Digital Finance & Tokenization

A 50/50 joint venture between OKX and ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has filed to launch 24/7 tokenized US stock trading under the SEC's proposed five-year innovation exemption, the first major attempt by anyone to use that exemption. The initial list will have 63 stocks, including Strategy, Apple, Nvidia, Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle and major banks. Trading would run continuously, 24/7 365, through Uniswap liquidity pools on OKX's X layer and in USDC, USDG and USDT pairs, with users holding assets in self-custodial wallets subject to identity verification, AML and KYC. Unlike Robinhood-style representations, the tokens must be backed one for one by an actual share held through a registered broker dealer, and investors would receive dividends and voting rights just like on any stock. Companies have 30 days to object to having their stock tokenized.

Strategy added 334 bitcoin for $28.7 million while spending $176.3 million to buy back its STRC preferred stock, a sum roughly six times larger than its latest bitcoin purchase. The bitcoin purchase was funded with $15.7 million from issuing and selling MSTR shares and $13 million from Strategy's flexible USD cash pool, while the STRC buyback was funded with $154.1 million of its USD cash pile and $22.2 million of interest earned on its dollar holdings. Strategy now holds $4.88 billion in protected USD reserve and $833.4 million of flexible USD cash, and has spent about $64 billion in total on bitcoin at an average cost base of $75,440.70. Separately, a joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, has filed to offer 24/7 tokenized US stock trading under the SEC's proposed five-year innovation exemption, with an initial list of 63 stocks including Strategy, Apple, Nvidia, Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle. Trading would run continuously through Uniswap liquidity pools on OKX's X Layer in USDC, USDG and USDT pairs, with assets held in self-custodial wallets and backed one-for-one by actual shares held through a registered broker-dealer. Bloomberg Terminal has also begun carrying Hyperliquid data, and the Independent Community Bankers of America is suing the OCC over national trust bank charters granted to crypto companies. Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast will shut down with an October 26 withdrawal deadline, after assets on the network fell from $2.2 billion to $32 million and its token lost 98% of its launch value, while the IMF approved funds for El Salvador after a waiver for its bitcoin breach.

Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert said a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission initiative to reform accredited investor rules vindicates a prediction he made about tokenization in 2011. Silbert, described as the "King of Crypto," recalled his 2011 interview with the WSJ and concluded that 15 years later Wall Street had effectively capitulated to his long-term prediction about tokenization. He summed up the outcome with the remark, "I Nailed That One Too." The SEC's move to revisit the accredited investor framework is the development that prompted his comments.

Visa is expanding its stablecoin infrastructure across nine blockchains and now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume up nearly 200% year over year. In fiscal 2026 year to date, about 17% of Visa's stablecoin-linked card volume came from business and commercial card programs, and its stablecoin settlement volume has crossed a $20 billion annualized run rate, up more than 15-fold from a year ago. The company launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, introduced an onchain credit model in September 2026 that uses VisaNet settlement data, and expects its partnership with Bridge to take stablecoin-linked cards to more than 100 countries. Visa's Value-Added Services revenues rose to $3.8 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 from $2.8 billion a year earlier, while processed transactions rose 10% year over year to 71.7 billion. Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $16.3 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, free cash flow reached $15.2 billion, and Visa returned $6.2 billion in the third quarter through dividends and share repurchases, including $4.9 billion of buybacks, with $28.4 billion still available under its repurchase authorization as of June 30, 2026.

Strategy's high-profile STRC preferred stock is nearing the critical $100 level, a threshold that may once again open the door to an important line of capital for the Bitcoin treasury juggernaut to grow its cryptocurrency position. The development centers on the preferred instrument tied to the company's Bitcoin accumulation strategy, with the $100 mark serving as the key reference point for whether that capital channel reopens.

Citigroup Inc. is taking Citi Token Services to Japan and the United Arab Emirates, broadening its digital payments network across key financial hubs. Built on a private and permissioned blockchain, the platform enables near-instantaneous movement of funds within Citigroup's network, helping clients overcome traditional banking cut-off times, holidays and time-zone constraints. With the addition of Japan and the UAE, Citi Token Services is now available across seven markets, including the United States, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom; Japan will support USD transactions, while the UAE will support USD and euro transactions. The platform, launched commercially in 2024 following an initial Singapore-New York pilot, was integrated with Citigroup's 24/7 U.S. dollar Clearing capabilities in 2025 and later expanded to support euro transactions through its Dublin operations. The initiative aligns with Citigroup's 2026 Investor Day strategy, which identified tokenization and next-generation platforms as longer-term Services growth drivers, with Services revenues expected to grow at a low to mid-single-digit rate in 2027-2028.

