Author: NBTC

HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has received approval to operate in the United Kingdom’s Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), allowing its digital assets platform, HSBC Orion, to support the issuance, servicing and settlement of digital securities. The bank announced Tuesday that HSBC Orion will operate as a digital securities depository within the DSS, a regulatory environment designed to test new technology for securities markets. HSBC said it is the first company approved by the Bank of England to go live in the sandbox. HSBC’s platform will support digitally native bond issuance, including the UK’s planned digital sovereign bond —…

Trading Higher Bitcoin traded as high as $63,832 early Monday, extending a rebound that has carried the largest cryptocurrency from below $60,000 to above $63,000 in five sessions. The market first crossed $63,000 in U.S. morning hours on July 4, leaving bitcoin up 1.4% over 24 hours and 3.6% on the week at that point. Three catalysts set the recovery in motion, according to market observers. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh signaled that inflation risks have come down, the June jobs report showed the U.S. economy adding just 57,000 nonfarm payrolls, and crowded short positions were forced to unwind as…

The boundaries between a crypto card and a DeFi yield aggregator are dissolving. Plasma One has introduced a stablecoin account that marries fee-free $USDT spending with a cashback token and yield sourced directly from Aave, the largest lending protocol in decentralized finance. According to the product launch details, the offering includes three membership tiers—Lite, Core, and Platinum—each unlocking higher $XPL cashback rates on card transactions. The account is built around USDT0, a wrapped version of the $USDT stablecoin that taps into Aave’s yield-generating markets. Plasma One is clear that it does not operate as a bank and that none of…

A Thai-regulated digital asset manager just made it easier for investors across Asia to buy into Injective without navigating unregulated crypto exchanges. Merkle Capital’s new M-$INJ fund is the first regulated investment vehicle in Asia built exclusively around the $INJ token. The fund, which launched on June 4, is supervised by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission. It targets both retail and institutional investors who want exposure to $INJ through a compliant structure. What Merkle Capital actually built Merkle Capital secured the first Digital Asset Fund Management license from the Thai SEC back in January 2022. Since then, the firm has…

Pi Network just made its most ambitious move yet, and it has nothing to do with price. On Pi2Day 2026, the network launched three products that shift the entire conversation about what Pi actually is. Not a mining app, not a speculative token sitting in digital wallets waiting for a listing. A functioning infrastructure layer for AI, identity verification and distributed computing that is now available to businesses and developers outside the Pi ecosystem entirely. Pi Is Now Selling Services to the Outside World The most commercially significant launch is PiVerify, a KYC and identity verification service that external businesses…

Interactive Brokers has introduced stablecoin withdrawals and added nine crypto tokens through zerohash as the brokerage expands its digital asset services. Eligible clients can now withdraw US dollars from their brokerage accounts through automatic conversion into USDC, PayPal USD or Ripple USD. The stablecoins can then be transferred to supported external wallets. The service extends the stablecoin deposit feature Interactive Brokers launched in January. That feature allows clients to send stablecoins to a wallet provided through zerohash, where they are converted into dollars and credited to their brokerage accounts. The nine tokens added through zerohash are Aave, Aptos, Canton, Lido…

AxLabs has launched Ax402, a payment gateway that allows AI agents to pay for goods and services on a per-request basis. It is aimed at enabling AI agents to purchase access to data, content, and tools using tokens, without the hassle of maintaining things like accounts, subscriptions, and checkout pages. Ax402 is built on x402, an open protocol that repurposes the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code as the trigger for machine-to-machine payments. The 402 code was reserved in the 1990s for future payment use cases but has sat dormant since. The x402 protocol was originally created by Coinbase and…

Bitcoin’s latest rally pushed it to a two-week high above $63,000 over the weekend before cooling off. According to market data from CoinGecko, Bitcoin briefly touched nearly $63,900 during the US holiday weekend before retreating toward $63,200 on Monday, holding on to most of its weekly gains after rising more than 5% over the past seven days. The weekend advance was driven by a combination of weaker-than-expected US economic data, renewed demand through spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and a wave of short liquidations that accelerated the move higher. Fresh optimism emerged after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported…

A significant amount of the liquidity that users contribute to decentralized exchanges isn’t really being used to speed up trades, according to a recent report by Dune. To put things in perspective, concentrated liquidity was created to increase the capital efficiency of decentralized exchanges. This was done by enabling liquidity providers (LPs) to distribute funds within particular price ranges where trading is most likely to take place. However, the study discovered that during the first half of 2026, an average of 29.4% of liquidity was outside the range of active trading. Thanks to the same, no trading fees were generated.…

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has partnered with Galaxy Digital on a referral program that enables eligible clients to lend cryptocurrency in exchange for shares of spot crypto ETPs, including the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust. The offering is intended to help clients integrate digital assets into traditional investment portfolios more efficiently. Through the arrangement, Morgan Stanley will educate clients about digital assets and connect interested investors with Galaxy. The program provides a regulated pathway for converting crypto holdings into investment products that can be held alongside other portfolio assets. Clients participating in the program can lend cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether,…