South Korea and tokenization
“Proposed rules would allow stocks, bonds, and investment funds to operate under the country’s tokenized securities framework when it comes into effect in 2027.
“The framework includes requirements covering capital, compliance personnel, technology systems and the management of distributed ledger records. Proposed rules for retail OTC markets would also impose annual purchase limits for individual investors.
“South Korea’s proposed framework would require distributed ledgers to operate with designated account managers and involvement from the Korea Securities Depository.
The important question is which record determines legal ownership when systems disagree, and who is responsible for correcting it. Institutions need that answer before they can rely on tokenized securities at scale.
“As more established securities move onto distributed ledgers, the legal status of the ownership record becomes just as important as the technology maintaining it. Investors and issuers need to know what the record represents, who is accountable for it and how disputes or discrepancies are resolved.
“For institutions, that level of legal certainty will be central to whether these assets can be issued, distributed and held at scale.”
– Edwin Mata, co-founder and CEO, Brickken
What investors actually do with tokenized assets
“Across the four asset classes covered in its Q3 report, tokenized assets reached approximately $33.9 billion, representing growth of more than 140% over the past year. Cash equivalents account for around $17.8 billion, making them the largest category.
“Tokenized equities have grown much faster from a smaller base, increasing approximately 25 times over the year. They also accounted for 93% of spot trading across the asset classes analyzed in August. The usage patterns are very different elsewhere. Dune found that just 0.006% of cash-equivalent supply traded during August, while around 19% to 21% of tokenized credit was being used within lending protocols.
“Tokenized stocks have grown by more than 2,000% while the number of active holders has passed one million.
“I think this data is useful because it gives us a more detailed way of looking at the tokenized asset market. Total value issued tells us how much capital has entered the market. Trading volumes, holder numbers, collateral usage, transfers, and redemption activity tell us what happens to that capital afterward.
“Different asset classes will naturally behave differently. A tokenized Treasury product may be held primarily as a cash-management instrument. Tokenized credit may have greater value as collateral. Equities may generate more secondary trading because investors use them differently.
“That means there is unlikely to be one metric that tells us whether tokenization is succeeding. The more useful question is whether the infrastructure improves the way that particular asset is issued, held, transferred, traded or used.”
– Mata
24/7 trading pressures the rest of the market
“OKXICE, a joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, has filed with the SEC to launch 24/7 trading in tokenized U.S. stocks.
“The practical test is whether funding and settlement can support the same trading hours. If investors can trade over the weekend but cannot move cash or complete settlement until Monday, some of the promised efficiency remains out of reach.
“Continuous trading still depends on ownership records, compliance checks, settlement, and corporate-action processing operating alongside it. Tokenization can support the continuous transfer of an asset, but the processes attached to that asset also need to remain coordinated.
“This is particularly important for equities because ownership carries specific legal and economic rights. The infrastructure has to know who owns the security, whether that person is permitted to hold it and what rights they receive.”
– Mata
Canada, European Union to connect payment systems
“Fintechs Canada supports the ambition to connect Canada’s payment systems with global peers, as signaled in recent reports on a draft Canada-EU agreement. It is the right long-term goal for Canada, one that can increase competition, lower costs and improve how consumers and businesses move money.
“But global links start at home. Canada’s new instant-payment system, the Real-Time Rail (RTR), is scheduled to begin a phased launch later this year, and Canada can only plug into international rails once it succeeds here. The real test will be how much of Canada’s payment volume actually moves onto the rail, and whether all participants, including fintechs, have fair access to connect and compete. That’s why Fintechs Canada is calling on government and Payments Canada to publish a regular, public adoption scorecard to track progress.
“Success will require all participants, especially incumbents, to move fast, engage fully and shift payment volume onto the rail. Linking the RTR to international systems before it is widely used at home would add complexity to an already demanding rollout.
“Fintechs Canada has long advocated for payment modernization underpinned by the RTR, and fintechs are all in on making it work. We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with government and help shape Canada’s approach to international payment links.”
