A dense 24-hour news cycle brought fresh filings, earnings, market calls and regulatory signals across crypto and adjacent tech markets. Fidelity filed an amended registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 11 to add ETH staking to its spot Ethereum ETF, the Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH). Under normal conditions, the fund said it could stake as much as 100% of the ETH it holds, with no minimum staking threshold, and its investment objective would change to include staking rewards if approved. Elsewhere, some existing Anthropic investors said the AI company could be valued at more than $2 trillion if it goes public as early as October, with one investor putting the upside case at $3 trillion based on a roughly 30x revenue multiple. The estimates remain investor forecasts, and several investors said Anthropic management has not set an IPO valuation target. The session also featured quarterly updates from Bullish, BitGo and Securitize, new SEC steps around tokenized fund operations and tokenized equities, ETF flow data for Bitcoin and Ethereum products, and a series of policy, infrastructure and security developments spanning Europe, the U.K., Brazil and the U.S.

Tokenized money market and Treasury funds are moving beyond their original role as yield products and into a new position inside institutional digital cash systems. By May 2026, tokenized Treasury and money market funds had reached about $10 billion in combined assets, with BlackRock’s BUIDL alone accounting for roughly 40% of that total. At the same time, Hong Kong moved tokenized funds from a subscription-and-redemption model toward 24/7 secondary trading, while banks in Singapore began testing tokenized fund shares as collateral for lending and trading activity. The competition is now centered on utility rather than issuance alone. In the United States, tokenized funds are increasingly being tied to stablecoin reserve structures, including JPMorgan’s JLTXX on Ethereum, which is designed for reserve use under the GENIUS Act framework. Europe and the UK are focusing on fitting these products into formal regulatory systems. Singapore is pushing the collateral use case. Hong Kong, meanwhile, is trying to combine issuers, banks, trading venues and settlement infrastructure in one regulated market structure. What is emerging is not simply a new wrapper for traditional money funds. Tokenized fund shares are being tested as assets that can circulate across trading, settlement and credit networks. That raises a broader question for asset managers, banks and crypto platforms alike: in a market where cash management tools, bank deposits and digital currencies start to share the same rails, who will control access to the system itself?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Investment Management has issued a no-action letter to Franklin Templeton, permitting its registered funds to use the on-chain money market fund FOBXX, also known as BENJI, to manage cash and collateral via blockchain instead of following traditional custody rules. The letter, issued under Section 17(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Rule 17f-2, allows registered funds to hold FOBXX shares without satisfying certain physical vault requirements. This supports intraday trading, hourly net asset value calculations, and faster transaction processing. FOBXX primarily invests in U.S. government securities, aims to maintain a stable share price of $1, and has expanded to multiple blockchains. The development was reported by CoinDesk.

A dense stream of updates hit crypto and AI markets between Aug. 12 and Aug. 13, spanning venture funding, protocol incidents, regulatory moves, exchange actions and large on-chain transfers. PANews’ roundup included Lovable’s $400 million Series C at a $13.3 billion valuation, Wintermute’s plan to spend about $1 billion over five years on high-frequency trading and AI data center infrastructure, and Tencent’s second-quarter results showing higher capital expenditure tied to AI spending. In digital assets, Harmony said it had traced fraudulently minted tokens across 409 wallets and was considering a rollback, while Solana briefly came close to a network-freeze threshold after a data center routing issue knocked nearly 29% of staked SOL offline. Anchorpoint also began the first phase of distributing its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP, and Coinbase said it will suspend 10 perpetual contracts on Aug. 26. Whale activity remained active as well, including an Ethereum ICO participant moving 2,000 ETH to Coinbase, a wallet sending 2,300 BTC to Wintermute-linked deposit addresses since June 25, and a leveraged ETH trader closing out positions for a reported $4.3 million profit. The period also brought new product releases from Grok and DeepSeek, a major SEC no-action letter tied to Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund, and fresh scrutiny of prediction markets from U.S. regulators and New York City lawmakers.

Real-world assets became one of crypto’s hottest themes in July, with on-chain value rising to a record $32 billion, up about 22% from the start of the month and above the previous high set in April. Yet the expansion in issuance has not translated into broad on-chain activity. Data cited from BeInCrypto Intelligence, RWA.xyz, Stacks partner Edgy, and DWF Labs shows that a large majority of tokenized assets are barely moving: more than 70% of tracked assets recorded no weekly transfer activity, while roughly 87% to 90% of the market remains outside lending, collateral, or other DeFi use cases. The gap is also visible across major platforms. Securitize leads in scale with more than $4.9 billion in tokenized assets but posts DeFi utilization of only about 0.7%. Ondo Finance manages nearly $3.5 billion across more than 10 chains and 168 integrations, yet its utilization rate is only around 2.7%. Maple Finance, by contrast, manages a smaller $2.3 billion but has more than $1.6 billion in active loans, over $22 billion in cumulative loan originations, and a utilization rate of 62%. The article argues that asset design, compliance restrictions, and weak market infrastructure are the main reasons tokenization has not automatically produced circulation. As the sector matures, competition is shifting from issuance volume to actual use, liquidity, and distribution.

Real-world assets became one of crypto’s hottest narratives in July, with on-chain RWA supply rising to a record $32 billion, up about 22% from the start of the month and above the previous peak set in April. Yet the surge in issuance has exposed a harder question for the sector: what happens after assets are tokenized? Data cited from BeInCrypto Intelligence, RWA.xyz, DWF Labs and Stacks contributor Edgy points to the same problem. More than 70% of tokenized assets worth over $100,000 saw no on-chain transfer over a week, while roughly 87% of the market remains outside lending, collateral, or active trading flows. In other words, scale has grown much faster than utility. That split is also visible across the leading platforms. Securitize has built the largest footprint, with more than $4.9 billion in tokenized assets, but its DeFi utilization sits at about 0.7%. Ondo Finance manages nearly $3.5 billion and has broad multichain distribution, yet utilization is only around 2.7%. Maple Finance, by contrast, runs a smaller $2.3 billion asset base but reports more than $1.6 billion in active loans and a 62% utilization rate. The gap reflects differences in product design, securities compliance rules, and missing market infrastructure. As the market moves past the issuance race, competition is shifting toward distribution, liquidity, and real on-chain use.

Franklin Templeton has filed two Bitcoin DRIP ETFs with the SEC, where dividends from US stocks are automatically converted into Bitcoin. Initial allocation is 95% equities + 5% BTC, with quarterly rebalancing. Fastest launch date is September 1, 2026.

Franklin Templeton has added its BENJI tokenized money market fund to MoonPay Trade, allowing institutions to swap stablecoins such as USDC and USDT for BENJI through an on-chain platform.