https://www.tokenknowlogy.com CBDC & stablecoin policy tracker, analysis and news. en Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:27:21 +0100 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/sec-innovation-exemption-tokenized-stocks https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/sec-innovation-exemption-tokenized-stocks Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 17 September 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did something it has conspicuously avoided for a decade: it gave a conditional green light for tokenized equities to trade on public blockchains. The order — officially an "Innovation Exemption" — grants temporary relief to "Tokenized Securities Venues" (TSVs) that want to trade tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks through https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/lse-xstocks-tokenized-equities https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/lse-xstocks-tokenized-equities Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In early September 2026, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) announced a partnership with Payward — the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken — to bring UK equities on-chain. The deal, first reported by Ledger Insights, would see Payward issue the 100 largest London-listed companies as "xStocks," its tokenized equity framework, with the LSE subsequently listing those tokens for trading on its new 2 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/bundesbank-prividium-privacy-blockchain https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/bundesbank-prividium-privacy-blockchain Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Germany's central bank has quietly become the first institution to run a privacy-focused blockchain platform inside its own infrastructure. ZKsync developer Matter Labs announced this month that it has open-sourced the core of Prividium, its permissioned ledger for financial institutions — and named the Deutsche Bundesbank as the first organisation to self-host a deployment of it. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-08-03_deep-dive_china-digital-yuan https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-08-03_deep-dive_china-digital-yuan Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 That is how OMFIF, the London-based central-bank think tank, opened its July 2026 analysis of the People's Bank of China's (PBoC) quiet but consequential decision. Effective 1 January 2026, the PBoC reclassified the digital renminbi (e-CNY) from digital cash into interest-bearing deposit money. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/swift-first-live-tokenized-deposit-transfer https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/swift-first-live-tokenized-deposit-transfer Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In the quiet run-up to late August, two of the world's largest banks did something that tokenized deposits had never managed before: they moved money directly between each other, outside the confines of a single bank's blockchain. On 19 August 2026, HSBC and Standard Chartered settled the first live tokenized deposit transfer over SWIFT's blockchain-based ledger — a milestone that may matter more https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/circle-occ-national-trust-bank https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/circle-occ-national-trust-bank Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In the span of twenty-one days, Circle Internet Group — the company behind USDC, the world's second-largest stablecoin with a $72 billion market cap — accomplished something no crypto-native firm has done before: it secured a federal national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on 10 July, then added a New York limited-purpose trust charter from the NYDFS on https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/blackrock-european-tokenized-mmfs-rwa-38b https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/blackrock-european-tokenized-mmfs-rwa-38b Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 BlackRock has crossed the Atlantic — and this time it's not about ETFs. The world's largest asset manager launched its first European UCITS tokenized money market funds (MMFs) on 3 August 2026, issuing digital share classes across six existing ICS funds denominated in dollars, euros, and sterling. The launch came one day after BlackRock unveiled two new US-based tokenized MMF products designed spe https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-deposits-infrastructure https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-deposits-infrastructure Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Until now, tokenized bank deposits have largely lived in walled gardens. JPMorgan's Kinexys network has processed over $4 trillion in cumulative volume — but only within its own ecosystem. BNY Mellon's permissioned blockchain settles bank-to-bank — but only for its own participants. The infrastructure that would let tokenized deposits move across institutions and borders the way stablecoins alread https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/omfif-china-ecny-deposit-shift https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/omfif-china-ecny-deposit-shift Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Starting 1 January 2026, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) quietly reclassified the digital renminbi (e-CNY) from digital cash to interest-bearing deposit money. As OMFIF put it, China is now "running the CBDC experiment the West designed away" — a shift with profound implications for how the global community thinks about central bank digital currency design. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/imf-tokenization-risks https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/imf-tokenization-risks Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In July 2026, the International Monetary Fund published a wide-ranging assessment of tokenized finance, articulated by its head of monetary and capital markets, Tobias Adrian. The message is deliberately double-edged: tokenization can make markets faster and cheaper — but the very frictions it eliminates are the buffers that have historically contained financial shocks. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/anchorpoint-hkdap-hong-kong-stablecoin https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/anchorpoint-hkdap-hong-kong-stablecoin Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 12 August 2026, Anchorpoint Financial — a joint venture of Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) — launched the beta phase of HKDAP, the first Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin issued under the city's new regulatory regime. The rollout through licensed exchanges HashKey and OSL marks the first live issuance of a *regulated* stablecoin in Hong Kong, barely four months https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/bis-tokenised-deposits-over-stablecoins https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/bis-tokenised-deposits-over-stablecoins Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0100 At the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on 28 August 2026, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) took one of its clearest public positions yet on the future of digital money: tokenised deposits — not stablecoins — should carry the bulk of everyday payments going forward. BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos argued that stablecoins, in their current form, "do not yet u https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-08_deep-dive_singleness-of-money https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-08_deep-dive_singleness-of-money Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 This sentence is so obvious that most people never think about it. You transfer money between banks every month — Bank A to Bank B — and the value is always the same. No discount, no exchange rate, no questions asked. