Digital Assets archive
Every Digital Assets story, newest first. 479 stories
4 stories
- Regulation
Clarity Act odds now ride on an ethics bar
Conflict restrictions written without a sunset and enforceable by state attorneys general would outlast the definitions the bill is nominally about.
- Custody & Infrastructure
S&P Global buys the calculation layer under its own index brand
Ten institutions bought into the vendor whose convention will price the tokenized assets their own custodians will have to value.
- Tokenization
Kraken turns tokenized equity into collateral and keeps 25% of the yield
The 2% APY on SPYx and QQQx comes from a leveraged credit strategy behind an exchange interface, and the disclosed loss-sharing reaches the depositor's principal.
- The Wrap
Stablecoins take the payment fee, not the deposit
Balances are holding, so the ABA's Washington fight is not the one its members are losing.
1 story
- Adoption
Community banks are defending deposits while the payment flow migrates
An op-ed's deposit data undercuts the ABA's stablecoin fear, but the workflow leak is the one that costs.
3 stories
- The Wrap
This week, tokenization sold paperwork and charged for it
Robinhood's debt defense, Valinor's empty contract, and ARK's narrow filing share one design choice: route around the consent step, and bill for the routing.
- Regulation
Lummis revises CLARITY five days out and leaves the carve-out alone
Three narrow changes land five days before a 60-vote cloture motion that still turns on the DeFi anti-money-laundering exemption.
- Custody & Infrastructure
Liquid's exit stays shut as Blockstream refuses the ransom
Blockstream's refusal costs it little; 598.5 bitcoin remains outstanding and the only exit from Liquid is still shut.
7 stories
- Tokenization
Valinor's tokenized BDC fund bought its liquidity from the tape
A $5 million wrapper around listed business development companies, with a token contract that has moved nothing, puts the 1.25% fee on trial.
- The Wrap
Banks are buying freeze switches, not ledgers
U.S. Bank's live dollar token on Stellar and Swift's second live payment on its ledger point to one product: settlement on the issuer's terms.
- Regulation
Atkins headlines a Solana summit while the SEC's rulebook waits
The SEC's most legible statement on digital assets right now is the company its principals keep.
- Adoption
The stablecoin payout layer is a licensing business
Oak HC/FT is funding the unglamorous half of stablecoin payments — licences, audits and local scheme connections — while Circle pays nine times more in stock to buy the same capability outright.
- Tokenization
A national bank's stablecoin lands on Stellar, freeze switch included
U.S. Bank's live cross-border pilot in its own dollar token shows banks will use public rails as long as the issuer keeps the ability to stop a transfer.
- The Wrap
The gate is free and the last mile is for sale
Two infrastructure moves this week show the economics of institutional digital assets moving from the settlement rail to the edges where tokens become useful.
- Adoption
Matter Labs gives away the gate to sell the plumbing
A central bank running permissioned-chain code on its own hardware is a heavier reference than a proof of concept, and it moves the hard question from privacy to interoperability.
3 stories
- Tokenization
Tenev's token defense: it's debt, not AMC stock
If the tokens are Robinhood Assets debt referencing AMC, issuer consent may be beside the point—but so are shareholder votes.
- Adoption
Latitude raises $35M to own stablecoin's last mile
The Stripe- and Uber-alumni startup is betting that the value in stablecoin rails sits at the moment tokens become local money, not in the transfer itself.
- The Wrap
Institutional crypto is fencing off the ledger
Compound's whitelisted pool, ARK's tokenized share class, and REC's sandbox bond all treat the ledger as a back-office detail rather than a product to sell.
6 stories
- Tokenization
ARK asks SEC for a tokenized share class without asking it to bless the ledger
The venture interval fund's application seeks a ledger-recorded share class and leaves the distributed ledger itself out of the requested relief.
- Tokenization
REC's tokenized bond draws an eight-times book in SEBI's sandbox
The state-owned lender's ₹5 billion placement found eager institutional buyers, but whether the token itself mattered remains the open question.
- Adoption
Compound walls off institutional-only lending
A v3.5 market splits Compound's liquidity, gives whitelisted borrowers their own terms, and leaves the stress parameters off the page.
