Executive Summary

The global macro backdrop shifted this week after the announcement of a U.S.–Iran peace framework, which temporarily reduced energy-market and shipping disruption risk. The development supported a relief move across precious metals, with gold trading around $4,330/oz and silver testing the $70.50/oz level. However, inflation pressure remains elevated: May PPI rose 6.5% year-over-year, driven partly by a 10.7% increase in upstream energy costs. At the same time, digital-asset regulation continued to move toward institutionalization, with NYDFS proposing stablecoin rules aligned with the federal GENIUS Act, Japan’s lower house advancing crypto reform with a lower 20% tax framework, and the SEC approving T. Rowe Price’s active multi-asset crypto ETF proposal.

Digital assets staged a high-beta relief rally despite continued liquidity outflows. Aggregate crypto liquidity saw $1.61 billion in net USD outflows, including a $1.29 billion contraction in fiat-backed stablecoins and continued spot ETF redemptions. Against that backdrop, Bitcoin rose 5.65% to $66,321 and Ethereum advanced 7.42% toward the $1,800 area, largely reflecting short-covering and tactical risk re-pricing rather than a confirmed return of sustained institutional inflows. Altcoin market capitalization expanded 11.2%, with the strongest rebound in higher-beta sectors such as AI and scalability infrastructure.

Corporate and venture activity remained concentrated around financial-market infrastructure, stablecoins, and crypto treasury vehicles. Venture funding reached more than $582 million across seven events, led by Digital Asset’s $355 million raise for Canton Network and Morpho’s $175 million institutional lending round. Public crypto treasury strategies also continued to expand, with Strategy adding 1,587 BTC through ATM-funded purchases and Bitmine disclosing 5.54 million ETH in holdings. Meanwhile, Coinbase’s AI-agent payment stack, Japan’s banking-led stablecoin plans, and exchange-driven pre-IPO synthetic products all point to deeper convergence between traditional finance, stablecoin settlement, and crypto-native market structure.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> U.S. and Iran Announce Peace Framework; Strait of Hormuz Expected to Reopen

The U.S. and Iran reached a framework agreement to halt the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, easing immediate energy-market stress and supporting a short-term rebound in risk sentiment. However, the agreement remains conditional and politically sensitive. Iranian officials claimed that the draft included sanctions waivers and frozen-asset provisions, while U.S. officials later stated that no frozen funds would be released at signing and that any sanctions relief would depend on verified Iranian steps on enriched uranium and monitoring access.

> May PPI Showed Pipeline Inflation Pressure

The Producer Price Index for final demand rose 1.1% in May and 6.5% year-over-year. Final demand goods increased 2.8%, while energy prices rose 10.7%, with gasoline up 23.4%. PPI matters because it captures upstream cost pressure before it flows into consumer prices and corporate margins. The report strengthened the market’s concern that inflation is not yet sufficiently controlled, limiting the Fed’s room to support risk assets.

> NYDFS Proposed Stablecoin Rules Aligned With the Federal GENIUS Act

The New York State Department of Financial Services proposed amendments to its virtual currency rules to harmonize state-level stablecoin oversight with the federal GENIUS Act. The proposal focuses on reserve assets, redemption, supervision, and compliance requirements for licensed virtual currency businesses. While this is U.S.-based, it has global relevance because NYDFS-regulated stablecoin issuers are deeply connected to international crypto liquidity and institutional settlement flows.

>SEC Approved T. Rowe Price’s Active Crypto ETF Proposal

The SEC approved a NYSE Arca rule change to list and trade shares of the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF. The fund is actively managed and is normally expected to hold between five and fifteen eligible crypto assets, while retaining flexibility under its approved methodology. This is strategically important because regulated crypto exposure is moving beyond single-asset BTC and ETH products toward diversified, actively managed crypto portfolios.

Rest of the World

> Japan Advanced Crypto Reform Under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act

Japan’s lower house passed a bill to bring crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and support a lower 20% tax framework for crypto gains. This is a major structural shift. Japan is moving crypto closer to securities-style supervision while improving the tax environment for investors. The long-term impact could be positive for regulated crypto exchanges, ETF development, custody, and institutional distribution in Japan.

> Hong Kong Signaled Regulated Stablecoins Could Launch as Early as Mid-Year

Hong Kong authorities indicated that regulated stablecoins could launch as early as mid-2026 after the relevant regime takes effect. This is important because Hong Kong is one of the few major financial centers deliberately building a regulated stablecoin framework. For Web3 infrastructure, Hong Kong’s approach supports compliant issuance, custody, settlement, and cross-border payment experimentation, especially for Asia-facing institutions.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold has reversed sharply from the recent 5-day correction and is now trading around $4,330/oz, up 2.64% intraday and +1.74% over 5 days. The move shows a clear recovery from the low near the $4,040–4,080/oz zone, followed by a strong breakout above the short-term consolidation range around $4,200–4,250/oz. This suggests renewed demand for gold as a monetary hedge and safe-haven asset, likely supported by weaker risk appetite, rate-cut expectations, or renewed macro/geopolitical hedging. Technically, gold has shifted from corrective pressure to bullish recovery, but the key confirmation level is whether it can hold above $4,280–4,300/oz after the sharp jump.

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver has also rebounded strongly and is trading around $70.57/oz, up 3.73% intraday, outperforming gold on a daily basis. After bottoming near the $62–63/oz area, silver has staged a higher-beta recovery, reclaiming the important $68–70/oz zone and now testing whether it can sustain above $70/oz. The move indicates that speculative and industrial-metal demand has returned, not just defensive precious-metal buying. Compared with gold, silver’s stronger percentage gain shows improving risk appetite within metals, but it remains more volatile; holding above $69–70/oz is essential for the rebound to develop into a stronger bullish continuation.

HTX Ventures Angle: The geopolitical de-escalation in the Strait of Hormuz offers financial markets a localized volatility reprieve, but a sticky 6.5% PPI print confirms that structural pipeline inflation remains aggressively entrenched. For venture allocators, the macroeconomic takeaway is clear: the cost of capital will remain restrictively high, and the era of single-asset retail wrapper speculation is coming to a close. The SEC’s approval of T. Rowe Price’s active multi-asset ETF framework and Japan’s securities-style 20% tax reform confirm that the global market is institutionalizing diversified digital asset exposure. We are positioning our mandates exclusively to back institutional-grade infrastructure that supports active asset management, multi-token clearing metrics, and onshore regulated custody protocols.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (June 8 ~ June 12 ):

● BTC: -$319.3 M (Led by BlackRock IBIT outflows at $355M)

● ETH: -$14.8 M (Led by Grayscale ETHE outflows at $17.4M)

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (Jun 9~ Jun 14 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$1.29B

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Crypto market (Jun 9~ Jun 14 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$1.61 B

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 40 (Fear) to 34 (Fear)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index rose slightly from 15 (Extreme Fear) to 23 (Fear).

HTX Ventures Angle: The divergence between positive spot market price action and a severe $1.61 billion aggregate net liquidity withdrawal reveals that this week’s rally was a short-term structural squeeze rather than an organic influx of fresh fiat. Institutional allocators are continuing to trim spot exposure via ETF wrappers, and the $1.29 billion reduction in on-chain stablecoins confirms that systemic liquidity remains highly constrained. This data dictates an extremely disciplined allocation posture; micro-cap or altcoin project launches executed inside a net-negative stablecoin environment run straight into a distribution wall. We remain defensive, focusing capital deployment on fundamental network layers that capture high-velocity transaction volumes independent of macro liquidity inflows.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (10 Jun ~ 16 Jun )

> Global crypto market cap recovered slightly by 5.1% to ~$2.27T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): +5.65% (Rose from a weekly low of ~$61,000 to close at $66,321.61).

● Current Price: $66,321.61

● Fluctuation Analysis: Short Squeeze & Tactical Risk Rebound. After sweeping local lows near $61k early in the week, BTC triggered a strong short-covering move and reclaimed the mid-$65k range. However, because weekly ETF data still showed net outflows, the rebound should not yet be framed as a confirmed return of institutional spot inflows. Sustained stabilization will require follow-through in spot volume, ETF flows, and stablecoin liquidity.

● Support Level: $61,000 — $62,500

● Resistance Level: $67,500 — $68,000 (The local peak tested on June 16 prior to a minor late-session consolidation).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): +7.42% (Rose from an early-week floor of ~$1,610 to $1,794.40).

● Current Price:$1,794.40

● Fluctuation Analysis:High-Beta Mean Reversion. Mirroring Bitcoin’s structural reversal, ETH showcased strong high-beta momentum during the relief rally. The aggressive push past the $1,700 technical block on June 15–16 indicates that capital rapidly rotated back into the smart-contract layer once broader market stability was re-established.

● Support Level: $1,610 — $1,660

● Resistance Level: $1,840 — $1,850 (The sharp wick high printed on June 16, serving as the immediate supply wall for current price discovery).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: +11.2%

● Current Valuation: $1.034 Trillion

● Fluctuation Analysis: Risk-On Re-leveraging. The broader altcoin sector experienced a strong structural reversal, comfortably reclaiming the vital $1 Trillion psychological and historical benchmark. The steady, expanding trajectory across the 7-day window demonstrates that speculative confidence has quickly returned, with capital actively flowing down the risk curve into mid-and-small cap protocols.

● Support Level: $930 Billion

● Resistance Level: $1.05 Trillion (The local threshold the index is actively testing at the close of the weekly session).

Source: CoinGecko

Sectors Performance

The digital asset market is showing a clear short-term recovery, with capital rotating back into higher-beta growth narratives after the prior selloff. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is leading the rebound at +7.6% over 7 days, supported by strong market cap expansion and sustained volume, while Infrastructure and Layer 2 (L2) both gained +5.4%, suggesting renewed appetite for core crypto technology and scalability themes. DeFi (+3.3%) continues to attract liquidity, with the strongest 24h performance among the major categories at +2.4%, while RWA (+2.7%) remains relatively steady and institutionally sticky, supported by a large market cap and exceptionally high 24h volume. Overall, this looks like a broad-based relief rally, but the negative 1h readings across all sectors suggest short-term profit-taking after the recent rebound.

Source: CoinGecko(Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

HTX Ventures Angle: The rapid 11.2% snapback in the altcoin market cap and the outperformance of high-beta sectors like Artificial Intelligence prove that on-chain speculative capital remains highly elastic and reactive to localized macro stability. However, because this risk-on rotation occurred on the back of thin underlying stablecoin depth, the near-term sustainability of these multiples remains questionable. We are leveraging this short-term valuation expansion to reassess structural risk across long-tail token models, strictly focusing our capital allocations on base-layer infrastructure and high-performance scalability themes that possess sticky, organic utilization metrics.

4/ Security Incidents

>Humanity Protocol Suffered a Major Private-Key Compromise

Humanity Protocol suffered a major security incident after attackers compromised the deployer’s private key and drained approximately $36 million worth of H tokens, according to security reporting. The team and external security researchers linked the attack pattern to North Korea-associated tactics. The incident caused a sharp token-price collapse and reinforced a recurring lesson: private-key management, deployer permissions, and emergency controls are existential risk factors for token projects.

>Aztec Connect Legacy Router Exploit Drained Approximately US$2.1 Million

Aztec Connect’s deprecated Router contract was drained for approximately US$2.1 million to US$2.19 million on 14 Jun. Security reporting attributed the exploit to a suspected proof-verification flaw in legacy, immutable smart contracts. Aztec Connect had been deprecated years earlier, and Aztec Labs reportedly no longer held admin keys or control over the system, meaning the contracts could not be paused, upgraded, or patched. The incident is important because it shows that decommissioned DeFi infrastructure can remain a live risk surface when residual assets stay locked in immutable contracts.

HTX Ventures Angle: The security failures this week emphasize two distinct, systemic risk surfaces that founders consistently misjudge. Humanity Protocol’s $36 million loss underscores that deployer private-key segregation and multi-sig emergency circuit breakers remain single points of failure that can instantly destroy market capitalization. More critically, the Aztec Connect exploit proves that deprecated, immutable DeFi infrastructure can remain a live, unpatchable risk surface years after active operations cease if residual assets stay locked in place. Moving forward, our operational due diligence mandates strict hardware-enforced credential security protocols and portfolio-wide security requirements for decommissioning contracts to fully prevent legacy contagion.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

>Strategy’s Continued Bitcoin Accumulation

Strategy disclosed that from June 8 to June 14, 2026, it raised approximately $209.0 million in net proceeds through its MSTR common-stock ATM program and used $100.0 million to purchase 1,587 BTC at an average price of $63,024. As of June 14, Strategy held 846,842 BTC, with an aggregate purchase cost of $64.07 billion and an average cost of $75,656 per BTC. The update confirms that Strategy remains a net Bitcoin accumulator, but its model is increasingly tied to capital-market access and dilution management.

> Bitmine Continued Scaling Its ETH Treasury Strategy

Bitmine announced that its ETH holdings reached 5.54 million tokens, with total crypto and cash holdings of approximately $9.6 billion. The company also reported that 4.72 million ETH had been staked. This reinforces Bitmine’s position as the most aggressive public ETH treasury vehicle and shows that public-market crypto treasury strategies are expanding beyond Bitcoin into yield-bearing ETH exposure.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Coinbase Expanded Its AI-Agent and Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure Narrative

Coinbase continued to position itself as infrastructure for AI-agent payments and stablecoin settlement. The company highlighted Coinbase for Agents and x402-related payment infrastructure, while market reporting cited nearly $1 trillion in annualized stablecoin movement/payment activity. This matters because AI-agent commerce requires machine-native settlement rails, and stablecoins remain the most practical format for programmable, low-friction payments.

>Japan’s Largest Banks Moved Toward Joint Stablecoin Issuance

Japan’s largest banking groups, including MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho, were reported to be preparing joint stablecoin issuance by March 2027. This is a major institutional signal. If implemented, bank-issued stablecoins could become a regulated settlement layer for corporate payments, tokenized deposits, and on-chain financial products in Japan. The strategic importance is clear: stablecoins are no longer only crypto-native instruments; they are becoming part of bank-led payment modernization.

>Crypto Exchanges Captured SpaceX Pre-IPO Demand Through Synthetic and Derivative Products

Crypto exchanges and tokenized-market platforms capitalized on investor demand around SpaceX’s public listing through pre-IPO derivatives and synthetic exposure products. This is strategically important because it shows crypto venues moving into private-market and pre-IPO exposure, a traditionally illiquid category dominated by institutional investors. The opportunity is large, but so are the risks: pricing, disclosure, settlement, and investor-protection standards must improve before these products can become mainstream.

> Moomoo Integrated Hyperliquid Perpetual Contract Market Data

Futu’s Moomoo app integrated Hyperliquid perpetual contract market data, allowing users to view on-chain perpetual futures pricing directly inside the app. The update is informational rather than direct trading access, but it is still strategically meaningful because mainstream brokerage interfaces are beginning to surface crypto-native derivatives data. This creates a bridge between retail brokerage users and on-chain market structure, especially around synthetic perpetual exposure such as SPCX-USDC.

HTX Ventures Angle: The corporate and institutional landscape is shifting from passive crypto-asset holding toward more complex treasury, staking, and payment-infrastructure deployment. Strategy and Bitmine show that public-market crypto treasury vehicles are increasingly dependent on capital-market access, dilution management, and yield strategy rather than simple asset accumulation alone. At the same time, Coinbase’s AI-agent payment stack and Japan’s banking-led stablecoin initiatives reinforce that stablecoins are becoming an institutional settlement layer. For HTX Ventures, the investable opportunity remains strongest in programmable enterprise payment gateways, compliant stablecoin infrastructure, and machine-to-machine billing rails.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

> Aptos (APT) unlocked approximately 11.31 million tokens on June 12th, representing about 0.67% of the circulating supply, with a value of approximately $7.6 million.

> HOME (HOME) unlocked approximately 750 million tokens on June 10th, representing about 19.79% of the circulating supply, with a value of approximately $40.2 million.

> Magic Eden (ME) unlocked approximately 172 million tokens on June 10th, representing about 33.99% of the circulating supply, with a value of approximately $10.4 million.

> HumidiFi (WET) unlocked approximately 256 million tokens on June 9th, representing about 111.4% of the circulating supply, with a value of approximately $14.5 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 7 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$582 million.

Some major highlights:

Morpho: US$175 Million Funding Round Led by a16z Crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital

DeFi lending protocol Morpho raised US$175 million in a funding round led by a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, and VanEck. The investment was made into Morpho’s token and valued the protocol at up to approximately US$2 billion. Morpho has grown into one of the leading on-chain lending protocols, with around US$6.6 billion in assets locked, closing the gap with incumbent lending leader Aave. Its core differentiation is modular lending-market infrastructure: rather than operating only as a single shared lending pool, Morpho allows users and institutions to create customized lending markets with their own risk parameters. Strategically, the round shows that top-tier investors still have strong conviction in DeFi credit infrastructure, especially platforms that can serve both crypto-native users and traditional institutions seeking higher-yield, programmable lending markets.

Digital Asset: US$355 Million Raise Led by a16z Crypto to Scale Canton Network

Digital Asset, the creator of Canton Network, raised US$355 million in a funding round led by a16z crypto. The round included major traditional finance and crypto participants such as ABN Amro, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, Optiver, Polychain, S&P Global, SBI Group, SoFi, Tradeweb, and William Blair. The capital will support the expansion of Canton as institutional on-chain infrastructure for regulated financial markets, including tokenized assets, compliant workflows, and privacy-preserving settlement. Canton’s value proposition is highly aligned with institutional requirements: shared blockchain infrastructure, but with privacy, permissioning, compliance, control, and interoperability. The round is a major validation of tokenized capital markets infrastructure and confirms that Wall Street-backed blockchain adoption is increasingly moving from pilot-stage experimentation toward production-grade financial-market infrastructure.

HTX Ventures Angle: Venture capital is completely abandoning generic consumer application tokens to consolidate capital inside highly defensible, credit-and-settlement infrastructure moats. The massive $355 million deployment into Digital Asset’s Canton Network — backed directly by tier-one Wall Street clearing houses and market makers — validates our core thesis: the future of on-chain asset registries relies entirely on privacy-preserving, permissioned execution layers. Simultaneously, Morpho’s $175 million institutional backing reveals that decentralized credit formation is moving toward highly customizable risk parameters rather than monolithic shared pools. Our internal capital allocation heavily mirrors this shift, prioritizing modular capital-efficiency protocols and enterprise-grade asset tokenization infrastructure over long-tail consumer narratives.

8/ Watchlists (June 17 — June 21, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● Jun 17: Corporate Treasury — European proxy Capital B (The Blockchain Group) will hold a critical shareholder vote to authorize up to €5B in equity issuance and €116B in credit instruments , aimed at aggressively accelerating its MicroStrategy-style Bitcoin treasury strategy.

● Jun 18: Federal Reserve — The FOMC will announce its interest rate decision and updated economic projections. Crucially, newly appointed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will host his highly anticipated first monetary policy press conference, setting the initial tone for his tenure.

● Jun 18: Macro Data — The U.S. will release its latest initial jobless claims data.

● Jun 19: Market Holiday — U.S. equity markets (NYSE) will be closed in observance of Juneteenth. CME Group futures will also close early, which may temporarily compress cross-asset institutional liquidity.

Crypto-Specific

● Jun 17: Infrastructure — Coinbase will host its “Take Control” live stream event, focusing on demonstrating the real-world operational capabilities of its upgraded payment infrastructure.

● Jun 17: Major Unlocks — Spark (SPK) will unlock an outsized ~27.08% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$17.8M) . YZY unlocks ~$6.2M.

● Jun 20: Token Unlocks — LayerZero (ZRO) will unlock approximately 25.71 million tokens, representing ~4.83% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$23.2M). KAITO unlocks ~$7.4M.

● Jun 21: Venture Capital — Applications close for YZi Labs’ “EASY Residency S4” incubation program. This signals continued early-stage capital appetite for startups building specifically at the intersection of Web3, AI, and biotechnology.

References

1.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026, June). Producer Price Index — May 2026.

2.Hafezi, P. (2026, June 14). Iran says draft U.S. deal includes oil sanctions waiver, nuclear limits and asset release. Reuters.

3.U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2026, June 12). Order approving a proposed rule change to list and trade shares of the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF. https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nysearca/2026/34-105681.pdf

4. New York State Department of Financial Services. (2026, June 9). DFS Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris proposes regulations to harmonize state and federal stablecoin law. https://www.dfs.ny.gov/reports_and_publications/press_releases/pr20260609

5. New York State Department of Financial Services. (2026). Proposed stablecoin regulation text. https://www.dfs.ny.gov/industry-guidance/regulations/pre-proposed-insurance/rppd-23reg202-text

6. Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. (2026, June 10). LCQ6: Stablecoins. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202606/10/P2026061000429.htm

7. CoinDesk. (2026, June 11). Japan passes sweeping bill regulating crypto like stocks with lower taxes to drive growth. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/06/11/japan-passes-sweeping-bill-regulating-crypto-like-stocks-with-lower-taxes-to-drive-growth

8. Reuters. (2026, June 10). Japan’s largest banks to jointly issue stablecoins by March 2027. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/japans-largest-banks-jointly-issue-stablecoins-by-march-2027-2026-06-10/

9.CoinDesk. (2026, June 10). Humanity Protocol token crashes more than 80% after a $36 million private-key hack. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/06/09/humanity-protocol-token-crashes-more-than-80-after-a-usd32-million-private-key-hack

10.Coinbase. (2026, June). Coinbase for Agents and x402 payment infrastructure. https://www.coinbase.com/blog/the-state-of-crypto-the-future-of-money-is-here

11. The Defiant. (2026, June 13). Brian Armstrong says Coinbase processes $1T in stablecoin payments annually.

12. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Inc. (2026, June 10). Bitmine Immersion Technologies announces ETH holdings reach 5.54 million tokens and total crypto and total cash holdings of $9.6 billion. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitmine-immersion-technologies-bmnr-announces-eth-holdings-reach-5-54-million-tokens-and-total-crypto-and-total-cash-holdings-of-9-6-billion-302793756.html

13. Reuters. (2026, June 11). Crypto exchanges cash in on SpaceX frenzy with pre-IPO derivatives.

14.Weiss, B. (2026, June 9). Exclusive: The startup that’s dressing up crypto for Wall Street raises $175 million in a round led by a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital. Fortune.

15. Digital Asset. (2026, June 11). Digital Asset raises $355 million to accelerate Canton’s role as onchain infrastructure for capital markets. PR Newswire.

16.The Block. (2026, June). a16z crypto leads $355 million raise for Canton developer Digital Asset.

17.Moomoo. (2026, June). SpaceX going IPO? Now you can watch SPCX 24/7 right in moomoo. https://www.moomoo.com/community/feed/what-s-new-spacex-going-ipo-now-you-can-watch-116718593376662

18. Bashir, K. (2026, June 15). Attacker drains $2.1 million from Aztec Connect 3 years after its shutdown. BeInCrypto.

19.PA一线. (2026, June 15). Strategy上周花费约1亿美元购入1587枚比特币. PANews.

前言

RWA Perps 不是加密世界对传统金融的又一次模仿，而是链上金融从“资产上链”走向“风险上链”的重要一步。它将黄金、原油、美股、指数等全球宏观资产的价格波动，以永续合约的形式全天候嵌入链上，由预言机、杠杆与清算引擎构成的”金融积木堆栈”直接承接定价职能。其本质是一次坐标系的迁移：用户交易的不再是资产所有权，而是全球宏观波动率。

2026 年第一季度，这一叙事从概念跃入现实：单季成交量超越 2025 全年，Pre-IPO 合约在真实 IPO 中以 2.9% 的误差胜过持牌机构二级市场，原油 Perps 在地缘政治黑天鹅期间成为全球唯一运行的风险转移场所。但规模的快速膨胀并未掩盖结构性约束 — — 预言机精度、休市跳空、LP 方向性风险、双重监管壁垒，每一层都是潜在的断裂点。这一赛道的长期胜负手，不在于交易量扩张的速度，而在于风险管理与合规架构的深度。

作为火币HTX 的全球投资部门，HTX Ventures 长期跟踪链上衍生品、RWA 与全球资产上链的演进路径，并通过投资与孵化深度参与这一进程。本报告希望厘清的并非 RWA Perps 短期成交量的高低，而是这一赛道从爆发走向成熟所必须跨越的结构性关口，以及在这一过程中，链上金融与全球资本市场之间的边界将如何被重新定义。

本报告将围绕以下几个问题展开：

● RWA Perps 与代币化资产的本质区别是什么，”价格上链”与”资产上链”为何是两条截然不同的路径？

● 是什么驱动了 2026 Q1 的爆发式增长，HIP-3 的”无许可市场部署”意味着什么？

● 链上订单簿、Vault 合成流动性、混合对冲池，三条技术路线各自的天花板与软肋在哪里？

● 预言机精度、休市跳空、LP 方向性风险如何逐层叠加为系统性危机？

● 监管的灰色地带究竟有多宽，协议的合规路径又在哪里？

● 竞争格局如何演化，CEX 与 DEX 是在争夺同一块蛋糕，还是在各自开辟新的边界？

1. 市场概览：爆发式的 2026 Q1

2026 年第一季度，RWA Perps 脱离了实验阶段，正式进入需求驱动的指数级增长期：单季交易量达 5248 亿美元，以一个季度的体量超越了 2025 全年的 3130 亿美元，日均未平仓量同步扩大 5.6 倍至 48.2 亿美元。推动这一转折的核心力量，是 Hyperliquid HIP-3 协议的横空出世，其市场份额从年初的 2.8% 飙升至季末的 28.6%，”无许可市场部署”时代的到来，将链上 RWA 资产的上线周期从数月审批压缩至分钟级操作，直接引爆了整个赛道的需求释放。

2. 深度拆解：RWA Perps 的双层架构

在理解 RWA Perps 的爆发之前，有必要先厘清一个底层认知差异：在 RWA 赛道，”资产上链”与”价格上链”是两条截然不同的路径，其商业逻辑、目标用户与技术门槛存在根本性差异。 混淆这两条路径，是当前市场叙事中最常见的误判来源之一。

Tokenized RWA（资产上链） 将真实资产代币化，代币代表对底层资产的所有权或收益权。典型案例包括 PAXG（黄金代币）、Franklin Templeton 的代币化美国国债等。这条路径的本质是资产的数字化映射，涉及托管、合规认证、赎回机制等完整的链下基础设施，上线门槛高、周期长，但用户获得的是真实的资产权益。

RWA Perpetuals（价格上链，以下简称 RWA Perps）是指通过永续合约为链下资产提供价格敞口的链上衍生品。其核心在于，交易者可以在无需持有或托管底层资产的情况下，对其价格变动进行杠杆化交易。用户无需经历托管或认证流程，也不存在赎回路径。这条路径的本质是对价格波动的合成暴露，而非资产本身。

2.1 二元结构模型：链上合成暴露的底层逻辑

RWA Perps 并非一个单一系统，而是由性质截然不同的两层协同运作：

第一层：现实资产参考层（价格锚） 链下真实市场持续产生价格信号，如标普 500 指数、伦敦金现货、WTI 原油等，这些由纳斯达克、CME 等全球顶级交易所实时生成的价格数据，通过预言机网络被引入链上，充当合约定价的外部锚点。这一层本身不在链上，但它是整个系统的”事实来源”，其稳定性与可靠性直接决定了上层衍生品的安全边界。

第二层：链上永续层（交易执行） 在价格锚之上，链上协议负责所有交易执行功能：杠杆管理、资金费率计算、保证金核算与清算引擎。这一层与加密原生 Perps 的机制高度一致 — — 这正是 RWA Perps 几乎不需要用户学习成本的原因：习惯了在 dYdX 或 Hyperliquid 上交易 BTC/ETH 的用户，切换到原油或标普 500 合约时，操作界面与使用逻辑完全相同。

2.2 核心差异化

这一结构带来三项关键的差异化特征，也是 RWA Perps 相较于 Tokenized RWA 在需求侧更具爆发力的根本原因：

无所有权： 用户不享有分红、投票权或实物交割。这意味着合规门槛更低、上线速度更快，协议无需处理资产托管与赎回机制，但也意味着用户承担的是纯粹的价格风险，而非资产权益。

全时段交易： 弥补了传统市场的流动性断层 — — 美股周末停盘、原油夜盘缺失，在 RWA Perps 中均不成问题。这不仅是一个产品便利性特征，更是一个在极端行情下具有实质意义的制度差异：当信息冲击发生在周末，只有链上市场能够即时定价，这也是伊朗事件中链上原油市场得以独立承担价格发现职能的制度基础。

资本效率： 通过链上抵押品（通常为 USDC/USDT），用户可以对黄金、美股等传统高门槛资产进行极低成本的杠杆做多或做空，无需开设境外券商账户、无需持有实物资产，也无需经历繁琐的 KYC 流程。

3. 驱动力：为什么 RWA Perps 在 2026 年爆发？

RWA Perps 在 2026 年 Q1 实现了从实验品到主流市场的跃变 — — 单季成交量 5248 亿美元，已超过 2025 全年的 3130 亿美元。这一爆发并非单一因素驱动，而是四重长期动力共振叠加一次突发性催化剂的结果。

3.1 叙事收敛：代币化教育了市场，信任跨过临界点

过去一年多，RWA 代币化（尤其是国库券、私募信贷与商品）在链上积累的规模已从 2025 年初的约 64 亿美元增长至 2026 年 Q1 的约 316 亿美元，这一过程为用户和机构建立了”真实世界资产上链可信”的心理基础。当代币化债券、黄金 ETF 持续获得机构背书，用户对”非加密资产上链”的信任度跨过了临界点。

在此基础上，RWA Perps 作为”合成暴露”路径应运而生：无需实际持有底层资产，只需对价格形成判断即可开立杠杆仓位，资本效率远高于直接代币化。叙事的核心转移了，用户不再问”链上原油是否可信”，而是直接问”如何在链上做多布伦特”。这一从”资产代币化”到”风险上链”的叙事收敛，是 RWA Perps 爆发的认知前提。

3.2 资产质量升级：更熟悉的高 beta 标的吸引流动性流入

RWA Perps 的爆发，也来自底层资产质量的变化。过去链上 Perps 的主要交易对象集中在 BTC、ETH 与高波动 Altcoins，用户需要同时判断项目基本面、Token 经济模型、解锁压力与市场情绪。而 RWA Perps 引入的是黄金、原油、美股、指数等全球投资者已经长期学习和定价的资产。这些资产拥有更成熟的波动率历史、更清晰的宏观驱动因素，也更容易被非加密用户理解。

换句话说，RWA Perps 为高质量资产开辟了一个新的链上交易时段。它并不是创造了全新的风险，而是把已经存在于传统金融市场中的高 beta 敞口，以更高资本效率、更长交易时间和更低准入门槛的方式引入链上。对交易者而言，这降低了理解成本；对协议而言，这意味着更大规模、更可持续的外部流动性有机会进入链上市场。

3.3 习惯迁移：加密交易者的零学习成本切换

加密原生用户早已深度习惯永续合约的基本范式：最高 50 至 100 倍以上的杠杆、资金费率的多空博弈、24/7 不间断的清算机制。这套认知框架完全可以无缝复用于 RWA Perps — — 当 NVDA、原油、标普 500 出现在同一个 Perp 界面上时，链上用户切换资产的学习成本几乎为零。

这种迁移产生了可量化的跨资产流量。Hyperliquid 的数据曾显示，RWA 合约占平台总交易量一度达到 44%，意味着相当规模的资金并非来自传统金融用户的增量，而是原本在 BTC/ETH 合约间流转的加密存量资本，向 TradFi 资产完成了重新配置。

3.4 基建质变：高效定价引擎打通了最后关卡

前三项是需求侧的准备，而供给侧的真正突破在于基础设施的成熟。早期 RWA Perps 协议面临三类核心痛点：传统市场闭市期间预言机价格冻结、跳空行情触发连锁清算、以及长尾资产流动性碎片化。2025 年起，这些问题陆续找到工程解法。Hyperliquid HIP-3 以 permissionless 的市场部署框架叠加链上 CLOB，允许价格在无外部预言机支撑的窗口期通过订单流自主演进，EMA 漂移定价机制平滑了休市期间的价格路径；Gains Network 等早期协议以”USDC 池 + Chainlink 预言机 + 固定点差”的组合完成了产品验证，其 v2/v3 迭代推动了定价引擎的整体成熟；Ostium 的主动对冲池与强制去杠杆设计优先保障 LP 偿付能力，使 Gap 风险不再是池模式的致命伤。预言机层面，Stork、Pyth、Chainlink 的竞争加速了 TradFi 资产的喂价精度与响应速度，对企业行动、闭市定价和基差问题提供了日趋完善的处理方案。三类基建创新共同将 RWA Perps 从能运转但容易出事的实验品，推向了可以承载真实风险的基础设施。

3.5 催化剂：地缘政治黑天鹅的活体测试

上述驱动因素在 2026 年 3 月的一个周末得到了最具说服力的现实验证。

以 3 月 7 日至 8 日为例，当美国与以色列针对伊朗的军事行动发生后，事件恰逢周末窗口，传统原油市场完全停摆，CME 的 WTI 价格仍停留在周五收盘区间（约 $91–92），没有任何机制能够消化这一突发信息冲击。

与此同时，Hyperliquid 上的 CL-USDC 永续合约在数小时内快速上行，一度升至 $96–109 区间，并随着冲突升级进一步触及 $115 附近。在这 48 小时内，链上市场不仅提供了唯一的连续价格曲线，也成为全球范围内唯一有效运转的原油价格发现机制。

对应的交易数据印证了市场参与者的主动介入：Trade.xyz 在 3 月 8 日（周日）的单日交易量达到 $1.7B。在传统市场完全关闭的情况下，这一数字体现的是真实的风险定价需求，而非投机噪声。

更为关键的是后续的”滞后确认”效应：周一（3月9日）传统市场重新开盘时，CME 原油价格直接出现显著跳空，并向链上周末形成的价格区间靠拢。 这一现象表明，链上市场在休市期间完成的并非噪声交易，而是对信息冲击的真实定价 — — 传统市场的开盘价格，某种程度上只是对链上价格的滞后确认。

这一事件对 RWA Perps 赛道的意义是结构性的：它将”7×24 交易”从一个产品卖点，升级为一个经过压力测试的真实基础设施能力。当极端行情真实发生时，链上市场没有宕机，它正常运转并完成了价格发现。

4. 资产类别的进化路径

RWA Perps 的扩张遵循从“简单高频”到“复杂低频”的逻辑。

图源：CoinGecko RWA Report 2026

4.1 商品主导 (2025年中前)

在 RWA Perps 的早期演进中，链上基础设施与预言机网络尚在完善的初始阶段，黄金、白银、原油等大宗商品凭借其天然的全球定价主权与强共识，成为了链上捕获宏观波动率的可行锚点。以原油为例，作为 TradFi 中流动性最充沛的资产之一，CME（芝商所）与 ICE（洲际交易所）的 WTI 原油期货日均成交量常年保持在百万级合约规模，名义交易规模高达数千亿至万亿美元级别。

对于早期的 RWA Perps 协议而言，优先引入这类在传统市场已具备“完美连续定价”的资产，是降低链上清算风险、快速吸引流动性的最佳路径。

作为进化路径的起点，商品 Perps 培养了链上用户的宏观交易习惯，并在后续的极端行情中展现出了全天候交易的绝对优势。在 2026 年 3 月的地缘政治危机期间，由于传统市场存在开闭市限制，恐慌情绪在链上集中宣泄，Hyperliquid 上的 WTI 原油永续合约 24 小时交易量峰值飙升至 13 ~ 17 亿美元，不仅刷新了链上商品衍生品的历史纪录，甚至一度超越 ETH 合约，成为该平台上仅次于 BTC 的第二大交易品种。