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article4_tri-polar-trust_zh https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article4_tri-polar-trust_zh Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 2026年6月的那篇Forbes文章描绘了一个二元格局：美国走市场主导的私人稳定币路线，欧洲和中国走中心化设计的CBDC路线。 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article2_project-agora_zh https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article2_project-agora_zh Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 你发起一笔从日本子公司到德国供应商的付款。这笔钱需要经过日本银行 → 中间行 → 德国银行，在三个时区、两套系统、无数次的合规筛查中逐一传递。如果遇到日本公共假日和德国非交易时段的重叠——这笔钱可能要等三天。你不知道它在哪一步。你无法查询它的实时状态。你只能等。 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_deep-dive_us-stablecoins-vs-digital-euro https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_deep-dive_us-stablecoins-vs-digital-euro Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On June 22, 2026, the US Senate voted 85-5 to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail digital currency through 2030. The next day, the European Parliament's economics committee voted 43-14 to advance the digital euro. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article3_stablecoin-reserves-macro_zh https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article3_stablecoin-reserves-macro_zh Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 2026年5月，稳定币总市值达到约 3200亿美元。其中 99.4% 锚定美元，年交易量约 28万亿美元。作为对比，这相当于美国最大批发支付系统不到三个工作周的结算量。 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article1_singleness-of-money_zh https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/2026-07-06_article1_singleness-of-money_zh Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 2026年6月22日，美国参议院以85:5的票数禁止美联储在2030年前发行零售央行数字货币。第二天，欧洲议会经济委员会以43:14推进数字欧元。 https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-treasuries-15b https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-treasuries-15b Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 The tokenized US Treasury market has crossed $15 billion in total value, driven by relentless institutional demand and a small number of dominant players. BlackRock's BUIDL fund alone accounts for over $2.5 billion, with Circle's USYC close behind at $3.0 billion. The overall tokenized RWA market (excluding stablecoins) now stands at approximately $33.5 billion — with Treasuries remaining the flag https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/russia-digital-ruble-launch https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/russia-digital-ruble-launch Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 3 July 2026, Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina confirmed that the digital ruble is "technically ready" and will launch nationwide on 1 September 2026 — making Russia the largest economy to date to formally launch a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC). The announcement moves Russia's CBDC programme from its pilot phase, which began in August 2023 with 13 banks and limited user te https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-treasuries-monetary-policy https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenized-treasuries-monetary-policy Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Tokenized US Treasuries have crossed $15 billion in total value locked as of July 2026, with the broader tokenized RWA market reaching $33.5 billion — a more than 500% year-over-year increase. BlackRock's BUIDL, Circle's USYC, Ondo Finance's OUSG and USDY, Franklin Templeton's FOBXX — these products now hold more on-chain Treasury exposure than some small countries hold in foreign-exchange reserve https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/genius-act-missed-deadline https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/genius-act-missed-deadline Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 July 18, 2026 was supposed to be a milestone for American crypto regulation. One year after the GENIUS Act was signed into law by President Trump, six federal agencies — the Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, SEC, CFTC, and Treasury — were statutorily required to publish the final implementing rules that would bring America's comprehensive stablecoin framework into full operation. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/open-usd-stablecoin https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/open-usd-stablecoin Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 30 June 2026, a consortium of more than 140 companies — including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Google, and Coinbase — announced the formation of Open Standard, a governance entity that will issue a new US dollar stablecoin called Open USD (OUSD). The initiative represents the most ambitious corporate-backed challenge yet to Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), which toge https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/clarity-act https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/clarity-act Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 14 May 2026, the CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee markup vote — its most significant legislative hurdle to date. Having already passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support in mid-2025, the bill now awaits a full Senate floor vote. If enacted, it would represent the first comprehensive federal framework for digital assets in the United States. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/dtcc-stellar-tokenization https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/dtcc-stellar-tokenization Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) — the backbone of US securities settlement, processing over $3 quadrillion annually — is taking tokenisation live. In July 2026, DTCC will demonstrate its tokenisation service in a production environment, with a full commercial launch slated for October. Its chosen blockchain network: Stellar. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/genius-act-final-rules https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/genius-act-final-rules Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On July 18, 2026 — exactly one year after President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law — six US federal agencies will finalise the regulatory framework that governs America's $290 billion stablecoin market. The OCC, FDIC, NCUA, Treasury, FinCEN, and OFAC are each publishing final rules within a five-day window, representing the most comprehensive stablecoin regulation any major economy has ever https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/south-korea-won-stablecoin-cbdc-roadmap https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/south-korea-won-stablecoin-cbdc-roadmap Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 19 July 2026, South Korea's Financial Services Commission, the Bank of Korea, the Financial Supervisory Service, and the Korea Securities Depository jointly unveiled a sweeping roadmap that links won-backed stablecoins, a wholesale CBDC, tokenised government bonds, and full foreign-exchange liberalisation — making it arguably the most ambitious digital currency reform package ever proposed by a https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/usdt-lightning-network https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/usdt-lightning-network Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On 21 March 2026, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed that USDT — the world's largest stablecoin by market capitalisation — had gone live on Bitcoin's Lightning Network via Taproot Assets. The move completes a 14-month engineering effort first announced at the Plan B Forum in El Salvador in January 2025, and marks a quietly historic moment: the stablecoin that began life on Bitcoin in 2014 has, twe https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/solayer-visa-usdc https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/solayer-visa-usdc Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In May 2026, Solayer — a restaking protocol built on Solana — launched a Visa-compatible payment card that lets users spend USDC anywhere Visa is accepted. Backed by the Visa and Stripe-Bridge card programme, the Solayer Pay Visa card opens stablecoin spending to 40,000 users across 100 countries, with ATM withdrawal support included. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/saudi-blockchain-tokenization https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/saudi-blockchain-tokenization Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 In May 2026, Saudi Arabia announced one of the most ambitious blockchain initiatives by any sovereign state: a $12.5 billion push to tokenise real-world assets, beginning with real estate. The programme, led by Faisal Monai — the architect of Saudi Arabia's digital payments infrastructure — will operate through droppRWA and aims to bring a significant portion of the Kingdom's multi-trillion-dollar https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/ecny-20-dedollarisation https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/ecny-20-dedollarisation Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 On December 31, 2025, six of China's largest state-owned banks — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Bank of Communications, and Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) — made a joint announcement that fundamentally changed the trajectory of the world's largest CBDC pilot. Starting January 1, 2026, balances hel https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenisation-evolution-impact https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/tokenisation-evolution-impact Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Tokenisation — the process of representing ownership rights in real or financial assets as digital tokens on a blockchain — has moved decisively from niche experiment to institutional reality. In 2022, tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) were worth roughly $3 billion on public blockchains. By mid-2025, that figure had surpassed $24 billion, a 308% increase in three years. When permissioned and priv https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/private-credit-tokenization https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/private-credit-tokenization Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 For years, tokenized US Treasuries dominated the real-world asset (RWA) narrative. BlackRock's BUIDL, Ondo Finance, and Circle's USYC captured headlines as institutional investors piled into on-chain government debt. But something shifted quietly in early 2026: private credit overtook treasuries to become the single largest non-stablecoin RWA segment. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/standard-chartered-30-trillion-tokenization https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/standard-chartered-30-trillion-tokenization Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100 Standard Chartered has published one of the most ambitious forecasts for tokenized assets to date: the bank projects the global tokenized real-world asset market will reach $30 trillion by 2034. That represents a nearly 900x increase from today's $33.5 billion market (per RWA.xyz, July 2026) — and a powerful signal that mainstream finance believes tokenization is not just real, but transformationa https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/digital-euro https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/digital-euro Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The European Central Bank's Digital Euro project has moved from investigation into the realisation phase, marking a pivotal moment for Europe's monetary sovereignty. After years of research, public consultation, and technical experimentation, the ECB is now laying the groundwork for what could become the world's most significant central bank digital currency rollout in a major advanced economy. https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/stablecoin-regulation https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/stablecoin-regulation Sun, 01 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Stablecoins have grown from a niche crypto instrument into a multi-hundred-billion-dollar market that touches mainstream finance. With that growth has come a wave of regulatory activity worldwide. As of early 2026, the regulatory landscape is rapidly crystallising — but it remains fragmented across jurisdictions, creating compliance challenges for issuers and opportunities for regulatory arbitrage https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/china-ecny https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/china-ecny Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000 China's digital yuan — the e-CNY — began its first pilot trials in April 2020 across four cities: Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong'an. Five years and dozens of expansion rounds later, it is by far the world's largest CBDC pilot, touching hundreds of millions of users and processing billions of yuan in transactions. What has China learned, and what does the e-CNY reveal about Beijing's strategi https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/defi-stablecoins https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/defi-stablecoins Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Decentralised finance (DeFi) and stablecoins share one of the most interdependent relationships in the crypto ecosystem. Stablecoins provide the liquidity that powers DeFi lending, borrowing, and trading protocols. DeFi, in turn, provides the primary use case and demand driver for stablecoins beyond simple remittances and exchange onboarding. Understanding this symbiosis is essential to grasping b https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/cbdc-vs-cash https://www.tokenknowlogy.com/articles/cbdc-vs-cash Sat, 01 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000 For centuries, physical cash has been the bedrock of monetary systems — anonymous, universally accepted, and independent of any electronic infrastructure. But as central banks around the world accelerate their CBDC projects, a fundamental question emerges: will digital currencies replace cash, or can they coexist?