Tennessee has placed a statewide ban on crypto ATMs, becoming the second state in the United States, after Indiana, to have outright banned crypto ATMs.

 

The ban on crypto ATMs in the state comes after Bill Lee, Tennessee’s governor, signed House Bill 2505 into law, following its unanimous approval by both the Tennessee House of Representatives and the Senate.

 

House Bill 2505, which has now been passed into the state’s legal code, prohibits the installation or operation of virtual currency kiosks, otherwise known as Bitcoin ATMs, in the state. Any violation of the law will be treated as a criminal offense classified as a Class A misdemeanor, with offenders facing up to one year in prison and a fine of $2,500.

 

Image credit: capitol.tn.gov

 

The law also treats business owners who allow these crypto ATMs to be hosted on their property as accomplices, making them liable under the same offense. Although the bill was signed into Tennessee’s legal code last Thursday, it will take effect on July 1.

 

Indiana First to Ban Crypto ATMs

Tennessee’s ban on crypto ATMs comes shortly after Indiana, which on March 9 signed House Enrolled Act 1116 (HEA 1116 into law, banning crypto ATMs in the state and becoming the first U.S. state to do so. The move was prompted by the high levels of fraud and widespread scams associated with crypto kiosks.According to FBI data, about $333 million was stolen through crypto kiosks in 2025 alone. 

 

Prior to the ban, Indiana had nearly 900 crypto ATMs in operation. However, all of these machines were effectively deactivated immediately after Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed House Enrolled Act 1116 into law.

 

Tennessee Takes a Strong Stance on Prediction Markets

Tennessee has, for some time now, taken strong action against prediction market platforms, targeting operators such as Kalshi and Polymarket. In January of this year, the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council (SWC) issued cease and desist orders against major platforms including Polymarket, Kalshi, and Crypto.com, demanding that they stop offering sports event contracts in the state.

 

Kalshi, however, sued the state in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and won a preliminary injunction. The ruling allowed Kalshi to continue operating in the state while the case proceeds.

 

 

The Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM) has launched the Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio (MSNXX), a new government money market fund that aligns with the stablecoin reserve investment requirements set by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act).

 

The new stablecoin reserve fund aims to offer payment stablecoin issuers an eligible money market fund option in which they can invest their stablecoin reserves backing their payment stablecoins. 

 

According to Fred McMullen, Co-Head of Global Liquidity at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the reserve fund offers stablecoin issuers investment solutions that allow them to safely and securely invest the reserve assets backing the stablecoins they hold.

 

With this stablecoin reserve fund, stablecoin issuers can safely and efficiently preserve their reserve capital while maintaining daily liquidity and competitive interest yields. Since the fund only invests in cash, Treasury bills, notes, and bonds with maturities of about 93 days or less, stablecoin issuers are not required to manage complex regulatory compliance processes or continuously audit reserves to demonstrate sufficient liquidity backing their stablecoins.

 

Speaking on the launch of the stablecoin reserve fund, Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy for Morgan Stanley, said that the launch of the MSIM Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio is another step toward modernizing Morgan Stanley’s financial infrastructure and is a key step in improving the firm’s institutional client experience.

 

"Creating opportunities for all client segments as markets evolve will make the next phase of finance possible and more broadly accessible," Oldenburg added.

 

Morgan Stanley Expands Its Digital Assets Offerings

The launch of the Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio (MSNXX) is part of Morgan Stanley’s efforts toward expanding its digital asset offerings and comes shortly after Morgan Stanley Investment Management, early this month, launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), a spot exchange-traded product that tracks the price performance of Bitcoin.

 

Upon launching on the New York Stock Exchange, the MSBT fund drew approximately $34 million in net inflows on its first day, processing more than 1.6 million shares and significantly outperforming older exchange-traded funds.

 

Eric Balchunas, one of Bloomberg’s notable ETF analysts, ranked it in the top 1 percent of all ETF launches, describing it as “arguably the biggest bitcoin ETF launch in the history of the spot bitcoin ETF market.” Balchunas also projects that the MSBT fund will reach $5 billion in assets under management within the next year.

 

 

Singapore-based fintech company Nium has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to integrate the USDC stablecoin into its global payment network.

 

The integration, announced this week, leverages Coinbase’s custody, liquidity, and wallet infrastructure, allowing Nium’s clients and users to perform cross-border payments in USDC and settle transactions in either stablecoins or local currencies.

