KRWQ, a stablecoin pegged to the South Korean won, is expanding to Solana following a recent announcement from IQ, the company behind the stablecoin.

 

The expansion, according to IQ, is aimed at enhancing KRWQ support for various Korean won-denominated trading applications on Solana, including perpetual futures, on-chain foreign exchange markets, arbitrage strategies, cross-margin trading, and other institutional and algorithmic trading systems and applications.

 

 

“The Korean won is a major global currency with substantial activity in offshore derivatives markets, yet it has remained largely inaccessible in crypto native trading systems,” IQ said in a statement to reporters. “KRWQ allows market participants to trade, hedge, and deploy capital using Korean won liquidity directly on chain.”

 

Regarding its decision to launch KRWQ on Solana, the IQ team cited Solana’s low latency and deep liquidity as key reasons for selecting the network.

 

“Solana provides the performance and ecosystem depth needed to scale KRW liquidity on chain,” said Dave Shin, chief operating officer of KRWQ. “We are seeing clear demand for non-USD trading pairs, particularly in derivatives.”

 

As KRWQ’s adoption continues to grow among both retail and institutional users, IQ expects increased usage of the stablecoin across a wide range of applications, including cross-border settlements and advanced trading systems.

 

About the KRWQ stablecoin 

KRWQ is a stablecoin developed by IQ in collaboration with Frax Finance, a notable decentralized finance project. It was created with the main goal of bringing the Korean won (KRW) onto the chain.

 

By enabling 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and low-cost on-chain transactions, KRWQ addresses major inefficiencies in offshore KRW trading, increasing demand for and use of KRW in global payments and decentralized finance, while reducing dependence on US dollar-pegged stablecoins.

 

Since its launch in October 2025, KRWQ has rapidly gained traction as the first on-chain settlement layer for Korean won trading, expanding beyond Base, its initial deployment chain, and going live on Fraxtal, Codex, Morph, and Hydrex. KRWQ was also recently listed on EDX Markets, an institutional-focused cryptocurrency exchange, across spot and perpetual futures.

 

KRWQ now has a spot trading volume of nearly $40 billion and a Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF) market worth about $60 billion.

 

 

Jupiter, the Solana-based decentralized finance platform, has partnered with crypto asset manager Bitwise Asset Management and decentralized lending infrastructure protocol Fluid to launch an Ethena (USDe) focused lending market on the Jupiter platform.

 

The partnership will see the launch of an institutional grade USDe lending market on Jupiter’s lending platform, with Bitwise serving as the curator of the new market, setting risk parameters and overseeing operations, while Fluid powers the lending infrastructure.

 

 

By assigning USDe lending curation responsibilities to Bitwise, a traditional finance asset management firm, Jupiter aims to achieve institutional grade credibility and easier access to large scale institutional capital, with the potential for the market to grow into the billions of dollars.

 

“USDe is an institutional grade savings product built for scale. By combining Jupiter Lend's advanced lending infrastructure with Bitwise's asset management expertise, we have created an efficient USDe market ready for DeFi and institutional adoption,” said Guy Young, founder and chief executive officer of Ethena Labs.

 

Before now, institutional capital and DeFi lending mostly operated separately. However, with the launch of this USDe lending market for institutional access, all entities involved, including TradFi and DeFi participants, can work together: Jupiter providing the lending market, Bitwise curating the market, Ethena supplying the asset, and Fluid powering the infrastructure.

 

“Now more than ever, it is imperative that we take DeFi risk seriously. That is precisely why we are excited to partner with Bitwise, who bring both the expertise and the institutional credibility needed to help scale on chain lending from a niche into the default way to do finance,” said Kash Dhanda, chief operating officer of Jupiter.

 

“And by working with Ethena and Fluid, two of the most technically innovative teams in the space, we are thrilled to deliver a product experience like no other.”

 

Institutions Double Down on DeFi

With DeFi growing rapidly and its TVL reaching new highs of around $150 billion to $225 billion in 2025, there has been an increase in the number of institutions entering and doubling down on DeFi.

 

Institutional capital reportedly made up around 11.5% to 20% of DeFi volume or lending TVL in parts of 2025, with institutions like BlackRock, Bitwise, and JPMorgan Chase doubling down on real world asset tokenization and stablecoins.

