Anchorage Digital · 255

An artificial bull market? Crypto executives gather for the first meeting of the US CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee

Comparing news, the cryptocurrency sector has been picking up for three consecutive days. Bitcoin once surpassed $75,000 this morning and now remains near the $74,500 mark. Following US President Trump's intensive favorable remarks on the cryptocurrency sector this Wednesday, the first meeting of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee was held this Thursday, presided over by CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig and others. A large number of founders and executives in the cryptocurrency field appeared on the conference list. These include: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams; Polymarket CEO Shayne CoplanRipple CEO Brad Garlinghouse; a16z Crypto Managing Partner Chris Dixon; Co-Founder of Multicoin Capital Tushar Jainkalshi Co-founder Luana Lopes Lara; Chainlink Labs CEO Sergey Nazarov; Gemini CEO Tyler WinklevosSkraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi; Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev; Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko; Representatives of companies such as Anchorage Digital, Grayscale, OKX, and Consensys. Traditional financial institutions and exchange executives (such as CME Group, Cboe, Nasdaq, ICE, etc.) also attended. The conference focused on topics such as the evolution of crypto regulation, artificial intelligence, and predictive markets. The U.S. CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) was formally established on January 12, 2026. On the same day, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig announced the launch of the committee and changed its name from the original Technology Advisory Committee (Technology Advisory Committee) to provide advice to the committee on innovative topics such as fintech, crypto assets, and artificial intelligence.

1d ago

Analysis: The “Bitcoin vs. Bank” era is coming to an end, and trillion-dollar financial institutions are accelerating their embrace of crypto assets

Comparatively, as Wall Street and global financial institutions accelerate their entry into the digital asset sector, the line between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) is gradually blurring. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said that the era of “going long for Bitcoin and short bankers” is over, and financial institutions are turning to the other side of the crypto industry to promote the spread of digital assets. Hunter Horsley said that this summer, both financial institutions with over $1 trillion in assets under management approved the launch of crypto products in a bear market environment, indicating that large institutions are expanding channels for customers to acquire digital assets. “Everyone is wearing the crypto industry's jersey this year. Everyone is working for the crypto industry right now.” Horsley said. He pointed out that these financial institutions, which manage more than a trillion dollars in customer assets, did not open related services during the 2022 downturn in the crypto market, but now they are actively embracing this sector. Sygnum's chief investment officer Fabian Dori also believes that the relationship between banks and the crypto industry has undergone structural changes. “In the past, 'go long with Bitcoin and short bankers' deals have come to an end, and banks have moved from boycotting digital assets to building, supporting, and distributing digital assets through escrow, tokenization, and compliant transactions.” This change is mainly driven by growing customer demand and gradually clarifying regulatory rules, rather than short-term market cycle changes. Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley said that in the past two years, its customer structure has increasingly reflected the trend of integrating traditional finance and crypto finance. Large financial institutions usually choose to cooperate with professional cryptographic infrastructure companies rather than build their own technical systems. In recent years, more and more financial institutions have entered the crypto sector, including Swissquote (Swissquote), DBS (DBS), Spanish Foreign Bank (BBVA), Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), Credit Suisse related institutions, as well as Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab (Charles Schwab). (CoinDesk) This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

6d agoburnking

Sharplink Expands ETH Treasury Strategy, Putting $200 Million ETH Into Lido Staking

In comparison, Ethereum treasury company Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET) announced that it will stake $200 million worth of ETH through Lido, Ethereum's largest liquidity staking protocol, to increase the company's ability to yield ETH assets. Sharplink said that after this pledge, the company will receive an encapsulated pledge of ETH (wstETH) representing the staked ETH and its proceeds, and Anchorage Digital, an institutional-level digital asset custodian, will be responsible for hosting. This configuration will further expand Sharplink's existing ETH staking and restaking strategy. Lido is currently one of Ethereum's largest liquidity staking protocols, with the platform staking ETH worth around $16.5 billion. Its wstETH token has been integrated by over 100 protocols and currently has around $100 billion as DeFi collateral assets. While users hold WSTEth, the underlying ETH still continues to receive staking benefits and can continue to be used in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom said the introduction of Lido will further improve the company's ETH asset production efficiency, utilize the composability of WSTEth, and maintain institutional-level risk management standards. The partnership will enhance the diversification of the company's treasury strategy and access one of the most liquid and widely used assets in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. Vasiliy Shapovalov, executive director of the Lido Labs Foundation, said that Sharplink's increased use of the Ethereum native staking protocol and DeFi ecosystem reflects support for the Ethereum application ecosystem. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

9d agoburnking

Western Union officially launched Stablecard stablecard payment cards, covering 37 markets in the first batch

According to the news, global remittance giant Western Union (Western Union) announced the official launch of its Stablecard based on Rain's stablecoin infrastructure. Users can directly receive USDPT, a stablecoin issued by Western Union and issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on Solana, and instantly spend at Visa-enabled merchants around the world through integrated Visa cards, and can also choose to withdraw cash. Stablecard first covered 37 markets, and Western Union plans to expand to more than 60 markets by the end of the year. The company said that stablecoins will help it reduce the need for advance funding for cross-border remittance transfers, improve capital efficiency, and support the launch of more digital financial services.