 

 

As Coinbase will provide the wallet infrastructure, Nium clients will be able to fund accounts in USDC within a Coinbase wallet embedded in the Nium platform. The USDC can then be converted to fiat currency by Coinbase and paid out through Nium, all within a single workflow on the platform.

 

Through this partnership, Nium will enable end-to-end stablecoin-to-fiat payment flows that allow users to send, receive, and convert stablecoins into fiat across more than 190 countries within a single platform.

 

Speaking about the partnership, Prajit Nanu, CEO of Nium, said it is aimed at providing clients with a more efficient way to move and manage money globally. He added that the collaboration improves capital efficiency while supporting a future in which stablecoins play a central role in Nium’s payment stack.

 

About Nium 

Based in Singapore, Nium is a cross-border payments company that allows users, including retail and institutional clients, to perform cross-border remittances and transactions.

 

Apart from being a core traditional finance company, Nium has in the past made several pro-crypto moves, especially in the stablecoin space.

 

In March of this year, it launched a stablecoin card issuance platform that allows companies holding stablecoins to issue spending cards on both the Visa and Mastercard networks through a single API integration on its platform. To enable USDC settlements on its platform, Nium last year participated in Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot, which eventually made it possible for the company to settle cross-border transactions using stablecoins across different supported blockchain networks.

 

Like Nium, several other Singapore-based traditional finance companies have taken pro-crypto steps in recent times, integrating blockchain technology and crypto support into their platforms. Notable among them is DBS Bank, Singapore’s largest bank, which launched the DBS Digital Exchange, a platform for asset tokenization, crypto trading, and custody.

 

Cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken, OKX, Binance, and Bybit, have also partnered with traditional finance institutions to help bridge the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance.

 

 

Tokenized stocks have crossed the $1 billion market cap marking a major turning point for RWAs on-chain. Public equities drove the surge, with platforms like Ondo Global Markets and xStocks leading the charge, while tokenized private equities on Solana continue to gain early traction and expand rapidly.

 

The rise of tokenized stocks brings several benefits to investors as they enable 24/7 global trading without the traditional T+2 settlement delays, allowing markets to operate continuously rather than shutting down after regular hours. Fractional ownership lowers the barrier for smaller investors to gain exposure to stocks and private investments. Assets can be used directly as collateral in DeFi protocols, creating new opportunities for yield generation and liquidity with instant settlement that reduces counterparty risk and improves capital efficiency. 

 

Ondo Finance and xStocks together account for over 90% of the tokenized stock market cap. Ondo leads at $741.1M (heavily on Ethereum at $440.1M and BNB Chain at $283.2M), followed by xStocks at $315.2M (dominant on Solana with $258.4M and reach through CEXs like Kraken and Bybit). The rest includes Superstate, Robinhood on Arbitrum, Dinari, and PreStocks’ $17.8M in tokenized private equities. Launched in June 2025, xStocks has already facilitated over $3.5 billion in on-chain transaction volume and $25 billion in total trading volume, tokenizing major assets like SPYx, QQQx, NVDAx, and TSLAx. 

 

Another interesting segment is tokenized pre-IPO stocks that bring exposure to private companies like Anthropic directly onto Solana via platforms such as PreStocks. These tokens are created through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) that hold shares or exposure acquired on secondary markets. PreStocks then issues 1:1 backed SPL tokens on Solana that track the company's implied valuation which lets holders get price exposure with 24/7 trading on DEXes like Jupiter. The tokenized pre-IPO sector has grown roughly 200% year-to-date, with Anthropic leading the surge. 

However, Ethereum is still the clear leader when it comes to bringing stocks on-chain, as it’s become the primary home for major financial moves as the value of funds moving onto Ethereum has grown 20x since the start of 2024, thanks to massive names like BlackRock and Fidelity launching their own products there. This dominance extends across other major real-world asset categories as well, with the network maintaining a strong position in tokenized commodities, funds, and stablecoins.

 

 

Nasdaq has secured SEC approval to trade tokenized Russell 1000 stocks and major index ETFs on the same order book as their traditional counterparts, while the NYSE is building a 24/7 on-chain venue with instant settlement and stablecoin funding in partnership with Securitize and the DTCC’s tokenization infrastructure. Firms like Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan, and Apollo are rolling out tokenized money market funds, credit strategies, and other securities across networks that reache beyond Ethereum and Solana to include chains like Polygon, Avalanche, Base, Aptos, and Stellar, reflecting a multi-chain strategy to plug directly into different DeFi ecosystems. 

