🔌 Supercharging Financial Services

Marching into March, with Ray Buckton, Head of Research at RWA World, ready to spring into a new season and leave this cold weather behind. ❄️

Sure, my puns are funny, but are they meme-coin-level funny? 📏

Even if they’re not, meme coin “investors” might be having the last laugh – the SEC officially stated that meme coins aren’t securities because they’re essentially useless. 🥁

🎯🔥 Rapid Fire Takeaways:

😆 SEC says meme coins are not securities because they’re useless

⛽ UAE’s proactive regulations fuel real-world asset tokenization boom

💰 Real-World Assets – The $56 Billion Frontier

📅 Binance to delist non-MiCA compliant stablecoins in Europe on March 31

🏛️ Bank of America ready to issue a stablecoin if regulations allow, says CEO Brian Moynihan

⚡ Stripe Calls Stablecoins “Superconductors” For Financial Services 

⛩️ Circle's USDC to be First USD Stablecoin in Japan

While some trade tokens made of hot air, we at RWA World are all about celebrating the builders who are using the technology for… you know, things that actually matter. 😉

Hence why Figure’s collaboration with Sixth Street on a JV to bring over $2 billion in additional liquidity to Figure’s mortgage loans is such a big deal – real partnerships, real innovation, real value. 👏

🦘 Tokenization Taking Off

Not a week goes by without more innovations and analyses covering them. The UAE’s proactive regulations were recently identified as a big driver of the tokenization boom, as Dubai granted a VASP licence to Mantra. Some see the inevitability of this trend and are putting RWAs around $56 billion in the near future. 📈

Others are just as bullish, with Polygon’s CEO opining how tokenization can transform real estate investing. It’s not just real estate, either – Digital Asset and Euroclear wrapped up phase one of their program to increase the mobility of collateral assets using the Canton Network, while Fermion showed off its new luxury asset tokenization platform on the Base blockchain. 💎

However, some of the biggest news came again from Ondo Finance, one of the leading US Treasury tokenizers in the market today. They’re officially bringing RWAs to the Mastercard Network in a partnership that will make large sum cross-border transactions more seamless than ever before. That line between digital and physical keeps blurring, as Unit Network raised $18 million to build a decentralized platform for real-world and digital asset trading. ☯️

🧑‍⚖️ Regulation Rising Rapidly

Naturally, all this evolution can’t happen without catching the discerning eye of global regulators. The US Senate officially passed a resolution to kill the IRS DeFi broker rule in a move that will embolden the United States' builders. At the same time, the CFTC and White House are to address tokenized assets and stablecoins in upcoming meetings, so more movements are on the horizon. 📜

Of course, we finally received confirmation that the US will have a crypto reserve that includes more than just Bitcoin. While Bitcoin maximalists are undoubtedly dissatisfied with the move, made-in-America projects like Cardano and Ripple made the cut. Remember that the SEC keeps dropping cases like hotcakes; this week, it dismissed the Cumberland DRW enforcement case, so more projects may be added to the reserve. 📋

Meanwhile, in Europe, Binance is set to delist non-MiCA compliant stablecoins by the end of the month, which will be a big blow to Tether and other Wild West assets. However, the ESMA is accused of overreaching via its non-EU crypto provider guidance, so we’ll see if that date holds. 👀

💯 Banks And Institutions Go Full Tokenization

Banks are also busy bustling into tokenized positions. In Turkey, Bank Pozitif is custodying crypto with Taurus, while Boerse Stuttgart Digital is enabling crypto trading at DekaBank. Not to be outdone, DigiFT secured its custodial licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. 💳

Our friends at Archax had a busy week, as the HBAR Foundation made an investment in the Fidelity International money market fund that Archax tokenized earlier this year. That’s not all. XDC also tapped Archax to tokenize its own money market funds, so it was indeed a busy week. 🏃

OSL also distributed APAC’s first tokenized money market product in Hong Kong, while Euroclear explored tokenzied collateral for crypto firms. But the real show was from Bank of America, who outright admitted that they’d launch a stablecoin once regulation gave them the green light. 🚦

🚨 Stables And Central Banks 

The sector’s biggest asset class is growing at an impressive rate. After securing the proper licensing, USDC will officially be the first USD stablecoin to debut in Japan. While progress is happening off-chain, Global Dollar (USDG) is expanding on-chain further to the Solana network. No wonder Stripe called stablecoins “superconductors for financial services.” 🌐

On the CBDC front, Russia is experiencing delays, Brazil says piloting has been challenging, and the Bank of Israel has proposed potential design options. The ECB recently experienced a payment system outage that could have been avoided if a CBDC were in play – talk about a real-world justification. 💥

💐 Spring In The Air

It’s starting to warm up a bit as the icy chill of regulatory uncertainty melts away into spring. 

Never has there been a better time to build with innovative technologies, and we’re so stoked to be a part of it. 

Let us know if you need any introductions or support or have any questions that we might be able to answer.

Until next time, keep on keeping on!