😵‍ 95% Fail Rate for Payments!?

Digital assets remain divisive. Banks, known for their conservative practices, tend towards caution. 🚧

A recent report shows that 95% of payment service providers (PSPs) have had accounts closed or restricted due to digital asset activity. Ouch. 👀

🎯🔥 Rapid Fire Takeaways:

🐪 UAE Approves Dirham-Pegged Stablecoin

🤔 State Street mulls tokenized bond push

💰 Tether Talking to Commodity Traders About Lending Them Its Billions

🤝 ECB: Towards a digital capital markets union

🥃 Bitcoin Miner Marathon's Anduro Unveils Tokenization Platform, Starts With Whiskey

🏘️ Chintai Partners with Kin Capital to Launch $100 Million Real Estate Debt Fund on Blockchain

🔺 LatAm Bank Littio Ditches Ethereum for Avalanche as Demand for RWA Vaults Grows

But the narrative is quickly changing – the DTCC just announced a digital asset sandbox. 🏖️

They’re not alone, either. Citi Token Services is ramping up its digital asset offerings for clients. The age of tokenization is upon us! 🌄

⭐ A Five-Star Event

In case you missed it, RWA Day was a massive success! Some of the best networking we’ve ever seen occurred in Salt Lake. 🧂

Don’t just take out word for it – participants like Scott Foo, Adam Blumberg, and Greg Tomaselli all had glowing reviews.  Our recent WolfWeb3 Space on the subject revealed just how much speakers and attendees loved it! 🌟

Stay tuned – we’re already cooking up something big for the RWA Day, and you’ll be the first to hear about it. 👂

🏢 Tokenization and Institutional Adoption

Regulations tend to form around how businesses use new technology, and we’re finally seeing major banks get deep into the weeds of blockchain and DLT. State Street has so far ruled out stablecoins but is adamant about other tokenization projects. In particular, tokenized bonds are on the menu. 🍽️

Asset servicing giant CACEIS has also put the first European-regulated Undertakings for the Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS, to avoid the mouthful) money market fund on the blockchain. While they’re starting, Latin American bank Littio is pivoting, swapping from Ethereum to Avalanche due to low transaction fees. 📊

But big banks aren’t the only ones using blockchain for asset tokenization. We had the pleasure of having Marathon Digital-backed tokenization platform Anduro on stage at RWA Day. They shared their recently unveiled whiskey tokenization initiative with us, impressing attendees with the seamlessness of tokenized assets on Bitcoin. 👀

🏛️ Stablecoins and CBDCs

The tokenized asset with the most prominent product market fit is stablecoins—they’re a twelve-figure market and show no signs of slowing down. This explosive growth is likely why South Korea seeks to regulate cross-border stablecoin transactions, and the UAE has approved a dirham-pegged stablecoin. They’re not quite leading the pack, though. That would be China, where one in eight citizens now have a digital RMB wallet. 👛

Tether is also celebrating 10 years of stablecoin growth in a big way, discussing lending billions of dollars to commodity traders. Hashnote’s USYC is also snowballing. It recently expanded to the Canton Network as the first natively-private tokenized money market fund, and Deribit has introduced it for cross-marginal collateral. 📈

Euro stablecoins are also taking a bigger bite of the pie, as MiCA laws now dictate a more accessible path forward for euro-denominated stablecoin assets, according to Kaiko Research. It’s not all about fiat, though. Mooove over, as Cow Group recently partnered with DigiShares to launch a gold-backed stablecoin called MyGold. 🐄

⚜️ European Union Developments

It’s hard to overstate MiCA's impact on the digital asset market landscape. It’s a fundamental shakeup, with Coinbase planning to delist unauthorized stablecoins in the EU by December. Bitpanda is also offering EU-regulated security tokens to retail investors, while Midas is expanding in the jurisdiction thanks to the clarity. 🌍

Policy and research papers are also flowing from the Old World, with the ECB authoring one on a potential digital capital markets union and another exploring how US monetary policy has the most significant impact on the stablecoin market cap (for now). Licenses are also being granted, with Tradias securing its own BaFin license after finalizing its Series A, allowing it to operate independently from Bankhaus Scheich. 🎫

Assetera and Archax have also partnered to expand tokenized asset distribution in the EU, and ABN AMRO has used the euro CBDC to settle digital commercial paper. All this use suggests the ECB DLT settlement trials are going well – WIBank even used the initiative to issue registered bonds on a public blockchain. The EU may yet close the innovation gap! ⛓️

🏠 Real Estate and Asset Tokenization

No matter where tokenization calls home, it’ll need a roof over its head, and real estate tokenization is taking off. Chintai has partnered with Kin Capital to launch a $100 million real estate debt fund, and our friends at Polytrade announced a strategic partnership with Blocksquare with a similar aim of taking on tokenized real estate. Blocksquare has been in high demand – they also partner with FractioneX for first-time real estate buyers. 🤝

Beyond houses and handshakes, GnosisDAO soared past $3 million in tokenized T-Bills. In some of the week's biggest news, Securitize and ZeroHash inked a deal to enable USDC-to-USD conversions for BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, completing the loop and making access easier than ever. Moreover, WisdomTree now allows users to pay for coffee with their tokenized money market funds, and we’re seeing tokenized assets going mainstream. ☕

🏁 Another Week of Winners 

It’s been another fantastic week of progress for tokenized assets. 

If you can’t tell by now, an on-chain future is inevitable. 

Buckle up – next week will have even more exciting tidbits and tantalizing surprises!