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China is running two digital-money tracks, and they answer different questions
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Coverage of China’s digital currency tends to mash two separate projects into one story about beating the dollar. They are not one project. China runs a domestic digital-money track and an international one, with different tools, different goals and different problems, and reading them as a single de-dollarization push gets both wrong. The domestic track…
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Why Circle launched USYC: the GENIUS Act split between payments and yield
Tokenized US Treasury funds total roughly $15 billion on-chain in May 2026, up from under $1 billion in early 2024. The headline names are BlackRock’s BUIDL at around $2.9 billion, Franklin Templeton’s BENJI suite at around $2 billion, and Ondo Finance’s combined OUSG and USDY platform at around $3.5 billion. The fastest grower has been…
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Sovereign Bitcoin in 2026: the gap between announcement and balance sheet
Three small open economies have announced sovereign Bitcoin programmes. None of the three is currently buying Bitcoin. El Salvador stopped purchases in February 2025 under its $1.4 billion IMF deal. Bhutan has sold roughly $1 billion in BTC over the past eighteen months. Pakistan’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, unveiled at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, has…
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Stripe’s vertical stablecoin stack: Bridge, Tempo and a 1.5% take rate
Stripe charges merchants 1.5% to accept stablecoins, plus 0.5% on FX where it applies. That single line is the most important data point in stablecoin payments right now. The underlying rails settle for fractions of a cent. The take rate Stripe is charging is interchange-shaped, sitting on infrastructure the issuers were told would commoditise payments.…
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Eight Indonesian digital banks made money in 2025. SeaBank is the only one with bank-like returns.
Eight of the nine listed Indonesian digital banks posted full-year net profits in 2025. The press coverage has treated this as vindication for the digital-banking model. The return on assets numbers tell a quieter story. SeaBank’s 2.3% ROA and 11.5% ROE are the only ones in the cohort that look like a conventional Indonesian retail…
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Hong Kong digital banks at year six: three at breakeven, five still losing
All eight Hong Kong digital banks are past their fifth full year of operation. The FY2025 results published in early 2026 give the first clean cohort comparison. Three operators have reached at or near breakeven: ZA Bank, WeLab Bank and Mox. Five remain loss-making: Livi, Airstar, Fusion, Ant Bank Hong Kong and PAObank. The variable…
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Issuer ROI in 2026: Consolidation, Automation, and Reducing the Tech Tax
How issuer platforms are being evaluated as banks simplify operations and speed up delivery in a tighter operating environment. A Co-branded analysis from GL Insight in collaboration with FIS Introduction: Why Issuer ROI Looks Different in 2026 Issuer modernization over the past decade has expanded capabilities across digital channels, fraud prevention, loyalty, analytics, and real-time…
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The HKMA Stablecoin License Shortlist Tells You What The HKMA Actually Wants
The HKMA received 36 first-batch issuer applications for a HKMA stablecoin license under the Stablecoins Ordinance. It awarded two. Anchorpoint Financial Limited, a joint venture of Standard Chartered Hong Kong, HKT, and Animoca Brands, received FRS01. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation received FRS02. Both are required to issue HKD-referenced stablecoins. Both operate inside the…
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Project Pontes Is The ECB’s Quiet Rejection Of Multilateral CBDC
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The ECB joined BIS Project Nexus as a special observer and committed to launching its in-house Project Pontes pilot in Q3 2026. Read the two announcements together and the strategic position around CBDCs is clear. The ECB is hedging Nexus while building Pontes. The hedge will close. Europe is going to settle on Pontes, the…
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The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Just Opened A Credit Union Door For Stablecoin Issuance
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) published its proposed rule for permitted payment stablecoin issuers on May 15, 2026. The stablecoin policy press did not notice. They should have. The rule creates a third regulatory door for US stablecoin issuance, alongside the OCC bank pathway and the FDIC pathway for state-chartered insured depositories. The NCUA…