Metaplanet ended the third quarter with 44,000 Bitcoin after a net increase of 1,000 BTC, having sold 10,000 BTC and repurchased 11,000 crypto tokens during the period. The Japan-based crypto treasury company said the sale demonstrated its ability to convert Bitcoin into cash to meet financial obligations while keeping its long-term accumulation strategy intact. Under a revised capital allocation policy, Metaplanet plans to hold 85% to 90% of total assets in Bitcoin, with 10% to 15% allocated to strategic investments, and will use preferred stock, corporate bonds, and Bitcoin-collateralized financing while keeping crypto-related borrowing below roughly 10% of Bitcoin NAV. Its new net interest income strategy will invest in income-generating assets, including preferred securities issued by Bitcoin treasury companies, to fund further Bitcoin purchases. Metaplanet's Bitcoin income generation business produced ¥848 million, or $5.4 million, in third-quarter revenue, bringing nine-month revenue to ¥5.565 billion, or $35.4 million, with a third-quarter Bitcoin yield of 11.3% and an unchanged fiscal 2026 earnings forecast. Metaplanet stock traded about 3% higher at roughly $1.87, while Bitcoin traded near $86,000.

Crypto asset exchange operator BACKSEAT announced on October 5 that it has obtained a SOC 2 Type 1 assurance report, dated the same day, following an independent third-party assessment of the security posture and internal controls of its custody business, which handles the safekeeping and management of crypto assets. According to the company, this is the first such acquisition by a domestic crypto asset exchange operator in Japan, and it described the move as part of preparations for the anticipated lifting of the ban on crypto asset ETFs in Japan. The assessment was based on the Trust Services Criteria, covering five areas: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. President Keiji Maeda explained that in the United States, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, major operators serving as custodians for ETFs have obtained SOC 2 reports, and said this acquisition marks a milestone in gaining objective third-party evaluation. The company said it has been preparing for the realization of domestic ETFs in anticipation of revisions to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and other laws, and indicated it plans to provide custody services for a crypto asset market platform in which financial institutions and others will participate. Domestic crypto asset ETFs are expected to be permitted in January 2028.

Bitcoin rebounded to $86,970 on October 5 after Strategy disclosed it had acquired an additional 334 BTC worth about $24 million. Michael Saylor said on X that Strategy recorded $21 billion in valuation gains on digital assets in the third quarter of 2026, acquired 334 BTC the previous week, and bought back about $176 million worth of STRC shares. As of October 4, the company held 848,000 BTC and about $5.7 billion in dollar-denominated assets. With this purchase, bitcoin buying has continued for a third consecutive week, extending a trend that resumed in late August after a ten-week pause from June 7 to August 23. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs also recorded total inflows of $3.219 billion over 11 of the past 12 trading days. In prediction markets, Kalshi puts the probability of bitcoin exceeding $100,000 by January 2027 at 38%, while Polymarket sees only a 12% chance of it reaching $100,000 during October.

XRP has claimed the top spot in trading volume on South Korea's cryptocurrency market, surpassing Bitcoin and Ethereum, according to CoinMarketCap. The surge in local activity has kept the token's price within a $1.45 to $1.52 range even as broader global markets face pressure. The ranking marks a notable shift in South Korean trading preferences, where XRP now leads both major cryptocurrencies by volume.

Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat and chairman of Bitmine, said in an interview with Coinage that Ethereum will set a new all-time high and surge above $5,000 before the end of this year, and he sees the potential for it to reach $60,000 within the next few years, citing past price cycles in which it climbed from below $100 at the end of 2018 to nearly $4,900 in 2021. Lee noted that Ethereum has risen about 80% from its June low near $1,500 to around $2,700 by the end of September, even as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.25% on September 16, bringing the target range to 3.75%-4% by a 12-0 vote. On the institutional side, money has flowed in through spot Ether ETFs in the United States, with September 22 recording net inflows of $162.2 million, the third consecutive day of positive flows, as BlackRock's Ethereum fund took in $88.1 million and Fidelity's fund added $33.6 million. Lee also pointed to Robinhood's decision to build Robinhood Chain on Ethereum, which attracted as much as $2.1 billion in tokenized assets in its first two months, with $1.5 billion deposited into applications running on the network. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an innovation exemption on September 17 that allows certain tokenized versions of US-listed shares to trade on blockchain networks, after the draft Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate by a vote of 49-50.

