digital

On September 24, Zach Pandl, the research director of the cryptocurrency asset management company Grayscale, published an article in the column The Stack stating that in the wave of artificial intelligence, the demand and supply paths for the computing power required to train, run, and operate models are diverging. Grayscale believes that this imbalance favors owners of already powered and operational computing capacity and brings growth-oriented investment opportunities.Zach Pandl stated that digital demand can expand instantly, but physical infrastructure such as electricity, data centers, chips, memory, and cloud services takes years to approve, access, and build. When artificial intelligence agents perform multi-step tasks, they may consume 5 to 50 times more compute tokens than typical chatbot interactions, and increased application layer activity will transmit to the underlying computing infrastructure.The article cites data from the International Energy Agency and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stating that data centers are expected to account for about half of the growth in electricity demand in the United States by 2030, and new projects may take more than five years to connect to the grid. Even if electricity is secured, permits, specialized labor, electrical equipment, cooling systems, GPUs, high-bandwidth memory, and networks are still needed. Continuous value will flow to power producers, data center operators, and artificial intelligence cloud service providers that can convert electricity into computation.

Michael Saylor stated that as AI changes the way businesses are built, digital tokens can help 10 million new companies raise funds and reduce fundraising costs and delays. He advocates for simplifying issuance rules while retaining information disclosure and anti-fraud protections. Michael Saylor is the Executive Chairman of Bitcoin Treasury Company Strategy Inc.He proposed that companies could adapt rules for token issuance based on the type of issuance and set information disclosure requirements that match the risks, while reducing legal costs and retaining ownership protections and fraud accountability. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also proposed a cryptocurrency issuance exemption plan, one of which allows qualified issuers to raise up to $5 million within four years, and another allows raising up to $75 million every 12 months; both are still proposals and come with disclosure and anti-fraud requirements.

Michael Saylor published a long article titled "Prescriptions for Prosperity in the Digital Economy," stating that artificial intelligence will significantly enhance the productivity of individuals and businesses, thus necessitating a more free environment for creating, financing, owning, and trading assets. He suggests establishing a "Digital Bill of Rights" for digital assets, which centers on granting individuals and businesses the rights to create, issue, custody, transfer, and use digital assets, while providing fundamental protections in financial privacy, asset ownership, and market access.Saylor believes that digital intelligence will drive the birth of a large number of new enterprises, and financing costs, complexity, and time costs should be reduced, while improving capital formation efficiency through means such as digital tokens. He proposes a goal of enabling 10 million new enterprises to secure financing, while also establishing clear issuance rules and risk-matched disclosure requirements.Regarding the digital dollar, Saylor advocates for allowing banks, fintech companies, and technology platforms to compete more fully in the digital dollar product space and for issuers to compete around yields. He believes that the U.S. can further expand the global reach of the dollar by allowing companies to develop more competitive dollar digital products.For Bitcoin, Saylor defines it as "digital capital," advocating for allowing banks to custody Bitcoin under clear rules and use it as collateral for providing credit, while also establishing a viable path for insurance companies to incorporate digital capital into their balance sheets and product designs.He specifically mentions that the Basel Accord applies a 1250% risk weight to certain crypto asset exposures, arguing that regulators should reassess the relevant capital requirements based on the actual risks of digital assets and specific business activities.

Galaxy Digital, a Nasdaq-listed digital asset company, has incorporated $100 million in Sky Protocol interest-bearing savings tokens sUSDS into its corporate treasury and included them in the collateral range for institutional business facing over 1,600 counterparties. Galaxy also purchased an undisclosed amount of SKY.Galaxy clients can use sUSDS as collateral for loans and continue to earn Sky Savings Rate yields during the loan term. The average loan size in Galaxy's institutional lending business is approximately $1.4 billion; the Sky ecosystem's Prime Agent Grove had previously provided a $500 million warehouse loan limit to it.

Chutianlong recently won the bid for a digital renminbi hardware wallet management system project from an operating organization. The full-stack platform output from hardware supply to issuance continues to enhance the full-link service capability.

Emilie Choi, President and Chief Operating Officer of Coinbase, stated that Coinbase is one of the first supporters of the "Trump Account" plan. Faryar Shirzad, Chief Policy Officer of Coinbase, mentioned that the company has submitted opinions to the Internal Revenue Service regarding the implementation and expansion of the account, suggesting that beneficiaries be allowed to invest in a wide range of traded digital assets or gain exposure to digital assets through funds, aligning the scope of qualified investments with the asset classes that traditional IRAs can invest in. Coinbase believes that broader and product-neutral rules will help expand choices, promote competition, and provide more opportunities for young people in the United States to engage in diversified investments and wealth accumulation. The qualified investments proposed by the Internal Revenue Service in the growth phase are currently mainly limited to tracking a broad stock index of U.S. companies, unleveraged mutual funds or ETFs with an annual fee rate not exceeding 0.1%.