 

 

After months of gridlock and four hours of pointed debate, the Senate Banking Committee voted 15-9 to advance the Clarity Act, sending one of the most consequential pieces of financial legislation in recent memory toward a full Senate floor vote. Two Democrats joined all Republicans on the panel in support, a small but symbolically meaningful show of bipartisan backing that industry advocates say could prove decisive when the bill eventually needs 60 votes to pass the full chamber.

 

For the digital asset industry, the vote felt like a long time coming. The bill, formally titled the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, has been kicking around Capitol Hill for well over a year. The fact that it cleared committee at all, given the partisan atmosphere that dominated much of Thursday's hearing, was seen by many in the space as a genuine win.

 

Rules of the Road, Finally

At its core, the Clarity Act tries to solve a problem that has dogged the crypto industry since its earliest days: nobody could quite agree on who was in charge. The SEC and the CFTC have spent years in an uneasy standoff over which agency has jurisdiction over which digital assets, leaving companies in legal limbo and pushing some development offshore. The bill would draw a cleaner line, classifying digital assets as either securities or commodities and assigning oversight accordingly.

 

The market responded before the committee even finished voting. Coinbase surged more than 8% on the session, as investors bet that regulatory clarity could finally unlock the broader institutional participation that has been sitting on the sidelines. Galaxy Digital climbed over 6%. Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, was up 7%. Bitcoin itself ground higher, hitting session highs near $81,500.

 

"For too long, regulatory uncertainty has sent talent, investment, and innovation overseas, strengthening foreign competitors while leaving American builders without the certainty they need to compete," said Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger, who called the committee vote a "defining moment." Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse was blunter: "If the largest economy in the world is going to lead on crypto, and it must, this is the moment."

 

Still Some Runway Ahead

Thursday's vote was a milestone, but it is not the finish line. The bill still needs to be reconciled with a separate version approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee, and the full Senate will require 60 votes to pass it, meaning a significant number of Democrats will have to come on board. The House passed its own version of the legislation last year, so the two chambers will also need to hammer out a unified text before anything heads to President Trump's desk.

 

The largest outstanding issue is an ethics provision intended to limit government officials, including the president, from profiting off crypto. Democrats have made clear they will not move forward without some version of it, while White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt has said the administration will not tolerate language targeting a specific officeholder. Both sides appeared at least open to finding common ground, with Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber telling reporters that a deal on the ethics provision is likely a prerequisite for getting the bill to a floor vote at all. The window, several lawmakers noted, is probably August.

 

A Framework Built to Last

What makes the Clarity Act different from the patchwork of guidance and enforcement actions that have defined crypto policy for the past decade is its ambition. It does not try to pigeonhole digital assets into frameworks designed for equities or futures contracts decades ago. It builds something new, with defined registration pathways for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers, as well as clear definitions covering blockchain applications, protocols, and smart contracts.

 

Ji Hun Kim, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, put it plainly after the vote: "Clear durable rules will help drive greater institutional and retail adoption, support innovation, create more high quality jobs in the U.S., protect Americans, and ensure that our country leads when it comes to digital assets policy and innovation."

 

The GENIUS Act, which passed the full Senate 68-30 last year, showed that comprehensive crypto legislation can attract broad support once the details are sorted. The Clarity Act is a harder lift, covering more ground and touching more competing interests. But Thursday's committee vote suggests the political will is there, and the industry is watching closely.

 

"Durable, lasting digital asset policy must be built on a bipartisan foundation," Mersinger added. By that measure, the Clarity Act is not finished yet. But for the first time in a long while, it looks like it might actually get there.

 

Why This Matters for the Future of Digital Assets

Let's be clear about all of this: Thursday was a great day for anyone who believes that digital assets have a meaningful role to play in the future of finance. I am certainly one of those. Not because the Clarity Act is perfect, and not because it's done, but because it signals something important that has been missing for years: the U.S. government is starting to treat this industry like it's here to stay.

 

The case for optimism goes beyond this single vote. The GENIUS Act passing 68-30 last year proved that stablecoin legislation could attract real bipartisan support. Institutional investment in Bitcoin ETFs has steadily matured. Major financial players who once dismissed crypto as a fringe asset are now building infrastructure around it. The underlying technology, particularly in DeFi and tokenization, keeps advancing regardless of what Washington does. What regulation does is create the conditions for all of that to compound. It clears the path for pension funds, endowments, and large asset managers who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for legal certainty before committing serious capital.