4.2 股票与 ETF 扩张 (2025年7月起)

根据 CoinGecko 2026 Q1 发布的 RWA 行业报告，自 2025 年 7 月起，其他资产类别的 Perps 开始强劲发力，股票与 ETF 领域的全面扩张正式打破了商品独大的格局。

股票 Perps 市场份额从 2025 年 8 月的 0.4% 一路飙升至 2026 年 3 月的 6.0%；ETF Perps 从 2025 年 10 月的 2.8% 稳步增长至 2026 年 3 月的 5.3%（其中标普 500 ETF 即 SPY 贡献了绝大部分交易增量）。

这组核心数据不仅勾勒出 RWA Perps 的品类进化路径，更标志着链上衍生品正式具备了吞吐全球顶级权益与基金资产流动性的能力。

在这一资产扩张周期的顶点，2026 年 3 月 18 日，S&P Dow Jones Indices 正式授权 Trade.xyz 在 Hyperliquid 上发行标普 500 指数永续合约，以 USDC 为保证金，支持全天候交易且无到期日。这是该传统指数巨头历史上首次将其旗舰指数正式授权给链上协议。这一合规与商业层面的双重破局，不仅赋予了链上 RWA 市场前所未有的正统性，更彻底激活了美股大盘指数在加密世界的流动性。

4.3 潜在深水区 (2026 — 未来)

如果说此前资产类别还局限在”高流动性、有公开定价”的路径，那么当下和未来，RWA Perps面对的是一类截然不同的挑战：底层资产本身尚无连续公开价格。债券、私募信贷、利率互换、波动率产品等，在技术层面仍处于早期摸索阶段。但在 2026 年 Q2，Pre-IPO 永续合约已率先通过了市场验证。

2026 年 5 月 14 日，AI 芯片公司 Cerebras（$CBRS）在纳斯达克上市，IPO 定价 185 美元，开盘报 350 美元。在此之前，trade.xyz 于 5 月 1 日以 175 美元参考价在 HIP-3 框架下上线了 CBRS 的 Pre-IPO 永续合约（IPOP）。

挂牌当日开盘前一小时，链上合约报价 340 美元，与实际开盘价 350 美元的误差仅为 2.9%。 同期，面向合格投资者的机构二级平台 Hiive 报价约 220 美元，较实际开盘价低约 37%。整个 14 天 Pre-IPO 窗口内，链上名义成交量达 2.81 亿美元，其中 2.07 亿美元发生在上市当日。据悉，主承销商摩根士丹利在挂牌当日上午将 Hyperliquid 价格作为实时参考信号。

这一结果的意义在于，链上市场对私募公司的定价精度，首次在真实 IPO 中被验证优于传统机构二级市场。

Cerebras 之后，SpaceX SPCX 合约已于 5 月 18 日上线（首日成交量 3300 万美元，OI 2180 万美元）。更大规模的考验在后：OpenAI 目标以约 8520 亿美元估值在 2026 年 Q4 上市，Anthropic 目标约 9000 亿美元估值于 2026 年 10 月上市，若成功将成为历史第二大 IPO。两者的 Pre-IPO 窗口预计跨越数月，远超 Cerebras 的 14 天，若流动性按比例扩展，将产生数倍于 CBRS 的链上成交量。

5. 市场模式对比：三大流派

RWA Perps 市场的技术路线并非线性推进，而是沿三条逻辑各异的路径平行演化。三者本质上都在回答同一个问题：在底层资产没有链上流动性的前提下，如何在链上为其创造出可持续的衍生品市场？

5.1 以 Hyperliquid 及 HIP-3 生态 为代表的订单簿流派

Hyperliquid 的答案是将价格发现内生化：不以外部预言机作为唯一定价来源，而是通过链上订单簿自主形成并维持价格，从而实现 24/7 不间断交易。

其定价机制的核心是冲击价格（Impact Price）：以最后一次预言机价格作为初始锚点，持续计算吃掉一定订单簿深度后的加权成交价，再通过 EMA 对价格路径进行平滑更新；只有当 Impact Price 对当前价格形成实质性穿透时，Mark Price 才会调整。这一设计使得即便在传统市场关闭期间，链上价格也能通过实际订单流自主演进，而非强制冻结。

清算层同样完全在链上闭合。所有仓位由链上抵押资产实时支持，账户风险随每笔撮合及价格更新持续重估；当账户权益跌破维持保证金阈值时，系统自动将清算订单以市价单形式注入订单簿，并引入分阶段强平与冷却机制，以抑制连锁爆仓的扩散。

在此基础上，Hyperliquid 通过 HIP-3 框架将这套基础设施开放给第三方开发者。任何团队可在不重建底层的情况下部署独立 Perp DEX，自定义预言机来源、杠杆参数与资产选择，而撮合逻辑、保证金体系与清算规则则统一由 HyperCore 支撑。目前开发者需质押 500,000 HYPE 进行部署，官方明确表示该门槛将随基础设施成熟逐步下调。

在上述机制框架下，Hyperliquid 和 HIP-3 生态 实际上已经在传统休市的时间窗口中具备了独立于传统市场的价格发现能力。根据第三方数据平台 Loris Tools 统计，截至2026年5月，HIP-3 生态历史总交易量已达 $255.31B，吸引了 272,154 名独立交易者。

然而，CLOB 模式的繁荣高度依赖专业做市商的持续入场。做市商倾向于将资金集中在头部资产上，因为这类资产内生交易量充足、对冲渠道成熟。对于缺乏内生交易量的长尾资产，做市商因对冲成本过高而拒绝参与，直接导致这类资产在链上买卖价差极大、深度极薄，难以形成有效市场。

5.2 Vault 合成流动性

在订单簿流派与混合对冲流派成型之前，以 Synthetix 和 Gains Network 为代表的早期协议已完成了 RWA Perps 的第一轮概念验证。Synthetix 开创了”全局债务池”模型，所有 SNX 质押者作为整体充当对手方，用户可按预言机价格自由交换合成资产；2020 至 2021 年间，Synthetix 曾上线 sAAPL、sTSLA 等链上镜像美股，吸引了大量交易需求，但因休市期间预言机无法更新、协议易遭操纵，2021 年后陆续下架了绝大部分 RWA 品类。Gains Network 则以 USDC 稳定币池为对手方，引入 GNS 代币作为风险缓冲机制，以 Chainlink 预言机加固定点差报价，将”预言机+资金池”模式推向了多品类的高杠杆交易场景。

两者共同证明了一件事：链上用户对传统资产敞口的需求是真实且规模可观的。但它们也清晰地划出了第一代机制的天花板 — — LP 直接充当对手方，意味着当交易者集体盈利时，资金池将承担方向性亏损；无论是全局债务池还是单边稳定币池，都缺乏主动对冲机制，风险只能被动吸收而无法提前疏导。这些未解的矛盾，直接催生了第三种路径。

5.3 以Ostium为代表的混合对冲流派

Ostium 的创始人 Kaledora 对上述问题给出了一个反直觉的答案：放弃链上价格发现。他认为，在 RWA 领域重建订单簿是一种资源浪费 — — 纳斯达克、CME 等全球顶级交易所早已对股票、外汇实现了完美连续定价，链上订单簿在”流动性贫血”的环境下无力与这些万亿级市场竞争。因此，Ostium 直接以预言机作为唯一定价来源，链上只负责结算与风险管理。

这一选择带来了一个确定性的代价：当底层市场关闭，预言机停止更新，协议随之丧失定价能力。Ostium 坦然接受了这一约束，并将其转化为一条明确的操作规则 — — 在每日收盘前 15 分钟，系统自动强制平仓杠杆倍数超过阈值的头寸，以安全性换取部分时段可用性。

在风险承接层面，Ostium 设计了混合对冲的架构：Liquidity Buffer（流动性缓冲）由协议累积收入构成，交易者的盈利先从这里赔付，亏损也先沉淀于此，充当第一道防线；OLP Vault（做市金库）当 Buffer 耗尽时，OLP Vault 才作为直接对手方介入。

2025 年 4 至 6 月，OLP Vault 出现连续三个月亏损 — — 交易者的盈利穿透了第一层缓冲，OLP 承担了真实损失。这一事件清晰地暴露出：两层池结构解决的是风险发生后如何分层吸收，而非如何降低风险积累速率本身。

为此，Ostium 引入了 Imbalance Score（动态失衡评分）机制，实时追踪协议内部的头寸偏斜，并将失衡状态映射为费用调整信号，延缓风险向资金池的累积速度。叠加基于 SOFR 的 rollover 费用（约 5.3% 加风险溢价），Ostium 的定价逻辑由此形成完整闭环：预言机提供价格锚，交易行为在资金池中累积偏斜，偏斜通过 Imbalance Score 被量化为系统风险并反馈至费用层，两层池结构则在风险不可避免时对损失进行分层吸收。

截至 2026 年 5 月，Ostium 历史累计交易量已达 15.96 亿美元，Vault TVL 约 4,067 万美元，在 RWA Perps 协议中居于前列，印证了混合对冲路线的实战可行性。

然而，这一链上存证、链下对冲的架构天然带来对账复杂性的隐患。链下对冲流水与链上清算之间存在时间差与信息不对称，用户和外部审计机构难以实时验证平台是否完成了足额对冲，其整体透明度远低于纯链上闭合方案，也由此沉淀了潜在的系统性摩擦成本。

6. 定价与预言机：最脆弱也是最核心的环节

RWA Perps 的定价难度远高于加密资产，系统必须处理休市窗口的定价真空、企业行动的瞬时跳跃、以及基差的持续积累。

6.1 市场失配：休市窗口的定价断裂

当纳斯达克或 CME 在夜间与周末休市时，链上协议将失去最核心的定价锚点。做市商通常通过在链上与链下市场同步建仓实现 Delta 中性，但当链下对冲渠道关闭时，做市商要么主动撤出流动性，要么显著扩大报价区间，导致订单簿深度骤降、点差非线性扩大，市场流动性迅速枯竭。

若协议继续允许交易，则必须依赖”替代定价机制”，这意味着价格从”外部锚定”转向”内部生成”，可能演变为由链上资金博弈驱动的影子市场。

传统资产在休市期间积累的信息冲击，会在重新开盘时以”跳空”形式一次性释放。这种非连续价格路径对依赖逐步清算机制的永续合约系统构成根本性挑战 — — 价格可能直接跨越多个清算区间，使系统无法在合理价格范围内完成强制平仓，最终导致穿仓与坏账积累。

在高杠杆环境下，即便是 5%–10% 的跳空，也足以击穿保证金体系。一旦系统缺乏额外的风险缓冲，损失将直接传导至流动性提供者或协议本身，威胁其长期可持续性。

6.2 企业行动对价格的冲击

在传统市场，股票拆分、分红除息、ETF 调仓均有标准化的价格调整机制。但对于以预言机为定价锚的 RWA Perps 而言，这些事件会直接触发喂价的非连续跳跃。以除息日为例，现货价格在除息日开盘时会瞬时下跌约等于股息金额，预言机随之同步，导致链上标记价格出现向下跳跃 — — 多头仓位的账面损益瞬间恶化，而这与任何市场力量无关，纯粹是事件驱动的机械调整。股票拆分则要求预言机同步按比例调整价格馈送，若存在哪怕数秒的滞后，极高杠杆下的仓位 PnL 便会出现严重异常，甚至触发错误清算。ETF 调仓的冲击相对温和，通常表现为收盘前成分股的连续买卖压力而非离散跳跃，但在高杠杆环境下同样会放大日内波动率。

各协议对此的处理思路存在根本性差异。Ostium 的立场是：永续合约追踪的是价格变动而非股票所有权，因此不直接补偿股息 — — 除息日跟随预言机价格下跌，并通过非对称 Rollover Fee（按每区块复利、平仓时结算）间接平衡多空双方的持仓成本，将股息影响隐含其中。trade.xyz 则采用更贴近传统期货逻辑的方案：交易时段以现货指数直接报价，闭市及夜盘切换为期货贴现隐含现货，以 EMA 折扣率捕捉利率与股息收益率的差值（r — q），将分红影响自然融入定价，而非事后手动除权。

目前尚无大规模灾难性的公开案例，但早期合成资产协议已预演过这一风险的雏形。Synthetix 在 2021 年后陆续下架 sTSLA 等美股合成资产，根本原因之一正是休市期间预言机无法更新、企业行动与链上状态长期异步，导致协议无法安全维持定价。随着 RWA Perps 规模扩大至数十亿美元量级，原生支持企业行动规范化处理的专用 RWA 预言机（如 Autonom）正逐步成为基础设施层的关键方向。当前阶段，高事件密度期（收益报告日、拆分公告日）的杠杆风险，仍是协议风控体系中尚未完全闭合的敞口。

6.3 基差风险

基差风险是前两节所述定价摩擦的集中显现。基差即链上永续合约的标记价格与底层现货之间的偏差。当底层市场休市、预言机喂价中断，或企业行动触发价格跳跃时，基差便会随时间持续积累。与加密原生永续合约不同，RWA Perps 的基差扩大往往不由链上交易行为驱动，而是由链外市场的结构性约束被动产生：单边 OI 积聚、对冲渠道关闭、极端波动期跨市场摩擦叠加，都会在短时间内使偏差非线性放大。

2026 年 3 月霍尔木兹海峡冲突提供了一次难得的真实量化样本。CME 原油期货周末关闭期间，Hyperliquid 成为全球唯一运营的原油风险转移场所。根据 Blockworks Research 跨 199 个品种-周末观测，Hyperliquid 的收盘前报价在 78.4% 的情况下比周五收盘价更接近 TradFi 周一开盘价，将中位重开误差从 92.8 个基点压缩至 38.4 个基点，方向一致率达 89.9%（R² = 0.785）。链上订单簿的内生定价机制确实能在休市窗口显著收敛基差 — — 但仍有约 21.6% 的情况下链上定价比沿用周五收盘价偏差更大；第二个周末成交量激增 21.8 倍至 3.056 亿美元时，尾部执行质量明显下滑，说明在流动性压力下，基差收敛效果并不稳定。

资金费率是协议收敛基差的核心工具：当链上 Perp 价格高于现货（正基差），多头持续向空头付费，形成价格回归的经济激励。然而在 RWA 场景下，这一机制受到显著约束。外部套利者若想通过“链上做空 Perp + 链下做多现货”的经典基差交易来加速收敛，必须同时具备合规的 TradFi 通道、充足的跨市场资本调度能力及低延迟的对冲执行，这些条件将有效参与者限定在少数持牌专业做市商和对冲基金范围内。非交易时段产生的基差，在外部套利资本缺席的情况下可能在整个周末持续积累，直至开盘才得以释放。

各协议的应对侧重各有不同：Ostium 倾向于通过强制降杠杆与非对称 Rollover Fee 在事前压缩基差扩大的空间；trade.xyz 则通过双模式预言机和动态资金费率将周末基差风险内化至定价结构。归根结底，基差风险是 RWA Perps “价格在链上、资产在链下”这一根本架构矛盾的财务投影，只要底层资产仍然依附于 TradFi 的交易时间表，这一矛盾就不会消失，只能被管理。

以上三类风险指向着同一个根源：预言机在关键时刻无法提供连续、准确、抗操纵的价格。在 RWA Perps 中，预言机不仅是后台工具，它就是产品本身。 任何 1% 的预言机延迟或定价算法错误，在高杠杆环境下都是致命的系统性漏洞。

7. 风险积木：系统性复杂性的叠加

第六部分分析的三类定价风险，若孤立来看尚在可控范围。但 RWA Perps 的危险性在于，这些风险层会依次叠加：底层资产价格冲击触发预言机滞后，滞后经由高杠杆放大为仓位损失，仓位损失引发流动性池穿仓，最终可能招致监管介入导致交易中断。每一层在触发下一层之前都有机会被单独消化，但一旦多层同时激活，风险便以系统性方式释放。

2026 年 3 月的霍尔木兹危机是迄今最完整的复合压力测试：地缘政治冲击（基本面层）触发 CME 周末关闭（市场结构层），链上预言机被迫切入内生定价模式（预言机层），随后成交量在单周末激增 21.8 倍（流动性层），尾部执行质量随之明显下滑 — — 六层风险几乎同时触发。任何一层单独出现都不会酿成系统事件，但叠加之后，协议承受的压力与单层风险不在一个量级。

7.1 方向性风险的结构性困境

与加密资产相比，股票、指数等 RWA 的单边趋势更持久、波动率更低。这一特性对协议流动性池而言是慢性毒药：在加密市场，多空力量频繁反转，LP 的方向性损失有机会自然回撤；但在持续上涨的美股牛市中，采用 Vault 池对手方模型的协议将长期处于净多暴露中，资金池被系统性抽干的速度远快于加密市场。方向性风险因此必须被”外部化” — — 要么通过链下对冲机制转移至更大规模的传统市场，要么通过机制设计主动限制风险暴露上限，否则协议无法实现规模扩展。

7.2 治理风险：参数调整的双刃剑

协议参数本身也是风险来源。保证金率、强平阈值、Imbalance Score 权重等参数的调整，在正常市场中是合理的风控优化，但在高杠杆存量仓位已大规模积累的情况下，任何突然的参数收紧都可能触发连锁清算，将调参行为本身变成系统性事件的导火索。治理机制的设计，如谁有权改参数、改动是否需要时间锁、是否向存量用户预告等，直接决定了这一风险的可控程度。

8. 监管：模糊不等于安全

监管是 RWA Perps 悬在头上的达摩克利斯之剑。当前协议普遍以”离岸+地理围栏”模式运营，通过 Regulation S 豁免服务非美国用户，而非主动寻求合规认定。这一状态并非被允许，而是尚未被追究。

8.1 美国：双重管辖的结构性障碍

美国对 RWA Perps（尤其是股票、ETF 及窄基指数相关产品）的监管障碍源于历史性的管辖权分裂。1982 年 Shad-Johnson 协议确立了 SEC 与 CFTC 对股票衍生品的联合管辖原则，2000 年《商品期货现代化法案》（CFMA）虽通过证券期货产品（SFP）框架部分放开交易，但双重注册与联合监管的合规成本极高，导致实际产品寥寥无几。

在此框架下，以单只股票或窄基指数为底层的 RWA 永续合约极大概率被 SEC 认定为”证券型互换”（SBS），须遵守《1934 年证券交易法》下的 SBS 规则体系，涵盖注册、资本要求、保证金、报告及商业行为标准，同时 CFTC 可能主张其属于”互换”范畴，形成双重管辖。2026 年 3 月 SEC 与 CFTC 签署的最新谅解备忘录（MOU）虽加强了加密资产分类协调，但并未触动股票类衍生品的双重管辖架构。现实结果是，Ostium、trade.xyz 等主流协议均通过地理围栏和服务条款封锁美国用户，依赖 Regulation S 豁免面向非美用户运营。

值得关注的是，Hyperliquid 核心团队于 2025 年 5 月向 CFTC 提交了两封评论信，回应其关于”24/7 衍生品交易与清算”及”永续合约”的两份 RFC，详细阐述了链上架构的风险管理机制，这是链上协议主动参与监管对话的早期信号。CFTC 对纯加密 Perps 态度相对开放，但股票类 RWA 的 SEC 壁垒短期内难以突破。

8.2 欧盟：MiFID II/MiFIR 框架下的高合规门槛

在欧盟，RWA Perps 作为杠杆衍生品，全面落入 MiFID II（指令）与 MiFIR（条例）的监管范围。2026 年 2 月 24 日，ESMA 发布公开声明明确指出：凡提供杠杆敞口且现金结算的永续合约，无论商业名称如何，均很可能触发各成员国已实施的 CFD 产品干预措施，具体包括：主要股票/指数类产品杠杆上限 20:1、大宗商品 10:1、加密资产 2:1；强制风险警示；保证金追缴触发自动平仓；以及负余额保护。

MiFIR 进一步要求交易前/后透明度及向 APA/ARM 提交交易报告，并须在获授权的交易场所执行。MiFID II 的投资者保护框架则对目标市场评估、适当性测试、产品治理及 PRIIPs KID 披露提出完整要求。2024 至 2026 年逐步生效的 MiFID III/MiFIR Review 进一步加强市场数据义务和利益冲突管理要求，合规成本持续上升。ESMA 的立场是”经济实质优先于产品名称”，即链上永续合约不会因其 DeFi 形式而获得豁免。

在此背景下，DeFi 协议通常选择地理封锁欧盟用户，或以”后端清算引擎”角色与持牌投资公司合作，由持牌方承担 KYC 与零售分发责任。

8.3 合规路径建议

当前阶段，RWA 永续合约的可行路径高度集中于“合规防御”与“结构轻量化”： 协议普遍采用合成（非实物交割）架构配合预言机定价，以最大程度降低托管责任；同时，在前端强制执行 IP 与钱包级的地理围栏，并嵌入 OFAC 制裁名单筛查；在法务层面，通过服务条款明确割裂美国用户，主要依托 Regulation S（美国）或 MiFID 豁免（欧盟）来合规地服务离岸客户。中长期而言，与受监管经纪商深度绑定、走“后端清算引擎”的融合模式，将是协议走向机构化的主要路径。

正当加密协议在合规边缘艰难摸索路径时，传统金融巨头也在自上而下地加速将其版图向链上延伸。NYSE 已宣布开发 Tokenized Securities 数字交易平台，支持代币化股票与 ETF 的 24/7 交易及 T+0 链上结算。2026 年 1 月 19 日由 ICE 正式公告，3 月 24 日与 Securitize 签署 MOU，后者将担任首个数字转让代理并以经纪交易商身份参与平台。平台需 SEC 批准，目前处于开发和监管审批阶段，尚未正式上线。NYSE Arca 已获 SEC 批准将交易时间扩展至每天 23 小时/5 天，目标上线日为 2026 年 12 月 6 日，，Nasdaq 也在同步推进类似计划。传统市场的这一推进对 RWA Perps 是双刃剑：短期内全天候差异化优势将受压缩，但跳空风险的降低和套利成本的收窄有助于链上产品的长期规模化。

9. 竞争格局与未来愿景

截至 2026 年 5 月中旬，根据 cmc 数据，RWA Perps 全市场（含 DEX 与 CEX，排除加密资产本位合约）最近一周周成交量达 $55.9B，前四周均值 $46B。渠道分布上，CEX 占比 71.6%，DEX 贡献 28.4% — — 这一比例六个月前不足 15%，上行趋势清晰。

CEX 侧的逻辑是将 RWA Perps 作为衍生品矩阵的自然延伸，嵌入现有产品体系。DEX 侧以 Hyperliquid HIP-3 生态为主导，其余份额由 Ostium、Lighter、EdgeX 等协议分担。

9.1 DEX 内部：HIP-3 的垄断结构与侧翼竞争

在众多 DEX 参与者中，Hyperliquid HIP-3 生态凭借共享订单簿基础设施的先发优势，约占 DEX 总量的六至七成，是当前链上 RWA Perps 市场最大的单一来源。

图源：Dune @yanchii

HIP-3 自 2024 年 10 月上线至今，累计成交量突破 $262.79B，当前全网未平仓合约规模 $2.55B，276,650 名独立交易者完成逾 1.03 亿笔交易。其中，Trade[XYZ] 以 88.9% 的交易量份额和 95.2% 的 OI 集中度主导 HIP-3 内部市场，当前持仓规模达 $958.89M。排名其后的 Dreamcash（1.8% OI）、HyENA（1.4%）、Ventuals（Pre-IPO 专注，0.8%）、Kinetiq（0.5%）合计不足 4%，差距悬殊。

图源：Loris.Tools

Trade[XYZ] 的垄断并非偶然。在共享订单簿基础设施上，它最早构建起高质量做市商网络和最完整的资产覆盖，形成了”流动性→交易量→更多做市商参与”的正反馈。后来者在同一赛道复制这一优势的空间极为有限。

HIP-3 体系之外，各协议以差异化路线构成侧翼。Ostium 在 Arbitrum 上以主动对冲池模式运行，将 LP 偿付能力置于首位，优先覆盖韩国指数（KR2550）、债券 ETF（TLT）、外汇对等 CLOB 难以支撑的长尾资产；Lighter 凭借 CLOB 架构在亚洲股票和外汇品种上形成差异；EdgeX 和 GRVT 以机构级交易体验向专业用户渗透；Avantis、Pacifica、Apex 等协议各自深耕特定资产类别与用户群体。

9.2 CEX 的深度支持：以火币HTX TradFi 为例

在 CEX 侧，以火币HTX 为例，其 TradFi 产品线提供了一个观察交易所战略意图的典型样本。

火币HTX 于 2026 年 2 月正式推出 TradFi 永续合约板块，产品形态与加密永续一致：USDT 本位、无到期日、7×24 小时交易、支持杠杆、可交叉或孤立保证金。初期重心落在大宗商品，包括黄金（XAU/XAUT/PAXG）、白银（XAG）、铂金（XPT）、钯金（XPD）、WTI 原油（USOIL）、布伦特原油（BRENTOIL），并向美股和主要指数全面铺开。

截至 2026 年 6 月 9 日，火币HTX TradFi 板块共上线96个资产，其覆盖范围已形成三层结构。贵金属与能源仍是基本盘，铜（COPPER）、天然气（NATGAS）等工业品相继补全。美股个股层覆盖面最广：英伟达（NVDA）、苹果（AAPL）、微软（MSFT）、谷歌（GOOGL）、亚马逊（AMZN）、台积电（TSM）、博通（AVGO）、英特尔（INTC）等科技主线齐全，摩根大通（JPM）、沃尔玛（WMT）、伯克希尔（BRKB）等传统蓝筹亦已上线，更有 CoreWeave（CRWV）、Circle（CRCL）、Coinbase（COIN）、MicroStrategy（MSTR）、帕兰泰尔（PLTR）等加密-TradFi 交叉概念股，以及美国稀土（USAR）、火箭实验室（RKLB）等主题性标的。指数与 ETF 层则覆盖标普 500（SPX500）、纳指 100（NASDAQ100）、QQQ、SPY、三倍做多半导体 ETF（SOXL）、安硕 MSCI 韩国（EWY）、安硕 MSCI 日本（EWJ）等跨市场品种，多支标注”NEW”，扩张仍在进行中。

火币HTX 依托中心化撮合引擎的低延迟与深度，将 TradFi 合约无缝嵌入加密用户已熟悉的交易界面，降低认知门槛。这与 DEX 侧形成清晰分工，CEX 负责引流与普及，DEX 承接对去中心化有明确诉求的用户与资金，二者并非零和竞争，而是共同扩大整个市场的边界。

9.3 基础设施生态：流动性层与合规工具层

RWA Perps 的竞争格局不仅发生在交易层，流动性供给与合规工具同样是决定胜负的基础变量。流动性层的核心是专业做市商与 Delta-neutral Vault 的双轮驱动。做市商为 HIP-3 高杠杆 RWA 市场提供紧 spread 与深度，其参与质量直接决定了订单簿模式的可用性上限；Delta-neutral Vault 通过对冲现货/期货敞口为 Perp 提供被动流动性并赚取资金费率收益，部分项目已开始探索将 tokenized 资产与链上对冲策略结合，引入 TradFi 机构的流动性来源。这一双轮结构有助于缓解 RWA Perps 固有的基差与跳空风险，但在极端行情下两个轮子可能同时失效 — — 这正是第七部分所讨论的叠加风险的现实写照。

合规工具层决定了 RWA Perps 能否在监管收紧的环境中持续运营。目前主流协议均强制实施地理围栏，结合 Reg S 离岸架构向非美用户提供服务；链上合规防火墙通过白名单、选择性披露（attestations）、ERC-3643 等标准和链上身份钩子进行访问控制；部分项目探索”合规池与无许可池并行”的双轨制，以覆盖不同风险偏好的机构用户。长期趋势指向”DeFi 协议作为后端清算引擎、持牌经纪商作为合规前端”的分层架构，这一模式将成为 RWA Perps 触达机构资金的主要通道。

9.4 未来展望

最终，RWA Perps 将与代币化现货、借贷市场、抵押品系统深度融合，形成一个完整的链上金融协议栈：当 RWA Perps 仓位可作为抵押品进入借贷协议，当期权与结构化产品可以链上 Perp 作为底层标的进行组合，当合规经纪商前端将数亿非加密用户接入这套清算引擎 — — 届时，一个 24/7 全天候、无准入门槛、极高资本效率的全球资产交易层将不再是愿景，而是正在运行中的基础设施。

结语

RWA Perps 代表了 DeFi 试图超越“内卷”并拥抱 100 万亿美元级别传统市场的雄心。然而，快不代表赢。在这个赛道，最后的幸存者将是那些在清算逻辑、预言机鲁棒性和合规性上做得最无懈可击的团队。

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关于 HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures 是火币HTX 的全球投资部门，集投资、孵化和研究于一体，识别全球最优秀和最聪明的团队。作为行业先驱，HTX Ventures拥有超过11年的区块链建设经验，擅长识别该领域内的前沿技术和新兴商业模式。为了在区块链生态系统内推动增长，我们为项目提供全面支持，包括融资、资源和战略建议。

HTX Ventures 目前支持超过 300 个项目，涵盖多个区块链领域，部分高质量项目已经在火币HTX 交易。此外，作为最活跃的FOF基金之一，HTX Ventures 投资于全球30家顶级基金， 并与 Polychain、Dragonfly、Bankless、Gitcoin、Figment 、Nomad、Animoca和 Hack VC 等全球顶级区块链基金合作，共同打造区块链生态系统。访问我们。

如需投资和合作，请随时联系 VC@htx-inc.com

参考资料

1. CoinGecko. RWA Report 2026. https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/rwa-report-2026
2. Trust Wallet. RWA Perpetuals. https://trustwallet.com/glossary/rwa
3. RWA.io. RWA Perp Trading: Let’s Dive In! https://www.rwa.io/post/rwa-perp-trading-let-s-dive-in
4. FalconX (Martin Gaspar). The Transformational Potential of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3. https://www.falconx.io/newsroom/the-transformational-potential-of-hyperliquids-hip-3
5. Shaun da Devens (Blockworks Research). X (Twitter) Post. https://x.com/shaundadevens/status/2041181362728653153
6. Block Scholes. 2026 — the year of RWA perps? https://www.blockscholes.com/premium-research/2026---the-year-of-rwa-perps
7. ESMA. Public Statement on Derivatives in Scope of the CFD Product Intervention Measures. https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2026-02/ESMA35-243228190-8024_-_Public_statement_on_derivatives_in_scope_of_the_CFD_product_intervention_measures.pdf
8. SEC & CFTC. Memorandum of Understanding (SEC-CFTC 2026). https://www.sec.gov/files/mou-sec-cftc-2026.pdf
9. CoinMarketCap Research. RWA Perpetuals: State of the Market — May 2026. https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/rwa-perpetuals-state-of-the-market-—-may-2026

Foreword

RWA Perps are not simply another attempt by the crypto world to mimic traditional finance; they represent an important step in on-chain finance’s shift from “asset-on-chain” to “risk-on-chain.” By embedding the price fluctuations of global macro assets — such as gold, crude oil, U.S. equities, and indices — on-chain 24/7 in the form of perpetual contracts, the “financial Lego” stack of oracles, leverage, and liquidation engines directly assumes the pricing function. Its essence is a shift in the coordinate system: users are no longer trading asset ownership, but rather global macro volatility.

In the first quarter of 2026, this narrative leaped from concept to reality: single-quarter trading volume surpassed the entirety of 2025, Pre-IPO contracts outperformed licensed secondary markets with a mere 2.9% margin of error during actual IPOs, and crude oil Perps became the world’s only operational risk-transfer venue during geopolitical black swan events. However, the rapid expansion in scale did not conceal the sector’s structural constraints — oracle precision, market-closure gaps, LP directional risk, and dual regulatory barriers. Each layer represents a potential breaking point. The long-term decisive factor in this sector will not be determined by the speed of trading volume growth, but by the depth of risk management and compliance architecture.

As the global investment arm of HTX, HTX Ventures has long been tracking the evolution of on-chain derivatives, RWA, and the broader tokenization of global assets, while actively participating in this transformation through investment and incubation. Rather than focusing on the short-term trading volume of RWA perps, this report seeks to clarify the structural thresholds that the sector must cross as it moves from rapid growth toward maturity, and how, in that process, the boundaries between on-chain finance and global capital markets may be redefined.

This report will address the following key issues:

● What is the fundamental difference between RWA Perps and tokenized assets? Why are “price-on-chain” and “asset-on-chain” two completely distinct paths?

● What drove the explosive growth in Q1 2026, and what does HIP-3’s “permissionless market deployment” mean?

● Where are the ceilings and vulnerabilities of the three technical routes: on-chain order books, Vault synthetic liquidity, and hybrid hedging pools?

● How do oracle precision, market-closure gaps, and LP directional risk layer upon each other to create systemic crises?

● How wide is the regulatory gray area, and where does the compliance path lie for these protocols?

● How will the competitive landscape evolve? Are CEXs and DEXs fighting for the same piece of the pie, or are they each carving out new frontiers?

1. Market Overview: An Explosive Q1 2026

In the first quarter of 2026, RWA Perps broke out of the experimental phase and officially entered an exponential growth period driven by demand. Single-quarter trading volume reached $524.8 billion, surpassing the $313.0 billion total for the entirety of 2025 in just three months, while average daily open interest expanded simultaneously by 5.6x to $4.82 billion. The core force driving this inflection point was the launch of the Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol, which saw its market share surge from 2.8% at the beginning of the year to 28.6% by quarter-end. The arrival of the “permissionless market deployment” era compressed the listing cycle of on-chain RWA assets from months of approval down to minutes of operation, directly triggering a massive release of demand across the entire sector.

2. Deep Dive: Dual-Layer Architecture of RWA Perps

Before understanding the explosive rise of RWA Perps, it is necessary to first clarify a fundamental cognitive difference: within the RWA sector, “assets on-chain” and “prices on-chain” are two completely distinct paths, with radical differences in their business logic, target users, and technical barriers. Confusing these two paths is one of the most common sources of misjudgment in the current market narrative.

Tokenized RWA (Asset-on-Chain): This tokenizes real-world assets, where the tokens represent ownership or yield rights to the underlying assets. Typical examples include PAXG (gold tokens) and Franklin Templeton’s tokenized US Treasuries. The essence of this path is the digital mapping of assets, involving comprehensive off-chain infrastructure such as custody, compliance certification, and redemption mechanisms. It features high listing barriers and long deployment cycles, but users obtain real asset entitlements.

RWA Perpetuals (Price-on-Chain, hereinafter referred to as RWA Perps): These refer to on-chain derivatives that provide price exposure to off-chain assets via perpetual contracts. The core lies in allowing traders to engage in leveraged trading on the price movements of underlying assets without needing to hold or custody those assets. Users do not undergo custody or certification processes, nor is there any redemption path. The essence of this path is synthetic exposure to price volatility rather than the asset itself.

2.1 The Binary Structure Model: The Underlying Logic of On-Chain Synthetic Exposure

RWA Perps are not a single system but operates through the synergy of two layers with completely different properties:

Layer 1: Real Asset Reference Layer (Price Anchor): The off-chain real-world market continuously generates price signals — such as the S&P 500 Index, London Spot Gold, and WTI Crude Oil. These real-time price data points, generated by top global exchanges like NASDAQ and CME, are brought on-chain via oracle networks to act as external anchors for contract pricing. This layer itself does not reside on-chain, but it serves as the “source of truth” for the entire system. Its stability and reliability directly determine the safety margin of the upper-layer derivatives.