 

Ondo Global Markets, now one of the main issuers of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, blocks U.S. users and anyone trading from inside the country, and pushes those restrictions through partners like MetaMask, Binance Wallet, and centralized exchanges that list its products. Kraken’s xStocks do the same, limiting access to non U.S. clients in a set list of jurisdictions and explicitly excluding residents of the United States, Canada, the U.K., and Australia. On Solana, the pre-IPO names led by PreStocks let people trade tokens linked to companies like Anthropic, but they sit in a gray zone because they’re SPV based claims with no audited, public proof of backing, wide gaps between implied token prices and private round valuations, thin liquidity, and no clear path for U.S. retail to participate. So while Binance, OKX, Kraken, and others rush to put tokenized stocks in front of millions of users, most of the real volume is still offshore, and U.S. investors are mostly stuck watching from the sidelines until policy catches up.

 

 

The world's largest stablecoin issuer is getting into the wallet game. Tether has officially launched tether.wallet, a self-custodial application that puts its payments infrastructure directly into the hands of end users for the first time.

 

For more than a decade, Tether's USDT stablecoin quietly powers hundreds of billions in daily trading volume, settlement, and cross-border payments across dozens of blockchains. But, most users never interact with Tether directly. That is about to change

 

The new app, simply called tether.wallet, supports four assets at launch: USDT, the company's U.S.-market stablecoin USAT, its gold-backed token XAUT, and Bitcoin, available both on-chain and through the Lightning Network. USDT and XAUT run on Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum at launch, while USAT is limited to Ethereum for now, with more networks reportedly in the pipeline.

 

No More Long Wallet Addresses

One of the more practical features is the use of human-readable identifiers, think something like [email protected], instead of the standard hexadecimal wallet strings that have caused users to accidentally send funds to the wrong address for years. Transactions also settle without requiring users to hold separate gas tokens; fees are paid directly in the asset being transferred. For anyone who has fumbled through a failed transaction because they did not have enough ETH to cover gas, that is a genuinely meaningful improvement.

 

Private keys remain fully under user control. All transactions are signed locally on the device, and Tether says it never holds user funds or keys at any point. It is a fully self-custodial model, which distinguishes it from the exchange-hosted wallets that have drawn scrutiny after a string of high-profile custodial failures in recent years.

 

570 Million Users, and Counting

Tether says its technology already reaches more than 570 million people across over 160 countries as of March 2026, with tens of millions of new wallets being added each quarter. The company is pitching tether.wallet as the next logical step in that growth, designed for mainstream users who have never touched a crypto wallet before, not just the crypto-native crowd who already know what a seed phrase is.

 

CEO Paolo Ardoino has been making the rounds with this one. He described the product as "the People's Wallet," framing it as a natural evolution of Tether's role from building the foundation of the digital asset economy to making it directly usable by anyone. His pitch goes further than stablecoins, though. Ardoino has long argued that AI agents will need native, self-custodial wallets for machine-to-machine payments, and the Wallet Development Kit (WDK) that underpins tether.wallet is designed with that kind of future in mind.

 

tether.wallet is built on Tether's open-source Wallet Development Kit, which the company has been quietly developing for a while now. The WDK had its first significant public deployment in January 2026, when video platform Rumble launched a non-custodial wallet built on the same infrastructure, enabling creator tipping in Bitcoin and USDT across Rumble's 80 million users. That earlier rollout effectively served as a real-world stress test before today's broader consumer launch.

 

The open source nature means third-party developers, businesses, and potentially AI systems can all build self-custodial wallet products on the same foundation. Tether is positioning this less as a single app and more as the beginning of a distribution layer.

 

Tether's Big Year...So Far

Tether has had a busy year on multiple fronts. In January, the company launched USAT, a GENIUS Act-compliant U.S.-regulated stablecoin issued through Anchorage Digital Bank, a direct challenge to Circle's USDC in the institutional and regulated segment of the market. In March, Tether engaged KPMG for what it described as the first-ever full financial audit of its $185 billion USDT reserves, a significant departure from the periodic attestations the company has historically relied on. PwC was also brought in to assist with internal systems preparation.