IBM announced that customers of its digital asset management platform IBM Digital Asset Haven can now connect to permissioned blockchain networks, including the blockchain-based shared ledger from Swift. A new beta version of the ISO 20022 message adapter allows financial institutions to initiate tokenized deposit transactions through this ledger using standard payment messages. IBM stated that financial institutions participating in Swift-related programs have tested tokenized deposits on this ledger using Digital Asset Haven. The ledger supports tokenized deposits issued by banks, enabling participating IBM clients to transfer digital assets around the clock, with final settlement still completed through existing systems.Swift first announced this ledger at Sibos 2025, based on a prototype developed in collaboration with Consensys, with over 40 financial institutions involved in its design, 17 of which are participating in the tokenized deposit pilot. Swift currently connects over 12,500 financial institutions across more than 200 markets worldwide. The aforementioned message adapter allows banks to continue using existing payment message formats and operational processes without adopting blockchain-specific workflows.IBM is also expanding Digital Asset Haven to a localized deployment beta version, which can be installed on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE in the client's own data center for managing digital assets such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits, without relying on public cloud infrastructure. IBM stated that the platform and key management layer are fully retained within the client's own environment, with keys protected by IBM Crypto Express hardware security modules.

Oracle announced the expansion of its Digital Assets Data Nexus platform, adding payment execution integration, configurable wallets and smart contract controls, as well as AI-driven transaction monitoring and risk analysis features.This upgrade supports connecting existing bank payment systems with digital asset transaction execution through the ISO 20022 messaging standard, helping banks establish a unified operational model for the flow of funds between traditional currencies and digital currencies, while enhancing ledger visibility, compliance controls, and operational efficiency. The platform will also support integration with Oracle Banking Payments and Swift Ledger, covering application scenarios such as tokenized deposits, stablecoins, CBDCs, digital bonds, and real-world assets. Oracle stated that the relevant features are planned for release in fiscal year 2027.

According to informed sources, the Hong Kong government plans to raise HKD 15 billion to 20 billion (USD 1.9 billion to 2.6 billion) by issuing multi-currency digital green bonds, which will be the largest transaction of its kind globally.The sources said that these bonds will be denominated in US dollars, Hong Kong dollars, euros, and offshore renminbi, with pricing potentially as early as next Monday. Due to the involvement of undisclosed information, the sources requested anonymity. The Hong Kong government has commissioned several banks to arrange a series of fixed income investor meetings this week.

According to BBX data, yesterday global publicly listed companies in the U.S. stock market announced their latest accounts regarding digital asset treasury allocation, targeted private placements, and stock repurchases at a discount. The core updates are as follows:Galaxy Digital (TSX: GLXY) invested $100 million to purchase sUSDS and increased its holdings in SKY tokens: The well-known cryptocurrency financial services firm Galaxy Digital announced that it has utilized $100 million of its own funds to officially incorporate the interest-bearing stablecoin sUSDS from Sky Protocol into its corporate treasury. At the same time, Galaxy has approved sUSDS as compliant collateral for its institutional trading business, allowing institutional clients to apply for loans by pledging sUSDS while continuing to enjoy Sky's savings interest rate benefits. Additionally, Greg Feibus, the global head of capital markets at Sky Frontier Foundation, confirmed that Galaxy also purchased an undisclosed amount of SKY tokens. The two parties have established a new tripartite lending arrangement and are discussing expanding the existing $500 million warehouse financing limit.Forward Industries (NASDAQ: $FWDI) plans to raise $25 million through a registered direct offering, fully allocated to increase its holdings in SOL: The publicly listed company Forward Industries, which is part of the Solana treasury, announced that it has signed a securities purchase agreement with institutional investors to sell 3.125 million shares of common stock at a price of $8 per share through a registered direct issuance, raising a total of approximately $25 million (expected to complete settlement around September 24). A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners is acting as the exclusive placement agent. Forward Industries clearly stated that the net proceeds from this offering will be fully used to increase its holdings in SOL in the secondary market, to expand its SOL treasury size and enhance the per-share fully diluted SOL content.Silvia (formerly ProCap Financial, NASDAQ: $SVIA) reduced its holdings by repurchasing 124 BTC, bringing total holdings down to 5,130 BTC: The Nasdaq-listed company Silvia, under cryptocurrency entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, announced that since September 15, it has repurchased an additional 2.3% of its circulating common stock at a market discount below net asset value (NAV). Since the repurchase program began, the cumulative repurchase ratio has reached approximately 14.5%. As of the market close on September 22, the company's circulating shares have been reduced to 82,881,223 shares, with the treasury holding approximately 5,130 BTC (a decrease of about 124 BTC from approximately 5,254 BTC on September 15), and the NAV per share is approximately $4.27. The company reiterated its firm commitment to selling some assets to repurchase shares until the secondary market trading price is no longer below NAV.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a certain whale transferred 42,000 ETH to Galaxy Digital about an hour ago, valued at approximately 112 million dollars, intending to sell.This whale has accumulated these ETH through over-the-counter trading with Galaxy Digital over the past two months.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission announced the implementation of the strategic action plan for the first five-year plan, which will shortly introduce a new licensing system for digital assets, and implement digital asset custody supervision, CrypTech market supervision, and anti-money laundering capability building.In the medium to long term, it will develop a regulatory framework for tokenized investment products as needed, covering tokenized gold and other real-world assets. The agency will also support the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government in establishing a central clearing and settlement system for gold, and developing gold and commodity products priced in Renminbi.