Layer 2: On-Chain Perpetual Layer (Trade Execution): On top of the price anchor, the on-chain protocol handles all trade execution functions: leverage management, funding rate calculations, margin accounting, and the liquidation engine. This layer’s mechanism is highly aligned with crypto-native Perps — which is precisely why RWA Perps require almost zero learning cost for users. Traders accustomed to trading BTC or ETH on dYdX or Hyperliquid will find the operational interface and usage logic exactly the same when switching to crude oil or S&P 500 contracts.

2.2 Core Differentiation

This structure delivers three key differentiating characteristics, which are also the fundamental reasons why RWA Perps have greater explosive potential on the demand side compared with tokenized RWAs:

No Ownership: Users do not enjoy dividends, voting rights, or physical delivery. This translates to lower compliance barriers and faster listing speeds, as the protocol does not need to handle asset custody and redemption mechanisms. However, it also means users assume pure price risk rather than asset entitlements.

24/7 Trading: This bridges the liquidity gaps of traditional markets — U.S. stock market closures over weekends and the absence of overnight crude oil trading are non-issues in RWA Perps. This is not merely a product convenience feature, but a structural institutional difference carrying substantial significance during extreme market conditions: when an information shock occurs over the weekend, only the on-chain market can instantly price it. This was also the institutional foundation that enabled the on-chain crude oil market to independently assume the price discovery function during the Iranian incident.

Capital Efficiency: Through on-chain collateral (typically USDC or USDT), users can take ultra-low-cost leveraged long or short positions on traditional high-barrier assets like gold and U.S. equities. There is no need to open overseas brokerage accounts, hold physical assets, or undergo tedious KYC processes.

3. Drivers: Why Did RWA Perps Explode in 2026?

In Q1 2026, RWA Perps achieved a quantum leap from experimental products to mainstream markets — with a single-quarter trading volume of $524.8 billion, already exceeding the $313 billion recorded for the entire year of 2025. This explosion was not driven by any single factor, but rather resulted from the resonance of four long-term drivers coupled with a sudden, powerful catalyst.

3.1 Narrative Convergence: Tokenization Educated the Market, Trust Crossed the Threshold

Over the past year, the on-chain scale accumulated by RWA tokenization (especially Treasury bills, private credit, and commodities) grew from approximately $6.4 billion at the beginning of 2025 to around $31.6 billion in Q1 2026. This process established a psychological foundation of trust among users and institutions regarding the viability of bringing real-world assets on-chain. As tokenized bonds and gold ETFs continuously secured institutional endorsements, user trust in “non-crypto assets on-chain” crossed a critical threshold.

Building upon this foundation, RWA Perps emerged as a form of “synthetic exposure”: users do not need to actually hold the underlying assets; they only need to form a view on price to open leveraged positions, achieving far higher capital efficiency than direct tokenization. The core narrative shifted: users no longer ask “Is on-chain crude oil trustworthy”, but instead directly ask “how do I go long Brent crude oil on-chain.” This narrative convergence from “asset tokenization” to “risk-on-chain” served as the cognitive prerequisite for the RWA Perps explosion.

3.2 Asset Quality Upgrade: More Familiar High-Beta Assets Attract Liquidity Inflows

The explosion of RWA Perps was also fueled by a shift in the quality of the underlying assets. Previously, the primary trading targets of on-chain Perps were concentrated in BTC, ETH, and high-volatility altcoins, requiring users to simultaneously evaluate project fundamentals, tokenomics, unlock pressures, and market sentiment. Conversely, RWA Perps introduce global macro assets like gold, crude oil, U.S. equities, and major indices — assets that global investors have studied and priced for decades. These assets possess more mature historical volatility records, clearer macro drivers, and are inherently easier for non-crypto users to understand.

In other words, RWA Perps opened a new on-chain trading session for high-quality assets. Instead of creating entirely new risks, it brought existing high-beta exposures from traditional financial markets on-chain via methods featuring higher capital efficiency, extended trading hours, and lower barriers to entry. For traders, this lowers the cost of understanding. For protocols, it means that larger-scale and more sustainable external liquidity has the opportunity to enter on-chain markets.

3.3 Habit Migration: Zero-Learning-Curve Switch for Crypto Traders

Crypto-native users have long been deeply accustomed to the fundamental paradigm of perpetual contracts: leverage up to 50x–100x+, long/short dynamics driven by funding rates, and 24/7 non-stop liquidation mechanisms. This entire cognitive framework can be seamlessly reapplied to RWA Perps. When NVDA, crude oil, and the S&P 500 appear on the same Perp interface, the learning curve for on-chain users to switch assets is virtually zero.

This migration generated quantifiable cross-asset traffic. Data from Hyperliquid once revealed that RWA contracts accounted for up to 44% of the platform’s total trading volume at its peak, meaning that a considerable portion of capital was not new inflow from traditional financial users, but rather existing crypto capital, originally rotating between BTC and ETH contracts, being reallocated toward TradFi assets.

3.4 Infrastructure Transformation: Efficient Pricing Engines Clear the Final Hurdle

While the first three factors represented demand-side readiness, the true breakthrough on the supply side came from the maturation of infrastructure. Early RWA Perps protocols faced three core pain points: frozen oracle prices during traditional market closures, market-gap openings triggering cascading liquidations, and fragmented liquidity for long-tail assets. Starting in 2025, engineering solutions to these problems began to emerge one after another. Hyperliquid HIP-3 introduced a permissionless market deployment framework stacked on top of an on-chain Central Limit Order Book (CLOB). This allowed prices to evolve autonomously via order flow during windows without external oracle support, utilizing an EMA drift pricing mechanism to smooth out price paths during market closures. Early protocols like Gains Network validated the product model using a combination of “USDC pools + Chainlink oracles + fixed spreads,” with its v2/v3 iterations driving the overall maturation of the pricing engine. Ostium’s active hedging pools and forced deleveraging designs prioritized LP solvency, ensuring that market-closure gap risks were no longer fatal vulnerabilities for pool-based models. At the oracle layer, intense competition among Stork, Pyth, and Chainlink accelerated the price-feed precision and response speeds for TradFi assets, providing increasingly sophisticated solutions for corporate actions, market-close pricing, and basis risk. Together, these three infrastructure innovations transformed RWA Perps from a workable but fragile experiment into robust infrastructure capable of bearing real risk.

3.5 The Catalyst: A Live Test via a Geopolitical Black Swan

The aforementioned drivers received their most compelling real-world validation during a weekend in March 2026.

Taking March 7–8 as a case study, when military actions by the US and Israel targeting Iran occurred over the weekend window, traditional crude oil markets came to a complete standstill. CME’s WTI price remained frozen at Friday’s closing range (around $91–$92), leaving traditional systems with no mechanism to digest this sudden informational shock.

Meanwhile, the CL-USDC perpetual contract on Hyperliquid surged rapidly within hours, initially climbing into the $96–$109 range and further touching near $115 as the conflict escalated. During these 48 hours, the on-chain market not only provided the only continuous price curve, but also became the only effectively operating crude oil price discovery mechanism globally.

The corresponding trading data confirms the active intervention of market participants: Trade.xyz reached a single-day trading volume of $1.7 billion on Sunday, March 8. With traditional markets completely shut down, this figure reflected genuine risk-pricing demand rather than speculative noise.

Even more critical was the subsequent “lagged confirmation” effect: when traditional markets reopened on Monday, March 9, CME crude oil prices immediately showed a significant gap and moved toward the price range formed on-chain over the weekend. This phenomenon demonstrated that the on-chain market was not engaging in noise trading during the closure, but was executing accurate real-time pricing of information shocks. To an extent, the opening price of the traditional market was merely a lagged confirmation of the on-chain price.

The significance of this event for the RWA Perps sector is structural: it upgraded “24/7 trading” from a marketing buzzword into a stress-tested, real-world infrastructure capability. When an extreme market event actually occurred, the on-chain market did not experience downtime; it operated normally and successfully executed price discovery.

4. The Evolution of Asset Classes

The expansion of RWA Perps follows a logic progression from “simple and high-frequency” to “complex and low-frequency.”

4.1 Commodity-Led Phase (Before Mid-2025)

During the early evolution of RWA Perps, when on-chain infrastructure and oracle networks were still in their foundational stages of refinement, commodities like gold, silver, and crude oil became the most viable anchors for capturing global macro volatility on-chain. This was due to their natural global pricing sovereignty and strong cross-market consensus. Take crude oil as an example: as one of the most liquid assets in traditional finance (TradFi), the average daily trading volume for WTI crude oil futures on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) consistently maintains a scale of millions of contracts, with nominal trading volumes reaching hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.

For early RWA Perps protocols, prioritizing the introduction of these assets — which already possessed “perfect continuous pricing” in traditional markets — was the optimal path to mitigate on-chain liquidation risks and rapidly bootstrap liquidity.

As the starting point of the evolutionary path, commodity Perps cultivated macro trading habits among on-chain users and demonstrated the absolute advantage of 24/7 trading during subsequent extreme market conditions. During the geopolitical crisis in March 2026, while traditional markets faced opening and closing constraints, panic and volatility found a concentrated release on-chain. The 24-hour trading volume peak for WTI crude oil perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid surged to $1.3 billion — $1.7 billion. This not only set a historic record for on-chain commodity derivatives but also temporarily flipped the ETH contract volume, becoming the second-largest traded asset on the platform behind only BTC.

4.2 Expansion into Stocks and ETFs (From July 2025)

According to the Q1 2026 RWA industry report published by CoinGecko, Perps for other asset classes began to gain strong momentum in July 2025. The full-scale expansion into stocks and ETFs officially broke the dominance of commodities.

The market share of Equities Perps surged from 0.4% in August 2025 to 6.0% in March 2026. ETF Perps steadily grew from 2.8% in October 2025 to 5.3% in March 2026, with the S&P 500 ETF, namely SPY, contributing the vast majority of incremental trading volume.

This set of core data not only outlines the category evolution path of RWA Perps, but also marks the point at which on-chain derivatives officially acquired the capacity to absorb liquidity from the world’s top equity and fund assets.

At the peak of this asset expansion cycle, on March 18, 2026, S&P Dow Jones Indices officially authorized Trade.xyz to issue an S&P 500 Index perpetual contract on Hyperliquid, using USDC as margin, supporting 24/7 trading, and carrying no expiration date. This was the first time in the history of the traditional index giant that it had officially authorized its flagship index to an on-chain protocol. This dual breakthrough at both the compliance and commercial levels not only granted unprecedented legitimacy to the on-chain RWA market, but also fully activated the liquidity of major U.S. equity indices in the crypto world.

4.3 Potential Deep Waters (2026 and Beyond)

While previous asset classes were limited to paths featuring high liquidity and public pricing, RWA Perps are now and will increasingly face a fundamentally different challenge: underlying assets that lack continuous, public pricing. Bonds, private credit, interest rate swaps, and volatility products remain in the early engineering exploration phases. However, in Q2 2026, Pre-IPO perpetual contracts became the first to successfully clear market validation.

On May 14, 2026, AI chip company Cerebras ($CBRS) listed on Nasdaq, with an IPO price of $185 and an opening price of $350. Before this, on May 1, trade.xyz had launched the CBRS Pre-IPO perpetual contract (IPOP) under the HIP-3 framework at a reference price of $175.

One hour before the official opening bell on listing day, the on-chain contract was quoting at $340, representing a mere 2.9% margin of error against the actual opening price of $350. In contrast, Hiive, an institutional secondary platform catering to accredited investors, was quoting around $220 — approximately 37% below the actual opening price. Across the entire 14-day Pre-IPO window, on-chain nominal trading volume reached $281 million, with $207 million concentrated on the listing day alone. Notably, reports indicated that the lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, utilized the Hyperliquid price as a real-time reference signal on the morning of the listing.

The significance of this result lies in the fact that, for the first time in a real IPO, the pricing accuracy of the on-chain market for a private company was validated as superior to that of the traditional institutional secondary market.

Following Cerebras, the SpaceX SPCX contract went live on May 18, recording a first-day trading volume of $33 million and an open interest (OI) of $21.8 million. Even larger tests loom on the horizon: OpenAI aims to go public in Q4 2026 at an estimated valuation of $852 billion, and Anthropic targets an October 2026 listing at a valuation of approximately $900 billion, which would mark the second-largest IPO in history if successful. The Pre-IPO windows for both are expected to span several months — far exceeding the 14-day window of Cerebras. If liquidity scales proportionally, it will generate on-chain trading volumes multiple times larger than those seen with CBRS.

5. Market Models Comparison: The Three Major Schools of Thought

The technical landscape of the RWA Perps market is not moving along a single, linear trajectory. Instead, it is evolving along three parallel paths, each guided by its own distinct architectural logic. In essence, all three models attempt to answer the exact same question: when the underlying assets have no on-chain liquidity, how can a sustainable derivatives market for them be created on-chain?

5.1 The Order Book School: Represented by Hyperliquid & the HIP-3 Ecosystem

Hyperliquid’s solution is to internalize price discovery. Rather than relying solely on external oracles for pricing, it utilizes an on-chain Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) to autonomously generate and maintain prices, enabling true 24/7 trading.

Pricing Mechanism: The core of its design is the Impact Price. Taking the last oracle price as an initial anchor, the engine continuously calculates a weighted execution price after simulating the consumption of a set amount of order book depth. This path is then smoothed using an Exponential Moving Average (EMA). The contract’s Mark Price only adjusts when the Impact Price substantially penetrates the current price. This ensures that even when traditional markets are closed, on-chain prices can evolve organically based on real order flow rather than being forcefully frozen.

Liquidation Layer: Liquidations are entirely closed-loop and on-chain. All positions are backed in real time by on-chain collateral, with account risk continuously revalued with every order match and price update. The moment an account’s equity drops below its maintenance margin threshold, the system automatically injects liquidation orders into the book as market orders, utilizing a phased liquidation and cooling-off mechanism to suppress the spread of cascading liquidations.

The HIP-3 Framework: Hyperliquid opens this institutional-grade infrastructure to third-party developers via the HIP-3 protocol. Any team can deploy an independent Perp DEX without rebuilding the underlying ledger. Developers can fully customize oracle sources, leverage parameters, and asset selections, while the core matching engine, margin systems, and liquidation rules remain uniformly powered by HyperCore. Currently, deployment requires a stake of 500,000 HYPE, a threshold the team has stated will scale downward as the infrastructure matures.

Through this framework, Hyperliquid and the HIP-3 ecosystem have achieved authentic price discovery completely decoupled from traditional financial markets during market-closure windows. According to statistics from the third-party data platform Loris Tools, as of May 2026, the HIP-3 ecosystem’s cumulative historical trading volume had reached $255.31B, attracting 272,154 unique traders.

However, the prosperity of the CLOB model is highly dependent on the continuous participation of professional market makers. Market makers tend to concentrate capital in leading assets, because these assets have sufficient endogenous trading volume and mature hedging channels. For long-tail assets that lack endogenous trading volume, market makers refuse to participate due to excessively high hedging costs, directly resulting in extremely wide bid-ask spreads and very thin depth on-chain, making it difficult to form an effective market for such assets.

5.2 Vault Synthetic Liquidity

Before the order book and hybrid hedging schools fully matured, early protocols represented by Synthetix and Gains Network completed the first proof-of-concept phase for RWA Perps. Synthetix pioneered the “Global Debt Pool” model, where all SNX stakers acted collectively as the pooled counterparty, allowing users to trade synthetic assets frictionlessly at pure oracle prices. Between 2020 and 2021, Synthetix launched on-chain mirrored US equities like sAAPL and sTSLA, attracting massive trading demand. However, because oracles could not update during traditional market closures, the protocol became highly vulnerable to latency arbitrage and manipulation, leading to the delisting of almost all RWA asset classes after 2021. Gains Network iterated on this by utilizing a USDC stablecoin pool as the counterparty, introducing the GNS token as a programmatic risk-buffer mechanism. By pairing Chainlink oracles with a custom fixed-spread model, Gains successfully pushed the “oracle + liquidity pool” framework into highly leveraged, multi-asset trading environments.

Both protocols successfully proved a vital thesis: on-chain demand for exposure to traditional financial assets is real, immediate, and massive. However, they also clearly illuminated the ceiling of first-generation mechanisms. Having LPs act directly as the counterparty means that when traders collectively win, the liquidity pool takes a direct directional loss. Whether dealing with a global debt pool or a single-sided stablecoin vault, these models lack active hedging mechanisms — meaning systemic risk can only be passively absorbed rather than proactively mitigated. These unresolved vulnerabilities directly catalyzed the birth of the third path.

5.3 The Hybrid Hedging School: Represented by Ostium

Ostium’s founder, Kaledora, offered a highly counterintuitive answer to the RWA problem: Abandon on-chain price discovery entirely. He believes that rebuilding an order book in the RWA sector is a waste of resources — top global exchanges such as Nasdaq and CME have already achieved near-perfect continuous pricing for stocks and foreign exchange, while on-chain order books, in an environment of “liquidity anemia,” are unable to compete with these trillion-dollar markets. Therefore, Ostium directly uses oracles as the sole pricing source, with the chain only responsible for settlement and risk management.

Choosing this path incurs a definitive cost: when the underlying traditional market closes and the oracle stops updating, the protocol loses its pricing capability. Ostium accepts this constraint, transforming it into a strict operational mandate: 15 minutes prior to daily market closure, the system automatically and forcibly liquidates any positions exceeding predefined leverage thresholds, deliberately sacrificing partial-hour availability for systemic security.

To manage the financial risk of the pool, Ostium utilizes a sophisticated dual-layered Hybrid Hedging Architecture: The Liquidity Buffer: Funded entirely by accumulated protocol fee revenue. Trader profits are paid out from this buffer first, and trader losses flow back into it, serving as the first line of defense. The OLP Vault only intervenes as the direct counterparty when the Buffer is exhausted.

Between April and June 2025, the OLP Vault suffered three consecutive months of net losses as trader profits broke cleanly through the first-layer Liquidity Buffer, forcing OLP LPs to absorb real financial damage. This event clearly exposed that the two-layer pool structure solves how to absorb losses in layers after risk occurs, rather than how to reduce the rate at which risk accumulates in the first place.

To solve this, Ostium introduced the Imbalance Score mechanism. It tracks internal position skew within the protocol in real time and maps the imbalance state into fee adjustment signals, slowing the accumulation of risk into the liquidity pool. Combined with SOFR-based rollover fees (approximately 5.3% plus a risk premium), Ostium’s pricing logic thus forms a complete closed loop: oracles provide the price anchor; trading behavior accumulates skew within the liquidity pool; the skew is quantified as system risk through the Imbalance Score and fed back into the fee layer; and the two-layer pool structure absorbs losses in tiers when risk becomes unavoidable.

As of May 2026, Ostium’s cumulative historical trading volume had reached $1.596 billion, with Vault TVL of approximately $40.67 million, placing it among the leading RWA Perps protocols and validating the practical feasibility of the hybrid hedging route.

However, this architecture of on-chain record-keeping and off-chain hedging naturally introduces the hidden risk of accounting complexity. There are time lags and information asymmetries between off-chain hedging flows and on-chain liquidations, making it difficult for users and external auditors to verify in real time whether the platform has completed sufficient hedging. Its overall transparency is far lower than that of a purely on-chain closed-loop solution, thereby accumulating potential systemic friction costs.

6. Pricing and Oracles: The Most Fragile Yet Core Link

Pricing RWA Perps is vastly more complex than pricing crypto-native assets. The system must navigate pricing vacuums during traditional market closures, instantaneous pricing jumps triggered by corporate actions, and the continuous accumulation of basis risk.

6.1 Market Mismatch: Pricing Disconnection During Market Closures

When major venues like NASDAQ or the CME close overnight and over weekends, on-chain protocols lose their primary pricing anchors. Traditional market makers generally maintain a delta-neutral stance by simultaneously executing offsetting positions across on-chain and off-chain venues. However, the moment off-chain hedging pipelines shut down, market makers face a stark choice: either completely pull their liquidity or aggressively widen their bid-ask spreads. This causes order book depth to plummet and spreads to widen non-linearly, rapidly draining market liquidity.

If a protocol permits continuous trading during these periods, it must rely on “alternative pricing mechanisms.” This forces pricing to shift from an external anchor to internal generation, effectively transforming the venue into a shadow market driven entirely by on-chain capital dynamics and speculation.

Furthermore, informational shocks that accumulate while traditional markets are closed are released all at once as a “price gap” (or jump) at the next opening bell. This non-continuous price path poses a fundamental structural hazard to perpetual contract systems that rely on progressive liquidation engines. Because the opening price can instantly jump past multiple liquidation price tiers, the engine is rendered incapable of executing forced liquidations within a reasonable price range, ultimately leading to negative equity positions and the accumulation of bad debt.

In a high-leverage environment, even a 5%–10% gap is enough to break through the margin system. Once the system lacks additional risk buffers, losses will be transmitted directly to liquidity providers or the protocol itself, threatening its long-term sustainability.

6.2 Impact of Corporate Actions on Asset Pricing

In traditional financial markets, structural adjustments such as stock splits, ex-dividend events, and ETF rebalancings rely on standardized pricing adjustment mechanisms. However, for RWA Perps that use oracles as their primary pricing anchor, these events directly trigger non-continuous jumps in price feeds. Take the ex-dividend date as an example. On the ex-dividend date, the spot price of an equity drops instantaneously by an amount roughly equal to the dividend payout. As the oracle synchronizes with this change, the on-chain mark price experiences a sharp downward jump. This instantly deteriorates the profit and loss (PnL) of long positions through a purely mechanical, event-driven adjustment that is entirely decoupled from market forces. Splits require oracle networks to simultaneously adjust price feeds on a proportional basis. Even a few seconds of latency can cause severe abnormalities in highly leveraged position PnLs, potentially triggering erroneous cascading liquidations. The impact of ETF rebalancings is relatively muted, typically manifesting as continuous buying or selling pressure on underlying component stocks right before market close rather than discrete price jumps. Nonetheless, under high-leverage conditions, it significantly amplifies intraday volatility.

Different protocols approach this challenge with fundamentally different design philosophies. Ostium’s stance is that perpetual contracts track price movements rather than stock ownership, and therefore do not directly compensate for dividends. Instead, the contract price is allowed to drop alongside the oracle feed on the ex-dividend date, while an asymmetric Rollover Fee (compounded per block and settled upon position closure) is utilized to indirectly balance holding costs between long and short positions, implicitly embedding the dividend impact. Trade.xyz adopts a solution closer to traditional futures logic. During standard trading hours, the protocol quotes spot indices directly. During market closures and overnight sessions, the pricing engine transitions to a model where futures discounts imply spot values. It utilizes an EMA discount rate to capture the differential between interest rates and dividend yields (r — q), naturally absorbing the distribution impact into the pricing structure rather than relying on retroactive manual ex-rights adjustments.

To date, no large-scale catastrophic public incidents have occurred, but early synthetic asset protocols have already foreshadowed the embryonic form of this risk. Synthetix’s progressive delisting of sTSLA and other US equity synthetic assets after 2021 was rooted partly in the fact that oracles could not update during market closures, leaving corporate actions and on-chain state asynchronous over extended periods. This made it impossible for the protocol to maintain pricing safely. As RWA Perps scale into the multi-billion-dollar range, dedicated RWA oracles natively designed to standardize the handling of corporate actions (e.g. Autonom) are gradually emerging as a critical direction at the infrastructure layer. At the current stage, leverage risk during high-event-density windows (earnings release dates, split announcement dates) remains an unclosed exposure within protocol risk management frameworks.

6.3 Basis Risk

Basis risk is the concentrated financial manifestation of the pricing frictions discussed above. In this context, the basis represents the divergence between the mark price of the on-chain perpetual contract and the underlying off-chain spot asset. When the underlying market closes, oracle feeds are interrupted, or corporate actions trigger price jumps, the basis accumulates continuously over time. Unlike crypto-native perpetuals, basis expansion in RWA Perps is rarely driven by on-chain trading behavior. Instead, it is passively generated by the structural constraints of off-chain TradFi markets. One-sided open interest (OI) accumulation, closed hedging pipelines, and cross-market frictions during extreme volatility windows can cause this divergence to expand non-linearly over short periods.

The Strait of Hormuz conflict in March 2026 provided a rare, quantitative, real-world sample. While CME crude oil futures were closed over the weekend, Hyperliquid operated as the global market’s sole functioning venue for crude oil risk transfer. Data from Blockworks Research across 199 asset-weekend observations revealed the following: In 78.4% of cases, Hyperliquid’s pre-market close quote was closer to the Monday TradFi opening price than Friday’s traditional close. The median reopening error was compressed from 92.8 basis points down to 38.4 basis points. The directional alignment rate reached 89.9% (R² = 0.785). This data proves that an endogenous on-chain order book pricing mechanism can significantly converge the basis during market-closure windows. However, in approximately 21.6% of cases, the on-chain price diverged further from the Monday open than Friday’s frozen price. Furthermore, during the second weekend — when trading volume surged 21.8x to $305.6 million — tail-end execution quality degraded noticeably. This indicates that under sudden liquidity stress, basis convergence efficiency remains highly unstable.

Funding rates are the core tool through which protocols engineer basis convergence: when the on-chain Perp price trades at a premium to spot (positive basis), longs continuously pay shorts, creating an economic incentive for price regression. In the RWA sector, however, the execution of this mechanism faces significant operational barriers. For external arbitrageurs to exploit classic basis trades — such as shorting the on-chain Perp while simultaneously going long the off-chain spot asset — they must possess: Fully compliant, institutional-grade TradFi access pipelines. Robust cross-market capital deployment capabilities. Ultra-low-latency hedging execution engines. These structural prerequisites strictly limit effective market participation to a small circle of licensed professional market makers and hedge funds. Consequently, basis accumulated during non-trading hours frequently persists throughout the entire weekend due to the absence of external arbitrage capital, finding release only when traditional markets reopen.

Protocols approach this with distinct strategic emphases: Ostium favors ex-ante compression of potential basis expansion through forced deleveraging and asymmetric Rollover Fees, whereas trade.xyz internalizes weekend basis risk directly into its pricing architecture via dual-mode oracles and dynamic funding rates. Ultimately, basis risk is the financial projection of the fundamental architectural contradiction inherent to RWA Perps: prices are on-chain, but assets are off-chain. As long as the underlying assets remain bound to the rigid operational schedules of traditional finance, this structural mismatch cannot be eliminated — it can only be managed.

The three categories of risk above all point to the same root cause: the failure of oracle networks to deliver continuous, precise, and manipulation-resistant price feeds at critical junctures. In RWA Perps, the oracle is not merely a backend utility — it is the product itself. Under high-leverage market conditions, any 1% oracle latency or minor pricing algorithm error transforms instantly into a fatal, systemic exploit.

7. Risk Stacking: Systemic Cascades and Compounding Complexities

The three dimensions of pricing risk analyzed in Section 6 might appear manageable when isolated. The danger of RWA Perps, however, lies in how these risk layers stack sequentially: a price shock in the underlying asset triggers oracle latency; this latency is amplified by high leverage into catastrophic position losses; these losses cause a breach of the liquidity pool (underwater equity); and the resulting chaos triggers regulatory intervention, halting all trading. While each layer can theoretically be absorbed individually before activating the next, a synchronized trigger across multiple layers unleashes systemic failure.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis in March 2026 serves as the most complete compound stress test recorded to date. During this single event, six layers of risk were activated near-simultaneously: a geopolitical shock (fundamental layer) triggered a weekend CME closure (market structure layer), forcing on-chain oracles into endogenous pricing modes (oracle layer), which collided with a 21.8x spike in weekend trading volume (liquidity layer), causing tail-end execution quality to sharply degrade (execution layer). While no single layer alone would have sparked a systemic crisis, their compounding effect subjected protocols to a scale of financial pressure orders of magnitude greater than any isolated risk vector.

7.1 The Structural Dilemma of Directional Risk

Compared to crypto assets, RWAs such as equities and indices exhibit more persistent one-sided trends and lower volatility. This characteristic acts as a slow-acting poison for protocol liquidity pools. In crypto markets, long-short forces reverse frequently, giving LPs opportunities to naturally recoup directional losses. But during a sustained U.S. equity bull market, protocols utilizing the Vault counterparty model remain in a state of net long exposure for extended periods, with their liquidity pools being systematically drained at speeds far exceeding what is typical in crypto markets. Directional risk must therefore be “externalized” — either transferred to larger-scale traditional markets via off-chain hedging mechanisms, or actively capped through mechanism design that limits exposure ceilings. Without one of these solutions, protocols cannot scale.

7.2 Governance Risk: The Double-Edged Sword of Parameter Adjustments

Protocol parameters themselves are also a source of risk. Adjustments to margin ratios, liquidation thresholds, or Imbalance Score weightings represent reasonable risk-control optimizations under normal market conditions. However, when high-leverage positions have already accumulated to substantial size, any sudden parameter tightening can trigger cascading liquidations, turning the act of parameter adjustment itself into the fuse for a systemic event. The design of governance mechanisms determines the controllability of this risk vector. Key structural safeguards include who has the authority to modify parameters, whether changes require timelocks, whether existing users are given advance notice, etc.

8. Regulation: Ambiguity is Not a Safe Harbor

Regulation remains the ultimate Damocles’ sword hanging over the RWA Perps sector. The current cross-protocol norm relies heavily on an “offshore operations + geofencing” playbook, leveraging Regulation S exemptions to serve non-U.S. clients rather than proactively pursuing formal compliance certifications. This status is not so much permitted as it is not yet prosecuted.

8.1 United States: The Structural Barriers of Dual Jurisdictional Mandates

In the United States, regulatory roadblocks for RWA Perps — particularly products tied to single equities, ETFs, and narrow-based indices — stem from a historical fracture in jurisdictional authority. The 1982 Shad-Johnson Accord established a framework of joint jurisdiction between the SEC and the CFTC over equity derivatives. While the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 partially opened up trading via the Security Futures Products (SFP) framework, the dual-registration requirements and compliance costs under this joint model proved so high that very few live products ever launched.

Under this prevailing framework, an on-chain perpetual contract tracking a single stock or a narrow-based index will, with near certainty, be classified by the SEC as a Security-Based Swap (SBS). This classification binds the protocol to the exhaustive SBS rulebook under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which mandates: Formal platform registration and stringent capital requirements. Strict margin, trade reporting, and business conduct standards. Simultaneously, the CFTC may assert authority over the same contract under the broader definition of a “swap,” resulting in overlapping dual jurisdiction. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the SEC and CFTC in March 2026 strengthened coordination on crypto asset classification, but did not alter the dual-jurisdiction architecture governing equity derivatives. Consequently, leading protocols like Ostium and trade.xyz deploy aggressive geofencing and strict Terms of Service (ToS) filters to block U.S. users, choosing instead to rely entirely on Regulation S exemptions to serve offshore liquidity.

Notably, the core team behind Hyperliquid submitted two formal comment letters to the CFTC in May 2025. These were sent in response to the agency’s Requests for Comment (RFCs) regarding “24/7 Derivative Trading and Clearing” and “Perpetual Contracts,” offering an in-depth look at risk-management mechanisms within on-chain architectures. While this represents a notable early signal of an on-chain protocol engaging in regulatory dialogue, the CFTC’s open-minded stance applies primarily to pure crypto Perps; the SEC’s defensive walls around equity-linked RWAs remain structurally intact.

8.2 European Union: High Compliance Thresholds Under MiFID II/MiFIR

Within the European Union, RWA Perps qualify as leveraged derivatives and fall directly into the scope of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and Regulation (MiFIR). On February 24, 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a decisive public statement clarifying its stance: Any cash-settled perpetual contract providing leveraged market exposure, regardless of its commercial branding or DeFi label, will likely trigger existing Contracts for Difference (CFD) product intervention measures across member states. These include: leverage caps of 20:1 for major equity/index products, 10:1 for commodities, and 2:1 for crypto assets; mandatory risk warnings; automatic close-out upon margin call triggers; and negative balance protection.

MiFIR further imposes pre- and post-trade transparency obligations and requires trade reporting to APAs/ARMs, with execution mandated on authorized trading venues. MiFID II’s investor protection framework imposes comprehensive requirements covering target market assessment, suitability testing, product governance, and PRIIPs KID disclosures. This compliance burden is mounting with the rollout of the MiFID III/MiFIR Review (phasing in between 2024 and 2026), which tightens market data obligations and conflict-of-interest rules. ESMA’s underlying doctrine is clear: economic substance takes absolute precedence over legal terminology. On-chain perpetual protocols will receive no special exemptions based purely on their DeFi form.

Facing these barriers, DeFi protocols generally choose to geoflock EU users or pivot to a “backend clearing engine” model, partnering with licensed investment firms that assume full responsibility for KYC and retail distribution.

8.3 Recommended Compliance Paths

At the current stage, viable pathways for RWA perpetual contracts are highly concentrated around “compliance defense” and “structural minimization.” Protocols broadly adopt a synthetic (non-physically-settled) architecture paired with oracle-based pricing to minimize custodial liability. At the front-end, they enforce IP- and wallet-level geofencing while embedding OFAC sanctions list screening. At the legal layer, terms of service are used to clearly sever US users, with offshore clients served compliantly under Regulation S (US) or MiFID exemptions (EU). Over the medium to long term, the primary path toward true institutionalization involves deep integrations with regulated traditional brokerages, establishing the DeFi protocol as an off-market, high-efficiency backend clearing engine.

While decentralized protocols tread cautiously through regulatory gray zones, traditional financial giants are rapidly scaling their own on-chain footprints from the top down. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced the development of its own Tokenized Securities digital trading platform, designed to support 24/7 trading and T+0 on-chain settlement for tokenized equities and ETFs. Following a formal announcement by ICE on January 19, 2026, the exchange signed an MOU with Securitize on March 24, 2026, positioning the firm to serve as the platform’s initial digital transfer agent and participating broker-dealer. This platform requires formal SEC approval and remains in active development.Concurrently, NYSE Arca secured SEC approval to extend its trading hours to 23 hours a day, 5 days a week, with an official target launch date set for December 6, 2026. Nasdaq is moving swiftly to implement a near-identical schedule. This top-down advance by traditional institutions represents a double-edged sword for the RWA Perps vertical: the differentiation advantage of round-the-clock trading will be compressed in the short term, but the reduction in gap risk and the narrowing of arbitrage costs will support the long-term scaling of on-chain products.

9. Competitive Landscape and Future Vision

As of mid-May 2026, CoinMarketCap (CMC) data indicates that the total RWA Perps market — including both centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and excluding crypto-asset margin contracts — recorded a weekly trading volume of $55.9 billion, with a four-week moving average of $46.0 billion. In terms of channel distribution, CEXs account for 71.6% of market share, while DEXs contribute 28.4%. Notably, the DEX market share stood at less than 15% six months ago, demonstrating a clear and aggressive upward trajectory for decentralized alternatives.

The operational philosophy on the CEX side treats RWA Perps as a natural extension of their existing derivative matrices, seamlessly embedding macro assets into established product suites. Conversely, the DEX landscape is overwhelmingly dominated by the Hyperliquid HIP-3 ecosystem, with remaining market share split among protocols like Ostium, Lighter, and EdgeX.

9.1 The DEX Landscape: The HIP-3 Monopoly Structure vs. Flank Competitors

Among decentralized participants, the Hyperliquid HIP-3 ecosystem captures approximately 60% to 70% of total DEX volume, leveraging the first-mover advantage of its shared order book infrastructure to position itself as the single largest source of on-chain RWA Perps liquidity.

Since its launch in October 2024, HIP-3 has accumulated a cumulative trading volume of $262.79B, with current network-wide open interest of $2.55B and 276,650 unique traders having executed over 103 million transactions. Within the HIP-3 ecosystem, Trade[XYZ] maintains an absolute monopoly, commanding 88.9% of trading volume and 95.2% of open interest concentration, with current position size reaching $958.89M. The next tier of competitors — Dreamcash (1.8% OI), HyENA (1.4%), Ventuals (Pre-IPO focused, 0.8%), and Kinetiq (0.5%) — collectively account for less than 4%, reflecting an enormous gap.