 

By moving into consumer-facing wallet infrastructure, Tether is entering territory already occupied by MetaMask, Phantom, Trust Wallet, and others. Those players have years of user experience, broad network support, and established reputations. Whether Tether's brand recognition among non-crypto users, combined with the built-in familiarity of USDT, translates into meaningful adoption is the real question. The stablecoin market itself crossed $315 billion in March 2026, an all-time high, and analysts expect this number to grow dramatically over the next few years.

 

 

 

 

The Bank of Korea (BOK), South Korea’s central bank, has proposed the introduction of crypto circuit breakers for domestic cryptocurrency exchanges, months after the Bithumb Bitcoin blunder.

 

In its recently published 2025 Payment and Settlement Systems Report, the bank recommended introducing system-level safeguards similar to the Korea Exchange (KRX) stock market circuit breakers that would automatically halt trading on crypto exchanges, especially during sharp price swings or abnormal transactions caused by large volume or erroneous trades.

 

Referencing the massive payout mishap at Bithumb in February, the BOK argued that this feature would help prevent such incidents from repeating, citing the crypto market’s lack of sufficient safeguards compared to traditional finance. It also suggested including the proposal in South Korea’s pending Digital Asset Basic Act.

 

“The virtual asset industry has inadequate internal control systems and faces weaker regulatory oversight compared to traditional financial institutions,” the bank said.

 

“It is necessary to consider introducing systemic mechanisms such as the Korea Exchange’s circuit breaker, which can block abnormal trades such as large orders or halt trading in the event of sudden fluctuations in virtual asset prices.”

 

Bithumb February Bitcoin Blunder

On February 6, 2026, Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was running its routine “Random Box” promotional giveaway. The plan was to distribute small cash prizes totaling 620,000 Korean won (KRW), worth approximately 423 to 460 US dollars, to about 600 qualified users, with each user receiving between 2,000 and 50,000 KRW, or about 1.37 to 34 US dollars.

 

However, the situation escalated when an employee mistakenly entered “BTC” as the currency unit instead of “KRW.” As a result, the system instantly credited approximately 620,000 Bitcoin to users, with each user receiving roughly 2,000 Bitcoin.

 

Bithumb detected the error within minutes and promptly restricted trading and withdrawals on the affected accounts. The exchange was able to recover 99.7 percent of the distributed Bitcoin, while the remaining 1,788 Bitcoin that had already been sold by users were covered by the exchange’s corporate reserves.

 

While the introduction of stock-style circuit breakers for cryptocurrency exchanges appears to be motivated by a desire to protect markets, many experts argue that such measures run counter to the decentralized and borderless nature of cryptocurrency. 

 

Some warn that these guardrails could amplify risks and create price discrepancies between domestic exchanges and global markets. This, in turn, could lead to arbitrage opportunities and confusion, particularly when South Korean exchanges halt trading while the rest of the world continues.

 

 

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Hong Kong’s primary banking regulator, has issued its first stablecoin issuer licenses to the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Anchorpoint Financial Limited, in line with the city’s new stablecoin framework.

 

The licenses, which were granted on April 10, represent the first batch issued under Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance framework. The process was competitive, involving 36 applicants, with selections based on several factors, including risk management, credible use cases, and compliance readiness.

 

With these licenses granted, HSBC, one of Hong Kong’s largest and oldest banks, and Anchorpoint Financial Limited, a joint financial venture led by Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT), and Animoca Brands, are now a step closer to achieving their stablecoin plans.

 

HSBC plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin by the second half of 2026. The stablecoin will maintain a one-to-one peg with the Hong Kong dollar and will be backed by high-quality liquid assets held in segregated accounts. It will also be integrated into two of HSBC’s consumer applications, the PayMe app, which already has more than 3.3 million users, and the HSBC HK Mobile Banking app.

 

With this integration, HSBC users will be able to perform peer-to-peer transfers and peer-to-merchant payments using the Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin directly within HSBC applications.

 

Anchorpoint Financial Limited also plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin, with its first rollout expected this quarter. While the stablecoin is intended to support the digital economy, including cross-border and local payments, Anchorpoint’s initial focus will be on institutional investors and business partners, with retail users to follow at a later stage.

 

With this first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses and additional approvals underway, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority aims to address financial challenges in Hong Kong and support the development of the city’s digital asset industry.

