Author: NBTC

Standard Chartered-led Anchorpoint Financial has started a limited rollout of HKDAP, its Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin, four months after securing one of the city’s first two issuer licences. The initial rollout will focus on institutional payments and settlement before adding more access channels and cross-border applications. HashKey Exchange and OSL Group joined as authorized distributors, allowing eligible institutions and professional investors to obtain HKDAP through their apps and other supported channels, according to separate announcements. HashKey said it had completed its first minting and redemption transaction for the token, including conversions between HKDAP and fiat currency. Anchorpoint, a joint venture…

Circle has expanded Circle Mint to support direct local-currency $USDC on- and off-ramps across eight currencies. The company said in an Aug. 18 post that foreign exchange is handled inside Mint, removing the need for a separate conversion step or pre-funding additional accounts. Alongside USD and EUR, Circle listed the Brazilian real, British pound, Hong Kong dollar, Mexican peso, offshore Chinese yuan and Singapore dollar among the local currencies supported for eligible Mint account holders. How the proposed flow works Circle says customers can activate cross-currency exchange, link a bank account for the local-currency side and register that account for…

Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, offered a detailed breakdown of what to expect from the Senate’s September 15 vote on the Clarity Act, warning that the date marks the start of a process rather than a final outcome. What September 15 Actually Is Senate Majority Leader John Thune scheduled the vote before the August recess. Carbone said he feels “very confident that we’re going to start the process on September fifteenth,” but was clear about what that vote does and doesn’t mean. “That vote on September fifteenth, it’s very important for people watching, is not the final passage…

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has tested the $XRP Ledger as a public verification layer for economic statistics. With the help of the blockchain, the BIS has created a permanent record that can show whether a published dataset has been altered. Verification problem How can someone who downloads an official statistics file be certain that it is the same file published by the issuers? Official statistics are mostly distributed through digital platforms and consumed by automated systems, including AI tools. The BIS notes that SDMx, the standard used to exchange official statistics, helps institutions publish and distribute data, but…

Michael Saylor has warned that changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules pose a greater long-term threat than rival cryptocurrencies, governments, or external competition. Saylor warns against capturing Bitcoin consensus Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor issued the warning in a series of X posts on Tuesday, describing Bitcoin’s consensus rules as its constitution. Those rules determine how ownership is recognized, how scarcity is maintained, how transactions settle, and what network participants can change. Bitcoin has won. Now it must survive victory.Its gravest threat is not an enemy at the gates, but corruption from within: factions that invent pretexts, rewrite the rules, and…

Nomura’s digital asset subsidiary will set the risk parameters for institutional lending markets running on DeFi rails, with the first of them readied for Euler Finance. Laser Digital and Keyring Network have not disclosed the committed capital, fee split, launch date, or named borrower or lender. The two companies have described a framework and said the first markets are ready. Under the arrangement, Keyring supplies the infrastructure and tooling for specific lending and borrowing markets, including access verification, quantitative risk parameterisation and liquidation framework design. Laser Digital’s asset management division takes the role the companies call risk governor, contributing governance…

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has criticized the relaunched TapTools, saying the platform no longer resembles the high-quality analytics website he once used as part of his daily routine. For context, TapTools initially announced its shutdown in June after facing significant internal and financial difficulties. As reported earlier, the platform had lost its fifth senior executive within a year, with departures involving key positions such as chief technology officer and chief operating officer, as well as co-founders. However, TapTools later reversed its decision yesterday and announced its return with the message, “We’re back.” The announcement initially sparked excitement among some Cardano…

The National Statistical Office (NSO) of India has released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report today. The report revealed that the country’s retail inflation surged to 4.45% in July, up from 4.38% in June. Although the inflation rate is slightly below the expected 4.5%, July marks another month of rising prices in India. Now, all are watching the potential monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). As inflation rates remain elevated, the RBI is likely to take a cautious approach to further rate cuts. This could have significant implications for the country’s rupee and the crypto market. How…

Arthur Hayes has proposed allocating roughly 20% of Flop Network’s FLOP token supply to testnet participants over 10 years as part of a self-funded decentralized computing network for artificial intelligence agents. Arthur Hayes said in an Aug. 19 Substack article that Flop Network would connect AI agents seeking computing power with miners operating internet-connected hardware, using FLOP as the network’s payment and reward token. The BitMEX co-founder described the proposed system through a fictional creation story, but the article also provided new information about the project’s token distribution, economic model, and intended users. Hayes said the token launch would follow…

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a public warning about the risks associated with cryptocurrency ATMs, highlighting the irreversible nature of transactions and the potential for these machines to obscure the identities of counterparties. The advisory, reported by Crypto Briefing, comes as crypto ATMs become increasingly prevalent in everyday locations across the United States, including gas stations, convenience stores, and shopping malls. Understanding the CFTC’s Concerns The CFTC’s warning focuses on two primary risk factors. First, crypto ATM transactions are generally irreversible, meaning that once funds are sent, they cannot be recovered, even if the transfer was…