18d ago

Tether-compliant stablecoin USADED officially launched Celo for the second mainnet deployment after Ethereum

Comparatively, according to The Block, Tether's compliant stablecoin USAT (USAT) has officially launched on the Celo mainnet, and is being deployed on the Celo mainnet for the second time after Ethereum. The token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo, and can be directly used to pay for on-chain gas using Celo's fee abstraction mechanism. USAT was launched in January of this year and currently has a market capitalization of approximately US$185 million.

24d ago

BlackRock, Coinbase, and others set up a $15 million Bitcoin quantum defense fund

In comparison, BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Galaxy formed the Bitcoin Security Consortium, committing a total investment of $15 million over three years to fund Bitcoin security research and open source development focusing on quantum computing defense. The consortium does not hold or allocate funding; members will directly select developers and researchers to fund. The coalition said it will not guide Bitcoin development or take a stand on changes to the agreement, and Mike Schmidt of the developer funded the non-profit organization Brink will coordinate related work as a volunteer. Currently, there is no quantum computer capable of cracking Bitcoin's cryptography. Approximately 6.9 million pieces of BTC, worth 450 billion US dollars, are stored in addresses that may be affected if relevant quantum computers appear, and related repairs require coordination among various parties such as wallets, exchanges, miners, and users. Related work includes proposals such as BIP 360, which designs a new output type to limit public key exposure and to complement post-quantum signature schemes. Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said Core developers are doing important work, and the organization will provide more funding for Bitcoin's long-term security. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

29d agoburnking

From USDGO to OUSD: Corporate stablecoins “crossed the billion mark” and are close to 10 billion, what's the difference?

From the Asia-Pacific region and emerging markets to global corporate needs, the compliant digital dollar has quietly entered an era of consolidation where “distribution is king”. By Farmer Frank about corporate stablecoins, the market has been discussing a “about to happen” story for the past few years. There are many versions of this story, but the core context is largely the same: traditional financial institutions are entering the market, compliant stablecoins will become the underlying infrastructure for cross-border payments, and corporate treasury management will also undergo a paradigm shift as a result, and carrying all of this will be a number of new stablecoins involving banks, payment institutions, and technology platforms. Few people question this narrative. In fact, it is precisely because it is so reasonable that the market has given it such high attention and expectations. After all, institutions and enterprises do need a digital dollar that can both enjoy blockchain efficiency and be accepted by finance, compliance, and risk departments. However, most of the past discussions were limited to the future: which institutions are ready to enter the market, what products are about to be launched, and what payment and settlement scenarios are expected to migrate to the chain. Until recently, two clues worth watching have appeared in the market at the same time: On June 30, Open Standard officially announced Open USD (OUSD), bringing together more than 140 financial, payment, technology and crypto companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Google, Coinbase, etc., and plans to officially launch in late 2026; on July 20, press DeFilLama In terms of statistics, USDGO, another enterprise-grade stablecoin, surpassed 1 billion US dollars in circulation, and became the largest dollar-compliant stablecoin operated by Asian stablecoin operators; in a sense, OUSD intends to elevate the demand for corporate stablecoins to a kind of global industry consensus, and USDGO's 1 billion US dollars also provides a realistic sample of this set of consensus with prior reference value. Enterprise stablecoins seem to have entered a new phase of “distribution is king.” 1. I already have USDT and USDC, why do we need “OUSD”? Why does the market need another US dollar stablecoin when USDT and USDC have established huge liquidity networks? This is a cliché topic, and it is also the first threshold that no enterprise stablecoin can bypass. Many discussions in the past have reduced the opportunities for corporate stablecoins to two structural pain points of traditional payment systems: the first is the cost of compliance. Compliance reviews of cross-border capital flows are not one-off, but are embedded in every transaction. The link between anti-money laundering reviews, sanctions list screening, and cross-border reporting and rules between different jurisdictions means more uncertainty; the second is settlement efficiency. A cross-border B2B payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars often requires multiple steps such as message transmission, intermediary banking, foreign exchange, and final payment. The resulting processing fees, foreign exchange spreads, and capital usage costs are often superimposed, and the settlement cycle usually takes several working days; however, in reality, corporate stablecoin opportunities have never only come from existing stablecoins being “not compliant enough” or traditional payment systems “not fast enough”. The deeper reason is that the way and standards for enterprises use capital are fundamentally different from how crypto users use stablecoins. You need to know that in the crypto market, stablecoins are first and foremost a type of liquid asset. Among them, exchanges are responsible for providing transaction entrances, wallets and blockchains to handle transfers, and DeFi protocols provide borrowing, market making, and revenue scenarios. This also means that as long as a stablecoin has sufficient trading pairs and on-chain liquidity, users will naturally choose it. However, a multinational enterprise will not migrate supplier payments, merchant settlement, and treasury management to the chain simply because certain stablecoin transfers are faster; it also needs to handle issuer risk, subscription and redemption, fiat currency exchange, technology integration, accounting processing, liquidity management, and regulatory requirements in different markets. To put it bluntly, what companies are really concerned about is a whole set of issues, such as who is the issuer in the legal sense of the word? Who manages reserve assets? Can large subscriptions and redemptions be successfully completed? How to exchange fiat and stablecoins? Can financial costs be optimized? How to connect to the original financial system? How to complete customer identification, anti-money laundering, sanctions screening, and accounting processing? In addition to this, from the perspective of economic benefits, the traditional stablecoin model formed for the crypto trading market may not necessarily be replicated unchanged in the field of corporate payments. In the past model, Tether/Circ...