 

That said, the Senate still has to close the deal, and that is not a given. The remaining sticking points on the ethics provision and law enforcement concerns are real, not just noise. Lawmakers like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have been consistent that they will not deliver Democratic votes without meaningful conflict-of-interest guardrails, and that is a fair position. The 60-vote threshold means the bill needs to be genuinely bipartisan, not just technically so.

 

On timing, the realistic window is narrower than it might appear. Industry insiders, including Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber, have pointed to August as a likely deadline if the bill is to move this year. Congress typically slows through the fall ahead of elections, and the legislative calendar fills up fast. That gives negotiators roughly ten to twelve weeks to reconcile the two committee versions, finalize the ethics language, and lock down the 60 votes needed for a floor vote. It is achievable, but it requires both parties to decide they want a deal more than they want a talking point.

 

If it does pass, the long-term impact will be substantial. Clear rules attract capital. Capital attracts builders. Builders create products that bring in users. That cycle, running inside a legitimate regulatory framework and anchored in the world's largest economy, is how digital assets stop being a niche and become infrastructure. You know...that "mass adoption" that people have been talking about for years? Well, this could be it. It might not look like how we all imagined, but what ever really does? Thursday was one huge step in that direction. The Senate now needs to finish what it started and we need to come together to make sure they all know that they need to do just that. Let's get it done.

 

JPMorgan Chase filed paperwork Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a new tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, marking the bank's second push into blockchain-based investment products and the latest signal that Wall Street is serious about putting traditional finance on-chain.

 

The proposed fund, called the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund and carrying ticker JLTXX, would issue digital tokens on the Ethereum blockchain representing shares backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, cash, and overnight repurchase agreements. The fund's underlying blockchain infrastructure would be operated by Kinexys Digital Assets, the bank's blockchain unit that was formerly known as Onyx.

 

Built for the GENIUS Act

What makes this filing a bit different from typical money-market launches is who it's designed for. JPMorgan has structured JLTXX specifically to satisfy reserve asset requirements under the GENIUS Act, the U.S. legislation aimed at bringing stablecoin issuers under a regulatory framework. In short, the fund is positioned as a yield-bearing reserve vehicle for stablecoin firms looking for compliant, on-chain Treasury exposure.

That's a strategically significant market. Stablecoin supply has surged past $303 billion as of May 2026, with a large chunk of that liquidity sitting idle in exchange wallets generating nothing. When a bank the size of JPMorgan launches a regulated, on-chain money market product, this changes the game for institutional stablecoin issuers.

 

BlackRock Moved First, Then JPMorgan Followed Days Later

Just days before JPMorgan's Tuesday filing, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager overseeing roughly $14 trillion, submitted its own pair of SEC filings tied to tokenized Treasury products. One of those filings outlined the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, designed to hold cash and short-term Treasuries and issue what the firm is calling OnChain Shares. Another filing proposed adding an Ethereum-based tokenized share class to its existing $7 billion Select Treasury-Based Liquidity Fund, with BNY Mellon maintaining official ownership records on-chain using ERC-20 token standards.

 

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been vocal about this for a while. He's argued publicly that blockchain-based settlement can compress transaction cycles, enable round-the-clock trading, and add transparency to capital markets. The firm is now acting on this, and at scale. BlackRock's existing BUIDL fund already manages more than $2.5 billion across eight blockchain networks including Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche, and is increasingly being used as collateral across crypto markets.

 

A Market That Has Tripled in a Year

The broader tokenized real-world asset sector has crossed $30 billion in total value, more than tripling over the past twelve months. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone represent $14 billion of that, with Ethereum holding over $8 billion of the total. These aren't little numbers anymore.

 

Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon have also announced tokenization initiatives in recent months. Just last week, JPMorgan's Kinexys platform joined Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance in completing the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, settling the transaction on the XRP Ledger in under five seconds. This is another huge step... it's one thing to file an SEC registration, quite another to actually run a live settlement across borders in the time it takes to read this sentence.

 

The Race Is On

For context on how quickly this space is evolving, a Boston Consulting Group and Ripple joint projection estimates the tokenized asset market could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033. Whether or not that number proves accurate, the direction is pretty clear. Major banks are not waiting for the market to come to them.

 

JPMorgan seeded its first tokenized fund, the OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), with $100 million of its own capital after launching it through its $4 trillion asset management unit. JLTXX represents the bank's next step, this time aimed squarely at the emerging stablecoin compliance market rather than traditional qualified investors.