– Fintechs Canada
Oracle data breach
“The Oracle breach is a pretty stark reminder that health data needs a different security model. When nearly 20 million people can potentially have medical information, addresses, and Social Security numbers exposed, we’re talking about data you simply can’t replace.
“I’ve argued for years that privacy has to be built into technology from the ground up, rather than added later as a compliance feature. That becomes even more important as AI uses increasingly detailed health and biological data. We shouldn’t have to choose between better personalized healthcare and privacy. The goal should be systems where data remains encrypted, controlled by the individual and useful without being unnecessarily exposed.”
– Lisa Loud, CEO, DEPH Labs
Crypto and real estate
“Bitcoin dropping around 4% and slipping below $83,000 shows how quickly higher rates can cool risk appetite. But for real estate, I don’t think short-term price moves change the bigger story. Crypto holders increasingly want the ability to convert digital wealth into real-world assets like property without unnecessary friction.
“Volatility actually reinforces why strong settlement infrastructure matters. Buyers, sellers, and title companies need a process that can convert crypto into dollars quickly and securely, without leaving a property closing exposed to Bitcoin’s next move.”
– John Ioannou, founder, CryptEscrow
Crypto regulation
“The debate around U.S. crypto regulation has reached a point where getting rules in place is only half the challenge. The harder question is whether companies can rely on those rules five or 10 years from now, regardless of who controls Congress, the White House or the agencies enforcing them.
“That matters because financial infrastructure gets built over years, and institutions cannot make long-term decisions about capital, technology, and market access if the regulatory foundation underneath them could change after every election.
“I think this remains one of the biggest weaknesses in the U.S. approach. Agencies can provide guidance and build frameworks under existing authority, but they can only create so much certainty without Congress ultimately deciding where the boundaries sit.
“The failure to advance the CLARITY Act in September makes that harder, particularly while the SEC and CFTC continue pushing forward with their own rules.
“For institutions, regulatory certainty matters because it lets them make decisions beyond the current political cycle. Crypto has already survived several political cycles. Its regulatory framework needs to do the same.
“The CFTC has proposed a new federal framework for crypto exchanges offering leveraged or margined trading, giving platforms a route into federal oversight rather than relying entirely on a patchwork of state licenses.
“Under the proposal, regulated crypto trading platforms would face requirements around areas including market manipulation and proof of reserves, while registered futures commission merchants would intermediate customer trades.
“I think the direction makes sense because fragmentation remains one of the biggest obstacles for institutional participation. When rules differ by state, asset, regulator, and transaction type, complexity accumulates quickly, and institutions ultimately carry that cost.
“A federal framework can reduce some of that friction, but it also raises the question of durability. The CFTC can work within its existing authority, yet the absence of comprehensive legislation raises questions about how securely an agency-led framework can survive political or legal challenges.
“The market needs regulators willing to translate broad principles into practical requirements, and it needs Congress to provide the foundation that gives those requirements permanence.
Once that framework exists, infrastructure has to make it usable. Identity, permissions, counterparties and jurisdiction cannot depend on layers of manual reconciliation if these markets are expected to operate around the clock.
– Ryan Kirkley, CEO, Global Settlement Network
Crypto and the wealthy
“A new CoinShares survey of 2,230 affluent investors across seven major economies found that a majority already own digital assets, with crypto accounting for roughly 10% of portfolios on average. In the U.S., UK, Germany and Switzerland, ownership sits at around 70%.
“I think the more revealing part is why people are holding it. Long-term appreciation and diversification ranked ahead of speculation, while only 6% primarily identified themselves as short-term traders.
“For a large group of affluent investors, crypto has already found a place within portfolio construction and the question has shifted toward how much exposure they want, what they own and how that exposure fits alongside the rest of their assets.
“The infrastructure around those investors now has to catch up. If digital assets represent a persistent part of portfolios, investors will expect the same standards around custody, liquidity, reporting and settlement that they expect elsewhere.