Trade[XYZ]’s monopoly position is no accident. By deploying early on the shared order book infrastructure, it was able to secure a premier network of professional market makers and the most comprehensive asset coverage. This triggered a powerful flywheel effect: deeper liquidity attracted higher trading volume, which in turn brought in more market makers. The window for newer entrants to replicate this exact model within the same ecosystem has effectively closed.

Outside the HIP-3 ecosystem, other protocols form a flanking layer through differentiated strategies. Ostium operates on Arbitrum with its active hedging pool model, prioritizing LP solvency above all else, and focusing on long-tail assets that CLOBs struggle to support, such as the Korean index (KR2550), bond ETFs (TLT), and FX pairs. Lighter leverages its CLOB architecture to differentiate in Asian equities and FX instruments. EdgeX and GRVT penetrate professional users with institutional-grade trading experiences. Avantis, Pacifica, Apex, and others each cultivate specific asset classes and user segments.

9.2 Deep Support from CEXs: The Case of HTX TradFi

On the centralized exchange front, HTX’s “TradFi Perpetual” vertical offers an informative case study of CEX strategic design.

HTX launched its TradFi perpetual contracts section in February 2026. The products utilize the exact same architectural mechanics as crypto-native perpetuals: USDT-margined, no expiration dates, 24/7 continuous trading, leverage support, and cross/isolated margin options. While the initial focus was anchored in commodities — such as Gold (XAU/XAUT/PAXG), Silver (XAG), Platinum (XPT), Palladium (XPD), WTI Crude (USOIL), and Brent Crude (BRENTOIL), marking an aggressive expansion into U.S. equities and major global indices.

As of June 9th, 2026, the HTX TradFi sector had listed a total of 96 assets, with its coverage matured into a three-tiered asset matrix: Core Commodities: Precious metals and energy assets remain the fundamental layer, newly supplemented by industrial base metals like Copper (COPPER) and Natural Gas (NATGAS). U.S. Equities Tier: Features complete coverage of mega-cap technology leaders (NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, TSM, AVGO, INTC) alongside traditional blue chips (JPM, WMT, BRKB). Crucially, the exchange lists high-beta, crypto-TradFi crossover equities (CoreWeave [CRWV], Circle [CRCL], Coinbase [COIN], MicroStrategy [MSTR], Palantir [PLTR]) and topical thematic stocks like USA Rare Earth (USAR) and Rocket Lab (RKLB). Indices and ETFs: Offers cross-market exposures including the S&P 500 (SPX500), Nasdaq 100 (NASDAQ100), QQQ, SPY, Direxion 3x Semiconductor Bull ETF (SOXL), iShares MSCI South Korea (EWY), and iShares MSCI Japan (EWJ), with several listings tagged “NEW” — indicating that expansion is ongoing.

By leveraging the low latency and depth of its centralized matching engine, HTX seamlessly embeds TradFi contracts into the trading interface that crypto users already know, lowering the cognitive barrier. This forms a clear division of labor with the DEX side: CEXs handle user acquisition and mainstream onboarding, while DEXs absorb users and capital with explicit demand for decentralization. Rather than a zero-sum conflict, this dynamic expands the aggregate addressable market.

9.3 Infrastructure Ecosystem: The Liquidity and Compliance Tooling Layers

The competitive landscape of RWA Perps does not unfold solely at the trading layer. Liquidity provisioning and compliance tooling are equally decisive variables in determining who wins. The core of the liquidity layer is the dual-engine drive of professional market makers and Delta-neutral Vaults. Market makers provide tight spreads and deep liquidity to HIP-3’s high-leverage RWA markets, with the quality of their participation directly determining the upper bound of usability for the order book model. Delta-neutral Vaults provide passive liquidity for Perps by hedging spot/futures exposure, earning yield from funding rates in the process. Some projects have begun exploring the combination of tokenized assets with on-chain hedging strategies to draw in liquidity sources from TradFi institutions. This dual-engine structure helps mitigate the basis and gap risks inherent to RWA Perps. However, under extreme market conditions, both wheels may fail simultaneously. This is precisely the real-world manifestation of the compounding risk discussed in Section 7.

The compliance tooling layer determines whether RWA Perps can sustain operations in an environment of tightening regulation. Mainstream protocols today uniformly enforce geofencing, combined with Reg S offshore architectures to serve non-US users. On-chain compliance firewalls implement access controls through whitelists, selective disclosure (attestations), standards such as ERC-3643, and on-chain identity hooks. Some projects explore a dual-track system of “compliant pools alongside permissionless pools” to cover institutional users with varying risk appetites. The long-term trend points toward a layered architecture in which “DeFi protocols serve as back-end clearing engines while licensed brokerages serve as compliant front-ends.” This model will likely become the primary channel through which RWA Perps reach institutional capital.

9.4 Future Outlook

Ultimately, RWA Perps will converge with tokenized spot markets, on-chain credit facilities, and collateral management protocols to form a unified, on-chain financial technology stack. The true inflection point will occur when: Active RWA Perp positions can be seamlessly posted as high-grade collateral within decentralized lending protocols. Exotic options and structured financial products natively use on-chain Perps as their underlying risk anchors. Regulated traditional brokerage front-ends connect hundreds of millions of non-crypto users directly into this decentralized clearing engine. When these conditions are met, a 24/7/365, permissionless, highly capital-efficient global asset trading layer will cease to be a theoretical vision and become the dominant running infrastructure of global finance.

Conclusion

RWA Perps represent DeFi’s ambition to move beyond inward-looking liquidity cycles and engage with the $100 trillion traditional financial market. However, in this arena, speed of growth does not guarantee victory. The ultimate winners in this sector will not be the protocols that scale volume the fastest, but the teams that build the most flawless execution logic, the most resilient oracle networks, and the most robust compliance architectures.

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About HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.

HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active FOF (Fund of Funds) funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.

Feel free to contact us for investment and collaboration at VC@htx-inc.com

Reference

1. CoinGecko. RWA Report 2026. https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/rwa-report-2026
2. Trust Wallet. RWA Perpetuals. https://trustwallet.com/glossary/rwa
3. RWA.io. RWA Perp Trading: Let’s Dive In! https://www.rwa.io/post/rwa-perp-trading-let-s-dive-in
4. FalconX (Martin Gaspar). The Transformational Potential of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3. https://www.falconx.io/newsroom/the-transformational-potential-of-hyperliquids-hip-3
5. Shaun da Devens (Blockworks Research). X (Twitter) Post. https://x.com/shaundadevens/status/2041181362728653153
6. Block Scholes. 2026 — the year of RWA perps? https://www.blockscholes.com/premium-research/2026---the-year-of-rwa-perps
7. ESMA. Public Statement on Derivatives in Scope of the CFD Product Intervention Measures. https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2026-02/ESMA35-243228190-8024_-_Public_statement_on_derivatives_in_scope_of_the_CFD_product_intervention_measures.pdf
8. SEC & CFTC. Memorandum of Understanding (SEC-CFTC 2026). https://www.sec.gov/files/mou-sec-cftc-2026.pdf
9. CoinMarketCap Research. RWA Perpetuals: State of the Market — May 2026. https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/rwa-perpetuals-state-of-the-market-—-may-2026

Executive Summary

The macroeconomic environment delivered a complex mix of persistent inflation and moderating consumer demand, effectively neutralizing any expectations for an imminent Federal Reserve policy pivot. The U.S. labor market demonstrated resilient, albeit slowing, growth with 172,000 added nonfarm payrolls and a 4.3% unemployment rate, ensuring that the cost of capital will remain restrictively elevated for the foreseeable future. Simultaneously, global regulatory architectures are shifting from ad-hoc enforcement to structured market design, evidenced by the SEC’s FY2026–FY2030 strategic plan prioritizing digital asset frameworks, the HKMA’s Tokenised Bond Expert Group, and South Korea’s transition to risk-based crypto transfer supervision.

The digital asset ecosystem was hammered by a severe liquidity contraction, suffering a staggering $2.34 billion in total net outflows. This massive capital flight was driven by a $1.59 billion drop in fiat-backed stablecoins and record-breaking spot ETF liquidations, which saw $1.72 billion exit Bitcoin products and $174.4 million drain from Ethereum funds. Consequently, market sentiment plunged into “Extreme Fear” as the total market cap fell 11.1% to $2.16 trillion. Bitcoin cratered 13.3% to $63,301, and Ethereum suffered a steep 17.3% beta decay to crash below the critical $1,700 floor, dragging the broader altcoin and infrastructure sectors down with it.

Despite the brutal secondary market capitulation, enterprise infrastructure scaling and foundational venture funding demonstrated sharp institutional focus. Venture deployment hit a multi-year low of just $84 million, yet capital aggressively targeted cash-flowing market infrastructure, highlighted by SignalPlus’s $50 million raise for institutional derivatives and WasabiCard’s stablecoin payment rails. Corporate treasury management is also maturing into complex capital structuring; BitMine upsized a 9.50% Series A preferred stock offering to aggressively fund Ethereum accumulation, while traditional titans like Mastercard and Charles Schwab aggressively expanded 24/7 crypto futures and multi-chain stablecoin settlement networks.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> May Jobs Report Reinforced the Higher-for-Longer Macro Setup

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 172,000 in May, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.3%. The labor market is slowing compared with prior cycle highs, but it is not breaking. For risk assets, this reduced the urgency for near-term Fed easing and kept pressure on duration-sensitive assets, including crypto, growth equities, and venture-backed token projects. The market reaction was straightforward: stronger labor resilience means fewer immediate monetary-policy relief catalysts.

> SEC Draft Strategic Plan Explicitly Prioritized Digital Assets and On-Chain Infrastructure

The SEC’s FY2026–FY2030 draft strategic plan included a dedicated objective to provide a clearer regulatory foundation for digital assets and distributed ledger technologies. It also referenced tokenized offerings, custody, trading, staking, and on-chain financial infrastructure. This is strategically significant because it suggests that the U.S. regulatory conversation is shifting from ad hoc enforcement toward structured rulemaking and market-structure design.

> Fed Beige Book Highlighted Inflation Pressure and Softer Consumer Demand

The Federal Reserve’s June Beige Book showed that economic activity and inflation both increased modestly in recent weeks, while consumer and business stress remained visible. The key macro read-through is that the economy is not weak enough to force rapid easing, yet inflation remains sticky enough to keep real rates restrictive. This is an unfavorable mix for speculative crypto beta because liquidity-sensitive assets need either falling rates or strong growth acceleration; this week delivered neither.

Rest of the World

> Hong Kong HKMA Established a Tokenised Bond Expert Group

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced the formation of a Tokenised Bond Expert Group to support the further development of tokenised bond markets. This is a meaningful step for Hong Kong’s RWA roadmap because it targets institutional debt-market infrastructure rather than retail token speculation. For tokenization investors, Hong Kong continues to position itself as a regulated hub for on-chain capital markets experimentation.

> South Korea Moved Toward Risk-Based Crypto Transfer Supervision

South Korea’s financial authorities moved to adjust virtual-asset transfer rules by reducing reliance on a fixed mandatory reporting threshold and shifting greater responsibility to exchanges for risk-based monitoring. This is important for Korean exchanges, stablecoin flows, and cross-border transfers because compliance responsibility is moving deeper into platform-level transaction monitoring. The direction is not anti-crypto; it is anti-uncontrolled-flow.

>UK FCA Added Hyperliquid to Its Warning List

The UK Financial Conduct Authority added Hyperliquid to its warning list, indicating that the firm may be promoting financial services or products without FCA authorization. This is a clear reminder that fast-growing offshore perpetual DEX models face increasing regulatory perimeter risk as they scale. For investors, product-market fit alone is not enough; regulatory accessibility and jurisdictional strategy will increasingly determine valuation durability.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold is undergoing a short-term corrective consolidation after failing to hold the upper $4,450–4,480/oz range, with the 5-day move down around 2.22%. The sharp leg lower suggests profit-taking and weaker momentum, but the price has started to stabilize around the $4,300–4,330/oz area, indicating that gold’s safe-haven and monetary-hedge demand remains relatively resilient. Overall, gold looks mildly bearish in the short term but not structurally broken.

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver is showing a much weaker technical profile than gold, falling sharply from the $74–75/oz area to around $67.9/oz, with continued pressure below the $69–70/oz recovery zone. The move reflects a higher-beta liquidation within precious metals, likely driven by reduced speculative positioning and weaker industrial-growth risk appetite. Compared with gold, silver’s underperformance signals a more defensive rotation in metals, making silver short-term bearish and relatively weaker.

HTX Ventures Angle: The combination of sticky inflation and a resilient labor market guarantees a prolonged restrictive monetary stance. For speculative crypto beta, this stagflation-lite environment is highly toxic, as liquidity-sensitive assets require either falling rates or robust economic acceleration. However, the regulatory signals are overwhelmingly constructive for institutional infrastructure. The SEC’s strategic pivot toward structured rulemaking, combined with the HKMA’s focus on tokenized bonds, confirms that global jurisdictions are racing to build compliant on-chain capital markets. Our venture deployment must ruthlessly avoid offshore, regulatory-arbitrage models — which are increasingly targeted by agencies like the FCA — and exclusively fund compliant, enterprise-grade architectures capable of interfacing directly with these emerging statutory frameworks.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (June 1 ~ June 5 ):

● BTC: -$1.72B (Led by BlackRock IBIT outflows at $1.34B)

● ETH: -$174.4 M (Led by BlackRock ETHA outflows at $124.8M)

Source: Coinglass

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (Jun 3 ~ Jun 8 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$1.59 B

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Cryptomarket (Jun 3 ~ Jun 8 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$2.34 B

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 60 (Greed) to 40 (Fear)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index was dropped slightly from 35 (Fear) to 15 (Extreme Fear).

HTX Ventures Angle: The market is experiencing an absolute capital starvation event. A $2.34 billion weekly liquidity drain, compounded by intense spot ETF redemptions and a $1.59 billion stablecoin contraction, indicates that broad-market fiat is aggressively exiting the ecosystem. The plunge into “Extreme Fear” confirms that internal capital recycling has failed to support secondary valuations. In a high-yield macro environment, institutions are unwinding duration risk and hoarding cash. Until stablecoin minting velocities demonstrate a sustained structural reversal, trying to catch falling knives in the mid-to-small cap sector is a severely misallocated risk. We remain in a strict capital preservation and accumulation-phase posture.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (3 Jun ~ 9 Jun )

> Global crypto market cap dropped drastically by 11.1% to ~$2.16T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): -13.3%

● Current Price: $63,301.24

● Fluctuation Analysis: Macro-Driven De-Risking & Corporate Supply. Bitcoin’s breakdown was driven by a combination of stronger U.S. dollar momentum, higher yields, persistent spot-ETF outflows, and weakening risk appetite. Strategy’s earlier 32 BTC sale added symbolic pressure because it challenged the market’s perception of corporate BTC treasuries as untouchable reserves. However, this should not be framed as major supply pressure, as the company subsequently resumed accumulation with a 1,550 BTC purchase.

● Support Level: $62,000 — $63,000 (Currently acting as the critical defense line; buyers must defend this zone with verifiable spot volume to prevent further capitulation).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): -17.3%

● Current Price:$1,685.25

● Fluctuation Analysis:Beta Decay & Liquidity Drain. Ethereum underperformed Bitcoin during the broader liquidity contraction, reflecting classic high-beta weakness. While corporate treasury accumulation remained active, including BitMine’s latest ETH purchase, the buying was insufficient to offset market-wide de-risking and the breakdown below the $2,000 psychological level.

● Support Level: $1,650 (The localized bottom established early in the session; a failure here exposes the smart-contract layer to severe multiple compression).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: -14.0%

● Current Valuation: $897 Billion

● Fluctuation Analysis: Aggressive Capitulation. The broader Altcoin sector suffered the most acute multiple compression, with high-beta majors like Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Cardano (ADA) dropping between 18% and 28% respectively. This synchronized capitulation indicates a complete absence of internal sector rotation; speculative capital is executing a hard pivot to safety, rapidly unwinding long-tail Web3 narratives in response to tightening financial conditions.

● Support Level: $850 Billion (A macro structural floor that must hold to prevent a total technical breakdown of the mid-to-small cap ecosystem).

Source: CoinGecko

Sectors Performance

The digital asset market is undergoing a broad short-term risk-off rotation, with capital moving away from higher-beta narratives and speculative infrastructure exposure. The sharpest weekly weakness is concentrated in Infrastructure (-17.6%), Artificial Intelligence (-16.3%), and Layer 2 (-16.0%), indicating active de-risking across growth-heavy and high-momentum categories despite still-elevated trading activity. DeFi (-11.3%) remains under pressure but is showing early relative stabilization on the 24h window, while RWA (-5.3%) continues to outperform on a relative basis, suggesting stronger institutional stickiness and more defensive market positioning. Overall, the sector trend still points to distribution rather than accumulation, with the recent bounce looking more like a short-term relief move than a confirmed reversal.

Source: CoinGecko(Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

HTX Ventures Angle: The synchronized, double-digit capitulation across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major altcoins confirms a complete absence of internal sector rotation; capital is executing a hard pivot to safety. The fact that high-momentum narratives like AI and Layer 2s suffered the most severe multiple compression (-16% to -17%) proves the market is aggressively punishing speculative duration risk. However, the relative outperformance of Real World Assets (-5.3%) reinforces our thesis: capital is hiding in protocols with mathematically provable economic utility and institutional anchoring. We must leverage this drawdown to selectively acquire foundational infrastructure at distressed multiples while entirely avoiding long-tail consumer applications.

4/ Security Incidents

>Zcash Orchard Vulnerability Triggered a Severe Market Repricing

The Zcash ecosystem disclosed a critical Orchard counterfeiting vulnerability after security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered the issue. The fix was completed on 2 June, and the vulnerability was publicly discussed during the week. Because Zcash privacy design limits full supply-audit visibility, the ecosystem could not conclusively prove whether the bug had been exploited. ZEC sold off sharply following the disclosure. This incident is especially important because it shows that privacy-preserving systems face a unique auditability trade-off: stronger privacy can reduce external verification capacity during a security crisis.

> PiggyBank LAB Vault Drawdowns Highlighted Strategy and Risk-Control Failure

PiggyBank LAB reported abnormal vault drawdowns linked to basis-trading errors and suspected market-manipulation dynamics. PANews cited estimated NAV declines of approximately 15% for the USDC vault, 12% for SPYx, and 9% for JitoSOL. This was not a simple smart-contract hack; it was a portfolio construction and execution-risk failure. For DeFi yield products, the lesson is direct: investors must diligence strategy mechanics, liquidity assumptions, counterparties, oracle dependencies, and drawdown limits, not only smart-contract audits.

> IronWorm Supply-Chain Malware Targeted Developer and Web3 Infrastructure

Security researchers reported IronWorm, a Rust-based self-replicating malware campaign distributed through malicious npm packages. The malware targeted environment variables, cloud credentials, crypto wallets, SSH keys, and npm publishing tokens, with propagation behavior that could compromise developer workflows. This is highly relevant for Web3 because many protocols depend on open-source packages, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub workflows, and wallet-connected developer environments. Supply-chain compromise is becoming a protocol risk, not just an enterprise IT issue.

HTX Ventures Angle: This week’s security failures strictly redefine protocol risk parameters. The PiggyBank LAB drawdowns are a stark reminder that portfolio construction, oracle dependencies, and execution basis-risk are just as dangerous as flawed solidity code. Furthermore, the Zcash incident highlights a fundamental trade-off: aggressive privacy limits external verification capacity during a crisis, immediately breaking market trust. Finally, the IronWorm supply-chain malware proves that securing CI/CD pipelines and developer environments is now a critical security primitive. We must expand our technical due diligence to encompass execution strategy mechanics and supply-chain infrastructure, not just standard smart-contract audits.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

>Strategy’s Shift to Bitcoin Liquidity Management

Strategy’s latest update shows a more nuanced shift rather than a full move into active Bitcoin selling: after a rare 32 BTC sale used to support preferred-stock distributions, the company resumed accumulation by purchasing 1,550 BTC for approximately $101.3 million, bringing total holdings to 845,256 BTC. The key investment signal is that MSTR remains structurally long Bitcoin, but its capital stack is becoming more liquidity-sensitive as preferred dividends, common-share issuance, and cash-reserve management now sit alongside BTC accumulation as core priorities.

> BitMine’s Ethereum Treasury Expansion

BitMine’s latest material update is its upsized 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock offering, priced at $80 per share for 3.5 million shares, with proceeds intended for general corporate purposes including additional ETH/digital asset purchases, staking and validator infrastructure expansion, working capital, Ethereum ecosystem investments, and potential common-stock repurchases. The investment read-through is that BMNR is clearly adopting a Strategy-style crypto treasury financing model, but centered on ETH; the upside is faster Ethereum treasury growth without immediate common-equity dilution, while the risk is the recurring preferred-dividend burden if ETH price performance, staking yield, or market liquidity weakens.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Mastercard Expanded Stablecoin Settlement Capabilities Across Multiple Stablecoins and Networks

Mastercard expanded its settlement capabilities to include multiple regulated stablecoins, including USDC, PYUSD, USDG, USDP, RLUSD, and SoFiUSD, across networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, Canton, Tempo, and XRPL. The expansion also involves partners including Cross River, Lead Bank, CBW Bank, ARQ, and Nuvei. This is one of the clearest signals that stablecoins are becoming institutional settlement infrastructure rather than only crypto trading collateral.

> Franklin Templeton and MoonPay Integrated Tokenized Money Market Access

Franklin Templeton and MoonPay announced a partnership to expand institutional access to tokenized money market funds through MoonPay Trade and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI platform. This is strategically important because it connects regulated asset management with crypto-native distribution. The implication is that tokenized fund products are increasingly moving from passive pilots into embedded liquidity infrastructure.

> Charles Schwab Expanded Nearly 24/7 Crypto Futures Trading on thinkorswim

Charles Schwab announced that select cryptocurrency futures, including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and Ripple products, are now available for nearly 24/7 trading on thinkorswim platforms. This is a significant retail-brokerage development because it brings always-on crypto futures access into a mainstream brokerage environment. For the market, the long-term effect is greater convergence between traditional futures infrastructure and crypto-native trading hours.

> Binance Futures Added New U.S. Equity-Linked Perpetual Contracts

Binance Futures launched additional USDⓈ-M perpetual contracts linked to traditional listed equities, including DELL, IBM, NOW, CRM, IREN, and ONDS. This continues the exchange-level trend of merging crypto-native perpetual mechanics with traditional equity exposure. It also shows that offshore and global platforms are moving quickly to capture synthetic equity demand before regulated U.S. markets fully mature similar products.

HTX Ventures Angle: The line between corporate finance, legacy payment networks, and digital asset treasuries has officially been erased. BitMine utilizing high-yield preferred equity (9.50%) to aggressively scale an Ethereum treasury proves that TradFi capital markets are actively funding on-chain staking yield strategies. Concurrently, Mastercard integrating multi-chain stablecoin settlement and Franklin Templeton plugging tokenized money markets into MoonPay confirms that stablecoins are now mission-critical institutional settlement rails, not just trading collateral. As offshore exchanges like Binance syntheticize U.S. equities, the race for global, 24/7 liquidity convergence is accelerating.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

> Eigenlayer (EIGEN) unlocked approximately 1.29 million tokens. This accounts for 0.42% of its existing circulation, valued at roughly $1.7 million.

> Taiko (TAIKO) unlocked approximately 81.55 million tokens. This massive unlock represents 69.37% of its existing circulation and is valued at about $46.9 million.

> Spectral (SPEC) unlocked approximately 3.62 million tokens. This accounts for 17.57% of its existing circulation and is valued at about $3.7 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 5 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$84 million.

Some major highlights:

SignalPlus: US$50 Million Series B1 at US$500 Million Post-Money Valuation

SignalPlus closed a US$50 million Series B1 round at a US$500 million post-money valuation. The round was led by HashKey Capital, with follow-on participation from BlockBooster and AppWorks, while Goldman Sachs served as sole financial advisor. SignalPlus provides institutional-grade digital asset options and derivatives trading infrastructure, including position management, order execution, risk attribution, and strategy analytics. The raise is highly relevant because derivatives infrastructure remains one of the few crypto categories with clear institutional willingness to pay, especially as regulated and professional trading demand expands.

WasabiCard: Pre-A Financing Brings Cumulative Funding Close to US$10 Million

Stablecoin payment infrastructure platform WasabiCard completed a Pre-A financing round with participation from Vision Plus Capital and 01VC, following earlier Seed backing from Vernal Capital and Avenir Group. The company said cumulative funding is now close to US$10 million. WasabiCard provides global card issuing, enterprise payouts, multi-currency settlement, and stablecoin payment infrastructure. The company also disclosed more than 500 enterprise clients, over 500,000 issued cards, and more than US$1 billion in processed transaction volume. This is a strong example of capital moving toward stablecoin infrastructure with direct real-world payment utility.

HTX Ventures Angle: A multi-year low in venture funding ($84M) strictly mirrors the macro liquidity drought. However, the capital that is being deployed is highly strategic. SignalPlus raising $50 million at a half-billion-dollar valuation proves that institutional derivatives infrastructure is one of the few categories with a clear, proven willingness to pay. Similarly, WasabiCard’s ability to raise capital backed by $1 billion in real-world processed volume demonstrates that VCs are demanding verifiable traction and cash-flowing business models. We must maintain absolute discipline, funding only founders building revenue-generating infrastructure and institutional onboarding ramps.

8/ HTX Ventures Portfolio News

>RedStone Implements SEP-40 Oracle Standard on Stellar for RWA Scaling

RedStone has deployed the SEP-40 oracle standard on Stellar, providing interoperable, high-frequency pricing for the network’s rapidly growing RWA ecosystem, which has quadrupled to over $2B in tokenized assets in the past year. This unified pricing interface enables protocols to integrate standardized data for collateral markets, liquidations, and composability without custom adapters, reducing fragmentation and supporting institutional-grade onchain RWA infrastructure as Stellar transitions from issuance to functional DeFi usage.

> Ramp Network Integrates Monad for Seamless Fiat On/Off-Ramps

Ramp Network has launched support for Monad, enabling users to buy, sell, and swap MON, USDC, USDT0, and AUSD directly with one tap from their bank account — no bridges or new wallets required. As one of the most credible new high-performance EVM chains, Monad benefits from Ramp’s infrastructure connecting fiat and crypto across 150+ countries, with users also able to earn up to 5 USDC in rewards through the integration.

9/ Watchlists (June 10 — June 12, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● Jun 10: Macro Data & Global Rates — The U.S. will release the highly anticipated May Consumer Price Index (CPI). Concurrently, the Bank of Canada is scheduled to announce its latest interest rate decision, providing critical forward guidance on global monetary easing.

● Jun 11: Macro Data & European Policy — The U.S. will publish its May Producer Price Index (PPI) and initial jobless claims. Following this, the European Central Bank (ECB) will deliver its own pivotal interest rate decision.

● Jun 12: Public Markets Mega-IPO — SpaceX is targeting a June 12 Nasdaq listing under the ticker “SPCX,” with market reports indicating a valuation range around $1.75T–$1.8T. If completed as planned, the IPO could absorb a meaningful amount of risk appetite and influence broader sentiment toward high-growth technology and crypto-linked assets.

● Jun 12: Regulatory Enforcement — Major retail brokerages Futu and Tiger Brokers will officially pause all buy-side trading and capital deposits for mainland Chinese accounts, marking a significant enforcement of cross-border capital controls.

Crypto-Specific

● Jun 10: TradFi Convergence — Binance is scheduled to launch its Fully Paid Securities Lending (FPSL) product, allowing eligible users to lend fully owned securities for income while temporarily giving up proxy voting rights.

● Jun 10: Major Unlocks — HOME will unlock a massive ~19.79% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$40.2M) Magic Eden (ME) unlocks approximately $10.4M.

● Jun 11: Derivatives Infrastructure — Bybit will permanently transition its Open Interest (OI) calculation methodology from double-sided to single-sided counting. This structural update aligns with institutional derivatives reporting standards and will temporarily alter the optical size of exchange-wide leverage.

● Jun 12: Token Unlock — Aptos (APT) will unlock approximately 11.31 million tokens, representing ~0.67% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$7.6M).

References

1.SignalPlus. (2026, June 1). SignalPlus closes B1 round at US$500M valuation to accelerate global expansion and advance derivatives trading technology. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/signalplus-closes-b1-round-at-us500m-valuation-to-accelerate-global-expansion-and-advance-derivatives-trading-technology-302787253.html

2.WasabiCard. (2026, June). WasabiCard, payment unicorn-in-the-making, closes Pre-A backed by Vernal Capital, Avenir Group, Vision Plus Capital and 01VC. EQS News. https://www.eqs-news.com/news/corporate/wasabicard-payment-unicorn-in-the-making-closes-pre-a-backed-by-vernal-capital-and-avenir-group-vision-plus-capital-and-01vc/b4a8f2c9-875c-4b54-bd16-19d1a059e347_en

3.Reuters. (2026, June 4). SpaceX tells banks it won’t move its $135-a-share IPO price. https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/spacex-tells-banks-it-wont-move-its-135-a-share-ipo-price-2026-06-04/

4.University of Michigan. (2026). Surveys of Consumers: Data release dates. https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

5.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). Schedule of releases for the Consumer Price Index. https://www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/cpi.htm

6.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). Producer Price Index home. https://www.bls.gov/ppi/

7. Bank of Canada. (2026). Scheduled dates for interest rate announcements. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/core-functions/monetary-policy/key-interest-rate/

8. European Central Bank. (2026). Monetary policy decisions. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/govcdec/mopo/html/index.en.html

9.Zcash Community Forum. (2026, June). The Orchard counterfeiting vulnerability and next steps. https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/the-orchard-counterfeiting-vulnerability-and-next-steps/56015

10. PiggyBank. (2026, June). PiggyBank LAB vault drawdown statement. X. https://x.com/piggybank_fi/status/2063227763134279983

11. JFrog Security Research. (2026, June). IronWorm: Shai-Hulud’s rustier cousin. https://research.jfrog.com/post/iron-worm-shai-hulud-rustier-cousin/

12.Mastercard. (2026, June 3). Mastercard expands settlement capabilities to include stablecoin. https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2026/june/mastercard-expands-settlement-capabilities-to-include-stablecoin.html

13. Franklin Templeton. (2026, June 3). Franklin Templeton and MoonPay partner to expand institutional access to tokenized money market funds. https://www.franklintempleton.com/press-releases/news-room/2026/franklin-templeton-and-moonpay-partner-to-expand-institutional-access-to-tokenized-money-market-funds

14. Charles Schwab. (2026, June 3). Schwab announces latest round of enhancements to retail trading experience. https://pressroom.aboutschwab.com/press-releases/press-release/2026/Schwab-Announces-Latest-Round-of-Enhancements-to-Retail-Trading-Experience/default.aspx

15. Binance. (2026, June 3). Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M DELL, IBM, NOW, CRM, IREN and ONDS perpetual contracts. https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/d77e2d77ea21405d9ef2cd7c6974ea5f

16.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026, June 5). The employment situation — May 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_06052026.htm

17. Reuters. (2026, June 5). Strong May jobs number sends yields, rate expectations higher. https://www.reuters.com/business/view-strong-may-jobs-number-sends-yields-rate-expectations-higher-2026-06-05/

18. Reuters. (2026, June 3). US economic activity, inflation both up in recent weeks, Fed survey shows. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-economic-activity-inflation-both-up-recent-weeks-fed-survey-shows-2026-06-03/

19.U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2026). Draft strategic plan FY2026–FY2030. https://www.sec.gov/files/draft-strategic-plan-fy26-fy30.pdf

20. Hong Kong Monetary Authority. (2026, June 5). HKMA establishes Tokenised Bond Expert Group. https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/news-and-media/press-releases/2026/06/20260605-3/

21. Maeil Business Newspaper. (2026, June 5). South Korea adjusts virtual asset transfer reporting rules. https://www.mk.co.kr/en/stock/12066752

22. Financial Conduct Authority. (2026). Warning list: Hyperliquid. https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/warning-list-unauthorised-firms

23.Van Straten, J. (2026, June 8). MSTR buys 1,550 BTC, boosts cash reserves to $1 billion. CoinDesk. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/06/08/strategy-buys-1-550-bitcoin-boosts-cash-reserves-to-usd1-billion?utm_source=chatgpt.com

24.BitMine Immersion Technologies, Inc. (2026, June 5). BitMine Immersion Technologies announces pricing of upsized Series A perpetual preferred stock offering. TradingView. https://www.tradingview.com/news/chainwire%3A7802a3ba4094b%3A0-bitmine-immersion-technologies-announces-pricing-of-upsized-series-a-perpetual-preferred-stock-offering/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Executive Summary

The global macroeconomic landscape experienced a stark reality check this week as core indicators exposed systemic structural friction. April’s Headline PCE inflation unexpectedly accelerated to 3.8% year-over-year, dismantling any remaining assumptions of a clean monetary easing cycle and cementing elevated capital costs for the remainder of 2026. Compounding this pressure, a downward revision of U.S. Q1 GDP growth to an annualized 1.6% — coupled with a plummeting personal savings rate of 2.6% — revealed a fundamentally exhausted consumer base, flashing a significant structural warning for retail-volume dependent growth models. Traditional safe havens mirrored this macro strain, with Gold and Silver logging volatile holding patterns as high yields and a rigid U.S. dollar tightly restricted any meaningful safe-haven breakouts.

The digital asset ecosystem bore the full brunt of this liquidity constriction, suffering a massive $3.29 billion in total net outflows. This aggressive capital flight was driven by a $2.50 billion weekly contraction in fiat-backed stablecoins and severe spot ETF liquidations, which pulled $1.42 billion out of Bitcoin and $211.6 million out of Ethereum. Consequently, Bitcoin fell 7.26% to $71,194, while Ethereum broke below the vital $2,000 psychological threshold. The altcoin market fell into a distinct bull trap, briefly rallying before getting dragged down by the broader risk-off liquidation flush. Despite the broad drawdown, capital velocity aggressively concentrated into Decentralized Finance (+16.8%), which heavily outperformed the market as investors rotated away from speculative infrastructure toward proven yield-generating architectures.

On the enterprise and regulatory fronts, the industry is undergoing an institutional infrastructure migration. The CFTC approved Kalshi’s bitcoin perpetual contract, opening a path for regulated crypto derivatives within the United States, while the SEC granted Paxos registration as a blockchain-native clearing agency. Corporate treasury strategies displayed a sharp divergence: Strategy Inc. altered its historical narrative by actively selling Bitcoin to cover operational cash flow obligations — resulting in a steep 50% equity drawdown over the past year — whereas Bitmine Immersion Technologies aggressively expanded its corporate Ethereum vault toward a $12 billion valuation.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> Structural Inflation Resurgence & PCE Acceleration

April’s Headline PCE inflation — the Fed’s preferred gauge — unexpectedly accelerated to 3.8% YoY (0.4% MoM), while Core PCE rose to 3.3%, driven by unrelenting services and energy costs. This data completely shatters the “immaculate disinflation” narrative, confirming that structural inflation remains deeply entrenched and cementing a high-cost-of-capital baseline for the remainder of 2026.

