract markets what a market-maker or trading incentive programme may contain and how to file one.
Prediction markets
The Commission found on 11 August that a state enforcement action and its motion for a restraining order are a major market disturbance, and directed KalshiEX to keep operating.
Prediction markets
The flight tracking company discontinued its case on 11 August, the day after filing it and hours after a judge set a restraining order hearing for the 13th.
Africa & emerging markets
Cohort 2 of the Central Bank of Nigeria's regulatory sandbox takes applications from 12 August for supervised live testing of stablecoin issuance, virtual asset payments, custody and on-ramps.
Prediction markets
The flight tracking company filed in Manhattan on 10 August, alleging that Kalshi named it as the primary source agency for cancellation contracts, displayed its trademark on the market pages and settled wagers on data licensed for personal use only.
Regulation
A Sunshine Act notice dated 10 August calls an open meeting for 10 a.m. on Friday 14 August, at which the Commission will consider whether to propose a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.
Clearing & settlement
Distributed Ledger Repo moved an average of $365bn of repurchase agreements a day against tokenized collateral, which Broadridge reports as a 28 per cent rise year on year.
Trading venues
More than 50 cryptoassets went into the main Robinhood app for British customers on 10 August, traded through Bitstamp UK Ltd, with no trading, custody or account fee and a 0.10 per cent charge on the currency conversion that rises to 0.30 per cent…
Prediction markets
Staff at the derivatives regulator wrote to every venue listing event contracts to say that displaying them in American plus-minus odds, rather than in cents, is likely to mislead customers about what they are buying and risks breaching the…
Prediction markets
A federal judge in Detroit refused to stop Michigan enforcing its sports betting law against Coinbase, finding that sports event contracts are probably not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and that, even if they were, the Act does not displace…
Trading venues
The crypto market maker's New York affiliate is registered with the SEC and admitted to FINRA membership as a proprietary trading firm, able to trade equities and equity options, self-clear digital asset securities for its own account and create and…
Stablecoins
Total revenue and reserve income of $701m in the second quarter grew 7% year on year, short of the $712m CoinDesk says analysts expected, as a 66 basis point fall in the rate Circle earns on its reserves offset a quarter's growth in the coin's average supply.
Clearing & settlement
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.
Stablecoins
The yen stablecoin issuer says the extension takes the round to about 6bn yen cumulatively, with a listed logistics group aboard.
Payments
The fourth-largest US bank says corporate and commercial clients will move, program and settle funds around the clock on its own blockchain, starting with a limited dollar to pound exchange and widening through 2027.
Tokenized capital markets
The SEC-registered transfer agent brings its dShares home, selling every S&P 500 company for USDC through self-custody wallets, in what the firm calls an industry first.
Africa & emerging markets
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.
Stablecoins
BSTBL puts an existing Treasury fund's shares on Ethereum through BNY; BRSRV is a new multi-chain vehicle with Securitize—both shaped to sit inside GENIUS Act reserve rules.
Regulation
The letter puts nearly a million investors' losses at $3.81bn against $636m of gains for the President, and asks whether the coin was a soft rug pull. A blockchain analytics firm told CNN it shows no hallmarks of one, and the SEC would not comment.
Prediction markets
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.
Stablecoins
The NYDFS has granted Circle Internet Trust Company a limited purpose trust charter, putting the USDC issuer under the New York Banking Law a decade after it took the first BitLicense.
Prediction markets
The state's petition asks a New York court to shut an exchange the CFTC licenses, with remedies one report reckons could pass $36bn, and puts the sharpest question yet to the federal footing of event contracts.
Prediction markets
The regulator has ordered the former congressman to give up his profits and pay a penalty for trading a Kalshi contract on whether he would attend the State of the Union, an outcome he alone controlled.
Stablecoins
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.
Market design
A principles-based rewrite of Parts 37, 38 and 39 would police affiliations between exchanges, clearers and trading firms—the integrated structure crypto platforms made standard in derivatives markets.
Decentralised finance
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.
Trading venues
Revenue of $1.22bn missed on both the trading and subscription lines and the shares fell about 5% after hours, in a quarter the exchange's own release leads on a record 10.3% share of crypto trading volume.
Custody & asset servicing
Coinkite warned that Coldcard devices generated seeds with too little entropy; within a day, onchain observers were attributing the draining of hundreds of bitcoin to keys an attacker could simply recompute.
Africa & emerging markets
The OTC exchange's NDSP, built on Blockstation rails, is to issue, trade, clear and settle tokenized securities, with a first public offering slated for early September.