 

“The granting of stablecoin issuer licenses is an important milestone for the development of digital assets in Hong Kong. We look forward to the issuers launching their businesses according to their plans, exploring growth opportunities while properly managing risks,” said Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the HKMA. “We hope their promotion of regulated stablecoins will address pain points in financial and economic activities, create value for both individuals and businesses, and support the healthy development of digital assets in Hong Kong.”

 

Hong Kong Stablecoin Ordinance

The Hong Kong Stablecoin Ordinance is a regulatory framework passed into law by Hong Kong's Legislative Council in August 2025. The framework establishes a comprehensive licensing and supervisory regime specifically for fiat-backed stablecoins.

 

Under this framework, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority sets standards for stablecoin issuers seeking licenses in the jurisdiction. These include requirements related to financial resources, reserve assets, risk management, and anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism compliance, among others.

 

Although Hong Kong’s stablecoin regime is considered one of the strictest in the world, it is designed to promote trust and support the long term adoption of stablecoins rather than allow unregulated growth that could ultimately lead to systemic risks.

 

 

Swift and Chainlink just finished another interoperability trial focused on tokenized bond transactions, and it pulled in some serious European banking names: BNP Paribas Securities Services, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Société Générale FORGE all took part, testing how digital assets can move across both blockchain networks and traditional systems without anyone having to rebuild their existing infrastructure. The setup uses Swift's messaging standards alongside Chainlink's Cross-Chain-Interopability-Protocol (CCIP) so institutions can interact with blockchain networks through rails they already know and trust.

 

 

This builds on earlier work with over a dozen global institutions including Citi, BNY Mellon, and UBS Asset Management, who were already testing cross chain settlement on existing payment rails. The throughline across all of it is pretty straightforward: banks aren't going to adopt anything that forces them to gut their current systems, so if you can make tokenized asset settlement feel like a natural extension of what they already do, you've actually got a shot at making this work at scale.

 

 

Back in 2023, Swift ran experiments with Chainlink alongside Citi, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, Euroclear, Clearstream, and a bunch of others. They moved tokenized assets between wallets on the same chain, across public and private chains, and between different public chains entirely. CCIP validated the Swift requests, posted the transactions on chain, tracked execution, and sent confirmations back so banks saw one clean workflow on their end.

 

Then in 2024, under the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian, Swift teamed up with UBS Asset Management and Chainlink to actually settle tokenized fund subscriptions and redemptions. Swift handled the fiat cash side, CCIP handled the on-chain asset side which shows digital asset transactions plugging into the payment systems that over 11,500 institutions across 200 countries already use, rather than needing some separate parallel settlement network nobody has actually built yet.

 

Legacy systems need to be able to talk to blockchains and right now you've got different CBDCs, tokenized deposits, and all kinds of assets sitting on different ledgers that can't be exchanged easily. By making CCIP the standard cross chain messaging layer, Swift gives banks a way to touch multiple chains without having to rebuild their whole stack every single time a new network shows up. There's identity work layered in too with GLEIF and Chainlink working on verifiable institutional IDs, and you can't have regulated cross border settlement without knowing who's on the other end.

 

Chainlink has already pulled in hundreds of millions in revenue, and it's coming from a mix of sources. A big chunk is large enterprises paying off-chain for platform access, integrations, usage, and maintenance. On top of that, there are on-chain fees from subscription and per call models, plus revenue sharing arrangements.

 

Chainlink's CCIP has been processing around $18 billion in monthly cross chain volume back in early 2026, which was up roughly 62 percent from the year before. JPMorgan and UBS both have live blockchain settlement pilots running on it.

 

March saw some solid activity with Coinbase activated a $5 billion cbBTC bridge to the Monad network, which basically brought their wrapped Bitcoin liquidity into Monad's DeFi ecosystem. Apps like Curvance and Neverland have already adopted related markets because of this. Coinbase also hooked up Chainlink's DataLink to bring premium exchange data on-chain for the first time, and that's powering billions in trading volume now. They were already using Chainlink for Proof of Reserve and as their exclusive bridging solution for wrapped assets, so this felt like the natural next move.