> Q1 GDP Downward Revision & Consumer Exhaustion

The U.S. economy’s Q1 growth was revised downward to an annualized 1.6% (from the initial 2.0%), heavily dragged by deteriorating consumer spending and a sharp contraction in private inventory investment. Concurrently, real disposable personal income per capita fell by 0.5% and the personal savings rate plummeted to 2.6%, exposing a fundamentally exhausted consumer base that can no longer absorb price hikes — a massive structural red flag for B2C models reliant on volume growth.

> CFTC Approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin Perpetual Contract, Opening a Regulated U.S. Perps Path

The CFTC approved KalshiEX LLC’s BTCPERP contract, allowing the first regulated U.S. bitcoin perpetual futures contract to be listed as a futures contract. Separately, CFTC staff issued guidance confirming the categorization of certain crypto-asset perpetuals as foreign futures and provided no-action relief related to Coinbase Financial Markets’ transfer of customer crypto assets as margin to foreign brokers. This marks a major shift: crypto perpetuals, historically dominated by offshore exchanges and DeFi venues, are moving into regulated U.S. market infrastructure.

> PARITY Act Added a Tax-Policy Leg to the U.S. Crypto Rulemaking

U.S. lawmakers introduced the bipartisan Digital Asset PARITY Act, designed to modernize federal tax rules for digital assets. While the bill is still early-stage, it matters because U.S. crypto policy is no longer limited to market-structure and stablecoin legislation; taxation, investor protection, and reporting clarity are becoming part of the broader institutional adoption framework.

Rest of the World

> Hong Kong Moved Toward Full-Stack Virtual Asset Advisory and Asset-Management Licensing

Hong Kong’s Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and Securities and Futures Commission published consultation conclusions on legislative proposals to regulate virtual-asset advisory and management services. The regime is expected to be introduced under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, adding another layer to Hong Kong’s broader digital-asset framework across trading, custody, advisory, and management services.

> Japan Prepared to Bring Foreign Trust-Type Stablecoins Into Its Payment Framework

Japan’s regulatory framework is moving to recognize certain foreign trust-type stablecoins as electronic payment instruments, effective from June 1, 2026. The move gives compliant foreign-issued stablecoins a clearer path into Japan’s payment system, reinforcing Asia’s continued movement toward regulated stablecoin distribution.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold has successfully defended a critical technical floor, rebounding sharply from its intra-week lows near $4,378 to close the 5-day period up 0.54% at $4,530.785. This V-shaped recovery was primarily catalyzed by bargain hunting and emerging reports that the U.S. and Iran may be close to a peace agreement, which provided a temporary reprieve from the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. Despite this technical bounce, gold remains broadly subdued by a restrictive macroeconomic environment; climbing equity markets and higher-for-longer interest rate signals from central banks continue to sustain a strong U.S. dollar, capping the metal’s upside momentum .

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver tracked gold’s relief rally, bouncing aggressively from the $72 range to settle at $75.93800, marking a 0.87% gain over the past five days. This volatile recovery was fueled both by technical short-covering and the broader de-escalation of the Middle East conflict. Fundamentally, silver remains supported by forecasts of a sixth consecutive annual supply deficit, heavily driven by the expanding solar energy sector. However, much like gold, silver’s sustained momentum is being heavily restricted by resilient U.S. dollar positioning and elevated bond yields, forcing the market into a cautious holding pattern.

HTX Ventures Angle: The combination of an accelerating 3.8% Headline PCE and an annualized GDP growth downgrade to 1.6% indicates a stagflationary baseline that forces a total reassessment of venture risk premiums. With consumer savings structurally exhausted and capital costs clamped at multi-decade highs, B2C application plays reliant on subsidized volume growth are facing an existential wall. However, this systemic capital drought is actively forcing a structural cleansing that favors regulated, institutional-grade market infrastructure. The CFTC’s landmark approval of Kalshi’s regulated bitcoin perpetual contract signals that the high-volume derivatives complex is permanently shifting from offshore, regulatory-arbitrage venues into onshore U.S. compliance rails. Regionally, Hong Kong’s new virtual asset advisory licensing and Japan’s formal recognition of foreign trust-type stablecoins prove that Asia is moving rapidly to capture institutional allocation. Our deployment strategy must completely bypass retail-facing speculation; we are hyper-focused on B2B clearing frameworks, cross-border multi-currency funding rails, and compliance-anchored stablecoin issuance infrastructure designed to capture institutional order flow.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (May 26 to May 29 ):

● BTC: -$1.42B (Led by BlackRock IBIT outflows at $ 966.3M)

● ETH: -$211.6M (Led by BlackRock ETHA outflows at $188.1M)

Source: Coinglass

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (May 26 ~ Jun 1 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$2.50 B

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Cryptomarket(May 26 ~ Jun 1 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$3.29 B

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 63 (Greed) to 60 (Greed)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index was dropped slightly from 40 (Neutral) to 35 (Fear).

HTX Ventures Angle: A staggering $3.29 billion contraction in aggregate crypto liquidity — fueled by consecutive weeks of heavy spot ETF bleeding and a multi-billion-dollar drop in stablecoin reserves — confirms that broad-market fiat is aggressively de-risking. Bitcoin testing the $71,000 area and the subsequent altcoin bull trap are symptoms of an environment entirely starved of organic liquidity. Capital is inside an internal, defensive recycling loop. The fact that the Fear & Greed Index plummeted into “Fear” at 35 while capital simultaneously bottlenecked into the DeFi sector (+16.8%) proves that the remaining liquidity on-chain is purely pursuing capital efficiency and tangible yield over speculative duration. Traditional institutional players are draining cash from secondary altcoins to hoard stable positions or protect core majors. As long as stablecoin minting remains deeply net-negative, any micro-cap breakout is fundamentally unsustainable. We are maintaining a highly defensive posture, restricting secondary asset exposure and concentrating our focus on accumulation-phase protocol infrastructure that captures this hyper-focused, yield-seeking institutional capital.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (27 May ~ 2 Jun )

> Global crypto market cap dropped by 5.8% to ~$2.43T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): -7.26% (Declined from a weekly open near $76,780 to $71,194.45).

● Current Price: $71,194.45

● Fluctuation Analysis: Institutional De-risking & Macro Headwinds. Bitcoin faced intense selling pressure driven by heightened US-Iran geopolitical tensions and consecutive weeks of spot ETF outflows totaling over $2.4 billion. The failure to sustain previous institutional momentum shifted the market into a defensive posture, resulting in a steady bleed throughout the week.

● Support Level: $71,000 (The absolute bottom tested on June 2; holding this zone is critical to prevent a structural breakdown into the $60k range).

● Resistance Level: $76,780 — $77,000 (The weekly open and early peak where the initial distribution originated).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): -4.92% (Corrected from a weekly open of $2,094.10 to $1,994.28)

● Current Price:$1,994.28

● Fluctuation Analysis:High-Beta Weakness & Outflows. Ethereum broke below the vital $2,000 psychological threshold as it suffered from significant ETF withdrawals and a stronger US dollar. The asset mirrored Bitcoin’s macro-driven decline, lacking any independent catalysts to counteract the broader market’s risk-off sentiment.

● Support Level:$1,950 — $1,970 (This zone was tested twice, on May 29 and June 2, establishing a localized structural floor).

● Resistance Level: $2,094 (The weekly open, which acts as the primary overhead resistance for any mean-reversion attempt).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: -2.8%

● Current Valuation: $1.049 Trillion

● Fluctuation Analysis: Bull Trap & Capital Flight. The Altcoin sector briefly decoupled, forming a recovery arc that peaked near $1.1 Trillion on May 31. However, this proved to be a bull trap, as the broader macro sell-off and ETF outflows aggressively dragged the valuation back down into June, confirming a widespread capital flight from high-beta assets into majors, cash-equivalent positioning.

● Support Level: $1.04 Trillion — $1.05 Trillion (The aggregate valuation is currently resting directly on this critical support base).

● Resistance Level: $1.10 Trillion (The local peak established on May 31 prior to the late-week liquidation flush).

Source: CoinGekco

Sectors Performance

The digital asset market is experiencing a sharp, short-term capital rotation away from speculative narratives and baseline infrastructure toward proven financial utility and tangible yield. While core infrastructure remains flat, previous high-momentum sectors like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Layer 2 (L2) networks are undergoing active profit-taking and distribution despite maintaining high trading volumes. Conversely, capital is aggressively flowing into Decentralized Finance (DeFi) as the week’s clear outperformer, while Real World Assets (RWA) continue to showcase institutional stickiness by maintaining a massive, steady market cap.

Infrastructure (-0.9%), DeFi (+16.8%), Layer 2 (-3.4%), AI (-3.7%), RWA (+3.2%).

Source: Coingecko (Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

HTX Ventures Angle: The aggressive capital rotation into DeFi (+16.8%) and Real World Assets (+3.2%) while the rest of the market bleeds signals a structural pivot away from speculative infrastructure toward cash-flow validation. On-chain capital is hiding in protocols that offer immediate, mathematically provable economic utility and real-world asset yields. Conversely, the active distribution we are seeing in AI and Layer 2 categories demonstrates that the market is punishing high-FDV, long-duration tokens that cannot demonstrate near-term monetization in a high-interest-rate macro regime. We are adjusting our investment models to heavily favor revenue-producing DeFi logic and modular financial primitives.

4/ Security Incidents

>Gravity Bridge Was Drained for Approximately $5.4M in a Suspected Key Compromise

Gravity Bridge reportedly suffered an approximately $5.4M exploit, with stolen assets including USDC, WETH, USDT, and other tokens. Security reports suggested the incident may have involved a compromised bridge contract key. The incident adds to a broader pattern of cross-chain infrastructure remaining one of DeFi’s highest-risk surfaces.

> Sui Mainnet Experienced Multiple Outages Linked to Software Bugs

Sui experienced network stalls during the week, with the team indicating that the issues were tied to software defects introduced around the v1.72 upgrade and gas-charging logic. The network later resumed normal operation after validators deployed fixes. This was not a fund-loss event, but it was an availability and reliability issue for an L1 network with real DeFi and application activity.

> Superfortune’s GUA Incident Highlighted Private-Key and Multi-Sig Operational Risk

Superfortune reported a security incident involving the GUA token. Subsequent updates indicated that the issue was linked to a signer private-key compromise rather than an internal sale or address poisoning. The incident reportedly involved approximately 2,784 ETH being transferred to attacker-controlled addresses, reinforcing that treasury operations and signer security remain major vulnerabilities.

> Zcash Foundation Released Emergency Zebra 4.5.0/4.5.1 Security Update

The Zcash Foundation released Zebra 4.5.0, describing it as a security release that fixed multiple vulnerabilities, including a consensus-critical issue, and urged node operators to upgrade immediately. The update illustrates that base-layer infrastructure security remains a live operational priority even for mature networks.

HTX Ventures Angle: The security landscape this week highlights that private-key vulnerability and adjacent infrastructure routing remain the most critical liabilities in the ecosystem. The $5.4 million exploit on Gravity Bridge and Superfortune’s 2,784 ETH plus 170,000 USDT traceable outflow due to a signer private-key compromise prove that even as protocol mechanics mature, human-factor operational risks can instantly neutralize capital. Furthermore, while the Sui mainnet outages did not result in fund losses, a software defect stall due to gas-charging logic highlights the hidden availability risks baked into rapidly iterating Layer 1 architectures. For our venture portfolio, architectural security must go beyond code audits; we are mandating robust multi-sig operational compliance, hardware-enforced treasury configurations, and the implementation of consensus-critical node updates (like Zcash Zebra 4.5.0) as non-negotiable operational standards.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

>Strategy’s Shift to Active Bitcoin Selling

Strategy recently sold 32 Bitcoin for $2.5 million, marking a major shift from its strict “buy and hold” policy. Although 32 BTC is a tiny fraction of its 843,706 BTC reserve, the sale highlights the company’s new need for cash to fund preferred-stock distributions. By shifting to an active trading approach, the company is trying to manage its cash flow better. However, this change breaks the simple appeal of using the company’s stock as a direct substitute for holding Bitcoin. Consequently, Strategy’s stock has dropped over 50% over the past year, as market participants increasingly prefer to buy Bitcoin directly rather than investing in a stock that now carries standard corporate and operational risks.

> Bitmine’s Ethereum Treasury Expansion

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) recently expanded its corporate treasury by acquiring an additional 25,000 Ethereum (ETH) for approximately $50.6 million, bringing its total position to 5,416,901 ETH and $11.6B total crypto/cash holdings.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Coinbase Financial Markets Became a Regulated Gateway to Global Crypto Derivatives

Coinbase Financial Markets announced that U.S. clients can access global crypto perpetuals and options on futures through a single CFTC-regulated FCM. The initial access includes Deribit bitcoin options liquidity, with future expansion across contracts and collateral types. This strengthens Coinbase’s institutional derivatives positioning and gives U.S. institutions a more compliant route to global crypto leverage.

> Paxos Became a Blockchain-Native SEC-Registered Clearing Agency

Paxos Securities Settlement Company received SEC registration as a temporary clearing agency, making Paxos the first blockchain-native firm registered to provide clearing and settlement services under this framework. This is a meaningful institutional milestone because clearing and settlement are core components of traditional capital-market infrastructure.

> DTCC Planned to Connect Tokenized Assets to Stellar in 2027

DTCC announced that its tokenization service will connect with the Stellar public blockchain, with DTC-tokenized assets expected to become available on Stellar in the first half of 2027. The integration is designed to support the conversion of traditional assets into tokenized form and support lifecycle functions such as corporate actions and reporting.

> Coinbase and Standard Chartered Expanded Multi-Currency Fiat Rails for Institutions

Coinbase partnered with Standard Chartered to expand global multi-currency funding rails across AUD, SGD, CAD, CHF, EUR, and GBP through Coinbase Prime. The partnership is designed to improve capital efficiency, reduce FX friction, and allow institutions to operate across global markets from a single platform.

> Cash App Began Rolling Out USDC Payments Across Four Chains

Cash App began rolling out USDC payment functionality across Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The feature is being phased in and uses USDC as a blockchain transfer rail rather than a replacement for all fiat balances. The rollout is notable because Cash App has historically been closely associated with Bitcoin, while this move expands its stablecoin utility.

HTX Ventures Angle: The corporate treasury landscape is undergoing a sharp polarization that fundamentally redefines asset wrappers. Strategy Inc. liquidating Bitcoin to cover corporate overhead shatters its perception as an immovable vault, loading the stock with standard corporate and operational drag — a shift that public markets penalized with a brutal 50% valuation drop. Conversely, Bitmine’s calculation to aggressively expand its ETH treasury toward 6 million tokens showcases a pure capture of institutional staking yield as an equity wrapper. More structurally, the workflow milestones from Paxos securing SEC clearing registration, DTCC plotting Stellar public network tracking for 2027, and Cash App rolling out multi-chain USDC rails prove that the line between public blockchain rails and legacy back-office settlement has been permanently erased. Financial networks are transitioning into mission-critical production.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

> Base Activated Azul Upgrade, Improving Throughput and Withdrawal Finality

Base activated its Azul upgrade on mainnet, introducing a multi-proof system combining TEE and ZK components, improving withdrawal finality, and unifying execution and consensus client architecture. PAnews cited stress-test throughput of up to 5,000 TPS. This strengthens Base’s infrastructure positioning as activity around consumer crypto, payments, and AI-agent use cases expands.

>Gunz (GUN) unlocked approximately 354 million tokens on May 31st, representing about 14.53% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $4.2 million

> Kamino (KMNO) unlocked approximately 229 million tokens on May 30th, representing about 3.16% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $4.6 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 5 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$17.4 million.

Some major highlights:

Hypernova: $3M Pre-Seed to Expand Hyperliquid-Based Proprietary Trading

Hypernova secured $3 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Lemniscap, with participation from CMS Holdings, Very Early Ventures, Pivot Global, and prominent Hyperliquid ecosystem angels. Structured as a SAFE with token warrants, the capital will be used to scale the platform’s funded crypto trading model. Hypernova operates as a proprietary trading platform natively integrated with the Hyperliquid network, allowing traders to access funded capital pools.

Solmate: $11.4M Direct Equity Offering to Scale Solana Infrastructure

Nasdaq-listed Solmate Infrastructure (SLMT) secured $11.4 million through a registered direct offering of Class B common shares to its CEO and board members. Having transitioned from its former identity as Brera Holdings following a $300 million private placement in 2025, the firm now operates as a Solana-focused digital asset treasury and infrastructure provider. The new capital will finance the deployment of institutional-grade staking, data centers, and bare-metal validator hardware in Abu Dhabi, enabling the company to cover operational expenses without liquidating its existing SOL holdings.

HTX Ventures Angle: The highly compressed funding print this week — totaling just $17.4 million across 5 events — is a direct reflection of the restrictive macroeconomic baseline. However, the strategic allocation reveals that smart money is aggressively financing infrastructure moats. Hypernova securing a pre-seed round for Hyperliquid-focused prop trading illustrates that capital is backing platforms that optimize high-frequency on-chain liquidity velocity. Concurrently, Solmate’s $11.4 million direct equity offering to build institutional-grade validation data centers and bare-metal hardware in Abu Dhabi validates our core thesis: the market is heavily rewarding physical infrastructure and local jurisdiction compliance over speculative token models. We are actively backing projects that leverage hard infrastructure and localized regulatory positioning to build high-barrier-to-entry networks.

8/ HTX Ventures Portfolio News

>RedStone Enables Verified NAV Pricing for Royco Structured Products

RedStone delivers onchain data for Royco’s Neutrl and Cap markets, where structured products are priced against verified Net Asset Value (NAV) rather than volatile market noise. Solvency is verified by Accountable, with RedStone pushing this reliable economic reality onchain to create more robust and trustworthy structured DeFi products.

> RISE Ecosystem Accelerates with Trading Upgrades, Gaming Milestones, and Native Stablecoin Launch

The RISE chain is actively shipping new features across its ecosystem, including fresh trading pairs on RISEx with $NEAR listings, Clash of Perps integration, fully onchain reduce-only GTC orders, referral dashboards, and leaderboards. For The Kingdom has surpassed 2.5 million onchain transactions shortly after mainnet launch, while USDR — RISE’s native stablecoin backed 100% by U.S. Treasury bills with auto-yield and composability — is now going live. Additional momentum comes from builders like Helios.Trade deploying high-performance AMMs sharing execution with the RISEx orderbook.

9/ Watchlists (June 3 — June 7, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● Jun 3: European Central Bank — ECB President Christine Lagarde is scheduled to deliver a speech at 01:00.

● Jun 3: AI & Tech — Microsoft’s annual developer conference, Build 2026, concludes today. The company is officially releasing several self-developed artificial intelligence models, including a proprietary coding model.

Crypto-Specific

● Jun 4: Token Generation Event (TGE) — Tea Protocol, an on-chain open-source software platform, will hold its TGE event on Aerodrome. Furthermore, users who have not signed the relevant terms must complete the process by this date to ensure the automatic distribution of Season 3 tokens.

● Jun 4: Token Unlock — Eigenlayer (EIGEN) unlocks approximately 1.29 million tokens at 3 AM. This accounts for 0.42% of its existing circulation, valued at roughly $1.7 million.

● Jun 5: Major Unlock — Taiko (TAIKO) will unlock approximately 81.55 million tokens at 8 PM. This massive unlock represents 69.37% of its existing circulation and is valued at about $46.9 million.

● Jun 5: Token Unlock — Ethena (ENA) is set to unlock approximately 171.88 million tokens at 0:00 UTC+8.

● Jun 6: Token Unlock — Spectral (SPEC) will unlock approximately 3.62 million tokens at 8 AM. This accounts for 17.57% of its existing circulation and is valued at about $3.7 million.

● Jun 7: Token Unlock — Neon (NEON) will unlock approximately 53.91 million tokens at 8 AM. This represents 22.51% of its existing circulation, with a valuation of roughly $6.1 million.

References

1.Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (2026, May 29). CFTC approves BTCPERP contract submitted by KalshiEX, LLC. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9240-26

2. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (2026, May 29). Commission staff confirms the categorization of certain crypto asset perpetuals as foreign futures and issues no-action letter regarding FCM transfers of customer crypto assets to foreign brokers as margin. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9241-26

3. Coinbase. (2026, May 29). Coinbase brings global crypto derivatives to U.S. market. https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-brings-global-crypto-derivatives-to-us-market

4. Miller, M. (2026, May 19). Congressman Max Miller introduces bipartisan Digital PARITY Act. U.S. House of Representatives. https://maxmiller.house.gov/posts/congressman-max-miller-introduces-bipartisan-digital-parity-act

5. Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, & Securities and Futures Commission. (2026, May 26). FSTB and SFC publish consultation conclusions on legislative proposals for regulating virtual asset advisory and management services. Government of Hong Kong SAR. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202605/26/P2026052600567.htm

6. Financial Services Agency of Japan. (2026). Foreign trust-type stablecoin rules and electronic payment instruments framework. https://www.fsa.go.jp/

7.Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2026, May 28). Personal consumption expenditures price index. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.bea.gov/data/personal-consumption-expenditures-price-index

8.Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2026, May 28). Gross domestic product (second estimate) and corporate profits (preliminary), first quarter 2026. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-second-estimate-and-corporate-profits-1st-quarter-2026

9.Bitcoin.com News. (2026, May 31). Gravity Bridge drained of $5.4 million as hacker routes funds. https://news.bitcoin.com/gravity-bridge-exploit-5-4-million-binance-changenow-2026/

10. Sui Network [@SuiNetwork]. (2026, May). Sui mainnet incident and recovery updates [Posts]. X. https://x.com/SuiNetwork

11. Superfortune [@SUPERFORTUNE888]. (2026, May 27). Security incident update for GUA token [Post]. X. https://x.com/SUPERFORTUNE888/status/2059818459421372485

12. Zcash Foundation. (2026, May 29). Zebra 4.5.0 release. Zcash Community Forum. https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/zebra-4-5-0-release/55912

13.Base. (2026, May). Base MCP Gateway materials. https://www.base.org/

14.Paxos. (2026, May 28). Paxos Securities Settlement Company receives clearing agency registration from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.paxos.com/newsroom/sec-registers-paxos-securities-settlement-company-as-a-clearing-agency

15. Federal Register. (2026, May 29). Paxos Securities Settlement Company, LLC; order granting an application for temporary registration as a clearing agency. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10808/paxos-securities-settlement-company-llc-order-granting-an-application-for-temporary-registration-as

16. DTCC. (2026, May 27). Tokenization service to connect with Stellar public blockchain as DTC advances multi-chain strategy. https://www.dtcc.com/news/2026/may/27/tokenization-service-to-connect-with-stellar-public-blockchain-as-dtc-advances-multi-chain-strategy

17. Coinbase. (2026, May 27). Coinbase and Standard Chartered partner to unlock global fiat access. https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-and-standard-chartered-partner-to-unlock-global-fiat-access

18. PYMNTS. (2026, May 28). Cash App rolls out stablecoin payments. https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2026/cash-app-rolls-out-stablecoin-payments/

19.Rise. (2025, May 28). *RISE Ecosystem Accelerates with Trading Upgrades, Gaming Milestones, and Native Stablecoin Launch* [Post]. X. https://x.com/risechain/status/2059629816270516425

20. RedStone. (2025, May 29). *RedStone Enables Verified NAV Pricing for Royco Structured Products* [Post]. X. https://x.com/redstone_defi/status/2059922696742322565

21.Stocktwits. (2026, May 30). Tom Lee’s Bitmine reportedly adds more Ethereum as critics point to HYPE’s record run. TradingView. https://www.tradingview.com/news/stocktwits:7214f75ae094b:0-tom-lee-s-bitmine-reportedly-adds-more-ethereum-as-critics-point-to-hype-s-record-run/

22.CryptoRank. (n.d.). Solmate ICO (token sale). Retrieved June 1, 2026, from https://cryptorank.io/ico/solmate

23.Khatri, Y. (2026, May 28). Hyperliquid-based prop trading platform Hypernova raises $3 million in pre-seed funding. The Block. https://www.theblock.co/post/402923/hyperliquid-prop-trading-platform-hypernova-crypto-funding

Executive Summary

The macroeconomic landscape this week was dominated by sticky U.S. inflation data, with April CPI (3.8% YoY) and PPI (6.0% YoY) decisively reinforcing a “higher-for-longer” interest rate regime. This sustained stagflationary pressure triggered a severe capitulation in traditional safe havens; Gold suffered a structural breakdown to $4,547, and Silver plummeted to $75.94 as institutional capital systematically rotated into dollar-denominated cash equivalents. However, regulatory clarity saw significant momentum, highlighted by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee advancing the CLARITY Act and the Bank of England moving toward formal systemic stablecoin frameworks.

Within the digital asset ecosystem, the restrictive macro environment catalyzed a massive capital exodus, resulting in $1.495 billion in total net USD outflows. This liquidity drain was driven by severe spot ETF exhaustion — including $1.195 billion leaving Bitcoin products — and a $589.4 million contraction in fiat-backed stablecoins. Consequently, Bitcoin suffered a double-top rejection near $81,550, falling 5.03% to $76,822, while Ethereum and the broader altcoin sector experienced steep, synchronized drawdowns as risk-averse capital aggressively unwound high-beta exposure.

Despite the spot market bleed, corporate and institutional infrastructure execution achieved paradigm-shifting milestones. Circle raised $222 million to launch Arc, an institutional blockchain backed by BlackRock and Apollo, while DTCC partnered with Chainlink for collateral appchain infrastructure. Concurrently, corporate treasury strategies are maturing; Strategy signaled a potential shift by listing Bitcoin sales as a funding source to retire $1.5 billion in debt, and Bitmine solidified Ethereum’s cash-flow utility by generating an implied $319 million in annualized staking revenue.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> U.S. CPI Remained Sticky, Reinforcing Higher-for-Longer Rate Risk

U.S. April CPI rose 3.8% YoY, while core CPI rose 2.8% YoY. The CPI data reinforced the view that inflation remains above the Fed’s comfort zone, limiting the market’s ability to price a clean near-term easing cycle.

> U.S. PPI Came in Stronger Than Expected, Adding Pressure to Risk Assets

U.S. April PPI for final demand rose 1.4% MoM and 6.0% YoY, with goods and services prices both contributing to the increase. For markets, the PPI print strengthened the argument that inflation pressure is not yet fully resolved.

> CLARITY Act Advanced Through the U.S. Senate Banking Committee

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act, a major crypto market-structure bill designed to establish clearer rules for digital assets. Reuters reported that the bill includes provisions around trading venues, disclosure, AML obligations, DeFi treatment, tokenization studies, and restrictions on paying interest on certain “idle” stablecoin balances.

Rest of the World

> UK Stablecoin Supervision Continued Moving Toward Formal Frameworks

The Bank of England continued developing its framework for systemic payment stablecoins, while non-systemic stablecoins remain primarily under FCA supervision depending on issuance and use cases. Reuters also reported that the Bank of England is considering adjustments to its stablecoin approach, reflecting the challenge of balancing monetary stability, innovation, and private-sector adoption.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold has suffered a decisive technical breakdown over the past five trading days, sliding -3.64% from the $4,720 range down to $4,547.95. The chart reveals that after a brief, shallow consolidation early in the week, the metal experienced a steep capitulation starting around the 15th. This aggressive sell-off confirms that last week’s relief rally was merely a temporary anomaly. With global energy costs sustaining intense stagflationary pressures, the market is fully pricing in an extended period of highly restrictive Federal Reserve policy and elevated U.S. Treasury yields. Consequently, institutional capital is systematically liquidating non-yielding safe havens, rotating instead into dollar-denominated cash equivalents to weather this macroeconomic suffocation.

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver is absorbing an even more brutal high-beta flush, plummeting from an intra-week high near $88 down to the $75.94 level. The 5-day chart illustrates a massive structural rejection mid-week, effectively wiping out all recent speculative gains in a violent cascade. Silver is being crushed by a devastating macroeconomic convergence: it is battling the exact same fiat liquidity drain that is suppressing gold, while simultaneously pricing in a severe, oil-induced global manufacturing recession. As forward-looking industrial demand forecasts are aggressively revised downward, the white metal has lost its fundamental floor, leaving over-leveraged long positions completely exposed to forced technical selling.

HTX Ventures Angle: The combination of sticky 6.0% PPI and 3.8% CPI extinguishes any remaining market optimism for a near-term liquidity pivot. The brutal sell-off in precious metals confirms that institutions are hoarding cash equivalents rather than seeking traditional safe havens. For the crypto sector, this means broad fiat inflows will remain suppressed. However, the advancement of the CLARITY Act in the U.S. and stablecoin frameworks in the U.K. signals that the regulatory moat is officially being constructed. Venture capital will increasingly aggressively discount regulatory-arbitrage models and exclusively fund compliant, onshore infrastructure that aligns with these impending statutory rules.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (May 11to May 18 ):

● BTC: -$1.195B (Led by ARK 21Shares ARKB outflows at $ 433.8M)

● ETH: -$284M (Led by BlackRock ETHA outflows at $184.6M)

Source: Coinglass

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (May 13 ~ May 18 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$589.42 M

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Cryptomarket(May 13 ~ May 18 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$1.495 B

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 67 (Greed) to 63 (Greed)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index was up slightly from 50 (Neutral) to 40 (Neutral).

HTX Ventures Angle: The ecosystem is experiencing a severe, synchronized liquidity drought. A nearly $1.5 billion weekly outflow — compounded by both ETF capitulation and a $589 million stablecoin contraction — indicates that institutional allocators are actively de-risking and extracting capital from the system. In this environment, internal capital recycling cannot sustain secondary market valuations. The immediate venture strategy must shift entirely to capital preservation and supporting portfolio companies in extending their runways, as fresh institutional deployments will bottleneck.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (13 May ~ 19 May )

> Global crypto market cap dropped by 5.2% to ~$2.56T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): -5.03%

● Current Price: $76,822.14

● Fluctuation Analysis: Failed Breakout & Algorithmic Distribution. Bitcoin attempted to consolidate above the $81,000 level but faced a definitive double-top rejection near $81,550 on May 15. The subsequent downward channel indicates that institutional order flow has temporarily flipped to the sell side, executing a controlled retracement to flush late leveraged longs rather than triggering a cascading panic.

● Support Level: $76,000 — $76,500 (The asset found a localized floor here late in the week, successfully absorbing the initial wave of selling pressure).

● Resistance Level: $81,500 — $82,000 (The heavy overhead supply wall that neutralized the mid-week bullish momentum).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): -7.7%

● Current Price:$2,129.94

● Fluctuation Analysis: Beta Decay & Liquidity Drain. Ethereum continues to exhibit structural weakness relative to Bitcoin, suffering a steeper percentage drawdown. The chart reveals a steep capitulation from its $2,334 peak, aggressively slicing through multiple localized support zones down to the $2,100 handle. This exposes thin bid liquidity and confirms a lack of immediate fundamental catalysts required to attract fresh institutional capital to the smart-contract layer.

● Support Level: $2,080 — $2,100 (The extreme wick low established on May 19, serving as the absolute line in the sand for short-term structural integrity).

● Resistance Level: $2,300 — $2,335 (The early-week local high and the primary target for any significant mean-reversion rally).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: -2.6%

● Current Valuation: $1.11 Trillion

● Fluctuation Analysis: Flight to Safety & Capital Rotation. The aggregate Altcoin valuation mirrored the majors’ structural failure but with exaggerated volatility. After a mid-week speculative pump pushed the valuation toward the $1.17 Trillion mark, the sector bled out sharply into the weekend. This confirms a cautious macro posture; as BTC weakens, market participants are rapidly unwinding exposure to long-tail, high-beta assets to mitigate downside risk.

● Support Level: $1.04 Trillion — $1.05 Trillion (The definitive trough established on May 18 before a minor relief bounce).

● Resistance Level: $1.17 Trillion (The valuation peak established mid-week prior to the sector-wide capital exodus).

Source: CoinGekco

Sectors Performance

The broader cryptocurrency ecosystem experienced a synchronized market-wide drawdown over the trailing seven days, with all major sub-sectors tracked posting negative returns.

Infrastructure (-9.4%), DeFi (-4.8%), Layer 2 (-12.2%), AI (-10.0%), RWA (-1.2%).

Source: Coingecko (Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

4/ Security Incidents

>THORChain Paused Trading After Asgard Vault Exploit

THORChain paused trading after its Asgard Vault was compromised, with losses estimated at approximately $10.7M. The incident again highlighted the risk of cross-chain liquidity infrastructure and the difficulty of securing complex multi-asset vault systems.

> Mistral AI SDK Packages Were Affected by Supply-Chain Attack Risk

Mistral AI published security advisory materials related to compromised package dependencies affecting SDK packages. The advisory indicates that developer tooling and package-distribution infrastructure are becoming increasingly important security surfaces as AI and crypto systems converge.

>Verus-Ethereum Bridge Suffered an Ongoing Exploit, With Approximately $11.58M Drained

Blockaid issued a community alert stating that its exploit detection system identified an ongoing exploit targeting the Verus-Ethereum Bridge. According to Blockaid, approximately $11.58M had been drained at the time of the alert. The incident further reinforces that cross-chain bridge infrastructure remains one of the highest-risk areas in DeFi security, particularly where asset custody, proof verification, and bridge accounting logic converge.

HTX Ventures Angle: Cross-chain architecture continues to be the Achilles’ heel of decentralized finance. The dual exploits on THORChain and the Verus bridge prove that complex multi-asset vault systems and proof verification logic remain highly vulnerable. Furthermore, the Mistral AI SDK supply-chain attack signals a dangerous new vector; as AI agents gain autonomous transaction capabilities, securing the underlying developer packages is as critical as auditing the smart contracts themselves.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

>Strategy Moved to Retire $1.5B of 2029 Convertible Notes, With Bitcoin Sales Listed as a Possible Funding Source

Strategy entered into privately negotiated transactions to repurchase approximately $1.50B aggregate principal amount of its 0% Convertible Senior Notes due 2029 for an estimated aggregate cash repurchase price of approximately $1.38B. The company said funding may come from available cash reserves, proceeds from ATM securities sales, and/or proceeds from the sale of bitcoin. After cancellation of the repurchased notes, approximately $1.50B aggregate principal amount of the 2029 notes will remain outstanding.

> Bitmine Shifted From Aggressive ETH Accumulation Toward Staking Yield Optimization

Bitmine reported crypto, cash, and “moonshot” holdings of $13.4B, including 5.21M ETH, 201 BTC, and $775M in cash. The company stated that it held approximately 4.31% of total ETH supply and had staked 4,712,917 ETH, worth approximately $11.1B at $2,366 per ETH. Bitmine also said its staking operations generated a 2.86% annualized 7-day yield, implying annualized staking revenue of approximately $319M.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Interactive Brokers Expanded Prediction-Market Access Through Kalshi, CME, and ForecastEx

Interactive Brokers launched a unified prediction-market trading interface integrating Kalshi, CME Group, and ForecastEx. The product allows eligible users to trade prediction-market contracts within a broader platform that also supports stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds, and crypto.

> DTCC and Chainlink Advanced Blockchain-Based Collateral Infrastructure

DTCC announced collaboration with Chainlink around its blockchain-based Collateral AppChain, designed to support collateral pricing, valuation, margin management, optimization, and settlement workflows. DTCC said the appchain is expected to go live in Q4 2026.

> Binance Expanded TradFi Perpetual Exposure Through Stock-Linked Contracts

Binance Futures announced the launch of USDT-margined perpetual contracts tied to several listed equities, including FLNCUSDT, DRAMUSDT, and RKLBUSDT, with leverage up to 10x–20x depending on the contract. This reflects continued convergence between traditional equities and crypto-native derivatives distribution.

> Charles Schwab and Square Expanded Retail Crypto Access and Bitcoin Payments

Charles Schwab began rolling out Schwab Crypto accounts to retail clients, initially supporting direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum alongside other investment products. Square enabled Bitcoin payments for approximately 1M U.S. merchants, supporting Lightning Network payments while allowing merchants to settle in dollars.