- Tokenization
DBS and Citi complete weekend dollar transfer on Swift ledger
The Sept. 5 Singapore–New York payment is the ledger's second live use, stretching tokenized deposits past standard banking hours while final settlement stays on existing systems.
- Adoption
BitMine nears its 5% ETH target as staking takes over
The weekly purchase still reads as intent, but the 85% staked share is now the number that moves the company.
- The Wrap
Liquid's recovery was a negotiation, not a settlement
Blockstream got most of the frozen bitcoin back by talking to the draining address; the 15% left behind is the cost of social settlement, and Nasdaq Texas now offers the rulebook alternative.
3 stories
- Custody & Infrastructure
Liquid gets most bitcoin back, without a control point
The federation negotiated onchain with the address that drained it; the 15% left behind is the price of the model.
- The Wrap
Crypto's market structure runs on two regulatory rails
Nasdaq Texas gets an SEC-cleared spot ETP rule while Hyperliquid's reported perpetual-futures talks target a CFTC-regulated exchange, leaving institutions with two separate U.S. markets.
- The Wrap
Liquid's $319.5 Million Freeze Is a Custody Problem
Blockstream immobilized 3,998 bitcoin and said no key was stolen. The open question is which named party controlled the funds.
1 story
- Custody & Infrastructure
Why Liquid's 3,998 BTC pause is a custody event
Blockstream froze the sidechain after nearly the whole federation wallet moved through SideSwap's peg-out key; the network says no key was stolen, leaving the real control failure unnamed.
1 story
- Custody & Infrastructure
A blob-space scramble left Robinhood Chain's batches queued for 14 minutes
Robinhood Chain kept producing blocks while its Ethereum batches waited behind Base, leaving app users unaware of the settlement queue.
2 stories
- Regulation
SEC clears Nasdaq Texas rule for crypto ETP listings
Accelerated approval gives Nasdaq Texas an SEC-cleared Commodity Based Trust Shares standard, the exchange rule spot bitcoin and ether products need before they can trade.
- The Wrap
LSE's tokenized stocks are loan notes, not shares
Payward's xStocks trade as debt against a Jersey share pool, making tokenized equity a crypto-native index wrapper rather than onchain stock trading.
1 story
- The Wrap
LSE's Tokenized Stocks Are Loan Notes
Payward's xStocks will trade as debt against shares in a Jersey vehicle, not as onchain equity—and the wrapper is the product.
3 stories
- Tokenization
LSE to List Tokenized Versions of UK's 100 Largest Stocks
The London Stock Exchange's planned listing of Payward's xStocks would put the 100 largest London-listed companies on a 24/5 venue as loan notes, with the shares parked in a Jersey vehicle.
- Adoption
Firelight raises $8M to back DeFi cover with staked XRP
The seed round is a fraction of the $88.3 billion it aims to protect, yet the structure splits capital from adjudication to address the conflict that has kept onchain cover marginal.
- Tokenization
High-yield credit becomes onchain collateral
Securitize's HINC fund is now borrowable on Loopscale, pushing tokenized lending beyond Treasuries and into marks that can fall.
5 stories
- Regulation
Hyperliquid's U.S. perp path runs through Bitnomial
Bloomberg-reported talks would put Hyperliquid's permissionless perps on Bitnomial's CFTC-regulated exchange; the open question is whether the commission blesses the mix.
- Regulation
SEC pushes Form PF deadline to 2027 while it rebuilds the rule
Managers who build to the old amendments now may pay twice. The SEC is narrowing the rule before it lands.
- Adoption
Strategy's bitcoin return rests on a two-sided balance sheet
The $370 million purchase was funded by selling MSTR shares and partly allocated to STRC dividends and buybacks, making the bitcoin treasury's endurance a function of the stock price.
- Adoption
BitMine holds staked ETH at 5.07M as treasury grows
The miner's staked position has been flat for four weeks while its holdings march toward 5.9M ETH; the unstaked 834,000 ETH is the capital that will test MAVAN.
- Adoption
Sberbank plots bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether as loan collateral
A conditional plan to lend against digital assets makes credit, not payments, the adoption path in Russia's new regulated regime.