Revolut has become Europe's most valuable startup, reaching a $115B private valuation that puts it ahead of established banking names including Barclays and Société Générale. The London-based company, founded in 2015, set its latest valuation through a secondary share sale at $2,017 per share, up more than 50% from its $75B valuation in November 2025. Revenue rose 46% in 2025 to £4.5B, while pretax profit climbed 57% to £1.7B, and customer balances increased 66% to £50.2B. Revolut now counts about 80M customers, a base comparable with JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, though its pretax profit remains well below Barclays' £9B and its lending business is much smaller. The company is seeking to deepen customer relationships and expand its banking footprint across markets including Mexico, Australia, and the U.S.

Clearpool's community has approved, with 97.16% voting in favor, an expansion onto the XRP Ledger and the full migration of its native CPOOL token to a new asset, CLEAR. The institutional credit marketplace is bringing infrastructure to XRPL for financing working capital in the real fintech sector, with the platform providing technology rails and smart contracts, credit manager Cicada Partners auditing borrowers and underwriting risk, and Ripple joining the pools as a limited partner. Financing will be conducted exclusively in the dollar stablecoin RLUSD, giving the coin its first organic circulation among institutional investors, while custody provider Hex Trust will provide additional security and compliance bridges. The 1:1 token migration is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026, with the initial supply of the new CLEAR asset rising to 1.125 billion tokens from CPOOL's previous supply of one billion, and 70% of the new supply distributed to current holders at launch to protect against dilution. Half of all fees collected by the platform will go to the open market to buy back and permanently burn CLEAR, and the product relies on the ledger's native standards XLS-65 and XLS-66, which are still being tested on Devnet awaiting approval from 80% of validators before full deployment on the XRPL mainnet.

According to August cryptocurrency trading statistics released on the 2nd by the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association, spot trading volume among its 30 member firms came to 764.35 billion yen, up 13.4% from the previous month and marking the first increase in two months. Margin trading volume was 746.54 billion yen, up 19.0% month on month, bringing combined trading volume to about 1.51 trillion yen. Compared with the same month a year earlier, spot trading fell 61.9% and margin trading fell 36.4%, well below year-ago levels. Breaking down spot trading volume by coin, Bitcoin accounted for 462.9 billion yen, or 60.6% of the total, followed by Ethereum at 139.2 billion yen and XRP at 102.7 billion yen, with the top three coins making up 92.2% of the total. Customer deposits at the end of August stood at 3.51 trillion yen, up 22.2% from the end of the previous month and the highest level in seven months, since the end of January.

Coinbase Global CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup has partnered with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up proof the crypto giant "has come a long way" since 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong recalled that getting a bank to work with Coinbase at its founding was "nearly impossible," and thanked Citi for the arrangement. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing revenue component for Coinbase, which shares interest income on reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group and monetizes customer balances on its platform; USDC held in Coinbase products hit an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, more than 30% of all USDC in circulation. Coinbase shares finished Friday down 3.32% at $183.

Hitachi announced on October 5 that it began offering its Digital Asset AML Platform, a service that monitors money laundering risks in transactions involving crypto assets and stablecoins, on October 1. The service is intended for use by financial institutions and crypto asset-related businesses. In July, Hitachi published the results of a proof of concept conducted with 17 companies, including financial institutions and crypto asset-related businesses, and announced plans to offer the service starting in October. The new service combines information suspected of links to crime or sanctions targets with analysis powered by AI and machine learning to identify signs of suspicious transactions. It evaluates the counterparty's wallet before a transaction, continuously monitors after the transaction for newly emerging risks, and can also check the circulation status of stablecoins and other assets after issuance. Because crypto assets can be transferred across multiple wallets and exchanges, information held by a single company alone may make it difficult to grasp suspicious fund movements. The new service also uses risk information gathered by each business to help detect signs that would be hard for any one company to find on its own.

