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🎄 A Very Tokenized Christmas

RWA World Newsletter - Dec 20, 2024

Author

Ray Buckton
December 20, 2024

Merry Christmas! What a fantastic year it’s been – Pudgy Penguins launching their $PENGU token at a $2.3 billion market cap is one way to cap off 2024. 🐧

And while some new names are making big headlines, well-established brands in Web3 are embracing tokenization in full force and redefining how it’s done 💪

🎯🔥 Rapid Fire Takeaways:

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by IOTA, which had its fair launch in 2016 and recently passed a proposal to adopt the Move VM for smart contracts. The network already boasts EVM compatibility. 📜

⚖️ Stable Coins, Stable Payments

Stablecoins recently cleared a $200 billion market cap thanks to big names making even bigger moves. BVNK just raised $50 million to fuel its US expansion, while Tether is working to break back into the European market with an investment in StablR. 💵

Ripple also launched its RLUSD stablecoin this week, with CEO Brad Garlinghouse announcing the news on Twitter shortly before launch. Ethena wasn’t far behind, leveraging BlackRock’s BUIDL token for its own native stablecoin. Stabull Finance also joined the party, kicking off its stablecoin and RWA exchange on Ethereum and Polygon. 💱

The evolving stablecoin landscape sometimes makes for strange bedfellows. Binance, which saw its BUSD stablecoin wound down last year, is now working with Circle to make USDC available to its 240 million customers. And Paxos is now working with Standard Chartered on its stablecoin reserve management. It seems all's well that ends well. 🤝

💭Whose Regulating and Buying Who?

DekaBank scored its crypto custody license, while finance giant Revolut is strengthening its crypto fraud protection. Meanwhile, Emirates NBD has made an investment in Zodia Custody, and Crypto.com just acquired Orion Principals outright to boost its product expansion. 💰

The UK and Europe continue to go their separate ways, with the UK preparing to ban public crypto offerings while also giving preliminary approval to the first Digital Securities Sandbox participants. On the mainland, the European Banking Authority issued a report on tokenized deposits, BNP Paribas got involved with the Eurosystem’s DLT trials, and AXA IM has signed up for the ECB wholesale CBDC experiments. All while SocGen completed a tokenized repo with Banque de France. 🔬

Recall that Fnality CEO Rhomaios Ram is departing the company – we now know that the NY Fed’s Michelle Neal will be succeeding him in the new year. While the ICMA authored a DLT bonds reference guide, the Bank of Indonesia completed its wCBDC trials. However, 84% of Kiwis expressed concerns over CBDCs. 🤨

🌐 Real-World Assets, Real-World Adoption

Kicking it off with a big shout-out – our friends at Plume closed their Series A for $20 million! Exabits also wrapped up its $15 million seed round to tokenize GPU power, while AgriDex closed its $4 million round. 📈

Partnerships are also on the menu, with Quai Network recently announcing a collaboration with Penomo to tokenize renewables and Sui expanding its RWA tokenization purview with the help of Ant Digital Technologies. Add in Deutsche Bank and Axela working together to tokenize financial assets in Singapore and Inveniam working with G42 on global private markets, and it’s clear that lines are being drawn. ✏️

Personnel are also shifting – Ex-Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein is joining Securitize as its COO. While people are making moves, Assetera enabled non-US investors to trade its tokenized stocks, INX launched a simplified RWA trading interface, and Progmat explored real estate tokenization. 🏠

⛓️ On-Chain Development and DeFi Murmurs 

Starknet recently launched on-chain T-Bills, while the ONDO token hit new all-time highs following a purchase by incoming President Trump’s crypto project. Prosper also recently acquired 7000 ASIC miners from Bitmain to decentralize Bitcoin mining, just in time for it to be mulled as a US reserve asset. 🦅

Chainlink remains a big winner in tokenized assets, according to Santiment, as its oracle network continues to thrive. The giant also recently joined forces with Hedera to boost security in DeFi and RWAs. 🔏

In a bit of on-chain drama, DeFi giant Aave is considering leaving the Polygon ecosystem entirely after a recent proposal gone awry, which suggested using stablecoins in Polygon’s bridge for DeFi yield. Aave says the proposal amounts to fractional reserve banking and flies in the face of the principles of on-chain finance. 🎭

💝 Merry Christmas, Everyone

We’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. 

Relax, eat some sweets, and enjoy time with loved ones.

If you have some extra downtime, check out what IOTA has been working on lately. 

Its recent integration of the Move VM and EVM compatibility, along with being the first DLT to register with the ADGM, makes its $100 million in incentives quite enticing. 👀