 

Institutions don’t have to directly use $LINK and can pay however works for them, whether that's fiat, stablecoins, gas tokens, or other digital assets which gets programmatically converted into LINK and deposited into the Chainlink Reserve. Node operators and service providers get paid out in LINK, and staking adds another layer of security on top of that. So, there is some design to keep creating demand for the token as usage grows, rather than just treating it as an afterthought.

 

Swift is the control panel for global banking, Chainlink CCIP is the router that speaks every blockchain's language, and banks keep doing what they do and the translation layer handles everything else.

 

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has introduced into its wallet application, prediction market, a new feature that allows users to participate in probability-based markets directly from the Binance wallet app. 

 

This feature was made possible through the integration of Predict.fun, an independent decentralized prediction market platform built on the BNB Chain, with Binance explicitly stating the integration of more prediction market platforms into its app in the future. 

 

With the integration of Predict.fun into its wallet app as well as other future prediction market integration, Binance aims to tap into the over $20 billion prediction markets volume, going toe-to-toe with giant prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket which both account for 85–90% of the total global prediction market volume.

 

To encourage the mass adoption and use of this new prediction market feature, Binance is offering a gasless trading experience for all users. Thus, all trading fees incurred will be sponsored and catered for Binance itself, thereby making it very easy for its over 300 million users tap into the growing crypto prediction markets. 

 

Image credit: Binance

 

The Binance prediction market feature will also support market and limit orders, allowing traders execute trades immediately at the current best market price or leave immediately, without delay, as well as allowing traders execute trades at their specified price or even better. 

 

The Current State of Prediction Markets

Crypto prediction markets have grown rapidly in recent times, evolving from a niche segment of the crypto industry into a major sector in global finance. The global monthly trading volume across prediction market platforms has consistently exceeded 20 billion dollars, with last month recording approximately 25.7 billion dollars in trading volume.

 

Despite the high monthly trading volume and the growing number of unique crypto wallets actively trading across different platforms, prediction market companies have faced several regulatory challenges. This is especially true for the two largest platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, whose trading volumes together account for about 92 to 93 percent of global prediction market activity.

 

Although the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator in the United States, has recently moved to defend prediction market companies from strict regulatory actions imposed by several states, the activities of these companies remain restricted in at least 11 states.

 

The services of Polymarket remain blocked in about 33 countries, while Kalshi is restricted in about 50 jurisdictions, although it is still available in roughly 140 countries.

 

 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the primary insurance body for bank deposits in the United States, has recently moved to regulate FDIC supervised stablecoin issuers in accordance with the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.

 

The agency, in a recent press release, announced that its board of directors had approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement key provisions under the GENIUS Act.

 

According to the FDIC, this proposal would provide a prudential framework for permitted payment stablecoin issuers under its supervision, setting standards with regard to stablecoin reserve assets, redemption, capital, liquidity, and risk management that will be uniformly adhered to by all FDIC supervised stablecoin issuers.

 

The proposal will also establish requirements for FDIC supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers and insured depository institutions that provide certain payment stablecoin related custodial and safekeeping services.

 

All entities under FDIC supervision, including permitted payment stablecoin issuers, which are entities legally approved to issue stablecoins in the United States, and insured depository institutions, which include banks and other federally insured financial institutions, must comply with this new FDIC stablecoin prudential rule if they are engaged in issuing stablecoins or providing related services.

 

Although the FDIC insures deposits at more than 4,000 financial institutions in the United States and supervises more than 2,700 banks, there are currently no approved permitted payment stablecoin issuers or insured depository institutions operating under this specific framework. Approval would only follow once the proposal becomes a final rule, after which entities may begin applying for supervision under the FDIC.

 

For the proposal to become a rule, it must be released for public comment, which has already occurred, with a 60-day window provided for feedback. After the 60-day window elapses, the FDIC will review the comments and feedback and make any necessary adjustments based on the public response.

 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and, in some cases, the Treasury Department may be invited to review the final proposal to ensure it does not conflict with existing banking and financial laws. After this review, the FDIC board may approve it as a final rule, after which it is published in the Federal Register.

 

What happens after the proposal becomes law?

Upon the proposal becoming law, banks and other eligible financial institutions can then apply for designation as a Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer (PPSI) under FDIC supervision. The application is reviewed and either approved or denied by the FDIC within a period of 120 days. 

 

The FDIC will also regularly review the capital, reserves, risk controls, and compliance systems of these approved entities to ensure they are safe to operate.