 

The filings from JPMorgan and BlackRock within days of each other are not a coincidence. Regulatory clarity, combined with the sheer scale of idle stablecoin liquidity looking for a compliant home, has created an opening. Wall Street is moving quickly to fill it, and the tokenization race is looking less like a crypto experiment and more like the next phase of institutional finance.

 

Stablecoin startup Boundary Labs is preparing to launch USBD, a “verifiable” institutional-grade stablecoin, following its most recent successful fundraising round.

 

The $2 million preseed funding round, which began last year, was led by Galaxy Ventures, with other investors, including First Block Capital and BlackWood, also participating in the round.

 

 

Following its recent fundraising success, the Boundary Labs team aims to create a stablecoin whose reserves are completely verifiable on-chain, including the stablecoin’s net asset value and protocol performance. This marks a sharp contrast with other stablecoins that depend on trust-based off-chain reporting and attestations.

 

“The Boundary protocol provides daily reporting on system state, including overcollateralization levels and real-time NAV calculations. USBD is engineered with explicit over-collateralization and delta neutral hedging to protect against market direction risk and volatility,” said Matthew Mezger, co-founder and CEO of Boundary Labs, about the USBD stablecoin.

 

Because trust is important for enhancing institutional adoption of USBD, especially for treasury management, collateral, and fiduciary use cases, Mezger said the team is building the entire USBD infrastructure with advanced smart contract code that moves the industry from monthly off-chain attestations to daily on-chain verification. By doing so, Boundary aims to transition from common trust-based stablecoin systems to a trustless one. 

 

“This shift provides the structural resilience and auditability required for safe, permissionless staking and institutional fiduciary use cases, effectively transforming stablecoins into robust financial infrastructure,” Mezger said.

 

Boundary Lab’s Yield-Generation Strategies

Unlike other yield-generating stablecoins, USBD will not be a yield-bearing stablecoin. Nevertheless, Boundary Labs will create sUSBD, a separate staked token that will enable institutional clients to earn yield from the protocol’s decentralized finance strategies.

 

The revenue generated by the protocol will be used to build treasury reserves, fund operations, and will also be distributed to sUSBD stakers through an on-chain allocation system. The reward system will be fully on-chain and available for users to track and audit.

 

To onboard early institutional clients, Boundary Labs is planning to launch a private placement campaign with the goal of reaching $100 million in total value locked (TVL). Both USBD and sUSBD will be launched on Ethereum.

 

 

Payward, the parent company of the crypto exchange Kraken, has filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) seeking to establish a national trust company.

 

If approved, the OCC will grant Payward federal fiduciary powers under the U.S. Trust Powers statute to establish the Payward National Trust Company (PNTC), allowing Payward to provide custodial services to institutional clients and individuals seeking regulated bank level custody and trust services for digital assets. Payward aims to leverage its existing infrastructure, risk management systems, compliance programs, and regulated affiliates to deliver institutional grade, secure, and compliant custodial services.

 

Speaking on the OCC application, Arjun Sethi, Co CEO of Payward and Kraken, said, “Our long held belief has always been that the right path forward for digital assets runs through robust, transparent regulation. A national trust company provides the certainty institutions require and establishes the infrastructure to build the next generation of custody. This is not about being first. It is about getting the framework right so markets can scale with clarity, interoperability, and a long term vision for what clients will demand as these systems mature.”

 

The OCC application builds on the regulatory foundation that Payward has already established through Kraken Financial, one of its entities. Through Kraken Financial, Kraken achieved several milestones, including becoming the first crypto company to receive a Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institution charter. This allowed Kraken Financial to operate as a separate entity and become the first digital asset bank to gain access to the Federal Reserve payment system.

 

“Kraken Financial and what we are building with the OCC are complementary pillars of Payward’s regulated banking strategy aimed at advancing an efficient and accessible digitally native financial system,” said Arjun Sethi, Payward and Kraken co CEO.

 

“Our Wyoming SPDI and Federal Reserve master account represent a genuinely unique foundation, and the addition of a national trust company expands what we can offer our clients under an evolving U.S. regulatory framework.”

 

Kraken Joins Race to Offer Custodial Services

Payward is not the first crypto company to file an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, as companies like Ripple, BitGo, Stripe, Crypto, and Coinbase have also filed, with some receiving conditional approvals to provide custodial services.

 

Morgan Stanley Digital Trust also filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in February of this year, seeking approval to provide digital asset custody, with the application currently pending.