What is money, and who can say when something is or isn’t?
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Read on for 7 stories covering the global rise of digital-native financial infrastructure. With occasional commentary.
Delivered once or twice a week and produced by me, Marc Andrew.
1. Paris | ‘Crypto startup Morpho is pleased to announce it has secured $50M from Ribbit Capital and other strategic partners to enhance the network’s decentralization and support its mission to make financial infrastructure a public good.
With this development, Morpho stands to benefit from a long list of industry leaders who not only share a vision of building finance like the early internet–via layered, open protocols–but will also actively contribute their expertise and resources to Morpho's growth and the network’s decentralization.
The potential impact of Morpho extends far beyond current DeFi markets, as the protocol is capable of becoming decentralized infrastructure to underpin a truly global, internet-native financial system.’
read more from Morpho
editor’s note: Ribbit’s portfolio includes massive fintech success stories such as Revolut, NuBank, Coinbase, Robinhood
2. Washington | 'Kamala Harris’s advisers have approached top crypto companies to “reset” relations between her Democratic party and a sector that has come out as an important backer of Donald Trump, her rival for the US presidency.
Members of the vice-president’s team have contacted people close to crypto companies about meeting in recent days, said four people with knowledge of the matter. Those include leading exchange Coinbase, stablecoin company Circle and blockchain payments group Ripple Labs, two of the people said.
Harris’s overture to crypto companies comes as Trump enjoys strong levels of support from the sector. The former president — once a vocal crypto sceptic — has thrown his weight behind the industry and is delivering the keynote speech at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville last week.’
Read the full story at the FT
3. Hong Kong | ‘In less than 18 months, global banks will have to confront a problem almost philosophical in its scope, but with practical cost implications: What is money, and who can say when something is or isn’t? Hong Kong hopes to get the job of helping make that distinction.
From Jan. 1, 2026, lending institutions worldwide will have to disclose their cryptocurrency holdings in line with the final rules announced this month by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. A part of that exposure will be in the form of stablecoins, or digital assets that claim to be pegged to national currencies, and hence no riskier than money.
But are all stablecoins equally safe? Not according to the standards-setting body, which has decided to mark out liabilities such as the JPM Coin issued on JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s own private blockchain for preferential regulatory treatment. On the other hand, Tether Holdings Ltd.’s USDT, the dominant player in the $160 billion market, and its rival, Circle’s USD Coin, or USDC, may be subject to conservative capital requirements, which might put off banks from holding them.
Or at least that’s how the crypto industry, which is vehemently opposed to differential treatment, is viewing the guidelines. Jumping from a risk weight of 100%, or less, for a stablecoin that passes the safety test, to 1,250% for one that falls slightly short, “is analogous to mandating the death penalty for a parking ticket,” crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc. told the Basel Committee during consultations ahead of the final rules.
This is where Hong Kong enters the picture. The city has pegged its currency to the US dollar since October 1983, achieving a stable exchange rate over a four-decade period marked by the 1997 Asian crisis, the 2008 global financial contagion, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and the current estrangement in US-China relations. No stablecoin has been able to match this feat even for the 10 years that they have been around.
The Chinese special administrative region must know a thing or two about how to make a credible promise of convertibility, and it’s now encouraging private-sector players to pick up some of that expertise via controlled experimentation…’
read the full story at Bloomberg
4. Boston | ‘Banking giant State Street is exploring creating its own stablecoin — a cryptocurrency that runs on a blockchain and is pegged to an asset such as the dollar. It’s also considering creating its own deposit token, which would represent customer deposits on a blockchain, according to the person, who asked for anonymity because the work hasn’t been made public.
State Street has been stepping up its digital-asset efforts. Earlier this year, it integrated its digital-assets focused team members into its overall business, as it wants tighter integration between traditional finance and digital assets.
Its recently released digital-asset survey of 300 investment institutions found that nearly half of institutions say they are ready to trade digital assets on and off distributed ledgers and blockchains, provided they have the appropriate infrastructure.’
Read the full story at Bloomberg
5. London | ‘The Bank of England has set out its approach to innovation in retail payments, including account-to-account (A2A) payments, and emphasised the need for the UK retail payments systems to be interoperable with “overseas equivalents” in a new discussion paper.
The central bank has published its “response to the changing payments and settlement landscape going forward”, singling out innovation, and effective governance and funding as two of its policy outcomes in retail payments.
The BoE has said that the UK’s retail payments ecosystem should include access to a diverse landscape “such that there are alternative forms of payment to those currently in existence (such as credit and debit cards), including the ability to make account-to-account payments to businesses at the point of sale in a broad range of use cases”.’
Read more at Open Banking Expo, and read the Bank of England’s paper here
6. Lllubjana: The Republic of Slovenia issued its inaugural digital bond. The landmark transaction is the first such transaction of an EU sovereign, and one of the first sovereigns worldwide.
The bond was issued in the context of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) wholesale central bank money (CeBM) settlement experimentation programme. The settlement of the bond was performed on-chain in wholesale Central bank digital money through the Banque de France’s (BdF) interoperable and tokenized cash solution (DL3S).
BNP Paribas acted as Global Coordinator and Sole Bookrunner, as well as DLT platform operator of Neobonds, BNP Paribas’ private tokenisation platform built with Digital Asset's Daml and leveraging Canton blockchain.
The Republic of Slovenia digital bond was issued with the nominal size of EUR 30 million, coupon of 3.65% and final maturity date due 25 November 2024.
The Republic is committed to pioneering the use of new technologies in its central government debt management, as well as in its financial market in general. These initial transactions and experiments with wholesale tokenized central bank money represent an important steppingstone to greater transparency and efficiency of financial markets with wider technology adoption. While hardly material in financial markets at the moment in terms of value issued and/or traded, we expect the importance of the distributed ledger technology to grow significantly in the following years.
Read more from BNP Paribas
7. London | ‘While open banking starts to gain traction in Canada and the U.S., across the pond the banking and payments sector is celebrating milestones. Last week it celebrated ten million active users. Is that a good number?
“It’s a very good number,” said Marion King, chairperson and trustee of the U.K.’s Open Banking regulatory and advocacy group. “We’re seeing really strong double-digit growth. And I think this is just the beginning, because you need to remember that this is only measured from the nine banks that were involved in the Competition and Market Authority’s initial open banking effort — so it could actually be higher. So double digit growth month on month is very positive, and I think it shows pent-up demand for secure data exchange as we move forward with all of this.”
But while 10 million is a good number, the U.K.’s roadmap to expand open banking usage to 20 million revolves around increasing participation across the economy and launching innovative payment methods like variable recurring payments. VRPs, by Open Banking U.K.’s definition, are payments that let customers safely connect authorized payments providers to their bank accounts so that they can make payments on the customer’s behalf, in line with agreed limits. VRPs offer more control and transparency than existing alternatives such as Direct Debit payments.
King is optimistic about the role of Big Tech in open banking, citing Apple’s integration of open banking features in the U.K. as a pioneering example. “Big Tech’s engagement will significantly boost user volumes, provided we maintain a strong commercial framework,” she noted.
“It’s not just about financial services, it’s about fostering a data-sharing economy that benefits everyone. The U.K.’s approach, combining mandated participation with voluntary contributions, creates a model that others, including the U.S., could learn from,” King said.’