BlackRock released a white paper titled "Machine Native Economy: How Digital Assets Connect Intelligence, Business, and Computing." The white paper points out that the extraordinary growth of AI is a defining technological theme, and digital assets represent a parallel financial infrastructure, where both intersect in the interaction between AI systems and economic networks. AI is machine-native intelligence, and digital assets are machine-native currency. Agent-based AI uses blockchain as programmable infrastructure, connecting intelligence with economic activities and extending AI to real-world actions such as purchasing and trading.The white paper lists three overlapping areas: LLM and blockchain share similar tokenization, with the former encoding language into numerical values and the latter tokenizing economic value for machine-verifiable transfer and settlement; agent-based commerce requires machine-native payment rails, with stablecoins, native crypto assets, and on-chain assets serving as tools, while traditional rails have limitations in low-value programmable transactions around the clock; computing becomes the digital asset market, with hyperscale cloud revenue expected to exceed $1 trillion annually by 2030, and standardized computing power claims can serve as financing and programmable settlement use cases.

The cryptocurrency venture capital firm Hashed has anchored a new digital asset private credit fund with a target size of $300 million. The fund was founded by Abu Dhabi investor and Further Ventures co-founder Mohamed Hamdy, and is managed by Thoro Capital Management, where he serves as managing partner.Thoro will lend directly to digital asset institutions in US dollars settled through stablecoins, with Hashed acting as the primary investor in the fund. Hashed stated that the new fund aims to address key financing bottlenecks in the institutional digital asset space—traditional banks are constrained by regulatory capital requirements, while existing crypto lenders underwrite based on asset collateral, which forces even profitable and audited market infrastructure companies to rely on expensive, short-term secured borrowing.The fund adopts a "contract-based" underwriting approach, assessing borrowers' financial conditions, cash flows, and management performance. Hashed noted that tokenized private credit has become the largest real-world asset (RWA) category by cumulative on-chain lending, with total loans exceeding $14 billion, while the traditional private credit market exceeds $30 trillion. Previously, Hashed obtained a financial services license issued by the Abu Dhabi Global Market and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office last week.

Circle announced that the Digital Asset Backed Borrowing and Lending (DABB) feature has been launched on the Arc and Ethereum networks, available to eligible Circle Mint institutional clients.Clients can deposit Bitcoin, mint Circle Wrapped Bitcoin (cirBTC), and supply cirBTC as collateral to third-party lending markets in a single process using a self-custody wallet. The USDC borrowed will be directly settled into the Circle Mint account balance, without the need to sell the pledged Bitcoin; collateral can be released after repaying the USDC.

Global investment platform 01F Group, through its growth-stage fintech private equity division 01Fintech, announced an investment in Indonesia's leading digital financial platform DANA. This investment aims to support local technological infrastructure, promote financial inclusion, and serve Indonesia's real economy.Both parties will explore connecting credit and working capital for small and micro enterprises on the DANA platform, expanding services such as microinsurance and digital savings, and leveraging the 01F Group network to explore cross-border payments. DANA has been providing digital payment, QRIS, transfer, and artificial intelligence financial solutions since 2018.

Korean Air Bank issued a 100 million USD foreign currency digital bond with a term of 5 years, directly utilizing the digital financial market infrastructure of Euroclear. This is the first digital bond in Korea issued directly using Euroclear's blockchain infrastructure.The issuance, registration, and settlement of the bond are all processed on a distributed ledger network, shortening the bond allocation and payment settlement from 3 to 5 working days to the same day. Investors can trade the bond through the Euroclear global settlement network using their existing accounts and trading systems.