Real-world asset markets eased slightly in the latest weekly window, but user growth kept accelerating. PANews said RWA on-chain market capitalization stood at $38.53 billion as of Sept. 18, down 0.75% from a month earlier, while the number of asset holders climbed to 4.436 million, up 85.84%. Stablecoins also stayed on an upward track, with total market capitalization reaching $303.35 billion and monthly transfer volume rising to $7.03 trillion. The week’s biggest regulatory development came from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which approved a temporary, conditional Innovation Exemption for tokenized National Market System stocks. The move allows limited trading on certain blockchain-based venues and gives the agency a way to collect market data before writing longer-term rules. Hong Kong, meanwhile, said it wants to support issuance and trading of gold and other suitable RWAs on licensed platforms, while the European Central Bank, the U.K., Thailand and India each advanced separate tokenization or digital currency initiatives. On the industry side, SWIFT launched a tokenized deposit cross-border payments pilot with 17 banks, Ondo’s broker-dealer unit joined DTCC’s Fund/SERV network, Aave prepared a dedicated RWA lending market on Avalanche, and Centrifuge rolled out a tokenized high-yield corporate bond fund with New York Life Investment Management. Funding activity also stayed focused on tokenization infrastructure and stablecoin settlement rails, with tZERO, Velocity, dtcpay and Fin.com all announcing fresh capital.

DBS Bank, OCBC and UOB have completed a local tokenized deposit payment in Singapore dollars on Swift’s blockchain ledger, according to Odaily. The transaction marks the first interbank tokenized deposit deal completed among the three institutions. The banks had previously carried out cross-border transactions on Swift Ledger. With local interoperability now in place, corporate clients will be able to make tokenized payments across participating institutions. The update points to a new step in applying tokenized bank deposits to domestic payment flows in Singapore, based on the details provided in the brief. No additional transaction size or settlement timeline was disclosed in the source item.

Bitrace’s crypto crime report for the first half of 2026 said more than $174.9 billion in stablecoins flowed to high-risk addresses tied to six areas: online gambling, money laundering, gray and black market trading, fraud, sanctions and freezes. The report said the figures exclude HTX-related hot wallets and user addresses from sanctions statistics because of what it described as overly aggressive sanctions activity by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, or FCDO, while activity linked to Huione Group and Xinbi Group remained classified under gray and black market trading to avoid double counting. The report also highlighted several major developments across the period. Potato Guarantee shut down its public-group business in January, with demand shifting quickly to Xinbi Guarantee. The UK sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee on March 26 and HUOBI GLOBAL S.A., the entity behind HTX, on May 26. Bitrace also pointed to two major hacks that it said were tied to state-backed actors: the $285 million Drift Protocol attack on April 1 and the roughly $292 million KelpDAO LayerZero bridge theft on April 18. Together, those incidents accounted for about 60% of all security losses in the first half. Across specific categories, Bitrace said gambling-linked addresses received more than 57.4 billion USDT, laundering-linked addresses handled more than 20 billion USDT, gray and black market trading addresses took in more than 77.3 billion USDT, and fraud-linked addresses received more than 16 billion USDT. It also said Tether and Circle recorded 3,192 freeze events in the period, affecting 2,576 unique blockchain addresses and freezing more than $1.5 billion in stablecoins.

Taiwanese DeFi project Scallop said it encountered a suspicious engineering job approach that its founder, Kris Lai, believed could be linked to North Korean IT worker tactics. According to Lai, a Telegram account named Yuto Kazuma, claiming to be a blockchain engineer based in Tokyo, contacted him on Aug. 19 and said he had studied Scallop’s GitHub, Sui lending protocol, Sui Kit, Scallop SDK, and a newer AI Skill integration. The applicant also described experience across blockchain infrastructure, backend systems, distributed services, Solana RPC and WebSocket infrastructure, transaction pipelines, smart contracts, and AI agents. Instead of moving into a normal interview process, Lai replied with a blunt verification request: record a FaceTime video saying 「Kim Jong-un is an ugly pig」. He later said the account blocked him within hours. Lai viewed the exchange through the lens of a broader security concern that has drawn repeated warnings from U.S. authorities: North Korean remote IT workers using false identities to secure overseas tech jobs, collect salaries, and in some cases gain access to internal systems. The report also points to prior estimates that such operations generated billions of dollars over two years, alongside court cases in the United States involving so-called laptop farms used to make overseas workers appear to be operating from inside the country. Scallop, a DeFi lending protocol on Sui, said in 2024 that it had raised a cumulative $3 million.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have completed the first live cross-border bank-to-bank tokenized-deposit transaction on Swift’s blockchain-based ledger, moving the system from initial readiness to its first interbank use. The banks exchanged payment messages through the shared ledger and recorded the resulting obligations on HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service and Standard Chartered’s tokenized-deposit infrastructure. Swift then matched and netted those obligations, while final settlement was completed through existing systems. The setup is designed to let separate bank-issued tokenized-deposit platforms work together rather than forcing participants onto a single infrastructure. Swift and the two banks said the model could help corporate and institutional clients move liquidity across institutions outside conventional operating hours. The announcement did not disclose the size of the payment, the currencies involved, or the geographic corridor, and it did not say whether the transfer was routine production activity or a controlled live transaction. The deal follows Swift’s July update that its ledger was ready for initial use, with 17 banks across six continents preparing to pilot live transactions.

Asia FinTech Alliance on Aug. 11 released the Top 30 list for the inaugural AFA Awards, with six Taiwan companies making the cut from seven nominees recommended by the Taiwan FinTech Association. The shortlisted firms span financial infrastructure, regulatory compliance and market expansion, with names including XREX, Gogolook, OwlTing, CyCraft, Eastern Union and BaaS Innovation. According to TFTA honorary chair and AFA chairperson Tsai Yu-ling, all entrants first had to be nominated and screened in their home markets before competing against companies from 16 Asian economies. The first edition of the awards received 88 nominations across five categories. After the Top 30 round, the process will move into a second stage that will narrow the field to 10 finalists. The final round and awards ceremony are scheduled for Sept. 1, 2026, in Taipei, where the Top 10 companies will present in person to a judging panel drawn from financial and capital market institutions across Asia.

The European Union has added HTX, identified in legal documents as “HTX (HUOBI GLOBAL SA),” to its Russia sanctions framework, with the restrictions set to take effect on Aug. 23. Once the measure comes into force, individuals and companies in the EU will be barred from transacting with the exchange. According to the EU, HTX and other third-country financial institutions and crypto service providers helped provide funding channels for Russia, weakening sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine. The move does not amount to a full asset freeze. Reuters reported that eligible citizens and residents of the EU, the European Economic Area and Switzerland may still apply for authorization to withdraw funds or close accounts, but they must complete the process within three months after the ban takes effect. HTX said it takes compliance seriously and works with regulators globally, adding that it has screening controls in place to block sanctioned entities. The action is part of the EU’s 21st sanctions package against Russia. The package, adopted on July 23, added 218 individuals and entities, the bloc’s largest sanctions expansion in four years. HTX was listed alongside EXMO, Rapira and seven other crypto service providers. Separately, TRM Labs recently said HTX had frequently rotated hot wallets and fund addresses across TRON, Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana after UK sanctions, an allegation the exchange rejected.

Coinfest Asia 2026 will take place August 20-21 at Melasti Beach, Bali, adopting a beach club concept. Confirmed speakers include Nansen CEO, Trust Wallet CEO, and more. Asia now accounts for nearly 60% of global crypto users.