Market News
U.S. regulation of the sector could trigger a surge in stablecoin adoption, Standard Chartered and Zodia Markets said.
Regulatory progress is expected when Donald Trump's administration takes over early next year, the authors wrote.
Stablecoins could grow to 10% of the U.S. money supply and foreign exchange transactions once the sector becomes more legitimized, Standard Chartered (STAN) and Zodia Markets said in a report Thursday.
Currently, the stablecoin market is equivalent to 1% of U.S. M2 and 1% of foreign exchange transactions, the report said.
"As the sector becomes legitimized, a move to 10% on each measure is feasible," wrote authors Geoff Kendrick and Nick Philpott.
A stablecoin is a type of crypto that is designed to hold a steady value and is usually pegged to the U.S. dollar, though some other currencies such as gold are also used. M2 is a measure of U.S. money supply, and includes cash, savings and other short-term investments.
The catalyst for this surge in adoption will be U.S. regulation of stablecoins, the authors said, adding that cross-border payments and FX-equivalent transactions are key areas of growth.
Google has officially opened its AI Campus in Somers Town, Camden to enhance digital skills in the UK and empower the next generation to thrive in the artificial intelligence (AI) driven world.
The launch of the AI Campus in Somers Town, Camden, marks the beginning of a two-year pilot programme aimed at providing local sixth-form students with the resources to explore artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications in various sectors.
The initiative, which was developed in collaboration with Camden Council and Camden Learning, will offer students access to AI and machine learning tools, along with mentorship from experts at Google, Google DeepMind, and other industry professionals.
Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, broker, and custodian, has collaborated with Ripple Labs to tokenize a money market fund managed by abrdn on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). According to Ripple’s press release, this marks the first time a money market fund has been tokenized on the XRPL, further positioning the blockchain as a platform for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and institutional decentralized finance (DeFi).
The fund in question is part of abrdn’s £3.8 billion US dollar Liquidity Fund (Lux). The collaboration aims to reduce operational costs and enhance settlement processes by utilizing the XRPL’s blockchain infrastructure. The integration of tokenized funds on XRPL reflects the growing adoption of blockchain technology in capital markets.
According to the FCA's latest research on consumer attitudes and behaviours towards crypto, 12% of UK adults now own crypto, up from 10% in previous findings.
Awareness of crypto also rose from 91% to 93%. The average value of crypto held by people increased from £1,595 to £1,842. Respondents told the FCA that information from family and friends was the most common source of information for those who had never bought crypto. Only 1 in 10 people say they did not do any research before buying crypto.
Around a third of people said they believed they could raise a complaint with the FCA if something went wrong and were seeking recourse or financial protection. Currently, crypto remains largely unregulated in the UK and high-risk. If something goes wrong, it is unlikely you will be protected so you should be prepared to lose all your money.
The research comes as the FCA has started to share their approach to regulating crypto. The FCA has also published an indicative roadmap of key dates for the development and introduction of the UK’s crypto regime.
The roadmap sets out a series of focused consultations. This approach aims to make policy development transparent and help people engage by making the process more manageable and flexible for all.
Matthew Long, director of payments and digital assets at the FCA, said:
'Our research results highlight the need for clear regulation that supports a safe, competitive, and sustainable crypto sector in the UK. We want to develop a sector that embraces innovation and is underpinned by market integrity and consumer trust.
'We’re committed to working closely with the Government, international partners, industry and consumers to help us get the future rules right.'
Franklin Templeton is expanding trading of its OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX) to the second largest blockchain by market cap, Ethereum (ETH).
The asset manager has added a series of new blockchains to support the fund this year, including, most recently, Coinbase’s Base, Aptos and Avalanche. It uses the Stellar network as the primary public blockchain.
FOBXX launched in 2021, becoming the first money market fund to use a public blockchain to track transactions and ownership. It currently stands at a $410 million market cap, making it the third-largest tokenized money market fund.
BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) moved to the top of the list just six weeks after its launch in late March. It currently stands at $545 million, while the second largest fund, Ondo’s U.S. Dollar Yield (USDY), is at $452 million.
Among issuers, Ethereum is by far the top choice to issue shares of tokenized treasuries, with the largest blockchain handling over $1.6 billion of assets, followed by Stellar (XLM) and Solana (SOL), according to data by rwa.xyz.
Swiss bank UBS has successfully piloted a new system called UBS Digital Cash which, leveraging blockchain technology, is designed to simplify intraday-liquidity management for clients making cross-border payments.
The system enables the settlement of international transactions using smart contracts on a private blockchain network.
UBS says that the pilot facilitated “domestic transactions within Switzerland and cross-border payments in US dollars, Swiss francs, Euros and Chinese yuan”, as well as the transfer of liquidity between “various UBS companies”.
Having tested the system among multinational clients and banks, UBS adds that it now intends to “expand and develop its UBS Digital Cash offering in further steps”.
Although the bank has not disclosed what these further steps are, Xiaonan Zou, its head of digital assets and group treasury, cites the combination of UBS Digital Cash with “other digital cash initiatives” as “key for the financial industry”.
- A preliminary study combining a patent-applied, AI-powered algorithm with a high-speed, 5-to 30-second video of skin on the face and the palm of the hand detected if someone had high blood pressure as well as using a blood pressure cuff.
- The system, still in early development in Japan, also accurately detected Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.
- With modifications for real-world use, the system may eventually offer quick, contactless screenings for high blood pressure and diabetes and help monitor response to treatment.
The team, which included Stanford University researchers, used imitation learning to train the da Vinci Surgical System robot to perform three fundamental tasks required in surgical procedures: manipulating a needle, lifting body tissue, and suturing. In each case, the robot trained on the team's model performed the same surgical procedures as skillfully as human doctors.
The model combined imitation learning with the same machine learning architecture that underpins ChatGPT. However, where ChatGPT works with words and text, this model speaks "robot" with kinematics, a language that breaks down the angles of robotic motion into math.
The researchers fed their model hundreds of videos recorded from wrist cameras placed on the arms of da Vinci robots during surgical procedures. These videos, recorded by surgeons all over the world, are used for post-operative analysis and then archived. Nearly 7,000 da Vinci robots are used worldwide, and more than 50,000 surgeons are trained on the system, creating a large archive of data for robots to "imitate."
Why utilizing is 10x more important than tokenizing MMF?
Last week was particularly busy for tokenization space. There were 5 announcements about the development or the launch of tokenized MMF, including 3 from institutional players.
UBS Asset Management launched its first tokenized investment fund, the UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund, on Ethereum. The fund will be domiciled in Hong Kong serving the APAC region with DigiFT as the distributor.
Citi and Fidelity International have developed a solution that combines a tokenized money market fund (MMF) with an embedded digital FX swap significantly simplifying and streamlining foreign investors’ investment process in USD denominated tokenized securities.
Libeara, a SC Ventures backed tokenization platform, announced collaboration with FundBridge Capital, an MAS-regulated platform provider for fund managers, to launch a USD MMF Fund. Wellington Management Singapore will act as sub-manager for the Fund.
ParTec AG: ParTec AG files patent infringement lawsuit against NVIDIA at UPC in Munich
The subject of this lawsuit is the infringement of ParTec patents in the use of microprocessors and their cooperation. The lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring NVIDIA to refrain from distributing essential products of its GPU product portfolio in patent-protected countries in Europe. In addition, the lawsuit demands, among other things, disclosure of prior sales activities as well as damages.
EU MiCA rules pose ‘systemic’ banking risks for stablecoins — Tether CEO
MiCA: A step back for stablecoin stability, but there’s a silver lining for issuers
The MiCA-imposed bank reserve requirements will mean that a growing portion of stablecoin reserves will be held on bank balance sheets, raising significant implications if a bank were to go bankrupt.
Ripple misses filing deadline risking setback in ongoing SEC case
Ripple was issued a default notice for not meeting a court filing deadline.