HTX Ventures Angle: Corporate treasury dynamics are undergoing a massive paradigm shift. Strategy potentially selling BTC to manage corporate debt shatters the “diamond hands” illusion, transforming the firm into a dynamic, actively managed credit vehicle. Conversely, Bitmine’s $319 million annualized staking revenue validates Ethereum as a premier, cash-flowing institutional asset. Meanwhile, the aggressive moves by Interactive Brokers, DTCC, and Schwab prove that legacy finance is fundamentally blurring the lines between TradFi equities, crypto derivatives, and tokenized collateral. The infrastructure convergence is total.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

> Starknet Launched Privacy-Enabled strkBTC

Starknet launched strkBTC, a privacy-enabled Bitcoin asset that allows users to shield balances and transfers while retaining optional auditability through viewing keys. This expands the design space for private, auditable BTC-based financial activity on Starknet.

>Aptos (APT) unlocked approximately 11.31 million tokens on May 13th, representing about 0.67% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $12.4 million.

> Sei (SEI) unlocked approximately 55.56 million tokens on May 15th, representing about 0.95% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $3.8 million.

> Arbitrum (ARB) unlocked approximately 92.65 million tokens on May 16th, representing about 1.71% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $13 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 13 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$530 million.

Some major highlights:

Circle: $222M Token Presale to Launch Institutional ARC Blockchain

Circle raised $222 million in a token presale for Arc, its newly developed public blockchain, achieving a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, alongside traditional finance giants including BlackRock, Apollo Funds, and Standard Chartered. Arc is positioned as a specialized operating system for institutional finance and AI-driven autonomous software agents, aiming to securely handle complex financial contracts and high-volume USDC settlements natively.

Nof1: $15M Funding to Pioneer Autonomous AI Trading Markets

AI trading lab Nof1 raised $15 million in a round co-led by Nasdaq-listed SUI Group and proprietary hedge fund Karatage. The startup focuses on testing how frontier large language models behave in adversarial financial environments through its flagship experiment, Alpha Arena, which pits AI agents against each other using real capital. Positioned at the intersection of open-ended AI architecture and live market execution, Nof1 plans to use the capital to launch a consumer platform featuring autonomous coding agents for digital asset trading.

Elliptic: $120M Funding to Scale Blockchain Analytics and Compliance

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic secured a $120 million funding round led by One Peak Partners, bringing its valuation to $670 million. The round attracted strategic participation from traditional finance heavyweights, including Deutsche Bank, Nasdaq’s venture capital arm, British Business Bank, and existing investor JPMorgan Chase. Founded in 2013, Elliptic specializes in crypto transaction monitoring, anti-money laundering (AML), and sanctions compliance tools. Currently screening over 1 billion transactions weekly for more than 700 clients, the company will utilize the fresh capital to bolster its enterprise-grade compliance infrastructure, specifically tailored to support large banks, asset managers, and fintech firms expanding their digital asset operations.

HTX Ventures Angle: Venture capital has completely abandoned retail speculation in favor of institutional operating systems. Circle’s $222 million raise for the Arc blockchain — backed directly by BlackRock and Apollo — demonstrates that TradFi titans are funding bespoke, compliant Layer 1s to settle trillions in RWA and stablecoin volume natively. Furthermore, Elliptic’s $120M raise emphasizes that compliance is the ultimate prerequisite for this institutional liquidity.

8/ HTX Ventures Portfolio News

>Babylon Labs Releases SCRIPT: Bitcoin Collateral Risk Assessment Framework

Babylon has published SCRIPT, a comprehensive Bitcoin Collateral Risk Assessment Framework designed to help Bitcoin holders and applications evaluate counterparty risks across various Bitcoin collateral solutions, including their own. The framework breaks down risks into six key categories — Sovereignty, Clarity, Reuse prohibited, Isolation, Permissionless, and Transparency — providing clear de-risking guidelines such as retaining sovereign control, enforcing transparent programmed rules, prohibiting unauthorized rehypothecation, ensuring position isolation, avoiding censorship, and maintaining auditable collateral.

> Lorenzo Protocol Launches On-Chain Governance with Vesting Acceleration Proposal

Lorenzo Protocol has activated its governance system, with the first proposal now open for voting. Driven by community demand, it seeks to shorten vesting schedules across Rewards, Investors, Ecosystem & Development, Team, Treasury, and Advisors categories. If approved, this would shift tokenomics from V2 to V3, immediately boosting total and circulating supply by approximately 454.8M tokens (~21.66%). veBANK holders can now vote directly on-chain, with the voting period running from May 12 to May 17, 2026. An AMA with the CEO is also scheduled to discuss the changes.

> Lombard Fully Migrates to Chainlink CCIP for Enhanced Cross-Chain Security

Lombard has decided to adopt Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as its exclusive cross-chain infrastructure for distributing over $1B in Bitcoin-backed assets (LBTC and BTC.b). The migration will replace LayerZero across key ecosystems including Solana, Etherlink, Berachain, Corn, and TAC, while fully deprecating it on Morph and Swell. This move leverages CCIP’s defense-in-depth architecture, independent node operators, built-in risk controls, and institutional certifications to prioritize user safety and zero-incident standards. The transition also introduces the Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard for a canonical burn-and-mint bridging model, reducing dependencies and enhancing flexibility.

9/ Watchlists (May 20 — May 23, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● May 20: Corporate Policy & Regulation — Deadline set by Senator Elizabeth Warren for Meta to formally detail its third-party stablecoin integration plans. Simultaneously, Meta is executing a ~10% workforce reduction to aggressively redirect capital toward AI infrastructure.

● May 21: Earnings Catalyst — Nvidia releases its Q1 FY2027 financial report. This remains the definitive bellwether for global AI hardware CapEx and heavily dictates momentum for the entire AI-crypto sector.

● May 21: Federal Reserve — The FOMC publishes the minutes from its latest monetary policy meeting.

● May 22: Legal & Asset Recovery — Absolute deadline for victims of the Lantian Gerui mega-scam to register claims with the UK High Court regarding the ongoing disposition of 60,000 confiscated Bitcoins.

Crypto-Specific

● May 20: Token Unlocks — LayerZero (ZRO) unlocks ~25.71M tokens (~$33.4M) ; KAITO unlocks ~$7.9M.

● May 21: Venture Capital — Y Combinator hosts its first-ever dedicated, in-person interviews for Crypto and FinTech startups in New York. This signals a strategic geographic rotation in venture capital toward the East Coast to focus on stablecoin, RWA, and institutional capital markets infrastructure.

● May 21: Exchange — Coinbase formally suspends trading for 12 perpetual contracts (including ZK, CAKE, AKT, and KAITO). All open positions will be auto-settled.

● May 22: DeFi Litigation — Critical deadline for supplementary legal filings in the New York federal court regarding the emergency motion to unfreeze $71M in ETH tied to the Aave protocol.

● May 23: Ecosystem Sunset — JPG Store, the flagship NFT marketplace on the Cardano network, will permanently cease operations, reflecting the severe liquidity consolidation ongoing within non-EVM infrastructure.

References

1. Bank of England. (2025). Proposed regulatory regime for sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins [Consultation paper].
2. Binance. (2026, May 18). Binance Futures will launch multiple USDⓈ-margined TradFi perpetual contracts.
3. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Inc. (2026, May 11). Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) announces ETH holdings reach 5.21 million tokens, and total crypto and total cash holdings of $13.4 billion. PR Newswire.
4. Blockaid [@blockaid_]. (2026, May 18). Community alert: Blockaid’s exploit detection system has identified an ongoing exploit on the Verus-Ethereum Bridge [Post]. X.
5. Charles Schwab [@CharlesSchwab]. (2026, May). Twitter Post. X. https://x.com/CharlesSchwab/status/2054234006489588119
6. CNBC. (2026, May 11). Circle closes $222 million from BlackRock, Apollo for Arc blockchain. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/11/circle-closes-222-million-from-blackrock-apollo-for-arc-blockchain.html?&qsearchterm=arc
7. CoinDesk. (2026, May 15). Wall Street is starting to notice one of crypto’s smartest AI bets. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/05/15/wall-street-is-starting-to-notice-one-of-crypto-s-smartest-ai-bets
8. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (2026, May 14). CFTC staff issues no-action letter on data reporting for event contracts. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9131-26
9. DTCC. (2026, May 12). DTCC collaborates with Chainlink to advance 24/7 collateral management. https://www.dtcc.com/news/2026/may/12/dtcc-collaborates-with-chainlink-to-advance-24-7-collateral-management
10. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (2026, May 14). Interactive Brokers expands prediction markets, unifying access to Kalshi, CME Group, and ForecastEx. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260514242527/en/Interactive-Brokers-Expands-Prediction-Markets-Unifying-Access-to-Kalshi-CME-Group-and-ForecastEx
11. Mistral AI. (2026, May). Security advisories.
12. PANews. (2026, May). Elliptic secures $120M funding round.
13. Reuters. (2026, May 12). What is in the U.S. Senate’s landmark crypto bill? https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/what-is-us-senates-landmark-crypto-bill-2026-05-12/
14. Starknet. (2026, May). strkBTC is live: Private Bitcoin arrives on Starknet. https://www.starknet.io/blog/strkbtc-is-live-private-bitcoin-arrives-on-starknet/
15. Strategy Inc. (2026, May 15). Strategy to repurchase $1.5 billion of 2029 convertible notes [Form 8-K]. https://www.strategy.com/press/strategy-to-repurchase-1-5-billion-of-2029-convertible-notes_05-15-2026
16. The Defiant. (2026, May). THORChain reports $10.7M loss from compromised Asgard Vault. https://thedefiant.io/news/security/thorchain-reports-usd10-7m-loss-from-compromised-asgard-vault
17. THORChain Community [@THORCommunity]. (2026, May). Asgard Vault incident update [Post]. X.
18. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026, May 12). Consumer Price Index — April 2026 [News release].
19. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026, May 13). Producer Price Indexes — April 2026 [News release].
20. U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. (2026, May 14). Chairman Scott, Senate Banking Committee advance CLARITY Act in historic bipartisan vote.
21. CryptoProwl. (2026, May 13). Square reaches 1 million Bitcoin-enabled merchants as Block pushes BTC payments. Yahoo Finance.

Resilient U.S. labor data — highlighted by steady private payroll growth and historically low jobless claims — has effectively neutralized expectations for an imminent Federal Reserve pivot, reinforcing a restrictive “higher-for-longer” interest rate regime. While traditional commodities like Gold and Silver experienced high-beta relief rallies from recent oversold conditions, their upside remains structurally capped by sustained U.S. dollar strength and energy-driven inflation. Globally, regulatory frameworks are rapidly hardening into statutory law; South Korea amended its Foreign Exchange Transactions Act to encompass cross-border crypto transfers, while the U.S. Senate Banking Committee officially scheduled executive action on crypto market structure legislation.

Despite a restrictive macroeconomic ceiling, the digital asset ecosystem absorbed a robust $848.6 million in net USD inflows. This liquidity was fueled by a $751 million expansion in fiat-backed stablecoins and aggressive institutional accumulation, including $631.6 million in Bitcoin ETF inflows. This capital influx successfully propelled Bitcoin past the $80,000 threshold (+0.73%), confirming a decisive return to price discovery. However, Ethereum and the broader altcoin sector exhibited pronounced lagging beta; fresh liquidity is actively bottlenecking into apex assets and high-conviction foundational sectors — such as AI (+15.1%) and Infrastructure (+11.1%) — rather than trickling down the speculative risk curve.

Corporate treasury and integration strategies are evolving from passive holding to active, institutional-grade financial utility. MicroStrategy is utilizing capital markets to transition into a dynamic “net accumulator” of Bitcoin, while Bitmine has expanded its Ethereum treasury to an unprecedented 4.31% of total global supply. Concurrently, TradFi assimilation is achieving massive workflow milestones, evidenced by Bullish tokenizing 151 million corporate shares directly on Solana and Moomoo securing a U.S. prediction market license. Yet, as institutional rails mature, integration vulnerabilities persist; recent multi-million-dollar exploits on 1inch resolvers and Ekubo highlight that third-party routing and token-approval layers remain critical security liabilities even when core protocols function perfectly.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> U.S. Private Payrolls Remained Resilient, Supporting the “Higher-for-Longer” Rate Path

ADP reported that U.S. private-sector employment increased by 109,000 jobs in April, with annual pay up 4.4%. For markets, this was not a recessionary labor print. It reduced the urgency for near-term Fed easing and kept pressure on duration-sensitive growth assets, including crypto venture valuations and long-tail token narratives. The key VC implication is that liquidity-sensitive categories must continue to justify valuations through revenue quality, not merely user growth.

> Weekly Jobless Claims Stayed Low, Signaling No Material Labor-Market Break

Initial jobless claims rose by only 10,000 to 200,000 for the week ended 2 May, while continuing claims declined to the lowest level since January 2024. This reinforced the market view that the labor market remains stable rather than sharply deteriorating. For crypto markets, the absence of labor stress reduces the probability of an imminent Fed pivot, keeping broad risk appetite contained.

> U.S. Crypto Market Structure Legislation Advanced Toward Senate Committee Action

The Senate Banking Committee scheduled an executive session for 14 May to consider crypto market structure legislation. While the vote itself falls in the following week, the scheduling announcement occurred inside this reporting window and is a meaningful regulatory catalyst. The market implication is that U.S. crypto regulation is moving from enforcement-led uncertainty toward statutory market-structure negotiation, which could benefit compliant exchanges, custody providers, stablecoin rails, and tokenization infrastructure.

Rest of the World

> South Korea Passed Foreign Exchange Law Amendments Covering Cross-Border Crypto Transfers

South Korea’s National Assembly passed amendments to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act that bring virtual asset transfer businesses into the formal foreign-exchange regulatory perimeter. Businesses facilitating cross-border virtual asset transfers through sale, purchase, or exchange will need to register with the finance minister. This is particularly relevant for stablecoins, OTC desks, and cross-border settlement startups because Korea is moving to close the regulatory gap between digital assets and FX controls.

> Canada Signaled Stablecoin Rules Could Arrive by Mid-to-Late 2027

The Bank of Canada said Canada-based stablecoin regulations could be introduced by mid-to-late 2027, with work underway on the regulatory design. Although the implementation timeline is not immediate, the signal is important: G7 jurisdictions are increasingly converging around regulated stablecoin supervision, but timelines and supervisory models remain fragmented.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold has successfully carved out a technical floor over the past five trading days, posting a +2.37% recovery to trade near $4,660.10. The chart illustrates a steady relief rally from the mid-$4,500s up to a local peak near $4,760 before encountering renewed overhead resistance. This upward drift suggests that the initial wave of panic-liquidation, which was sparked by the recent $110+ crude oil shock, has temporarily exhausted itself. However, the macroeconomic ceiling remains firmly in place. With baseline inflation anchored by high energy costs, the Federal Reserve is locked into a restrictive rate posture. Consequently, sustained U.S. dollar strength and elevated real yields will continue to cap gold’s upside, marking this movement as a short-term technical bounce rather than a structural macroeconomic pivot.

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver is executing a classic high-beta relief rally, climbing sharply from its recent lows to decisively reclaim the psychological $80 threshold, currently settling at $80.24. The 5-day chart displays a strong, persistent accumulation trend that has effectively erased the prior week’s aggressive flush. This price action is largely driven by technical short-covering and speculative bargain-hunting within a deeply oversold market. While this recovery demonstrates impressive velocity, silver’s core structural vulnerability has not been resolved. The looming threat of an oil-induced global manufacturing contraction continues to cast a shadow over future industrial demand, leaving the white metal highly susceptible to sudden technical rejections if forward-looking economic data begins to officially deteriorate.

HTX Ventures Angle : The macro message is clear: liquidity is improving at the margin, but not enough to support indiscriminate risk-taking. In this environment, crypto ventures need to prove durable revenue, institutional utility, or balance-sheet relevance rather than relying purely on narrative beta.

Regulatory convergence is also becoming a long-term investable theme. The U.S., South Korea, and Canada are each moving in different ways toward formal digital-asset supervision. This should benefit compliant exchanges, custody platforms, stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized settlement networks, and institutional-grade on-chain finance providers.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (May 4 to May 8 ):

● BTC: $631.6 M (Led by BlackRock IBIT inflows at $ 596.4M)

● ETH: $70.3M (Led by BlackRock ETHA inflows at $100.1M)

Source: Coinglass

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (May 5 ~ May 11 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: $751.06 M

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Cryptomarket(May 5 ~ May 11 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: $848.63 M

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 69 (Greed) to 67 (Greed)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index was up slightly from 45 (Neutral) to 50 (Neutral).

HTX Ventures Angle: The ecosystem is witnessing robust but highly concentrated capital inflows. While the market absorbed over $848 million in net USD liquidity — driven by a healthy $751 million stablecoin expansion and aggressive Bitcoin ETF accumulation — this capital is strictly bottlenecking at the top of the market. Institutional money is not rotating down the risk curve. Until we see sustained, broad-based stablecoin velocity spilling over into mid-cap protocols, we remain highly defensive on long-tail, highly speculative narratives.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (6 May ~ 12 May )

> Global crypto market cap rose by 1.9% to ~$2.70T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): +0.73% (Maintained baseline from a weekly open of ~$80.04K).

● Current Price: $80,826.37

● Fluctuation Analysis: Volatile Equilibrium & Range-Bound Trading. Bitcoin experienced a “whipsaw” week, marked by aggressive liquidity sweeps in both directions. It spiked above $82,000 twice but faced immediate institutional supply, and subsequently flushed below $79,000 where it was met with aggressive spot bidding. This indicates a balanced market digesting recent gains without a clear directional breakout.

● Support Level: $78,500 — $79,000 (The mid-week flush on May 8–9 established a firm structural floor, successfully defending the broader bullish structure).

● Resistance Level: $82,000 — $82,500 (A clear double-top formation where overhead supply rejected upward momentum on May 7 and May 11).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): -2.39% (Corrected from a weekly open near ~$2,358.40).

● Current Price:$2,304.21

● Fluctuation Analysis: Beta Decay & Relative Weakness. Unlike the Altcoin sector, ETH failed to capture rotational capital. After a failed early-week breakout above $2,400, the asset suffered a prolonged bleed, underperforming Bitcoin. The inability to sustain higher valuations suggests capital is actively bypassing the primary smart-contract layer in favor of more speculative narratives.

● Support Level: $2,250 — $2,275 (This lower boundary caught the capitulation wick on May 8–9, providing the base for a weak late-week bounce).

● Resistance Level: $2,400 — $2,430 (Heavy structural resistance that decisively rejected the asset’s early-week rally).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: +5.9%

● Current Valuation: $1.192 Trillion ($1,192,447,825,714)

● Fluctuation Analysis: Risk-On Capital Rotation. In stark contrast to ETH’s weakness and BTC’s consolidation, the aggregate altcoin valuation trended steadily upward following a minor mid-week dip. This steady climb, absorbing the $1.15T resistance and pushing toward $1.2T, signals robust risk appetite as traders deploy dry powder into mid-to-small cap ecosystems.

● Support Level: $1.11 Trillion (The valuation successfully tested and held this higher low on May 8 before initiating the current expansion phase).

● Resistance Level: $1.20 Trillion (The immediate psychological threshold the sector is currently approaching).

Source: CoinGekco

Sectors Performance

Mainstream foundational sectors demonstrated significant growth this week, with AI and Infrastructure outpacing specific narrative categories.

Infrastructure (11.1%), DeFi (8.1%), Layer 2 (9.0%), AI(15.1%), RWA(7.3%).

Source: Coingecko (Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

HTX Ventures Angle: The market is decisively top-heavy. While Bitcoin successfully broke back into price discovery above $80,000, propelled by relentless institutional ETF accumulation, the lagging beta of Ethereum and the broader altcoin market indicates a severe lack of downstream liquidity rotation. Capital is refusing to move out on the risk curve, instead heavily concentrating into apex assets and foundational narratives like AI and Infrastructure. This is a highly selective, institutionally-driven tape.

4/ Security Incidents

> TrustedVolumes Drained for Approximately $6.7 Million

TrustedVolumes, a 1inch resolver, was drained for approximately $6.7 million through a compromised custom RFQ swap proxy. The Defiant reported that affected assets included USDC, USDT, DAI, WETH, WBTC, and LBTC, while 1inch stated that its own smart contracts, user funds, and infrastructure were not impacted. The incident highlights persistent third-party integration risk: even when core protocols remain safe, adjacent resolver and routing infrastructure can create meaningful loss vectors.

> Ekubo Users Lost Approximately $1.4 Million in a Token Approval Exploit

Ekubo, a Starknet-based DEX, saw users lose approximately $1.4 million in WBTC after an EVM swap router flaw allowed attackers to exploit token approvals. The team said core Starknet LP positions were not affected, but advised users to revoke approvals tied to the vulnerable router. This was not a core AMM insolvency event; it was a permissioning and router-exposure event, which is equally important from a user-risk perspective.

HTX Ventures Angle: The exploits on TrustedVolumes and Ekubo represent a dangerous evolution in DeFi vulnerability: third-party and adjacent infrastructure risk. Even when core AMM contracts and Layer 2 security models function flawlessly, compromised resolvers and legacy token-approval mechanisms can drain millions. For institutional adoption to scale safely, the industry must move beyond auditing core protocols and enforce strict, end-to-end security standards across the entire transaction routing and UI permissioning stack.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

> Strategy Reframes Bitcoin Treasury Policy: “Net Accumulator,” Not “Never Sell”

Strategy’s Executive Chairman Michael Saylor clarified that the company’s practical treasury policy is to remain a net accumulator of Bitcoin, stating that if Strategy sells 1 BTC for corporate purposes, it would aim to buy back 10–20 BTC over time. The clarification matters because Strategy’s Q1 materials showed the company holding 818,334 BTC as of 3 May 2026, while STRC and other preferred-equity products have become core funding instruments for dividends and future Bitcoin accumulation. Strategically, this marks an important evolution: Strategy is no longer framed as a completely immovable BTC vault, but as an actively managed Bitcoin credit-and-treasury vehicle that uses capital markets instruments to increase BTC per share over time.

> Bitmine Adds 26,659 ETH; Total ETH Holdings Reach 5.21 Million

Bitmine announced that its crypto holdings included 5,206,790 ETH, 201 BTC, $775 million in cash, and strategic “moonshot” equity holdings, bringing total crypto, cash, and related holdings to $13.4 billion. Bitmine stated that its ETH position represents 4.31% of total ETH supply and that 4,712,917 ETH, worth approximately $11.1 billion at $2,366 per ETH, had been staked. This reinforces BMNR’s positioning as the largest public ETH treasury vehicle and signals that ETH treasury strategies are increasingly becoming a public-equity wrapper for institutional Ethereum exposure plus staking yield.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Moomoo Obtains U.S. Prediction-Market License

Futu’s overseas brand Moomoo announced that it obtained U.S. regulatory approval to offer prediction-market/event-contract trading services to retail users, with products expected to cover sports, economics, politics, and culture. The move is strategically meaningful because prediction markets are moving from crypto-native venues into regulated retail brokerage channels. Moomoo Financial Inc. is listed in NFA records as a futures commission merchant, and the product positioning indicates that event contracts will be offered within a CFTC/NFA-supervised derivatives framework rather than purely as offshore wagering products.

> Bullish Tokenizes 151 Million Shares on Solana

Bullish tokenized its full 151 million-share cap table on Solana, with CEO Thomas Farley demonstrating a live wallet-to-wallet share transfer using Phantom at Consensus 2026. The strategic importance is not the share count alone, but the institutional workflow: tokenized equity, transfer-agent infrastructure, wallet-based transferability, and regulated capital markets infrastructure are converging. For Solana, this is a high-profile proof point that tokenized securities may become a serious enterprise use case beyond stablecoin payments and memecoin activity.

> Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs Commit Over $50 Million to Trading, AI, and Institutional Infrastructure

Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs announced a commitment of more than $50 million across first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure, and strategic support for trading and AI partners. The roadmap includes Decibel, encrypted mempool technology, FIX and CCXT connectivity, multi-leader consensus, and confidential perpetual trading. The strategic direction is clear: Aptos is positioning itself less as a generic L1 and more as an institutional-grade execution layer for on-chain markets and autonomous AI-agent financial activity.

HTX Ventures Angle: Corporate treasuries are officially transitioning from passive balance sheet hedges to active, sovereign-scale financial utility. MicroStrategy’s pivot to a ‘net accumulator’ strategy using capital markets, alongside Bitmine seizing 4.31% of the global Ethereum supply, proves public equity markets are heavily rewarding proxy digital asset vehicles. Furthermore, TradFi assimilation is achieving massive workflow milestones — evidenced by Bullish tokenizing its equity directly on Solana and Moomoo graduating prediction markets into regulated retail brokerage channels. Institutional rails are now live in production.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

> Centrifuge deSPXA went live on Base

Centrifuge launched deSPXA on Base, offering tokenized S&P 500 exposure for eligible non-U.S. investors. The product connects tokenized equity-index exposure with on-chain settlement infrastructure and is strategically relevant to the RWA theme.

> RedStone (RED) unlocked approximately 40.85 million tokens at midnight Beijing time on May 7th, representing approximately 12.20% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $5.5 million.

> Space and Time (SXT) unlocked approximately 387 million tokens at 9 PM Beijing time on May 8th, representing about 23.20% of the circulating supply, worth approximately $6.1 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 14 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$1.049 billion.

Some major highlights:

OnRe: $5M Series A to Accelerate On-Chain Reinsurance on Solana

Bermuda-licensed on-chain reinsurance startup OnRe secured a $5 million Series A funding round co-led by Forward Industries and RockawayX. The platform tokenizes real-world insurance risk through its ONyc token, bringing traditional reinsurance capacity to decentralized finance on the Solana network. Alongside the equity investment, Forward Industries announced plans to deploy up to $25 million into ONyc to secure dollar-denominated, uncorrelated yield for its corporate treasury.

OpenTrade: $17M Strategic Round to Scale Stablecoin Yield Infrastructure

UK-based platform OpenTrade raised $17 million in a strategic funding round led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Crypto. Focused on institutional-grade on-chain lending, the protocol provides stablecoin yields backed by real-world assets (RWA) and recently surpassed $200 million in Total Value Locked (TVL). The capital will be utilized to expand its infrastructure and strengthen its position as an institutional gateway for stablecoin liquidity.

Kalshi: Prediction Market Achieves $22 Billion Valuation in New Fundraise

CFTC-regulated prediction market Kalshi has closed a major funding round, propelling its valuation to $22 billion. Driven by surging retail and institutional demand for event-driven contracts, the platform has rapidly scaled its trading volume across macroeconomic, political, and cultural markets. The influx of capital further solidifies its dominance in the regulated U.S. derivatives landscape as it expands its product offerings.

HTX Ventures Angle:

Venture deployment is aggressively chasing regulatory moats and verifiable yield. The staggering $22 billion valuation for CFTC-regulated Kalshi, combined with heavy funding for OpenTrade’s stablecoin infrastructure and OnRe’s on-chain reinsurance, confirms that capital is completely ignoring pure-play consumer apps in favor of institutional-grade RWA and compliance architectures.

8/ HTX Ventures Portfolio News

>BounceBit Positions for BlackRock Onchain Expansion via BUIDL Integration

BounceBit announced its ongoing collaboration with BlackRock’s BUIDL fund through BounceBit Prime as the asset manager expands its tokenized onchain fund offerings. The project highlighted its proactive positioning to leverage growing institutional participation, exploring applications of these funds for enhanced yield generation, collateral utility, and capital efficiency across its RWA-focused ecosystem.

9/ Watchlists (May 13 — May 16, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● May 14: U.S. Regulation — The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will hold a pivotal markup hearing for the CLARITY Act. This highly anticipated crypto market structure bill aims to provide federal clarity for digital asset classification, with a crucial and hotly debated compromise clause that would prohibit crypto companies from paying yields on “idle” fiat-backed stablecoins.

● May 14: Traditional Finance — The Moscow Exchange will officially launch futures trading for Solana, Ripple, and Tron indices, exclusively targeting qualified investors and settling in Russian Rubles.

Crypto-Specific

● May 13: L2 Infrastructure — Base will deploy “Base Azul,” its first independent network upgrade on the mainnet, designed to significantly enhance security, performance, and the overall developer experience.

● May 13: Token Unlock — Aptos (APT) unlocks approximately 11.31 million tokens, representing ~0.67% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$12.4M).

● May 14: Protocol Sunset — Solana-based DeFi protocol Carrot will officially shut down, setting this date as the strict deadline for users to withdraw funds before the system force-liquidates all leverage and redemptions.

● May 15: Ecosystem Sunsets — Decentralized email project Dmail Network will begin gradually terminating all services, citing unsustainable decentralized infrastructure costs, a lack of clear commercialization pathways, and core team attrition.

● May 15: Major Unlocks — Connex (CONX) unlocks an outsized ~$18.1M ; Starknet (STRK) unlocks ~$6.8M; Sei (SEI) unlocks ~$3.8M.

● May 16: Gaming Infrastructure — Web3 gaming infrastructure studio Lattice will officially shut down its Layer 2 network, Redstone. The team is sunsetting operations after five years, reflecting the increasingly challenging venture funding landscape and lack of sustainable business models for pure-play autonomous world builders.

● May 16: Token Unlock — Arbitrum (ARB) unlocks approximately 92.65 million tokens, representing ~1.71% of its circulating supply (valued at ~$13.0M) .

References

1ADP. (2026, May 6). ADP National Employment Report: Private sector employment increased by 109,000 jobs in April; annual pay was up 4.4%. https://mediacenter.adp.com/2026-05-06-ADP-National-Employment-Report-Private-Sector-Employment-Increased-by-109%2C000-Jobs-in-April-Annual-Pay-was-Up-4-4

2. Bankless. (2026, May 6). Ekubo DEX users drained for $1.4M in token approval exploit. https://www.bankless.com/read/news/ekubo-dex-users-drained-for-1-4m-in-token-approval-exploit

3. EthDaily. (2026, May). Centrifuge deSPXA goes live on Base. https://ethdaily.io/centrifuge-despxa-goes-live-on-base

4. GlobeNewswire. (2026, May 5). Forward Industries and RockawayX Co-Lead Strategic Investment in OnRe to Accelerate Onchain Reinsurance on Solana. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/05/05/3287676/0/en/forward-industries-and-rockawayx-co-lead-strategic-investment-in-onre-to-accelerate-onchain-reinsurance-on-solana.html

5. Maeil Business Newspaper. (2026, May 8). The movement of funds for virtual assets across borders will also be regulated under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act. https://www.mk.co.kr/en/stock/12042028

6. Mutikani, L. (2026, May 7). US labor market stable as layoffs remain low. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/us-jobless-claims-increase-less-than-expected-amid-low-layoffs-2026-05-07/

7. Reuters. (2026, May 6). Bank of Canada says stablecoin rules could be introduced by mid or late 2027. https://www.reuters.com/business/bank-canada-says-stablecoins-rules-could-be-introduced-by-mid-or-late-2027-2026-05-06/

8. The Block. (2026, May). OpenTrade raises $17M to expand stablecoin yield infrastructure after topping $200M TVL. https://www.theblock.co/post/400187/opentrade-raises-17m-to-expand-stablecoin-yield-infrastructure-after-topping-200m-tvl

9. The Defiant. (2026, May). 1inch resolver TrustedVolumes drained for $6.7M on Ethereum. https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/1inch-resolver-trustedvolumes-drained-for-usd6-7m-on-ethereum

10. The New York Times. (2026, May 7). Kalshi prediction market fundraise 22 billion. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/business/dealbook/kalshi-fundraise-22-billion.html

11.U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. (2026, May 8). Executive Session. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/05/08/2026/executive-session?utm_source=chatgpt.com

12.CoinMarketCap. (2026, May). OpenTrade raises $17M to scale stablecoin yield platform. https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/opentrade-raises-17m-scale-stablecoin-yield-platform

13. Kalshi. (2026, May). Kalshi raises $1 billion at $22 billion valuation as institutional demand surges. Kalshi News. https://news.kalshi.com/p/kalshi-raises-1-billion-22-billion-valuation-institutional-demand-surges

14. Our Crypto Talk. (2026, May). OnRe raises $5M Series A. https://ourcryptotalk.com/news/onre-raises-5m-series-a

15.Moomoo Prediction Markets Article: Futu. (2026, May 10). Moomoo US set to launch U.S. prediction markets following regulatory approval. moomoo. https://www.moomoo.com/community/feed/moomoo-us-set-to-launch-u-s-prediction-markets-following-116553670918550

16. Bullish Tokenization Article: Bullish. (2026, May 5). Bullish tokenizes its shares, bringing BLSH onchain. https://www.bullish.com/us/news-insights/bullish-tokenizes-its-shares-bringing-blsh-onchain (Note: In APA 7, when the author and the website name are the same, you omit the website name from the source element to avoid repetition).

17. Yahoo Finance Aptos Article: Aptos commits $50M to support AI. (2026). Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/aptos-commits-50m-support-ai-183822615.html

Executive Summary

The global macroeconomic architecture experienced structural friction this week, highlighted by an unprecedented four-member dissent at the Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting. This historic fracture guarantees elevated policy volatility, actively draining legacy safe havens as Gold broke below $4,600 and Silver slid to $72.95. Concurrently, global regulatory frameworks are fracturing; Brazil explicitly barred virtual assets from its cross-border eFX rails, sharply contrasting with Japan’s accelerating compliance-driven market consolidation.

Despite a severe capital-constrained environment — marked by a massive $606.5 million contraction in fiat-backed stablecoins — Bitcoin executed a decisive decoupling. Driven by $622.8 million in targeted ETF inflows anchored by Fidelity, BTC surged past the $80,000 threshold. This stark divergence reveals a hyper-concentrated market: offshore and retail fiat is exiting the broader ecosystem, while traditional institutional capital surgically isolates risk into regulated Bitcoin wrappers, leaving altcoins starved for liquidity.

On the enterprise front, institutional integration crossed into mission-critical territory. Visa transitioned into an active blockchain validator while expanding its stablecoin settlement network to a $7 billion annualized run rate, and Securitize partnered with Computershare to forge a direct, compliant pathway for the $70 trillion U.S. equity market to migrate on-chain. Bolstered by corporate titans like Bitmine absorbing nearly 4.3% of the circulating Ethereum supply, the infrastructure connecting traditional finance and Web3 is solidifying at a staggering pace.

1/ Macro Markets Sentiment

U.S. Economy

> FOMC Rate Decision & Unprecedented Board Fracture

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate steady at 3.50%–3.75% during its April 28–29 meeting, but exposed the most severe internal division since 1992, with four FOMC members dissenting against the decision or policy language. This structural fracture in monetary leadership — coupled with outgoing Chair Powell confirming he will remain as a governor when Kevin Warsh assumes the chair in May — signals a highly erratic future path for the cost of capital, forcing capital allocators to aggressively discount forward multiples for policy volatility.

> CFTC Chair Selig Moves to Curb State-Level Interference with Prediction Markets

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig is pushing to limit individual states’ ability to interfere with federally-regulated prediction markets, aiming to prevent state-level enforcement actions from blocking the industry’s expansion.

Rest of the World

> Brazil Bars Crypto from Cross-Border eFX Rails

Brazil’s central bank prohibited virtual assets from settlement inside the regulated eFX cross-border payment framework, formally excluding stablecoins from the country’s primary FX corridor. The move runs structurally counter to the U.S. stablecoin embrace under the GENIUS Act and signals that regulatory blocs are diverging across the Americas, fragmenting the global stablecoin distribution map.