Central bank money
The BIS says twenty-eight institutions and central banks moved around CHF800,000 of live tokenized deposits across borders, the first time the project has put real value at stake.
Custody & asset servicing
The servicer of $8.6tn in fund assets will keep books and records on blockchain rails, take subscriptions in stablecoins and mint fund tokens directly, starting with a digitally native Dreyfus money market fund.
Tokenized capital markets
The Central Bank of Ireland has approved a tokenized share class of Aviva Investors' US Dollar Liquidity Fund, issued on the XRP Ledger with Ripple, Komainu and Licuido—which Aviva calls a regulatory first for tokenized fund structures.
Stablecoins
The federally regulated dollar token Tether launched in January now mints and burns natively on the payments network, where it can also pay for gas.
Prediction markets
The exchange will pay doctoral researchers to study its own market category, with a Carnegie Mellon economist as scientific director and independence rules of its own design.
Market design
The aggregator's shared liquidity layer went public across 13 chains, letting providers back several positions with the same tokens without depositing them anywhere—a capital-efficiency claim that doubles as a settlement question.
Africa & emerging markets
A memorandum of understanding puts securities tokenization, blockchain settlement and investor education on the table at East Africa's largest exchange, with the role of USDT still undefined.
Africa & emerging markets
The exchange holding Nigeria's first provisional digital asset approval says businesses can now settle in 14 currencies across nine African markets and beyond, a bet that regulated rails can undercut some of the world's costliest payment corridors.
Prediction markets
A preliminary injunction in the District of Minnesota halts Senate File 3432, finding the Commodity Exchange Act probably preempts a state law that criminalises prediction market platforms.
Payments
The USDC issuer acquires more than 680 patent families and says the deal makes it the largest US blockchain patent holder; the price was not disclosed.
Stablecoins
Amanah Advisors certifies XAUT as compliant with Islamic finance principles, as Tether courts Islamic banks and savers in markets where gold, not the dollar, is the trusted store of value.
Prediction markets
The league wants outright bans on contracts over officiating and player performance rather than case-by-case review, a 21-and-over floor, and prohibited-bettor lists—positions that put it at odds with both the Commission's draft and the leagues that…
Protocol economics
The largest Ethereum staking protocol has started migrating roughly $16bn of stake to Curated Module v2, a consolidation expected to cut the network's validator count by about a third.
Market design
Ondo Finance has replaced Ondo Chain, the institutional layer-1 it announced in February 2025, with an off-chain execution network that settles on public blockchains—a bet that what institutional tokenized markets lack is execution speed and privacy,…
Tokenized capital markets
The platform that issues BlackRock's BUIDL fund has registered Securitize Capital as an investment adviser, completing a set of licences that now runs from broker-dealer and trading venue to transfer agent, fund administrator and adviser.
Regulation
Kenya gazetted the Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026 on 24 July 2026, completing implementation of the VASP Act assented to in October 2025.
Prediction markets
The Division of Market Oversight says template filings that bundle many contract variations into a single certification fall short of what the rules require.
Credit & lending
Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Capital placed a $75m private markets strategy onchain through the KAIO platform on 23 July 2026, issuing on Solana, Sui and Base. Coinbase took exposure to the tokenized fund.
Regulation
The Council adds platforms in six jurisdictions to its Russia measures and creates, for the first time, a tool to bar dealings with any crypto provider used by Russia.
Market design
A new v4 hook standard verifies wallets against issuer-managed allowlists at the protocol level, with Superstate, Securitize and Dowgo among the launch collaborators.
Trading venues
HDR Global Trading will shut the derivatives venue on 23 September following a strategic review, telling users to withdraw funds before the deadline.
Clearing & settlement
BNY said in July 2026 that it plans to pilot tokenized US Treasuries on its private blockchain by the end of 2026 and offer round-the-clock settlement for both conventional and tokenized Treasuries in 2027.
Central bank money
Bank of China settled the two largest transactions recorded on mBridge, the multi-central-bank digital currency platform, in June and July 2026.
Tokenized capital markets
Franklin Templeton's Benji tokenization platform held $2.44bn in assets as of 18 July 2026, of which $1.5bn, or 61.7%, sat on BNB Chain, overtaking Stellar. BNB Chain balances rose 1,226% over the preceding month.
Tokenized capital markets
DTCC started limited production trading on its DTC Tokenization Service in July 2026, covering Russell 1000 constituent stocks, major ETFs and US Treasury securities.