 

 

Coinbase and mortgage lender Better Home & Finance have announced a new product that lets prospective buyers use Bitcoin or USDC as collateral on a Fannie Mae-backed mortgage, without ever having to liquidate their holdings. It is, by most measures, the clearest sign yet that digital assets are finding their way into the mainstream and will be used as the machinery of American homeownership.

 

How It Will Work

Borrowers transfer their digital assets from Coinbase into a custody wallet held by Better, retaining legal ownership of the crypto throughout the life of the loan. The collateral sits there as a pledge, not a payment. For holders of USDC, Circle's dollar-pegged stablecoin, the arrangement even lets them keep earning yield on their holdings while those same assets secure the mortgage.

 

The rate premium is real, though. Borrowers should expect to pay 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points above a standard 30-year fixed loan, depending on their overall profile. Whether that spread feels worth it depends largely on how much a borrower values not triggering a taxable event by selling appreciated crypto positions. For long-term Bitcoin holders sitting on significant gains, the math can work out in their favor.

 

One of the more notable design choices here is the absence of margin calls. In most crypto lending products, a sharp price drop can trigger forced liquidation of collateral. This product is built differently. If Bitcoin falls 40% in a month, the terms of the mortgage do not change and no additional collateral is required. Liquidation risk only enters the picture after a 60-day payment delinquency, putting the structure firmly in line with how conventional mortgages work rather than how crypto lending typically operates. This matters a great deal for borrowers who have been burned by or are skeptical of DeFi-style collateral arrangements.

 

How Did We Get Here?

In June 2025, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte issued a directive ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare proposals for counting cryptocurrency as an asset in mortgage risk assessments, without requiring borrowers to first convert those holdings into dollars. The directive was framed explicitly around President Trump's stated goal of making the U.S. the crypto capital of the world. Pulte's letter specified that only crypto held on U.S.-regulated centralized exchanges would qualify, and he called for risk mitigants including valuation adjustments to account for volatility.

 

Until now, Fannie and Freddie's guidelines required that any cryptocurrency a borrower wanted to use for a down payment, closing costs, or reserves had to be liquidated into U.S. dollars first. The Coinbase-Better announcement marks the first time that framework has been operationalized into an actual product backed by Fannie Mae. Whether lenders across the broader market follow suit remains to be seen, as industry experts have cautioned that adoption will be gradual. Individual lenders may impose their own overlays, and aggregators who purchase loans will need to get comfortable with the structure before it becomes truly mainstream.

 

Coinbase and Better are not alone in seeing opportunity here. Newrez, one of the largest mortgage servicers in the country with roughly $778 billion in assets under management, announced late last year that it was assessing Bitcoin and Ethereum for mortgage qualification purposes. Bob Johnson, head of originations at Newrez, described the FHFA directive as a meaningful signal from Washington that the capital markets infrastructure underpinning a significant share of U.S. mortgage origination is open for change.

 

Bitcoin ETFs have surpassed $100 billion in assets under management since receiving SEC approval in early 2024, and a growing cohort of American households hold meaningful digital asset positions. For those buyers, particularly younger, crypto-native professionals who have built wealth in digital rather than traditional asset classes, the old requirement to sell before buying a home was a genuine friction point. This product is a direct answer to that segment.

 

Questions Sill Remain

Not everyone is convinced the move is without risk to the broader housing system. A group of Democratic senators wrote to Director Pulte last July raising concerns about attaching a notoriously volatile asset class to one of the most systemically important markets in the U.S. economy. The letter questioned the transparency of the decision-making process and asked for details on how downside risks would be managed. Those concerns have not disappeared just because a product has launched.

 

Experts in the mortgage industry have echoed a degree of caution. Some analysts expect lenders to apply heavy discounts to crypto valuations for qualifying purposes, potentially treating holdings at 10% or less of market value, and to require that assets be seasoned on regulated exchanges for a defined period. The operational side of verifying, valuing, and monitoring digital assets in a mortgage context is still being developed, and few lenders have the infrastructure in place today to do it at scale.

 

Whatever the short-term practical limitations, the symbolic weight of Fannie Mae's involvement should not be understated. The government-sponsored enterprise, which has been under federal conservatorship since 2008 and underpins a substantial portion of American mortgage finance, is now part of a product that treats Bitcoin and USDC as legitimate collateral.