29d agoWeb3 农民 Frank#stablecoins

BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy and others jointly established the Bitcoin Security Alliance and promised 15 million US dollars to fund core developers and quantum-resistant cryptography research over three years

According to the news, nine financial institutions and Bitcoin companies announced the joint establishment of the Bitcoin Security Alliance. The founding members include Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Asset Management, Galaxy, and Strategy, covering the entire chain of institutions such as escrow, trading, infrastructure, payment, and asset management. The Alliance promised to provide a total of $15 million over the next three years to fund developers and researchers in the Bitcoin security field, including long-term work to prepare Bitcoin for the future era of quantum computing. Each member independently decides which developers, researchers, or organizations to invest their funds in. The day-to-day operations of the alliance are coordinated on a voluntary basis by Mike Schmidt, the executive director of Brink, a non-profit organization that funds Bitcoin open source developers. The coalition has made it clear that it does not establish or direct the Bitcoin protocol, does not take a stand on changes to specific agreements, and does not represent Bitcoin or its developers — Bitcoin development is still done by a global decentralized community of contributors. Its position is to follow the model of industry organizations supporting open source software for a long time, providing resources and attention to developers without controlling the underlying work. Strategy CEO Phong Le said that as a long-term holder, ensuring the security of the Bitcoin generation is our greatest incentive; Robert Mitchnick, head of global digital assets at BlackRock, pointed out that the work of Bitcoin's core developers is extremely important, and this promise will provide important additional funding for Bitcoin's long-term security needs. The Alliance will also serve as a reliable source of information for investors, the public, and media in the field of Bitcoin security, and plans to publish and continuously update materials related to Bitcoin security in the coming months. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

30d agoburnking

Movement Labs filed for bankruptcy protection a few months after the token issuance storm

In comparison, Movement Labs, the developer of the Movement blockchain, has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. According to court documents, the company has less than 1,000 creditors, estimated assets between 100,000 and 500,000 US dollars, and liabilities exceeding 1 million US dollars. Major creditors include co-founder Rushi Manche, the Delaware State Department of Taxation, and Anchorage Digital. The company has been in continuous turmoil since the launch of the MOVE token in December of last year. According to an investigation in April 2025, a market making agreement gave a single counterparty abnormal influence on MOVE's circulating supply, causing 66 million tokens to be sold the day after listing, and the token price dropped sharply thereafter. The dispute focused on the connection between the broker Rintech and the Chinese market maker Web3Port. Binance then blocked the relevant market-making accounts on the grounds of misconduct, Movement Labs launched a token repurchase program and hired an external agency Groom Lake to review the incident. Co-founder Rushi Manche parted ways with the company in May 2025.

31d agoWendy#starters

Tether USDT faces a two-year compliance countdown, with around 25% reserves or failure to meet standards

Comparatively, on the first anniversary of the signing of the GENIUS Act, the future of Tether USDT in the US market is uncertain. The bill provides a three-year compliance grace period, with about two years remaining. At that time, stablecoins that do not meet the standards will not be able to be traded on US crypto platforms. According to Tether's latest disclosure, about 25% of USDT reserves are still allocated to assets that do not meet the requirements of the GENIUS Act, such as precious metals, loans, and Bitcoin. The law requires issuers to reserve the full amount of highly liquid assets such as cash and US Treasury bonds. Tether CEO Ardoino promised compliance last year. The company launched the USAT stablecoin for the US market through Anchorage Digital this year, but usage is still low. The legal community is divided over the compliance timeline for foreign issuers. Some lawyers believe that foreign issuers must immediately comply with the freeze and seizure orders when the law comes into effect (expected January next year), but it will take about two years to meet the remaining requirements. Anchorage Digital's head of policy said institutional users will switch early to compliant stablecoins before the 2028 cutoff date. Currently, federal regulators have not finalized the implementation rules of the GENIUS Act, and there are no specific regulations for companies to follow. Tether did not respond to CoinDesk's request for comment on compliance progress.

33d ago