🍷 Solana Cornering Tokenized Commodities?

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Solana is making some serious moves in the tokenization landscape. ♟️

Their latest push sees Elmnts using blockchain to tokenize mineral rights – we can dig it. ⛏️

🎯🔥 Rapid Fire Takeaways:

🌊 Ripple to Allocate $10M to Tokenized U.S. Treasury Bills on XRP Ledger

🏢 Blocksquare and Pieme Launch Hotel Investment Funding Round

🧑‍💼 ECB Paper: Toss a stablecoin to your banker - Stablecoins’ impact on banks’ balance sheets and prudential ratios

💸 Cambodia’s Bakong digital currency helps address dollarization

📜 Partior Announces $60M+ Series B Round to Transform Clearing and Settlement Infrastructure Worldwide

🚀 Aptos Foundation and OKX Ventures Launch $10M Accelerator to Boost Ecosystem Growth

😬 BALL Crypto Scam? Former NBA Player’s RWA Project Accused Of $330,000 Rug Pull

You’d be hard-pressed to count Solana out at this point… speaking of pressing, dVIN launched tokenized wine on the network. 🍇

If you’d raise a glass to that, check out our conversation with dVIN and VanEck’s Segmint – they’re doing great work together. 🤝 

🗺️ Big Moves Unfolding

Speaking of VanEck, you can catch Segmint CEO Matt Bartlett and the RWA World team at RWA Day, an exclusive side event in Salt Lake alongside Permissionless III. 

Make sure to reply to this email to secure your 10% discount code if you still need tickets to Permissionless III! 🎫

You also won’t want to miss the RWA World Roundup on Friday at 9:30 am EDT! 🤠

🎟️ Lucky Number 10

Either inflation is running hotter than we thought, or tokenization regularly commands 8-figure investments… it’s probably both. Several companies and initiatives raised or committed $10 million this week:

• Ripple is allocating $10 million to tokenized T-Bills on the XRP Ledger 💵

• Ondo Finance saw a familiar buyer commit $10 million, sparking a token rally 📈

• The Aptos Foundation and OKX Ventures kicked off a $10 million accelerator for RWAs and more 💰

While Zoth may have missed the 8-figure club, securing $4 million for RWA yield in DeFi is still commendable. So is Blocksquare and Pieme kicking off a tokenized hotel funding round, and RACE entering the “L2 for RWAs” landscape. 🏁

Of course, what week would be complete without the tokenization powerhouse Securitize? They’ve been working with Arca Labs on a Treasury fund, and they just hit a major milestone. The shares, represented by ArCoin, received SEC exemption for secondary trading on an SEC-registered Alternative Trading System (ATS). That’s another “first in the world” achievement under the belt of Securitize and a big win for Arca Labs. 🍻

🚆 Regulation Creation Station 

This week was filled with papers and opinions, primarily from Europe. England and the BIS revealed their collaboration on Pyxtrial, a stablecoin monitoring system, while an ECB paper delved into which banks might prefer to deal in tokenized dollars. ⚖️

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) was working particularly hard, releasing a paper on scaling DLT-based capital markets and another on fostering innovation in digital finance. This guidance seems well received – the ECB is forecasting that thanks to MiCA’s guidance, euro-backed stablecoin volume is poised for explosive growth throughout 2025 and beyond. Foundations are being laid to that end – BayernLB issued its first digital bond under the ECB's wholesale DLT trials. ✍️

In Japan, SBI has been taking home the gold. They’ve officially signed an MOU with Korea’s Kyobo Securities to work on digital financial markets. Adding to the news, their subsidiary ODX will be listing tokenized bonds in the near future. 🏅

🌐 CBDCs and Wider Adoption 

Central banks have a keen interest in adopting new, innovative financial technology. If this past week’s market action is any indicator, they desperately need it... the Yen carry trade may be half dead, but innovation is alive and well. That’s partly why the ECB is fishing for expert input on its digital euro to see how it might work. 📚

Some emerging and frontier markets took heed of the recent report on dollar-backed stablecoins potentially spelling trouble for domestic central bank policy. Cambodia has seen significant progress with its digital deposits, leading to greater use of its native riel, and Indonesia revealed its vision for a digital rupiah. Halfway around the world, Brazil is now probing firms to see if they’re actually offering utility tokens or potentially issuing unregistered securities. 📝

On the corporate front, interest and adoption are soaring. India’s central bank saw Google, Amazon, and Walmart sign up to participate in its digital currency project this week, while Justoken kicked off operations in Brazil and Argentina. LatAm is on fire for crypto—a Binance survey revealed that a staggering 95% of LatAm participants are seeking to increase their digital assets exposure in 2025. 🚀

Unfortunately, while some tokenized assets may be real, the founder's intent is not. Last week we mentioned that former NBA player Scottie Pippen would be tokenizing a championship basketball from 1991. It seems that Scottie has turned tail with the funds, absconding with over $300,000 worth of assets from investors. 🏀🦹

Yet another reason why working with regulated, high-fidelity tokenization platforms like VanEck’s Segmint is the correct choice. 💡

🎓 Class Dismissed!

That does it for this week’s newsletter! 

Don’t miss RWA Day in Salt Lake, and make sure to contact RWA World for a 10% discount if you haven’t yet secured your tickets to Permissionless III. 

See you there! 👋