 

The irony here is hard to ignore. The 2008 financial collapse, driven largely by reckless mortgage-backed securities dealings, was the very event that inspired Satoshi Nakamoto to write the Bitcoin whitepaper. That invention, born as a rejection of and answer to the broken banking system, will now be used to back the same financial instrument that helped trigger the crisis. Life, as they say, comes full circle.

 

Franklin Templeton, one of the largest asset managers on the planet, has formally partnered with Ondo Finance to bring tokenized versions of its exchange-traded funds to blockchain networks, allowing investors to hold and trade exposure to traditional financial products directly through crypto wallets, at any hour of the day or night. The announcement, made Wednesday, marks a meaningful escalation in the firm's already aggressive push into digital asset infrastructure.

 

Under the arrangement, Ondo will purchase shares of five Franklin Templeton ETFs, including FFOG, FLQL, FDGL, FLHY, and INCE, then issue blockchain-based tokens through a special purpose vehicle. Those tokens pass along the economic exposure, so holders receive the return stream of the underlying fund but do not technically own the underlying shares directly. Liquidity will be supported by Ondo's network of market makers, including during windows when traditional exchanges are closed.

The platform powering this is Ondo Global Markets, which launched in September 2025 and has already reported more than $620 million in total value locked and north of $12 billion in cumulative trading volume across roughly 60,000 users. That kind of traction, relatively early in its life, helps explain why Franklin Templeton was willing to put its name on this deal.

Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton's head of innovation, framed the initial ETF lineup in straightforward terms: the chosen funds offer a broad mix of exposures and a useful test case to see what actually resonates with a new audience. The products will initially be available in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. U.S. availability, the firm said, hinges on further regulatory clarity around how third parties can distribute registered funds on-chain.

 

Making Moves

For those tracking Franklin Templeton's blockchain strategy, this is less a sudden pivot and more the next logical chapter. The firm launched its Benji Technology Platform back in 2021 and with it the first U.S.-registered money market fund to run on a public blockchain, the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund. That fund has since grown to $557 million in assets as of February 2026, not a trivial number for a product built on infrastructure that most institutional investors were still treating with skepticism just a few years ago.

Kaul also made waves at the Ondo Summit in New York in February, where she argued that the next evolution of asset management would be what she called "wallet-native": a world where stocks, bonds, private funds, and more are all held and managed through tokenized digital wallets rather than fragmented across brokerage accounts, banks, and paper records. The Franklin Templeton-Ondo partnership is a direct expression of that vision, and it is now live.

 

The Race Is On

Franklin Templeton is not operating in a vacuum. BlackRock's BUIDL fund has surpassed $2 billion in assets under management. JPMorgan rolled out its My OnChain Net Yield Fund on Ethereum late last year, crossing $100 million in short order. WisdomTree and Fidelity have both signaled similar intentions. And just this week, the New York Stock Exchange announced a partnership with Securitize to enable tokenized securities trading on its platform. The momentum is real and it is accelerating.

For Ondo, landing Franklin Templeton as a partner is a significant credibility stamp. The firm's ONDO token carries a market cap above $1.2 billion, and the broader real-world asset tokenization market has grown to over $15 billion in total assets according to RWA data, up sharply over the past year. The question now is whether tokenized fund structures can attract meaningful adoption beyond the crypto-native crowd that already lives in wallets.

 

 

What This All Means

None of this is without complication. Tokenized ETFs do not immunize investors from market volatility. Bitcoin hit an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025 and was trading around $70,500 by late March 2026. Easy access to assets at any hour cuts both ways. Regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. remains a genuine constraint, with questions around compliance, investor identification, and how registered funds interact with decentralized infrastructure still unsettled.

Franklin Templeton has also partnered with Binance to allow tokenized fund shares to serve as collateral for institutional trades, which introduces new connections between regulated finance and crypto exchange infrastructure. That might be efficient under normal conditions, but critics will rightly note that interconnected systems have a history of amplifying stress in bad times. The 2022 crypto collapse left lessons that the industry has not fully metabolized.

Still, when a firm managing $1.7 trillion commits to blockchain as a primary distribution channel rather than a side experiment, competitors pay attention. The walls between traditional finance and crypto markets are getting thinner fast, and the Franklin Templeton-Ondo deal may end up being one of the more consequential ones to watch as this story unfolds.