“That gap is still visible, with roughly four in ten respondents across several markets saying their advisers remain overly cautious about digital assets. Capital has already made a decision that parts of the traditional financial system are still debating.”
– Kirkley
AI
“The five largest U.S. hyperscalers could spend around $800 billion on AI infrastructure this year, according to Goldman Sachs, while AI-related investment has already become a significant contributor to U.S. economic growth.
“I think we have reached the point where any serious conversation about slowing AI development also has to account for the financial system that has formed around it.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been committed across data centers, chips, energy, debt markets and private capital, while equity valuations have absorbed assumptions about how quickly AI adoption will continue. A sharp change in those assumptions would travel well beyond technology companies.
“That does not mean safety concerns should be ignored because too much capital has already been deployed. It means policymakers have to understand the second-order consequences of major intervention when investment at this scale has become connected to credit, equities, infrastructure spending and economic growth.
“AI may have started as a technology race, but the amount of money committed to it has made its trajectory a macroeconomic question too.”
– Kirkley
Crypto and the plague
“Close to 200 people have been placed under observation in Russia after a laboratory worker in Irkutsk died of suspected plague. Moscow has since attributed the death to pneumonia of unknown origin and denied a lab accident, while Washington is monitoring the case and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said it is not a cause for alarm.
“For now, this is a contained health scare rather than a market event. But if it escalates, I think the first reaction in crypto would look more like March 2020 than a flight to a safe haven. When COVID became a global shock, Bitcoin lost roughly half its value in two days as investors sold whatever they could to raise cash, and leveraged positions were liquidated across markets that never close. In a liquidity scramble, digital assets trade as risk assets first.
“What followed matters more. Central banks and governments responded with emergency liquidity and fiscal support, and crypto went on to recover faster than many traditional assets. A serious escalation would likely follow a similar sequence: a sharp drawdown, followed by a market driven largely by how policymakers respond.
“The 2020 sequence is a useful guide to scale. In January and early February, while the virus was still seen largely as a Chinese problem, Bitcoin rose more than 40% to around $10,500. As it spread to Europe, Bitcoin drifted back roughly 25%, and when the WHO declared a pandemic, it fell from about $7,900 to below $4,000 in around 36 hours, with Ether falling by more than half. Spot volumes jumped to several times their February average, and hundreds of millions of dollars of leveraged positions were liquidated on BitMEX alone.
“Applied to today, with Bitcoin around $84,000, Ethereum near $2,575, and roughly $32 billion of daily Bitcoin trading volume, I would frame the outcomes as three scenarios. A regional escalation with travel and trade restrictions around Russia could resemble February 2020: a 15-25% drawdown taking Bitcoin to roughly $63,000-$72,000 and Ethereum to $1,900-$2,200, with daily Bitcoin volume rising to around $50-65 billion.
“A global health shock on the scale of March 2020 is the tail risk: a 40-50% fall would put Bitcoin near $42,000-$50,000 and Ethereum, which fell harder in 2020, near $1,050-$1,300, with volume of $100 billion or more a day and liquidations that could rival the roughly $19 billion seen in October 2025.
“Two things make today different. Spot ETFs and a much larger institutional base give the market deeper liquidity than in 2020, which may soften the initial fall. But with Brent above $100, central banks would have less room to flood the system with liquidity, so a recovery could take longer than the seven weeks Bitcoin needed to regain its pre-crash level in 2020. Pneumonic plague is also treatable with antibiotics, which makes a COVID-scale outcome far less likely. These are scenarios built on one historical precedent, not forecasts.
“There is also a geopolitical layer. An outbreak linked to a Russian laboratory would add uncertainty around sanctions, trade and cross-border movement, which tends to increase interest in assets and payment rails that operate outside any single jurisdiction.
“For institutions, the lesson is the one 2020 already taught. Stress events test settlement, collateral and liquidity before they test conviction, and markets that operate around the clock need infrastructure that can absorb a shock at any hour without relying on manual intervention.”
– Kirkley