Chayo Group Public Company Limited, or CHAYO, is pressing ahead with expanding its personal loan base, focusing on Advance or emergency loans through the Chayo Capital application, targeting an increase of around 5,000 to 10,000 app-based customers this year, up from the current base of around 2,000 to 3,000 such customers. Chief Executive Officer Suksan Yosain opened up that hitting that target will help support revenue from the lending business to expand, from its current share of around 2% of revenue. The main revenue structure still comes from the debt management and debt purchase business at around 90%, followed by debt collection services at around 4-5% and the business of supplying workers to factories at around 3%. As for the earnings outlook for 2026, the company is maintaining its profit target at the parent company level of approximately 300 million baht, after turning a profit of around 201.73 million baht in the first half of 2026. Meanwhile, on the partial repayment of principal on all five series of debentures, namely CHAYO25NA, CHAYO263A, CHAYO26OA, CHAYO273A and CHAYO279A, with a combined value of approximately 3.9329 billion baht, the company plans to repay around 10% of the principal across all five series within 2026. It has already repaid four series, leaving the fifth, which falls due in November 2026, and it has prepared liquidity to cover it. The company has an interest-bearing debt-to-equity ratio of 0.97 times, and stands ready to acquire additional new non-performing debt portfolios at appropriate price levels, while continuing to develop its competitiveness by bringing in technology and artificial intelligence systems to help manage costs more efficiently.

BNB Chain has become the first blockchain to surpass $1 billion in total tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds. According to Token Terminal data, the market value of tokenized stocks and ETFs rose about 17% from $2.87 billion in August to $3.35 billion in September. As of October 2, the overall market stood at $3.7 billion, with BNB Chain accounting for $1.1 billion, or roughly 30%, followed by Ethereum at $828 million and Solana at $738 million. In January, Ethereum held about 48% of the market, while BNB Chain accounted for just 13%. In a report dated September 29, Binance Research said the number of holders on BNB Chain had reached 1.8 million, noting that Binance's bStocks, launched in late June, is driving the growth.

Bybit announced a collaboration with Franklin Templeton that lets eligible traders use Benji-issued money market fund shares as off-exchange collateral on the crypto platform, extending the asset manager's push into tokenized finance. Franklin Templeton shares trade at US$32.81, with a year to date share price return of 37.86% and a 1-year total shareholder return of 44.68%, while shorter-term momentum has faded with the 30-day share price return down 5.53% and the 90-day share price return down 4.73%. The company is building on its earlier tokenized funds and blockchain enabled products, including the BENJI tokenized money fund, by adding 3.2b of digital asset AUM and acquiring 250 Digital, and by embedding tokenized funds into partner wallets such as MoonPay and Payward. A widely followed narrative pegs fair value at $35.50, above the last close of $32.81, while the stock trades at 22x earnings, below the US Capital Markets industry on 39.7x and peers at 35.9x but above the fair ratio of 12.8x. Franklin Templeton's story could still shift if fee pressure from large platforms intensifies or if integration across its expanded credit and digital franchises stumbles.

Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor published data on the company's Bitcoin strategy with the concise comment: "More orange than ever." The post, which appeared on the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, signals a potential massive new Bitcoin purchase by the firm. Saylor's terse remark accompanied the release of the company's Bitcoin strategy data, though no specific purchase amount or dollar figure was disclosed in the source material. The comment echoes Saylor's long-running practice of teasing Strategy's Bitcoin acquisitions ahead of official announcements.

Stellar took in $36.4 million of the $96.5 million that flowed into real-world asset tokenization across the top 10 blockchain networks over the past 24 hours, according to RWA Foundation citing Token Terminal. That single-network share amounts to more than a third, or 37%, of the total 24-hour inflow into the top 10 networks. The figures cover only the top 10 blockchain networks by RWA tokenization market capitalization, which rose by $96.5 million in the period.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday approved a Cboe BZX rule change allowing the exchange to list six triple-leveraged exchange-traded products from Volatility Shares, a first-of-its-kind step that could expand leveraged exposure to the world's largest cryptocurrency. The products target three times the daily performance of bitcoin, ether, gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas, with the bitcoin and ether products providing leveraged exposure through futures rather than directly holding the cryptocurrencies. The decision does not mean the products are immediately available for trading, as registration requirements must still be completed before shares can be publicly offered. Bitcoin traded at $84,860.5 as of 01:29 ET, little changed over the past 24 hours, after briefly climbing above $87,000 earlier in the week. The approval adds another potential route for investors seeking cryptocurrency exposure after the SEC separately proposed changes to crypto custody rules this week, a proposal that was a major focus for Bitcoin markets on Friday.