digital

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.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Blue Macellari, the head of digital assets at asset management giant T. Rowe Price, stated in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine that Bitcoin has now become the central topic of discussion regarding currency devaluation. She pointed out that bond vigilantes are making a comeback, U.S. Treasury financing is shifting from foreign buyers to domestic buyers, and the debt situations in Japan and Italy are not comparable to the U.S. buyer base.Macellari has 20 years of experience in emerging market sovereign debt and distressed debt investment, and later was responsible for establishing T. Rowe Price's digital asset business. In the interview, she reviewed the evolution of internal discussions on digital assets within the institution, the considerations for launching actively managed multi-token ETFs, and discussed the trends of asset management tokenization and automation, as well as the liquidity fragmentation risks brought by 24/7 trading.Additionally, Macellari assessed whether the demand for stablecoins under the GENIUS Act represents a substantive change or is merely wishful thinking, and she believes that devaluation trading has indeed driven institutional allocation to Bitcoin. She also stated that volatility can serve as a portfolio tool, and there are significant generational differences in Bitcoin allocation.

According to the Financial Times, Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from the digital currency project led by Beijing, which is part of China's efforts to develop an alternative cross-border payment system to the US dollar.The mBridge platform has sparked controversy in the United States, with concerns that participants may use it to bypass traditional dollar-dominated payment systems like Swift. The platform is set to be commercially launched, utilizing blockchain technology to enable central banks to directly transact using their respective digital currencies, reducing foreign exchange transaction times and costs, and diminishing the role of the dollar as an intermediary currency.

Founder of Strategy Michael Saylor stated: The digital asset industry is better off with supportive rules from the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, and banking regulators than accepting the limitations in the final CLARITY compromise. The safest path is to create products that satisfy customers and deploy them widely, allowing people to have a stake in innovation. Ownership should be protected, honest disclosure required, and fraud punished, then let entrepreneurs compete and grow.Saylor mentioned that the September CLARITY compromise would have restricted covered providers to only paying customers for holding stablecoins while allowing qualified activity rewards, and directed the Treasury to limit certain rewards when a significant harmful deposit transfer to community banks was identified. The GENIUS Act has included restrictions on issuers paying interest and returns on stablecoins. The innovation sandbox of CLARITY would have limited participating companies to 25 employees, with each committee approving 20 projects per year. The SEC provided conditional relief for on-chain trading of certain tokenized stocks on September 17, and the CFTC chairman committed to using existing authority while the bill is stalled.He pointed out that useful products should be scaled by 2027 and 2028, transforming temporary relief into permanent rules. The goal is to have 50 million American voters using digital financial products that improve their lives. The best protection for digital innovation is the public that benefits from it.

Huaxia Fund (Hong Kong) announced the completion of Hong Kong's first case of investing in digital assets with the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP, in collaboration with Standard Chartered Bank and others. This demonstrates how regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoins can interact with digital financial assets under a compliant and regulatory framework, providing investors with more diversified investment options.HKDAP is a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin established under the leadership of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) and issued by the licensed stablecoin issuer Anchor Financial.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Deutsche Bank plans to offer Bitcoin and digital asset custody services for European institutions and enterprises by the end of 2026, pending regulatory review approval.Corporate Bank Co-Head Gerald Podobnik stated that this service will run parallel to the existing system, with specific configurations determined by client needs, regulatory requirements, and the bank's risk appetite.

The Non-Fungible Token Alliance AMIKO is hosting the Non-Fungible Token × GWDC 2026 Innovation Forum. The forum will be held on September 29, 2026, at AT CENTER in Seoul, South Korea, focusing on core topics such as stock tokenization, Web3, and AI.AMIKO as a co-organizer will express around AI Agent, digital identity, and Web3 social networking. AMIKO is an AI-native infrastructure platform, centered on human-centric AI identity and social networks, allowing users to create AI digital avatars to continuously connect, communicate, and act in the online world. During this conference, AMIKO project guest Haru, who is the co-founder of Ryze Labs, will also give a speech sharing insights on topics related to AI Agent and digital identity.This GWDC event in Korea will gather representatives and institutions such as Sun Yuchen, Microsoft, Bithumb, Animoca Brands, MetaMask, and BNB Chain. AMIKO's presence at this event will help transition the discussion of AI Agents from tools to the industrial context of identity, social, and collaborative relationships.

Bitcoin Magazine released a video interview where Dan Hillery from UXTO stated that the Bitcoin-supported digital credit market currently has a scale of approximately 16 billion dollars, and it is expected to rival Bitcoin's market value of about 1.5 trillion dollars in the future. Two years ago, Bitcoin credit was almost non-existent, but it has now become the fastest-growing part of Bitcoin's capital structure.In the first episode of The Allocators Edge, Hillery elaborated on the pricing mechanisms of floating rate preferred securities such as STRC and SATA, how repurchases anchor their prices around the 100 dollar par value, and distinguished between digital credit risk and digital equity risk. He also introduced the structured credit funds being built, including the design of senior and subordinated shares.Additionally, Hillery discussed the impact of Bitcoin's price being flat or declining on related strategies, short-term Bitcoin-supported notes and product direction for the next five years, common misconceptions investors have about preferred securities, and the reasons why major fund categories still cannot enter digital credit. He believes that digital credit is the fastest-growing part of Bitcoin's capital structure and that more product innovations will emerge in the next five years.

The first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., began offering xU3O8 custody services for institutional clients on September 16, 2026. This token is backed by physical uranium concentrate yellowcake, with the related uranium materials stored at Cameco facilities and held in beneficial ownership by a UK trust structure.xU3O8 is issued by Uranium.io, with the UK regulator Archax acting as the trustee, and the underlying assets are mapped through the Etherlink network. Cameco is responsible for storing physical uranium in certified facilities and regularly publishes the results of reserve proof audits. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) regulates Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., allowing its clients to include xU3O8 in isolation and bankruptcy-remote accounts similar to those for Bitcoin and cash equivalents. Currently, the unit price of xU3O8 is approximately $5.66, with a total market capitalization of about $9 million.

Founder of Strategy, Michael Saylor, posted on platform X stating that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's innovation exemption policy allows qualified trading platforms to provide around-the-clock tokenized on-chain trading for U.S. investors. This is undoubtedly a significant breakthrough in the field of digital credit and the U.S. capital markets.

Anchorage Digital expands its commodity trust services, officially providing custody for tokenized uranium, marking the first time a federally chartered crypto bank in the United States has ventured into the custody of non-precious metal commodities.

According to Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank has announced the launch of a digital asset custody service, planning to provide secure custody and transfer functions for Bitcoin, Ether, and some stablecoins for institutional and corporate clients, with plans to expand to tokenized financial instruments in the future. The service is initially aimed at German clients and is pending regulatory approval.Deutsche Bank is primarily targeting asset management companies, hedge funds, custodians, brokerages, sovereign institutions, and corporate clients, while also viewing digital asset companies as a third target customer group. The report noted that European banks such as UniCredit are also evaluating the expansion of digital asset custody and brokerage services.