Legal expert criticizes Ripple for procedural errors despite high legal fees.
Consumer Finance Watchdog Finalizes ‘Open Banking’ Rules Aimed at Driving Competition
A U.S. consumer finance watchdog finalized rules that will allow customers to transfer their bank data to another bank or allow third-party apps to access it without having to pay fees or clear other hurdles designed to make such moves difficult.
The so-called open banking rules could reshape the consumer finance landscape by making it easier for upstart tech companies offering services ranging from digital wallets to financial-management tools to gain access to consumer data that has long been tightly held by banks.
Two banking groups on Tuesday said they were filing a lawsuit to block the regulations.
Stripe acquires stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion in crypto's largest acquisition: TechCrunch founder
Quick Take
Payments company Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge in a $1.1 billion deal, according to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
Stripe’s largest acquisition to date, and the largest acquisition in the crypto industry’s history, Bridge had raised $58 million from investors and was previously valued at $200 million.
Bridge offers software that helps businesses accept payments in stablecoins and signals an expansion of Stripe’s crypto adoption efforts.
State of Crypto Report 2024: New data on swing states, stablecoins, AI, builder energy, and more
7 key takeaways
Crypto activity and usage hit all-time highs
Crypto has become a key political issue ahead of the U.S. election
Stablecoins have found product-market fit
Infrastructure improvements have increased capacity and drastically reduced transaction costs
DeFi remains popular — and it’s growing
Crypto could solve some of AI’s most pressing challenges
More scalable infrastructure has unlocked new onchain applications
Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors
Key Points
AWS announced it has signed an agreement with Dominion Energy, Virginia’s utility company, to explore the development of a small modular nuclear reactor, near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power station.
AWS, Amazon’s subsidiary in cloud computing, has a massive and increasing need for clean energy as it expands its services into generative AI. The agreement is also a part of Amazon’s path to net-zero carbon emissions.
Amazon is the latest large tech company to buy into nuclear power to fuel the growing demands from data centers. Google and Microsoft have announced similar plans.
Paxos announced it will integrate with the Stellar network, an open-source blockchain used for a variety of payment and remittance applications.
This represents another expansion of Paxos’ tokenization platform to a trusted and growing blockchain.
Paxos’ highly regulated approach ensures that its tokenization offerings comply with financial regulations in each region of operation. With trust and credibility built into its platform, Paxos supports leading enterprises and institutions with their tokenization and digital asset infrastructure needs.
Paxos plans to bring assets to the Stellar network by late 2024. go for more
NVIDIA has released a new 70B AI model, crushing GPT-4 and Claude 3.5
Nvidia has quietly introduced a new artificial intelligence model named Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct, which has outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4 and Anthropic's Claude3.5, marking a significant shift in the competitive landscape of the AI field. This model was released on the renowned AI platform Hugging Face, and despite minimal publicity, its exceptional performance quickly garnered industry attention. go for more
‘Smart’ insulin prevents diabetic highs — and deadly lows.
Rita Slaaby, a principal scientist at pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk in Bagsværd, Denmark, and her colleagues engineered an insulin molecule with a switch that turns its activity on and off in response to glucose levels in the blood.
The researchers tested the insulin molecule, which they named NNC2215, in pigs and rats that had received infusions of glucose to mimic the effects of diabetes. They found that NNC2215 was as good as normal human insulin at lowering blood glucose when injected into the animals — and that it was able to prevent the drop in blood-glucose levels that occurred with a current insulin treatment. go for more
World-first therapy using donor cells sends autoimmune diseases into remission
The treatment’s success in three people raises hopes for mass production of cutting-edge CAR-T therapies.
Engineered immune cells, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, have shown great promise in treating blood cancers, half a dozen products having been approved in the United States. They also show potential for treating autoimmune conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis, in which rogue immune cells release autoantibodies that attack the body’s own tissue. But the therapy typically relies on a person’s own immune cells, and this personalization makes it expensive and time consuming.