> SBI Holdings Moves to Acquire Bitbank in Japan Consolidation Push

Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings entered discussions to make crypto exchange Bitbank a subsidiary, extending a regional pattern of incumbent financial institutions absorbing licensed exchanges as Japan’s regulatory framework matures. The deal positions SBI as the dominant compliance-anchored crypto distribution platform in Japan ahead of expected stablecoin and ETF expansions later this year.

> South Korean Court Grants Bithumb Stay on Operating Suspension

A Seoul court granted Bithumb a stay on its six-month partial business suspension pending final ruling, after the Financial Intelligence Unit imposed a $25M fine for KYC failures. The case is a leading indicator of how Asia-Pacific compliance regimes will translate to enforcement velocity in 2026, with licensed exchanges increasingly subject to retroactive penalties.

Commodities

Gold Spot (XAU/USD)

Gold continues its downward bleed, breaking below the $4,600 threshold to currently trade at $4,582.20. The 5-day chart illustrates a failed mid-week recovery that hit stiff resistance near $4,660 before capitulating to a -0.34% weekly close. This sustained compression confirms that the market is not merely reacting to a temporary liquidity shock, but actively repricing for a prolonged stagflationary environment. With energy costs anchoring baseline inflation, the Federal Reserve’s mandated hawkish posture is keeping U.S. real yields structurally elevated. As a result, institutional capital is executing a calculated rotation out of non-yielding bullion and into short-term, yield-bearing fiat instruments, systematically unwinding gold’s historical safe-haven premium.

Silver (XAG/USD)

Silver has experienced a volatile “whipsaw” week, currently settling near the $72.95 level. The 5-day chart highlights a sharp, aggressive spike on May 2nd — pushing the metal briefly toward the $76 mark — driven by a sudden influx of safe-haven buying as US-Iran diplomatic talks reportedly stalled. However, this geopolitical premium evaporated just as quickly as it arrived. With Brent crude remaining stubbornly elevated above the $100 threshold, the broader macroeconomic narrative continues to be dominated by stagflation fears and a restrictive Federal Reserve. Consequently, the sustained strength of the U.S. dollar and high Treasury yields quickly suppressed the rally, forcing speculative capital to liquidate and dragging silver back down to its fundamental, oil-constrained support floor.

Crypto Market Impact

The ongoing macroeconomic suffocation is ruthlessly exposing the broader digital asset market’s reliance on excess fiat liquidity. As traditional risk assets and precious metals bleed, crypto is experiencing a severe capital drought that is forcing a structural market cleansing. From a strategic investment perspective, this restrictive, high-rate environment is fatal for pure-speculation networks but serves as a vital catalyst for institutional-grade infrastructure. Capital allocation is rotating entirely away from retail narratives, pivoting aggressively toward tokenized Real-World Assets (RWA) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) protocols that can mathematically prove their operational efficiency and cash-flow generation independent of broader market liquidity.

HTX Ventures Angle: The historic FOMC fracture guarantees elevated policy volatility, forcing capital allocators to heavily discount forward multiples. Furthermore, the sustained bleed in precious metals confirms institutions are actively chasing yield in a restrictive environment, not just seeking safety. With global regulations actively fragmenting — evidenced by Brazil’s eFX crypto ban versus Japan’s pro-incumbent consolidation — asset deployment should avoid pure-speculation networks.

2/ Capital Movement

> Weekly ETF inflows/outflows (Apr 28 to May 4):

● BTC: $622.8M (Led by Fidelity FBTC inflows at $ 383.5M)

● ETH: -$25.6M (Led by BlackRock ETHA outflows at $57.7M)

Source: Coinglass

Source: Coinglass

>Weekly Fiat-Backed Stablecoin Net Inflows/Outflows (Apr 29 ~ May 4 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$606.53 M

Source: SoSoValue

>Weekly USD Net Inflows/Outflows into Cryptomarket(Apr 29 ~ May 4 )

Total Net Inflows/Outflows: -$109.98M

Source: SoSoValue

(Note: Total Net Inflows are calculated via a manual sum of the daily bar chart data, which differs from the platform’s rolling cumulative display).

> Fear & Greed Index dropped from 69 (Greed) to 63 (Greed)

> Crypto Fear & Greed Index was up slightly from 45 (Neutral) to 47 (Neutral).

HTX Ventures Angle: The massive $606.5 million contraction in stablecoin liquidity diverging against strong Bitcoin ETF inflows underscores a highly fragmented capital environment. The net ecosystem outflow of $109.98 million proves that the recent price action is not driven by fresh, broad-market fiat liquidity, but rather by internal capital recycling and structural spot inventory exhaustion. Institutional players are isolating their risk exposure strictly to Bitcoin via regulated ETF wrappers while actively draining liquidity from on-chain dollar reserves.

3/ Crypto Market Performance (29 Apr ~ 5 May )

> Global crypto market cap rose by 2.7% to ~$2.65T

Spot Market

Bitcoin (BTC): +3.69%

● Current Price: $80,217.36

● Fluctuation Analysis: Institutional Accumulation & Breakout. BTC absorbed a mid-week dip below $76,000 before surging through heavy resistance to reclaim the $80,000 psychological threshold. This rally was heavily catalyzed by robust institutional participation, including over $630 million in recent ETF inflows and a significant liquidation of leveraged short positions. The price action indicates a decisive shift back into price discovery.

● Support Level: $75,000 — $75,500 (This zone was aggressively defended during the April 30 flush, serving as the structural launchpad for the current breakout).

● Resistance Level: $80,500 — $81,000 (Immediate overhead supply zone; the asset is currently working to flip the $80,000 mark from resistance into definitive support).

Source: CoinMarketCap (BTC)

Ethereum (ETH): +2.29%

● Current Price: $2,360.21

● Fluctuation Analysis: Correlated Drag & Lagging Beta. Ethereum tracked Bitcoin’s recovery but exhibited a weaker structural profile, failing to initiate an independent breakout. The sharp dip to the $2,220 region on April 30 highlights underlying fragility. ETH is currently relying on BTC’s momentum to maintain its valuation, reflecting a lack of isolated institutional conviction in the smart-contract layer at this time.

● Support Level: $2,220 (The definitive local bottom established during the late-April drawdown, where buyers finally stepped in to halt the bleed).

● Resistance Level: $2,380 — $2,400 (This overhead block has consistently capped ETH’s upside momentum over the past week).

Source: CoinMarketCap (ETH)

Altcoin Market Cap: +1.3%

● Current Valuation: $1.125 Trillion ($1,125,020,609,939)

● Fluctuation Analysis: Stabilization & Concentrated Capital. The broader Altcoin ecosystem experienced a “V-shaped” recovery from the April 30 low. However, the aggregate valuation peaked near $1.15T before cooling off. This indicates that while the panic has subsided, fresh liquidity is primarily bottlenecking into Bitcoin ETFs rather than flowing down the risk curve into mid-to-small cap protocols.

● Support Level: $1.08 Trillion (The critical macro floor tested on April 30; defending this level was essential to preserve the broader bull market structure).

● Resistance Level: $1.15 Trillion (The local top established between May 3 and May 4 before capital began rotating back out of the sector).

Source: CoinGekco

Sectors Performance

Mainstream foundational sectors demonstrated resilient and consistent growth this week, with AI and L2 outpacing specific narrative categories.

Infrastructure (0.3%), DeFi(0.8%), Layer 2(3.0%), AI(4.3%), RWA(0.1%).

Source: Coingecko (Top Crypto Categories By Market Cap)

HTX Ventures Angle: Bitcoin’s aggressive reclaim of the $80,000 threshold, combined with Ethereum’s lagging beta and the altcoin sector’s failed breakout at $1.15 Trillion, paints a picture of intense capital concentration. Investors are actively rotating profits out of secondary narratives and seeking refuge in the apex asset. We are currently in a highly selective accumulation phase where liquidity is deliberately starving the application layer to secure base-layer dominance.

4/ Security Incidents

> Wasabi Protocol Drained for $4.55M in Admin-Key Compromise

Wasabi Protocol, a perpetuals trading platform deployed across Ethereum, Base, Berachain, and Blast, lost approximately $4.55M after attackers compromised its sole deployer EOA. The attacker called grantRole on the permission contract with zero delay, then upgraded the perp vaults and Long Pool to malicious implementations that drained user balances. The incident lacked any timelock or multisig safeguard on the admin role and adds to more than $770M in DeFi losses this year.

> Arbitrum Security Council Freezes $71M of Attacker Funds

In a notable counterweight, Arbitrum’s Security Council deployed emergency powers to freeze approximately $71M of attacker funds tied to the KelpDAO incident, while a 14-organization consortium pledged over $300M to the DeFi United rescue fund. The episode demonstrates that response infrastructure has matured even as attack frequency hits one incident per day.

HTX Ventures Angle: The juxtaposition of Wasabi Protocol losing $4.55 million to an admin-key compromise and the Arbitrum Security Council freezing $71 million from the KelpDAO exploit encapsulates the current security paradigm. Relying on a single Externally Owned Account (EOA) without timelocks for core protocol upgrades is an unacceptable, existential risk that continues to needlessly plague DeFi. Conversely, the swift intervention by Arbitrum demonstrates that decentralized governance and emergency response infrastructures are maturing rapidly to mitigate systemic contagion. For venture allocation, strict adherence to multisig architectures and decentralized risk-control modules is a non-negotiable prerequisite for funding.

5/ Corporate Actions

BTC/ETH DAT Movement

> BMNR Achieves $13.1 Billion in Total Holdings, Driven by Record 5.18 Million ETH Position

Following its recent uplisting to the New York Stock Exchange, Bitmine Immersion Technologies has reported total corporate holdings of $13.1 billion, solidifying its position as the world’s largest corporate Ethereum treasury. The company’s asset base is anchored by 5.18 million ETH — accounting for 4.29% of the total circulating supply — alongside $700 million in cash reserves, 200 BTC, and targeted strategic equity investments in emerging technology firms. Backed by prominent institutional investors, this aggressive accumulation strategy and robust yield generation reflect the company’s strong conviction in the expanding utility of the Ethereum network for structural blockchain tokenization.

Strategic Web3 Integrations

> Tether Posts $1.04B Q1 Profit, $8.23B Record Reserve Buffer

Tether published its Q1 2026 attestation on May 1, reporting $1.04B in net profit and a record $8.23B in excess reserves verified by BDO. Direct and indirect exposure to U.S. Treasury bills reached approximately $141B, placing Tether among the world’s twenty largest holders globally — a private-sector entity now larger than most G20 central banks in UST allocation. Reserves also include ~$20B in physical gold and ~$7B in Bitcoin, reinforcing the dollar-backed stablecoin model as sovereign-scale monetary infrastructure.

> Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement to Nine Blockchains; Hits $7B Annualized Run Rate

Visa added Polygon, Base, Circle’s Arc, Stripe’s Tempo, and Canton to its stablecoin settlement pilot, bringing total chain support to nine and lifting the annualized run rate to $7B — a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase from approximately $4.7B. More structurally significant, Visa now operates as a validator on both Tempo and Canton, transitioning from passive settlement participant to active blockchain network operator. The move is the most consequential TradFi–Web3 integration milestone since Mastercard’s stablecoin program and confirms that stablecoin rails have crossed from pilot into mission-critical infrastructure.

> Securitize × Computershare Open Path for $70T in U.S. Stocks to Move Onchain

BlackRock-backed Securitize partnered with Computershare to introduce Issuer-Sponsored Tokens (ISTs), enabling U.S.-listed companies to issue tokenized shares directly alongside traditional stock. Computershare, transfer agent for roughly 58% of the S&P 500, will record tokenized holdings within its existing transfer-agent infrastructure — meaning ISTs represent direct equity, not derivative claims. The architecture is the first regulator-compliant pathway for the $70T U.S. equity market to migrate onchain at the registry layer and represents the most significant RWA milestone of 2026 to date.

> MoonPay Korea Signs Banking MOU with Woori Bank

MoonPay Korea signed its first Korean banking MOU with Woori Bank, committing to support global distribution, cross-border settlement, wallet access, and currency conversion infrastructure for the country’s emerging won-backed stablecoin market. The deal positions MoonPay as the default distribution layer as Korean regulators formalize KRW stablecoin frameworks and grants the company structural advantage in one of APAC’s largest digital-asset corridors.

HTX Ventures Angle: Corporate and institutional engagement has definitively crossed the rubicon from pilot phases to mission-critical infrastructure deployment. Visa transitioning from a passive participant into an active node validator, combined with Securitize and Computershare opening a legally compliant pathway to tokenize the $70 trillion U.S. equity market, signals the mass migration of traditional financial rails on-chain. Simultaneously, Bitmine’s unprecedented accumulation of nearly 4.3% of the total ETH supply and Tether’s massive $8.23 billion reserve buffer prove that crypto-native entities are operating as sovereign-scale financial powerhouses. The market is heavily rewarding infrastructure that natively bridges traditional liquidity with decentralized settlement.

6/ New Launches & Unlocks

● Sui (SUI): The Layer-1 blockchain released approximately 42.62 million SUI tokens on May 1st. Representing 1.08% of its circulating supply, this unlock was valued at roughly $40 million.

● EigenLayer (EIGEN): The decentralized cloud platform released 36.82 million EIGEN tokens on May 1st. Constituting 7.01% of its circulating supply, the released tokens represented approx. $6.6 million in market value.

● ZetaChain (ZETA): The omnichain interoperability network executed an unlock of 44.26 million ZETA tokens on May 1st. Valued at approximately $2.5 million, this release accounted for 3.25% of the circulating supply.

● Omni Network (OMNI): The Ethereum rollup interoperability protocol released 7.99 million OMNI tokens on May 2nd. Representing a significant 23.25% of its circulating supply, the unlock injected roughly $5.3 million in value into the market.

● Ethena (ENA): The synthetic dollar protocol unlocked 40.63 million ENA tokens on May 2nd. Representing a minimal 0.50% of its circulating supply, this release was valued at approx. $4.4 million.

7/ VC & Funding

In the global blockchain sector, there were 17 investments and financing events recorded, with the total funding amount exceeding US$176 million.

Some major highlights:

Liquid: $18M Series A for Multi-Asset Derivatives Platform

Cryptocurrency derivatives platform Liquid has secured $18 million in Series A funding led by Neo and Left Lane Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures, SV Angel, and others. Founded by former Two Sigma quantitative researcher Franklyn Wang, the platform initially focused on crypto perpetuals but has since expanded to offer secondary pre-IPO equity, forex, traditional stocks, and Polymarket positions. The firm currently provides up to 200x leverage in select jurisdictions.

Squads: $18M Equity Round to Scale Stablecoin Settlement

Solana-based multi-signature protocol Squads completed an $18 million equity funding round led by Solana Ventures, bringing its total capital raised to $42.9 million. The funds will be deployed to expand Altitude, the firm’s enterprise stablecoin settlement platform. Since its public beta launch in December, Altitude has processed over $200 million in B2B and cross-border payments, allowing businesses to bypass traditional banking by managing operations entirely via self-custodied stablecoin wallets.

Fun: $72M Series A for Crypto Exchange Services

Cryptocurrency exchange startup Fun announced the completion of a $72 million Series A funding round co-led by Multicoin Capital and tech venture capital firm SignalFire. The round, which officially closed in January but was only recently made public, also attracted investment from Infinity Ventures, Pharsalus Capital, and Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen. The company has opted to keep its valuation for this round undisclosed as it scales its exchange infrastructure.

8/ HTX Ventures Portfolio News

>Lombard Bitcoin Earn Featured on Blockworks Analytics Vaults Dashboard

Lombard has integrated its vaults, including the flagship Bitcoin Earn automated yield product, into Blockworks Analytics’ first Vaults dashboard powered by Veda Labs. Users can now track live metrics such as overall TVL and deposit trends, individual vault performance, historical performance over time, and real-time APY. The dashboard provides transparent visibility into Lombard’s Bitcoin-on-Bitcoin yield strategies, making it easier for users to monitor their automated BTC earnings.

> RedStone Data Live on MegaETH Before First Trade

RedStone emphasizes building forward-looking infrastructure by having its real-time oracle data (via RedStone Bolt) fully operational on MegaETH ahead of any trading activity. This proactive approach ensures the high-performance L2 can scale seamlessly from day one, demonstrating how true real-time systems are constructed with reliable data infrastructure already in place before demand materializes

>Theoriq Reorganizes for Focused AI-Driven RWA Vault Growth

In a detailed update, Theoriq CEO Pei Chen announced a strategic reorganization to sharpen focus on AI-augmented curation of tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs), at the intersection of exploding AI applications in finance and the $29B+ onchain RWA market. Key changes include full separation from ChainML with in-house capabilities, leadership shifts (Pei Chen as CEO, Jameson Pickett promoted to CPO, Ron Bodkin moving to advisor), discontinuation of AlphaChat/AlphaHub, and doubled-down emphasis on high-performing vaults like the #1 Theoriq Gold Vault (~5% native APY) and AlphaVault ETH. The team is prioritizing $THQ token utility tied to vault performance, institutional scaling, and AI-native yield strategies while seeking additional capital.

9/ Watchlists (May 5 — May 11, 2026)

Macro & Regulatory

● May 6: U.S. Macro Data — Release of the April ADP Employment report, serving as a critical leading indicator for labor market resilience and private sector hiring.

● May 7: U.S. Macro Data — Release of April inflation expectations data.

● May 7: Corporate Policy — Deadline for public consultation regarding Metaplanet’s formal opposition to the potential exclusion of Bitcoin-holding companies from Japan’s TOPIX index.

● May 8: U.S. Labor Market — Release of April Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP), Unemployment Rate, and average hourly wage data. This is the definitive macro catalyst of the week for shaping the Federal Reserve’s near-term interest rate trajectory.

Crypto-Specific

● May 6: Earnings — American Bitcoin will release its Q1 financial report, providing insight into the operational health of publicly traded infrastructure players.

● May 7: Institutional Products — GraniteShares is set to launch 8 new leveraged cryptocurrency ETFs, expanding structural trading options for market participants.

● May 7: Governance & Liquidity — Voting concludes for the WLFI token unlock proposal. Separately, INFINIT has officially delayed its upcoming investor token unlocks.

● May 8: Protocol Governance — The Arbitrum DAO will conduct a pivotal vote regarding the potential release of frozen ETH within its treasury.

● May 8: Token Unlock — Space and Time (SXT) is scheduled for a massive token unlock, marking a key liquidity event to monitor for structural sell pressure.

References

1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2026, April 29). Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement. https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260429a.htm

2. CoinDesk. (2026, April 21). Arbitrum freezes $71 million in ether tied to Kelp DAO exploit. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/04/21/arbitrum-freezes-usd71-million-in-ether-tied-to-kelp-dao-exploit

3. CoinDesk. (2026, May 1). Bithumb scores a legal win in South Korea as six-month suspension is lifted by local judge. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/05/01/bithumb-scores-a-legal-win-in-south-korea-as-six-month-suspension-is-lifted-by-local-judge

4. Cointelegraph. (2026, May 1). Brazil central bank bars virtual assets from cross-border payment service eFX. https://cointelegraph.com/news/brazil-central-bank-bars-virtual-assets-from-cross-border-payment-service-efx

5. Cointelegraph. (2026, May 1). SBI seeks to make Bitbank a subsidiary in Japan crypto consolidation push. https://cointelegraph.com/news/sbi-seeks-to-make-bitbank-a-subsidiary-in-japan-crypto-consolidation-push

6. Computershare. (2026, April 29). Computershare introduces tokenized shares for US issuers. https://www.computershare.com/us/news/transfer-agent-services/computershare-introduces-tokenized-shares-for-us-issuers

7. Cox, J. (2026, April 29). Fed interest rate decision April 2026: Fed holds rates steady amid dissent. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/29/fed-interest-rate-decision-april-2026.html

8. Decrypt. (2026, April 29). Visa Adds Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo to Stablecoin Settlement Program. https://decrypt.co/365968/visa-base-polygon-canton-arc-tempo-stablecoin-settlement-program

9. Fortune. (2026, April 28). Liquid $18 million leveraged trading. https://fortune.com/2026/04/28/liquid-18-million-leveraged-trading/

10. Fortune. (2026, May 1). Fun Series A fundraise Multicoin Capital SignalFire. https://fortune.com/2026/05/01/fun-series-a-fundraise-multicoin-capital-signalfire/

11. Hochstein, M. (2026, April 30). Wasabi Protocol drained of $4.5M in admin key compromise. CoinDesk. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/04/30/wasabi-protocol-drained-for-usd4-5-million-in-apparent-admin-key-compromise

12. MoonPay. (2026, April 30). MoonPay Korea to Power Global Distribution of Won-Backed Stablecoin. PRNewswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moonpay-korea-to-power-global-distribution-of-won-backed-stablecoin-302758747.html

13. Securitize. (2026, April 29). Securitize and Computershare Announce Tokenized Shares for U.S. Issuers. PRNewswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/securitize-and-computershare-announce-an-agreement-to-enable-tokenized-shares-for-us-issuers-302756568.html

14. Tether International. (2026, May 1). Tether Posts $1.04B Q1 2026 Profit; $8.23B Reserve Buffer. https://tether.io/news/tether-posts-1-04b-q1-2026-profit

15. The Block. (2026, May 1). Tether posts over $1B Q1 profit as reserve buffer reaches record $8.2B. https://www.theblock.co/post/399722/tether-posts-over-1-billion-q1-profit-as-reserve-buffer-reaches-record-8-2-billion

16. The Block. (2026, May). Solana Ventures Squads funding stablecoin Altitude. https://www.theblock.co/post/399386/solana-ventures-squads-funding-stablecoin-altitude

17. The Information. (2026). CFTC prediction markets state preemption. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/cftc-prediction-markets-state-preemption

18. Visa Inc. (2026, April 29). Visa Accelerates Stablecoin Momentum: Adding Five Blockchains for Settlement. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2026/Visa-Accelerates-Stablecoin-Momentum-Adding-Five-Blockchains-for-Settlement/default.aspx

Introduction

Currency is never static. From metal coinage to paper banknotes, and from savings passbooks to mobile payments, every evolution in the form of currency has been rooted in technological change and institutional restructuring. What we are witnessing today may be the most profound and rapid transformation in this history yet.

According to TAB Global 1000 data, the world’s top 1,000 banks hold over $103 trillion in customer deposits. This scale forms the core liability base of the banking system and supports the stable operation of global credit expansion and financial intermediation. Meanwhile, another curve is rising sharply. As of March 2026, the global stablecoin market capitalization has surpassed $319 billion, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary predicts this figure could reach $3.7 trillion by the end of the decade.

The tension between these two curves constitutes the core question of this report:

When dollar–denominated assets take on an on-chain form and gain the ability to simultaneously provide custody, liquidity, and yield, will the deposit model that traditional banks rely on be repriced?

This question is critical not only because it touches upon the future of the crypto industry, but also because it strikes at the very foundations of banking. For traditional banks, deposits are not a neutral figure; they are the starting point for the operation of the balance sheet. Whoever controls deposits controls the basis for loan expansion, net interest margins, and financial distribution. For crypto platforms, stablecoins offer a new possibility by enabling a lower-friction technological architecture that transmits yields-previously absorbed within the banking system-more directly to end users.

However, this shift by no means implies that traditional banks will simply be replaced. While crypto platforms demonstrate structural advantages in yield, liquidity, and product innovation, they still face significant gaps in regulatory compliance, legal protections, liquidity management, and technical security. We observe both the rapid attraction of capital to stablecoins and yield-bearing products, and the regulatory contest unfolding around the GENIUS Act, the CLARITY Act, Europe’s MiCA framework, and Hong Kong’s stablecoin regulations — rapidly bringing this competition into the mainstream financial policy agenda.

Therefore, this report does not attempt to presuppose the victory of any one side, nor does it reduce this transformation to a binary judgment of “banks will be disrupted” or “crypto is merely a supplementary tool”. A more accurate characterization is this: we are at the starting point of a restructuring of the financial architecture. On one side is the legacy system centered on deposits and banking licenses; on the other is a new system centered on stablecoins, wallets, custody, and on-chain yield protocols. In the coming years, what is truly worth observing is not merely whether stablecoins can continue to grow, but how the relationships among currency, deposits, yield, settlement, and regulation will be redefined.

This report will explore the following questions:

● Why are stablecoins evolving from a payment instrument into a “yield-bearing dollar”?

● Why do they exert marginal competitive pressure on the deposit market?

● What are the fundamental structural differences between emerging crypto banks and traditional banks?

● Where does the yield of the “yield-bearing dollar” come from, and who bears the risks?

● What exactly is regulation constraining, and what is it protecting?

● Will traditional banks be replaced, or will they absorb this innovation and reconstruct themselves?

In this sense, what this report seeks to provide is not a prophecy, but a coordinate map for understanding this financial restructuring.

As the global investment arm of HTX, HTX Ventures has long tracked the evolution of stablecoins, on-chain financial infrastructure, and emerging fintech models, while actively participating in this structural transformation through both investments and incubation.

HTX’s global business footprint in stablecoin trading and yield-generating products also gives us a front-row view into this shift — grounded in real user behavior, capital flows, and product design dynamics.

The perspectives presented in this report are informed not only by HTX Ventures’ long-term coverage of global crypto-financial projects, but also by HTX’s hands-on operational experience across stablecoins and yield-based offerings.

1. From Payment Instrument to “Yield-Bearing Dollar”: What Changes Are Taking Place in the Market

For a long time, traditional financial institutions have relied heavily on massive amounts of low-cost deposits as their core source of funding. By absorbing depositor funds to issue loans, they earn stable interest margin profits through the operation of these capital pools. The latest data from TABInsights, the research arm of The Asian Banker, shows that the world’s 1,000 largest banks hold over $103 trillion in customer deposits.

This seemingly unbreakable model is now facing its most severe challenge in history. The challenger is not another bank, but stablecoins born on the blockchain. The rise of stablecoins has introduced a completely new form of digital currency to the on-chain world. It not only possesses extremely high liquidity and the programmability granted by smart contracts but has also thoroughly broken free from the efficiency constraints of traditional banking legacy systems. Unlike traditional deposits, which are limited by business hours and cross-border clearing nodes, stablecoins run natively on blockchain infrastructure, greatly increasing the turnover rate of capital.

As of March 2026, the global stablecoin market capitalization has exceeded $319 billion and continues to expand at high speed. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent stated that by 2028, the stablecoin market cap could surpass $2 trillion, and this figure may reach $3.7 trillion by the end of the decade. In terms of total volume, stablecoins are still far from being able to replace the banking system. If one were to conclude that “stablecoins are systematically replacing banks” based solely on absolute volume, such a view would clearly be premature.

However, from the perspectives of functional evolution, capital flows, and user behavior, another trend has already emerged: stablecoins are gradually evolving from a transactional tool into a “yield-bearing USD account” for a broader user base.

In earlier stages, stablecoins primarily served three functions. First, they were settlement assets between and within exchanges. Second, they were a US dollar-denominated medium for on-chain asset trading. Third, they were a “US dollar substitute” in the crypto ecosystem, helping users hold a relatively stable US dollar exposure without needing to exit the crypto network. During this stage, the most important values of stablecoins were payment efficiency and settlement convenience.

But since 2024, this positioning has begun to change significantly. More and more users are no longer just “using stablecoins” but are starting to “hold stablecoins”. Stablecoins are no longer just assets briefly parked during a trade but are gradually becoming part of asset allocation and cash management. Platforms have also begun to design various yield products around stablecoins, shifting them from settlement tools to “yield-bearing USD accounts”.

Behind this transformation are at least two core driving factors.

1.1 Changes in the Macro Interest Rate Environment

In a high interest rate cycle, dollar-denominated assets themselves offer considerable returns. Compliant stablecoin issuers allocate reserves to short-term US Treasuries, reverse repurchases, and other highly liquid cash equivalents, which means the stablecoin system is naturally connected to the US benchmark interest rate. While traditional banks still pay near-zero demand interest to a large number of depositors, platforms and protocols built around stablecoins have the ability to transmit a higher proportion of underlying yields to users with lower friction.

In other words, where stablecoins truly build competitiveness is not just by being “on-chain,” but by making explicit — through technology and product structures — the yields that were originally stagnant within bank balance sheets. For the first time, users can compare more intuitively: while holding the same US dollars, why is the difference in yield between different systems so large?

1.2 Evolution of Product Forms

Another key change comes from product packaging. In the past, obtaining on-chain yields often meant that users had to understand wallets, Gas, protocol interactions, collateralization logic, or risk parameters themselves, which significantly limited the participant base. Today, more and more platforms are beginning to encapsulate complex underlying asset allocations into simple “Yield-Bearing Accounts” or “Wealth Management Portals.” For the average user, the experience is no longer “participating in a DeFi protocol,” but “putting US dollars into an account that can be transferred out at any time and also generates yield.”

This step is critical because it moves stablecoins from tools originally focused on professional and trading scenarios toward the most widespread retail product category in traditional finance: savings and cash management products.

2. Why Stablecoins Are Beginning to Possess “Deposit-Like Attractiveness”

To understand why stablecoins are beginning to form a competitive relationship with bank deposits, one must return to a fundamental question: Why do users put money into banks?

Traditionally, the answer consists of three core elements: security, liquidity, and yield.

● Security means that funds are not easily lost and are protected by clear legal frameworks and deposit insurance in most jurisdictions.

● Liquidity means that funds can be accessed at any time for payments, transfers, and asset allocation.

● Yield means that while depositors relinquish direct control of their funds, they receive a certain interest return in exchange.

In the on-chain financial system, these three elements are being reorganized.

2.1 Changes in Asset Form: From Account Records to Digital Assets

In the traditional banking system, the “balance” a user sees is essentially an entry on a bank’s ledger; this record represents the bank’s liability to the depositor. The depositor owns a claim against the bank rather than direct control over a specific, independent asset.

Stablecoins are different. They exist as on-chain assets that can be stored in exchange platforms, institutional custody accounts, or user-managed self-custody wallets. A stablecoin is not just a record of value, but a digital asset that can be transferred, invoked, combined, and embedded into protocols. In other words, the representation of funds has shifted from an “account” to an “asset.”

This step may seem technical, but its impact is immense. Because once funds exist in the form of programmable assets, they are no longer confined to the ledger of a single institution; instead, they can flow, be priced, and generate yield within a more open network.

2.2 Changes in Liquidity Structure: From Business-Day Settlement to 24/7 Transfer

The liquidity capabilities of the traditional banking system are constrained by business hours, local payment networks, cross-border correspondent banks, and clearing cycles. Even today, with the high popularity of digital banking and mobile payments, many cross-border remittances, corporate settlements, and high-value payments remain subject to working hours, T+1/T+2 clearing, and multi-layered intermediary systems.

In contrast, blockchain networks provide 24/7 real-time settlement capabilities. Stablecoins can complete global transfers within seconds or minutes without waiting for banks to open, clearing nodes to queue, or correspondent banks to confirm.

This means that for an increasing number of users, "liquidity" is no longer just about whether cash can be withdrawn at any time, but whether transfers and reallocations can be completed globally with extremely low friction. This advantage is particularly evident in scenarios involving cross-border transactions, global asset allocation, and high-frequency capital management.

2.3 Changes in Yield Distribution Structure: From Bank Retention to User Overflow

The most critical change is occurring in the method of yield distribution.

The basic model of traditional banking is:

● Users deposit funds into the bank.

● The bank allocates these funds into loans, bonds, or other assets.

● The bank earns yield on the asset side and pays only low interest to depositors.

● The interest margin becomes the core source of the bank's profit.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this model; it has supported the commercial banking system for centuries. However, it also means that a large portion of the yield is retained within the institution's balance sheet, with users sharing only a very small fraction.

In the stablecoin and on-chain yield system, the situation is beginning to change:

● Platforms or protocols can allocate funds to short-term Treasuries, on-chain lending, RWA (Real-World Asset) credit, or trading strategies.

● Users receive a more direct distribution of yield by holding stablecoins, participating in yield products, or parking funds in platform accounts.

This does not mean that risk has disappeared; on the contrary, it means:

The risks originally absorbed and managed within the banking system have begun to partially "overflow" to the user side, manifesting in the form of higher yields.

Therefore, stablecoins are beginning to possess "deposit-like attractiveness" not because they simply replicate a bank account, but because changes have occurred across three dimensions simultaneously:

● Method of Holding: Account → Wallet or Custody

● Method of Liquidity: Periodic Clearing → Real-time Settlement

● Yield Distribution: Bank Retention → User Overflow

When these three dimensions change at the same time, the user's answer to "where should funds be placed" naturally changes as well.

3. Two Generations of Digital Banking: From Experience Upgrades to Financial Structural Reconstruction

To understand today's landscape, one must trace back two key waves of digital banking—from "interface beautification" to "underlying architecture reconstruction." Each wave has gone deeper and carried more disruptive force than the last.

3.1 The First Wave: Fintech Neobanks

In the 2010s, Fintech neobanks such as Chime, Nubank, WeBank, Revolut, and Monzo emerged. The innovation of this stage was essentially a user-experience war against the inefficiencies of traditional banking. Innovations concentrated on the user experience layer: mobile-first interface design, near-zero transfer fees, and instant notification pushes. They eliminated expensive physical branches and converted the saved costs into lower fees and higher user retention.

However, the first wave had a critical limitation: despite the smooth and sophisticated front-end applications, back-end fund clearing still relied on ACH, SWIFT, or domestic clearing systems in various countries. When it came to cross-border settlement or complex financial instructions, they remained unable to escape the settlement delays and capital frictions of the traditional banking system. For example, deposits at Chime are still held on the balance sheet of The Bancorp Bank. Neobanks changed the exterior, but did not disrupt the core.

3.2 The Second Wave: Crypto Neobanks

With the maturation of blockchain technology, Crypto Neobanks—represented by Coinbase, Cash App, Robinhood, and Crypto.com—officially took the stage. The evolution in this stage is no longer limited to UI; it concerns a fundamental change in the definition of financial assets and the methods of custody.

This wave brought three decisive innovations:

● Native Custody Accounts: Unlike traditional bank accounts, which serve only as a number on a ledger, Crypto Neobanks provide asset custody services based on private key management or Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, supporting the direct holding of various on-chain assets.

● Stablecoin Payment Networks: By integrating stablecoins, these platforms have achieved 24/7 instant settlement, completely bypassing the wire transfer cycles of traditional banks.

● Integrated Yield Products: Utilizing DeFi protocols or compliant tokenized Treasury products, platforms can directly transmit the real yield of underlying assets to users, breaking the traditional banking monopoly on interest margins.

The most historically significant shift in this evolution lies in the reconstruction of the balance sheet. In a traditional context, a user's wealth is represented as a bank deposit—that is, the bank's liability. Banks utilize these liabilities for maturity transformation to earn interest margins. But in the second wave, user assets are migrating on a large scale from bank deposits to digital asset custody.

When the balance sheet shifts from being driven by fiat deposits to being driven by digital asset custody, the role of financial institutions also transforms from "capital brokers" to "asset gateways." This not only improves the efficiency of capital flows, but also lays the technological foundation for the repricing of $100 trillion in global deposits.

In the third quarter of 2025, Coinbase earned $355 million in revenue from its stablecoin business, accounting for approximately 19% of its total revenue. This proportion is steadily rising, marking the accelerated transformation of an exchange into a financial infrastructure platform.

Therefore, the previous wave of digital banking changed "how a bank is used," while the latter wave is changing "how currency exists, flows, and generates yield."

4. The On-Chain Financial Stack: How Capital Operates

If the primary difference between Crypto Neobanks and traditional banks lies not in the interface but in the underlying structure, then it is necessary to further deconstruct what actually happens to user funds once they enter this system.