Regulation
HM Treasury published the first report of its Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, Chris Woolard, on 13 July 2026.
Central bank money
The European Parliament approved its position on the digital euro regulation on 9 July 2026, following a committee vote in June.
Economic security
Security firm PeckShield reported $75.87m in losses from 40 crypto security incidents in June 2026, a decline of about 7% on the previous month, with an exploit of Humanity Protocol the largest single event.
Tokenized capital markets
Robinhood began operating Robinhood Chain on mainnet on 1 July 2026, alongside round-the-clock tokenized stock trading, perpetual futures and onchain lending. The tokens give price exposure rather than direct share ownership.
Stablecoins
The Bank for International Settlements published the money and payments chapter of its 2026 Annual Economic Report on 23 June 2026, arguing that stablecoins fall short on singleness, elasticity and integrity of money.
Regulation
On 22 June 2026 the Bank of England published a policy statement and draft Code of Practice for sterling systemic stablecoin issuers, dropping proposed individual holding limits in favour of a temporary £40bn cap per issuance.
Protocol economics
Ethereum client teams locked the devnet-0 specification for the Glamsterdam upgrade in June 2026, with enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732) and block-level access lists (EIP-7928) as the central changes.
Prediction markets
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a notice of proposed rulemaking on prediction markets, published in the Federal Register on 12 June 2026, setting out when event contracts on enumerated activities are contrary to the public interest.
Africa & emerging markets
The IMF Executive Board concluded its 2026 Article IV consultation with Nigeria on 9 June 2026 and identified stablecoin oversight as a priority.
Credit & lending
Securitize brought Hamilton Lane's tokenized Senior Credit Opportunities Fund to Tron on 2 June 2026, its first issuance on that network.
Regulation
The European Commission opened a two-part consultation on revising the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation in May 2026, with responses due by 30 August 2026.
Regulation
The Senate Banking Committee released its version of the CLARITY Act on 11 May 2026 and advanced the crypto market structure bill out of committee that month. A further revision was reported in July 2026 as negotiators worked toward a bipartisan compromise.
Protocol economics
Alpenglow, which replaces Solana's TowerBFT consensus with the Votor and Rotor components, activated on a community validator test cluster on 11 May 2026.
Tokenized capital markets
Trading volume in tokenized gold reached $90.7bn in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding the total for all of 2025, according to research published by CEX.IO.
Payments
Mastercard and the African digital-asset platform Yellow Card announced a partnership on 7 May 2026 to build stablecoin-based payment and settlement rails across Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Custody & asset servicing
State Street announced on 28 April 2026 that it would launch tokenized fund servicing from Luxembourg, initially for tokenized money market fund issuers, later in 2026.
Tokenized capital markets
The European Central Bank published a study of the tokenised bond market in Issue 33 of its Macroprudential Bulletin on 13 April 2026, comparing matched samples of tokenised and conventional European corporate bonds.
Regulation
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted its first stablecoin issuer licences on 10 April 2026 to HSBC and to Anchorpoint Financial, a joint venture led by Standard Chartered with Animoca Brands and HKT.
Prediction markets
Intercontinental Exchange announced an additional $600m investment in Polymarket on 27 March 2026, adding to its earlier stake in the prediction-market platform.
Currency & FX
An IMF working paper published on 27 March 2026 examined cross-border stablecoin flows and their effects on emerging-market foreign exchange rates.
Regulation
The Securities and Exchange Commission approved a Nasdaq rule change on 18 March 2026 allowing certain tokenized securities to trade on the exchange, alongside an interpretation of how the federal securities laws apply to tokenized instruments.
Credit & lending
Aave reported cumulative lending volume above $1tn in late February 2026, the first decentralised credit protocol to reach that figure.
Regulation
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published a proposed rule on 25 February 2026 implementing the GENIUS Act, consolidating reserve, redemption, audit and supervision requirements for payment stablecoin issuers in a new 12 CFR Part 15.
Stablecoins
Tether announced USAT on 27 January 2026, a dollar stablecoin issued in the United States by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act framework, with Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer.
Payments
JPMorgan said on 7 January 2026 that it would issue JPMD, its dollar deposit token, natively on the Canton Network, a privacy-oriented institutional blockchain.
Governance
Uniswap governance activated the protocol fee switch on Ethereum on 28 December 2025, redirecting a share of swap fees to protocol revenue used for UNI buybacks and burns, and extended it to layer-2 deployments in March and June 2026.