Logically, the current "Yield-Bearing Dollar" system formed around stablecoins consists of three mutually supporting layers: the Custody Layer, the Stablecoin Layer, and the Yield Layer.

4.1 The Custody Layer

In traditional finance, custody means transferring ownership of assets to a third party. However, in the architecture of a Crypto Neobank, the custody layer is the physical foundation of the entire stack. Unlike the account systems of traditional banks, crypto custody is based on a wallet architecture. Assets are recorded on the blockchain in the form of tokens, with ownership relationships that are clear, verifiable, and do not rely on the credit endorsement of intermediary institutions.

The core logic of this layer has shifted from "trusting institutions" to "trusting cryptography." Through Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Hardware Security Module (HSM) technologies, control over assets no longer depends on a single physical vault but on distributed private key shards.

Key infrastructure providers include Fireblocks, BitGo, and Anchorage. These institutions provide Crypto Neobanks with institutional-grade asset custody, settlement, and compliant identity verification services. The maturation of the custody layer is a critical prerequisite for the crypto banking industry's expansion from the retail market into the institutional market.

4.2 The Stablecoin Layer

Stablecoins are the medium of circulation for this entire architecture. US dollar-pegged stablecoins act as a programmable interface between traditional fiat currency and the on-chain ecosystem. Stablecoins not only solve the price volatility issue of crypto assets but, more importantly, enable the programmability of finance, featuring technical characteristics of instant settlement and high liquidity.

Currently, the most widely used on-chain dollars are fiat-collateralized stablecoins, represented by USDT and USDC. Following these are cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoins like USDS and synthetic dollars like USDe.

As of the first quarter of 2026, global stablecoin circulation has surpassed $319 billion. USDT remains the absolute backbone of the market, with a market capitalization of approximately $184 billion. Despite facing stricter compliance audits, its average daily trading volume remains robust. USDC, with its stable and compliant image among North American and global institutions, maintains a market cap of around $79 billion. Notably, data from early 2026 indicates that USDC briefly surpassed USDT in adjusted on-chain transaction volume, reflecting its strengthening dominance in payment clearing and institutional-grade applications.

The importance of stablecoins lies not only in "pegging the dollar" but in the fact that they allow financial assets to possess programmable liquidity for the first time:

● They can be used as a settlement medium.

● They can be rapidly transferred across borders.

● They can be embedded into lending, payments, derivatives, and yield strategies.

It is not merely "digital cash"; it is the liquidity backbone of the entire on-chain financial stack.

4.3 The Yield Layer

The yield layer is the most disruptive innovation within the entire architecture. Stablecoin holders are no longer passively exposed to inflation erosion as with cash, but can obtain real yields through multiple channels.

At present, the main sources of yield can be broadly categorized into four types:

4.3.1 Treasury Yields: The Source Closest to Traditional Risk-Free Rates

The most easily understood type of yield today comes from short-term US Treasuries and similar cash equivalents. Compliant stablecoin issuers and certain RWA protocols allocate US dollar reserves to short-term Treasuries and then transmit part of this yield to end users through product structures.

The core of this model is to present interest income—which originally belonged to banks or money market intermediaries—to users with lower friction. Its strong attractiveness over the past two years is mainly because the high-interest-rate environment in the U.S. has kept short-term bond yields in a higher range.

4.3.2 DeFi Lending Yields: From On-Chain Capital Demand

The second category of yield comes from the lending market. When traders, market makers, or protocol users wish to borrow stablecoins, they are willing to pay interest, and the capital providers receive the yield. Protocols such as Aave and Morpho provide a relatively transparent interest rate market where rates adjust automatically based on changes in supply and demand.

Unlike Treasuries, this type of yield is not a direct reflection of macro interest rates but is the result of on-chain capital demand and collateralized financing structures. Therefore, it is typically more volatile, being higher when the market is active and falling rapidly when activity wanes.

4.3.3 RWA Credit Yields: From Real-World Credit Assets

The third category of yield comes from off-chain credit assets, known as RWA (Real-World Asset) credit. These products may allocate user funds to corporate loans, accounts receivable financing, trade finance, or other real-world credit assets, resulting in yields higher than pure Treasury products.

The appeal lies in providing the stablecoin system with a source of yield beyond native on-chain demand, allowing "on-chain dollars" to share in a portion of traditional credit market returns.

However, this model also means that users are no longer just bearing technical and liquidity risks, but risks closer to those in traditional finance: default risk, recourse risk, and legal enforcement risk.

4.3.4 Trading and Strategy Yields: From Market Structure, Not Natural Risk-Free Rates

The fourth category of yield comes from trading, arbitrage, and market-making strategies, including Delta-neutral, Basis trading, funding rate arbitrage, and liquidity market-making. These yields are often most attractive during periods of high price volatility, active derivatives trading, or imbalances in capital structures.

However, they are also the most easily misunderstood category of yield. Many returns that appear significantly higher than those offered by banks are not because "digital dollars naturally should have such high interest rates", but because users are indirectly taking on more complex market and risk management exposures through platforms.

The combination of these strategies allows stablecoin Annual Percentage Yields (APY) to generally reach 3% to 8%, with some aggressive strategies going even higher. Taking the wealth management businesses of leading platforms such as HTX as an example, crypto platforms are increasingly competing directly with traditional bank savings by offering more efficient capital circulation and a broader range of financial products. Their core advantages can be distilled into several key dimensions:

A highly secure foundation with superior liquidity
Unlike traditional banks that rely on long-term fixed deposits, HTX allows users to deposit and withdraw funds at any time, enabling highly flexible liquidity management. At the same time, HTX has maintained over 30 consecutive months with zero security incidents, providing a strong trust foundation for large-scale capital allocation.

A high-yield, high-frequency compounding engine
Breaking away from the monthly or quarterly interest models of traditional banks, HTX adopts hourly compounding mechanisms. This high-frequency calculation structure allows users to maximize returns over time. In terms of overall yield performance, stablecoin-based products can offer returns of up to 15%, forming a significant competitive moat and clear industry advantage.

A deeply integrated asset supply network
HTX has established a comprehensive product ecosystem spanning simple earn products, structured products, and on-chain financial offerings. Earn products alone cover more than 300 tokens and over 390 listed projects. For more sophisticated investors with hedging needs, the platform also provides structured derivatives such as “Dual Currency Investment” products, offering proprietary pricing advantages and immediate yield realization upon subscription.

Based on industry data from April. 23, 2026, a comparison of the flexible stablecoin APY structures of leading CEXs shows that platforms generally adopt tiered interest rates based on amount to maintain industry competitiveness and attract long-tail users:

5. Yield Changes Everything

To understand the impact of stablecoins on traditional banking, one must start from the most basic commercial logic. If technology is the engine of this transformation, then yield is the fuel that ignites everything. Every great migration in financial history has essentially been capital in pursuit of higher efficiency and superior returns.

For centuries, the commercial logic of traditional banking has consistently revolved around the net interest margin (NIM). By absorbing depositor funds at an extremely low cost and issuing loans at significantly higher interest rates, banks earn profit from the massive gap between loan interest and deposit interest after deducting operating costs. The core of this model lies in the control over currency pricing power and the competitive barriers built upon information asymmetry and switching costs.

Stablecoins, by directly penetrating underlying assets—such as U.S. Treasuries, RWAs, or efficient on-chain arbitrage strategies—transmit yields directly to the end holder. These yields are typically maintained between 3% – 8% or even higher. This model directly returns the profits that originally belonged to banking intermediaries to the actual owners of the capital.

When users discover that:

● The interest rate for US dollars in their bank account is near zero or far below the benchmark rate,

● While platforms or protocols can provide higher visible yields through different structures,

Then the flow of capital will naturally be affected.

This does not necessarily mean that a large-scale "deposit relocation" has already occurred, but it means that the long-term monopoly of banks over interest rate distribution has, for the first time, encountered a direct challenge from technology and product structures. According to research by the Federal Reserve in "Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Some Possible Implications for Deposits, Credit, and Financial Intermediation," under scenarios of moderate stablecoin adoption, bank lending capacity could decrease by $190 billion to $408 billion. This magnitude is sufficient to shake the liquidity foundation of the entire bank credit system.

6. The Battle for Deposits: Confrontation on Three Fronts

This competition is no longer a battle for market share among traditional banks; it has evolved into a head-on gambit between two completely different financial paradigms.

6.1 Yield Competition

The yields provided by stablecoin platforms are significantly higher than traditional bank deposits in the vast majority of market environments. Coinbase’s platform offers rewards for holding USDC, with an annual percentage rate that once reached 4.25%—more than four times the average deposit rate at U.S. banks at the time. Unlike traditional banks that settle interest monthly, leading platforms such as HTX have implemented hourly compounding interest, greatly enhancing the utility of long-tail capital.

More aggressive strategies emerge from the DeFi sector; Ethena’s staked USDe token, sUSDe, maintained an average annualized yield of approximately 18% in 2024, with current rates fluctuating between 5% and 30%. Such returns are almost unimaginable in the traditional financial world unless one assumes extreme levels of risk.

6.2 Capital Liquidity

The liquidity of digital assets far surpasses that of traditional financial assets. Blockchain networks have achieved 24/7 uninterrupted settlement, allowing funds to cross national borders in seconds without the constraints of banking business days. This completely shatters the cycle limitations of traditional financial T+2 or cross-border remittances.

6.3 Digital User Experience

Compared to the bloated physical branches and cumbersome account opening processes of traditional banks, crypto platforms provide an extremely streamlined mobile experience and optimized product selection. The product design of Crypto Neobanks is mobile-native, supporting one-click account opening, real-time balance updates, borderless transfers, and programmable automated strategies.

7. Regulatory Gambit: The Battle for "Currency Definition Power"

As capital on the scale of hundreds of trillions of dollars begins to be repriced between traditional finance and on-chain protocols, a war over "Currency Definition Power" has fully commenced. This is not merely a technical competition, but the most central policy debate within the current global financial system. Regulators, defenders of traditional banking, and crypto-native innovators are engaged in a fierce struggle over the essence and boundaries of stablecoins.

7.1 The GENIUS Act: A Milestone in U.S. Stablecoin Regulation

In July 2025, the President of the United States signed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act), the first federal legislation in the U.S. specifically targeting payment stablecoins. The Act established several key principles:

● Issuers must support stablecoin issuance with 1:1 full reserves held in cash or short-term Treasuries;

● Reserve compositions must be published monthly and undergo independent audits;

● Compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Bank Secrecy Act requirements is mandatory;

● Issuers are explicitly prohibited from directly paying interest or yield to stablecoin holders.

The GENIUS Act clearly forbids stablecoin issuers from providing any form of interest or yield to holders. Furthermore, the Act prohibits issuers from using "deceptive names" in marketing—for example, claiming that their stablecoin is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, guaranteed by the government, or covered by federal deposit insurance.

However, the ambiguity of the legislative text immediately laid the groundwork for the next round of maneuvering. While the GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying any form of interest or yield, it does not explicitly ban affiliates or third-party arrangements from providing yield-bearing products. The passage of the Act did not end the debate; rather, it directed it toward a new, more complex, and intense stage.

7.2 Defensive Measures of Traditional Banks: Warnings of Systemic Risk

For traditional banks, digital dollars with yield-bearing attributes constitute the most direct existential threat to their balance sheets. Lobbying groups and economists representing traditional financial interests have raised three core objections:

● Yield-Bearing Stablecoins Essentially Mimic Bank Deposits: Banks argue that when crypto platforms promise users fixed or floating annualized yields and allow users to withdraw funds at any time, the economic substance of such a product is an "unregistered demand deposit." They functionally replace bank accounts while bypassing stringent capital adequacy and liquidity coverage ratio regulations.

● Lack of Systemic Backstops from Deposit Insurance: Traditional deposits enjoy protection from national-level deposit insurance, which effectively prevents bank runs during market panics. Banks warn that the wealth management pools of crypto platforms lack similar rigid repayment guarantees. If underlying assets default, it could easily trigger a chain collapse akin to a "shadow banking" system.

● Potential Destabilization of Underlying Financing Markets: This is the greatest concern at the macroeconomic level. Traditional banks rely on stable core deposits to issue long-term loans to the real economy. If yield-bearing stablecoins trigger a massive relocation of deposits, banks will be forced to significantly reduce credit scales or borrow funds in the interbank market at extremely high costs. This draining of liquidity would directly drive up financing costs for society at large and could even trigger a credit crisis.

7.3 The CLARITY Act: An Unfinished Legislative Tug-of-War

The legislative-level gambit reached its most intense state during the deliberation of the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act). Congress responded to banking industry pressure with the CLARITY Act, extending the yield ban to all digital asset service providers. However, in January 2026, Coinbase announced the withdrawal of its support for the bill, leading to an indefinite postponement of the Senate vote.

On March 20, 2026, Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks announced a compromise: prohibiting passive yield while allowing activity-based rewards. However, Coinbase immediately refused to accept this draft, stating it could not support any provision prohibiting "direct or indirect" payment of yield or any clause "economically equivalent to bank interest."

The Federal Reserve has maintained a relatively cautious stance on this issue, but its research findings have already had a profound impact on policy discussions. Federal Reserve researchers have found that stablecoins behave more like investment instruments such as money market funds, rather than core deposits. U.S. monetary policy shocks tend to drive capital into high-quality money market funds and out of stablecoins, indicating a substitutive relationship between the two.

The core of the entire regulatory debate ultimately comes down to a difficult problem of asset classification: Do stablecoins belong to payment tools, investment vehicles, or deposit substitutes?

The outcome of this regulatory gambit will directly determine the ownership of trillions of dollars in interests, as well as the fundamental architecture of the U.S. financial system for the next decade.

8. The Counterattack of Traditional Banks: Tokenization and Underlying Architecture Reconstruction

Faced with the erosion of their deposit base by crypto platforms and the yield-driven competitive pressure of digital dollars, the traditional banking industry has moved beyond its initial phase of defense and criticism, and has begun launching substantive countermeasures at the foundational system level. The core strategy of this response is not to fully embrace permissionless crypto-native architectures, but to absorb the efficiency advantages of blockchain technology and develop competitive models that can directly rival crypto neobanks within a compliant framework. Banks are attempting to demonstrate, through technological means, that traditional credit systems can also achieve round-the-clock capital flows, thereby reclaiming institutional and long-tail capital diverted by stablecoins.

8.1 Tokenized Deposits

In this reconstruction of underlying architecture, tokenized deposits have become the primary weapon of traditional finance's counteroffensive. Their ultimate objective is to establish a blockchain-based deposit system, enabling regulated commercial bank money to possess programmability and instant settlement capabilities similar to stablecoins, while retaining deposit insurance and regulatory backing within the traditional financial system.

JPMorgan Chase began exploring blockchain as early as 2015, and in 2019 launched blockchain-based deposit accounts (Kinexys Digital Payments) on a private permissioned chain. In June 2025, its blockchain division Kinexys officially released the U.S. dollar-denominated deposit token JPMD, operating on the Base public blockchain, marking the first time the world's largest bank deployed deposit products onto a public blockchain. In November 2025, JPMorgan Chase officially opened JPMD to institutional clients, with B2C2, Coinbase, and Mastercard completing test transactions. Kinexys co-head Naveen Mallela stated that Kinexys currently processes over $1 trillion in annualized payments. If even a portion of the bank’s daily trillions of dollars in payment flows were migrated onto blockchain, the resulting scale would far exceed that of the entire stablecoin industry.

At the same time, Citibank continues to advance its Citi Token Services initiative, planning to launch crypto asset custody services and develop tokenized deposit products in 2026. Bank of New York Mellon is evaluating tokenized deposit solutions that would allow clients to conduct payments via blockchain rails. In the United Kingdom, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, and HSBC have initiated pilot programs for tokenized pound-denominated deposits.

8.2 Bank-Issued Stablecoins

In addition to transforming existing commercial deposit accounts, traditional financial institutions and giants have begun to directly experiment with issuing regulated, bank-affiliated stablecoins and consortium tokens, attempting to establish liquidity reservoirs belonging to traditional finance within the public blockchain ecosystem.

As a traditional payments giant with hundreds of millions of users, PayPal launched PYUSD, mapping fiat US dollars directly onto the public blockchain through a compliant issuer. This move completely blurs the boundary between traditional fintech and crypto networks.

Furthermore, banking consortiums composed of multiple insured banks, such as the USDF Consortium, are actively promoting the issuance of consortium-level tokens. These consortiums aim to solve the inefficiency of clearing between different small and medium-sized banks by minting unified standard tokenized fiat deposits on the blockchain, thereby countering the market monopoly of non-bank stablecoins like USDC and USDT in the payments sector.

8.3 Adoption of Blockchain Settlement Rails and Practical Dilemmas

Whether through the internal innovation of tokenized deposits or the external breakout of bank-affiliated stablecoins, the technical essence behind these moves points toward the comprehensive deployment of blockchain settlement networks. Traditional banks are actively integrating instant settlement and tokenized payment mechanisms, attempting to thoroughly eliminate the friction costs brought by T+2 settlement cycles, high wire transfer fees, and complex correspondent banking networks in the traditional financial system.

However, despite the grand strategic vision, the overall adoption of this new architecture by the traditional banking industry remains very slow. This sluggishness does not stem from a lack of technical feasibility but is constrained by heavy historical baggage and complex structural resistance.

While crypto neobanks can rapidly deploy high-yield, income-generating assets globally with agile software iteration speeds, the tokenization efforts of traditional banks are often constrained by endless proof-of-concept cycles, lengthy compliance approval processes, and internal conflicts of interest among departments.

9. Evolutionary Paths of the Future Financial Architecture

What will be the ultimate outcome of this competition between fundamental currency forms and business models? Based on current regulatory dynamics, the speed of technological iteration, and the profit-seeking instinct of capital, the evolution of the future financial architecture may manifest in three distinct paths.

9.1 Scenario 1: Total Victory for Crypto Neobanks

In the most radical evolutionary path, stablecoins will dominate the global payment and savings markets, and Crypto Neobanks will become the core of a new generation of financial infrastructure.

For traditional commercial banks, this would be a systemic defeat. Once depositors become accustomed to "interest-bearing cash" that is directly driven by underlying assets and flows 24/7, banks will inevitably lose the massive, low-cost deposits that serve as their core lifeline. This would be followed immediately by the complete exhaustion of the most lucrative parts of the banking business: payment clearing fees and cross-border exchange profits. Traditional banks would be forced to devolve into low-margin credit providers serving only specific asset-heavy industries or highly regulated fields.

9.2 Scenario 2: Successful Tokenization Counterattack by Traditional Banks

In stark contrast to the first scenario, traditional financial institutions successfully complete the upgrade of their underlying technology. Banks not only maintain their vast pools of depositor funds using their endorsement of trust but also achieve cross-bank and international real-time clearing and the automatic execution of complex financial contracts through tokenized deposits. Crypto infrastructure evolves into a technical service layer for banks rather than a competitor.

The Kinexys path by JPMorgan Chase represents the clearest practical attempt at this scenario. If large banks can establish a stable tokenized deposit network among institutional client groups and use their existing distribution channels and regulatory relationships to form barriers, this path possesses considerable feasibility.

Under this landscape, crypto-native neobanks and the underlying public chain technologies behind them would no longer exist as disruptors; instead, they would retreat behind the scenes to become pure back-end infrastructure supporting the operation of the entire traditional financial system.

9.3 Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Hybrid Financial Stack

While the first two scenarios constitute theoretical poles, looking at the evolutionary history of financial systems and current regulatory maneuvering, the construction of a multi-layered, integrated hybrid financial stack is the future vision with the greatest practical possibility.

In this endgame architecture, future financial services will no longer be a closed loop of a single system, but an open vertical network seamlessly assembled from various components.

At the very front end of the hybrid architecture, digital wallets with decentralized or hybrid custody will replace traditional bank account systems, becoming a universal super-digital identity and financial gateway for individuals and enterprises. At the asset circulation layer, compliant stablecoins issued by non-bank institutions and tokenized deposits issued by commercial banks will operate in parallel, jointly serving as settlement media and value carriers for global digital commerce to meet different risk preferences in various scenarios.

Traditional commercial banks will still retain their core position, performing systemic roles in large-scale credit creation and macro-liquidity management, while deeply integrating their underlying core ledgers with open on-chain protocols. Through this hybrid model, global capital can enjoy the ultimate efficiency and "yield equality" brought by crypto networks while maintaining the macro stability and regulatory baselines required by traditional finance.

10. Investment Landscape and Capital Flows

The flow of capital is often the most sensitive leading indicator of a fundamental shift in financial paradigms. This transformation has spawned massive investment opportunities, and capital is accelerating its accumulation across various nodes of the value chain. From Crypto Neobanks that directly reach users to the underlying infrastructure that drives asset circulation, capital focus is primarily divided into four core tracks.

10.1 Crypto Neobanks: Traffic Gateways and Asset Portals

At the very front end of the ecosystem are the Crypto Neobanks that directly control user relationships. They are completing a metamorphosis from "single trading platforms" into "all-around wealth management and savings hubs."

Coinbase: As the absolute leader in compliant crypto entry points, Coinbase is deeply tethered to the USDC ecosystem, providing platform users with seamless conversion and native yield for stablecoins. Furthermore, Coinbase's diversified revenue structure—including transaction fees, stablecoin yield, Base chain ecosystem fees, and institutional custody services—is accelerating its transformation from an exchange into a financial infrastructure platform.

Robinhood: Starting from commission-free stock trading, Robinhood is accelerating the integration of digital wallets and on-chain interest-bearing functions, attempting to completely migrate its vast base of young retail investors from traditional bank accounts to its closed-loop financial ecosystem.

10.2 Stablecoin Infrastructure: The "Mints" of the Digital Dollar

Stablecoin infrastructure represents the "commercial central banks" of the digital age. Capital highly favors this sector because its business model has proven to be the most sustainably profitable cash cow in the current crypto market.

Tether (USDT): As the issuer of the world's most liquid and largest market-cap stablecoin, USDT has become the underlying consensus for cross-border payments and wealth storage in emerging markets.

Circle (USDC): With extremely high transparency and deep integration into the U.S. regulatory framework, Circle has won the favor of institutional capital and become the preferred denomination standard for numerous DeFi protocols and traditional financial on-chain experiments.

PayPal (PYUSD): By integrating stablecoin issuance with its global payment network, PayPal represents the entry path for traditional payment institutions, creating a compliant bridge for hundreds of millions of existing PayPal users to access on-chain yield protocols.

10.3 Yield Layer Infrastructure: The Core of On-Chain Interest Rates

Yield layer infrastructure is the core technical engine that allows "Yield-Bearing Currency" to exist. Capital is densely positioning itself in decentralized or hybrid protocols capable of providing transparent, sustainable, and risk-controlled yields.

Aave: As a leader in the DeFi lending space, Aave has established a massive and time-tested capital pool model. By automatically adjusting supply and demand interest rates through algorithms, it provides the most fundamental on-chain risk-free and low-risk benchmark yields for global stablecoin holders.

Morpho: An optimization layer built atop underlying lending protocols, Morpho greatly enhances capital efficiency through a peer-to-peer matching mechanism. It provides higher yields for lenders and lower costs for borrowers, representing the trend of on-chain credit evolving toward higher precision.

Ondo Finance: As a frontrunner in the RWA track, Ondo Finance successfully tokenized U.S. Treasuries. It has opened a channel between traditional macro interest rates and crypto-native assets, providing a scalable and compliant Treasury yield path for massive stablecoin capital.

10.4 Custody Layer Infrastructure: The "Physical Vaults" for Institutional Entry

For pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and large hedge funds with massive capital scales, a prerequisite for large-scale entry is a sufficient secure custody foundation. Custody infrastructure is the necessary path for connecting traditional compliance requirements with cryptographic native assets.

Fireblocks: Utilizing its leading Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, Fireblocks has become the industry standard, providing thousands of institutions with networks for the secure transfer, storage, and issuance of digital assets. It essentially constructs the back-end clearing hub for crypto finance.

Anchorage: As the first crypto digital bank to receive a U.S. federal charter, Anchorage combines top-tier cryptographic security with a compliance status equivalent to that of major traditional banks, providing the highest level of policy safety cushion for "Wall Street's regulars" to enter the "Yield-Bearing Currency" market.

11. Core Risk Assessment

While Crypto Neobanks are reshaping the global deposit landscape through "Yield-Bearing Currency" and instant liquidity, this emerging financial stack is not indestructible. Compared to the traditional banking system, its risks are not concentrated at a single point but are distributed across yield structures, liquidity mechanisms, technical architectures, and the political regulatory environment, exhibiting stronger interconnectivity under extreme conditions. Before the digital dollar can fully disrupt the traditional banking model, capital and market participants must confront four core risks facing its underlying architecture and external environment.

11.1 Regulatory Restrictions on Yield

Regulatory restriction on yield is the most direct and disruptive policy risk facing Crypto Neobanks. As previously mentioned, "yield" is the core driver migrating traditional deposits to on-chain networks. However, global regulators remain highly vigilant regarding "unregistered interest-bearing products."

If regulators explicitly characterize stablecoin wealth management products with fixed or floating yields as "unregistered securities," platforms will face massive fines and be forced to delist core products.

Legislation aimed at regulating stablecoins, such as the GENIUS Act, often tends to prohibit compliant stablecoin issuers from directly paying interest to holders. If this restriction is passed down, blocking the channel for Crypto Neobanks to transmit underlying Treasury yields to users, their "high-interest moat" against traditional banks will cease to exist. Meanwhile, the formation of divergent frameworks—such as the EU's MiCA, Hong Kong's Stablecoin Ordinance, and the U.S. GENIUS Act—will also drive up cross-border compliance costs.

11.2 Liquidity Risk and Bank Run Crises

Although crypto wealth management platforms generally promise "deposit and withdraw at any time," their underlying yield sources—whether Treasuries, DeFi lending, RWA credit, or strategy assets—possess varying degrees of maturity structures, liquidity differences, and clearing dependencies. This illusion of liquidity is extremely fragile under extreme market pressure. In a normal market environment, this mismatch is hidden. However, under extreme pressure, it manifests rapidly.

The typical transmission path includes:

1) Concentrated user redemptions → Platform needs to liquidate underlying assets. 2) Insufficient liquidity for underlying assets → Forced sale at a discount. 3) Falling asset prices → Decreasing collateral value (DeFi). 4) Triggering chain liquidations → Further liquidity contraction. 5) Withdrawal delays or freezes → Collapse of confidence → Secondary bank run.

Even if yields are derived from the safest short-term U.S. Treasuries, a platform forced to sell Treasuries at a discount on the secondary market to meet cash redemptions during a pan-network panic run would still face a massive liquidity gap. Latest data shows that the combined U.S. Treasury holdings of Tether and Circle have surpassed those of Saudi Arabia. Massive redemptions could impact the short-term Treasury market.

In the on-chain system, this risk is further amplified:

● DeFi lending relies on collateral and liquidation mechanisms.

● Cross-chain assets rely on bridging and asset mapping.

● Yield strategies rely on continuous market liquidity.

Once any of these links fail, liquidity pressure is rapidly magnified through the system.

Many crypto banks route funds into on-chain lending protocols to capture higher yields. In the event of extreme market volatility, a sudden collapse in the value of on-chain collateral could trigger cascading liquidations, potentially exhausting liquidity pools instantly and leaving user withdrawal requests indefinitely delayed or blocked. Furthermore, the protocols upon which yield strategies rely are subject to potential code vulnerabilities and governance attacks.

11.3 Custody Failure and Technical Vulnerabilities

In traditional finance, deposit security is rigidly backed by national-level deposit insurance, such as the FDIC mechanism in the U.S. In the crypto financial stack, the foundation of security shifts from "state credit" to "code and cryptography," which introduces entirely new systemic failure points. In the 2022 Celsius case, the court ruled that assets in "Earn" accounts belonged to the bankruptcy estate, meaning users held unsecured claims. This legal precedent serves as a reminder that entrusting assets to a crypto platform is not legally equivalent to a bank deposit.

While top custodians like Fireblocks and BitGo employ advanced Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, the wallet architectures, API interfaces, and internal risk control processes of crypto platforms remain prime targets for hackers. If private keys are stolen or internal employees perform unauthorized operations, funds face irreversible and permanent loss.

11.4 Structural Risk: The Fragility of Yield Sources

The resilience of different yield sources under extreme environments varies significantly.

● Treasuries: Most stable and resistant to on-chain incidents; however, highly dependent on interest rate cycles (yields drop when rates cut); risks exist in custody/disclosure and off-chain execution chains.

● DeFi Lending: Relies on the Collateral—Oracle—Liquidation chain; prone to amplified risk during sharp price fluctuations due to collateral distortion and liquidation congestion.

● RWA Credit: Low sensitivity to on-chain incidents, but the core lies in credit default and legal enforcement; maturity mismatch and information disclosure risks exist.

● Trading/Strategies: Highest yield elasticity but also the most unstable; relies on volatility and spreads; prone to liquidity evaporation and strategy failure in extreme markets.

Events like Kelp DAO have already demonstrated that even if an individual protocol is secure, risks will be amplified through the system if issues arise in cross-chain assets, collateral structures, or liquidity layers.

This means the yield-bearing currency system is not a single risk, but a "multi-risk overlapping structure."

When macro interest rates decline, on-chain liquidity contracts, credit defaults rise, or market volatility fails, different yield sources may come under pressure simultaneously.

11.5 Lobbying Pressure from Traditional Banking

The rise of Crypto Neobanks is severing the profit arteries of traditional commercial banks, and the latter will not stand idly by. Traditional banks may push regulators through lobbying to implement stricter capital adequacy requirements, forcing crypto platforms to bear heavy compliance costs equivalent to those of major banks, thereby erasing their marginal cost advantage.

The banking industry could also physically sever the liquidity bridge between Crypto Neobanks and the fiat world by cutting off settlement networks and refusing to provide fiat custody accounts—akin to a historical "Operation Choke Point 2.0"—isolating them within closed on-chain systems.

The future of yield-bearing currency depends not only on technical superiority but also on the extent to which it can withstand these four systemic risks. For investors and industry practitioners, crypto neobanks require both strong security engineering capabilities and sound political judgment, along with a balanced approach to compliance.

11.6 Risk is Not a Flaw, But the System Itself

Overall, the risks of the yield-bearing currency system are not isolated defects, but integral components of its structure.

● Higher yield means a more complex risk combination.

● Greater liquidity implies more sensitive bank run transmission.

● A more open architecture means fewer institutional backstops.

Therefore, the real question is not "is this system risky," but rather:

In different macro cycles and extreme scenarios, can this system still maintain stability and redeemability?

For investors and industry participants, the key to judging a platform lies not in its current APY, but in:

● Whether yield sources are transparent.

● Whether risk assumption is clear.

● Whether the liquidity structure is matched.

● Whether it possesses survivability under stress testing.

The future of yield-bearing currency depends not only on technical and product innovation but also on whether it can gradually establish verifiable security boundaries and institutional trust beyond the yield itself.

12. Conclusion

After centuries of evolution, the global financial system stands at a decisive watershed. From early physical branches to the FinTech interaction revolution of the mobile internet era, most banking innovation has remained at the level of surface-level experience improvements. The rise of Crypto Neobanks and the new on-chain financial stack represents a structural disruption that penetrates deep into the foundations of balance sheets.

The core cornerstone of this financial revolution lies in the introduction of an unprecedented new asset class: "Yield-Bearing Programmable Currency." It simultaneously possesses the circulation functions of currency and the yield functions of savings, all while running on a permissionless global network. This shatters the core logic of traditional banking: depositors no longer have to accept interest rates near zero; they now have a real alternative. Yield-bearing programmable currency possesses the ultimate liquidity of 24/7 global instant settlement and the ability to directly penetrate and distribute underlying high-interest yields with low friction. When "smart code" replaces bloated bank credit departments, money itself gains the capacity for self-interest generation and automated circulation.

The popularization of this new concept is triggering a structural shift in global capital markets.

From a macro perspective, the impact of this transformation is multi-layered:

● For the Banking Industry: Net interest margins will face continuous compression pressure, the median cost of funding may shift upward, and credit creation capacity will be constrained.

● For Regulators: Finding a balance between encouraging innovation and preventing systemic risk will be the most difficult policy challenge of the coming years.

● For Depositors and Users: The inclusive dividends of digital finance are being realized; anyone in the world with a smartphone can access yields close to institutional levels.

● For the International Monetary System: The global expansion of US dollar stablecoins may strengthen the "exorbitant privilege" of the dollar, but it may also trigger a de-dollarization backlash.

Looking ahead, the boundaries between traditional banks and Crypto Neobank platforms will become increasingly blurred, and the ultimate battlefield that determines victory or defeat is already very clear: The future of banking is, in essence, a life-and-death struggle over "who can control digital deposits."

Whether it is crypto platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood building high-interest savings pools through stablecoin infrastructure, or Wall Street giants like JPMorgan and Citi striving to advance tokenized deposits, all participants are vying for the same goal: to become the ultimate gateway for the next generation of digital capital.

In this gambit, the final winner may not necessarily be a single technology or a specific institutional form, but rather those financial networks that can perfectly integrate absolute security, global instant liquidity, and transparent market yields. In this upcoming new cycle, capital will flow unreservedly to where efficiency is highest. If traditional banks cannot adapt to this interest-bearing logic driven by "a single line of code," they will ultimately face the fate of being marginalized by the era. The true winners will be those participants capable of building bridges between the two worlds.

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About HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.

HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active FOF (Fund of Funds) funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.

Feel free to contact us for investment and collaboration at VC@htx-inc.com

Reference

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https://tabinsights.com/ab1000/largest-banks-in-the-world

TABInsights

2. DefiLlama. Stablecoin Market Cap Chart，Supply & Peg Data.

https://defillama.com/stablecoins

3. Bloomberg. Bessent Says $2 Trillion Reasonable for Dollar Stablecoin Market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-11/bessent-says-2-trillion-reasonable-for-dollar-stablecoin-market

4. SEC. Coinbase Q3 2025 Shareholder Letter.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001679788/000167978825000207/q325shareholderletter.htm

5. Congress.gov. GENIUS Act of 2025.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/394

6. Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Some Possible Implications for Deposits, Credit, and Financial Intermediation.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/banks-in-the-age-of-stablecoins-implications-for-deposits-credit-and-financial-intermediation-20251217.html

7. European Union. Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R1114

8. CoinDesk. JPMorgan’s tokenized dollars are quietly rewiring how Wall Street moves money

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/12/18/jpmorgan-s-tokenized-dollars-are-quietly-rewiring-how-wall-street-moves-money

9. Stretto. Celsius Network Case.

https://cases.stretto.com/celsius/

10. House Financial Services Committee. Meuser: The Biden Administration’s Operation Choke Point 2.0 Was Carried Out by The Prudential Regulators to Target and Debank the Digital Asset Ecosystem.

https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409457

前言

货币从来不是一成不变的。从金属铸币到纸质钞票，从储蓄存折到移动支付，每一次货币形态的演变背后，都源自技术变革与制度重构。而我们正在亲历的，或许是这一演变史上迄今为止最深刻、也最迅猛的一次。

根据 TAB Global 1000 数据显示，全球前1000大银行持有超过103万亿美元的客户存款。这一规模不仅构成了银行体系的核心负债基础，也支撑着全球信贷扩张与金融中介体系的稳定运行。与此同时，另一条曲线正在快速上升。截至 2026 年 3 月，全球稳定币市值已突破 3,190 亿美元，美国财政部长预测这一数字到本十年末可能达到 3.7 万亿美元。

这两条曲线之间的张力，构成了本报告的核心问题：

当美元资产开始以“链上形式”存在，并能够同时具备持有、流动与生息能力时，传统银行赖以为生的存款模式是否会被重新定价？

这一问题之所以重要，不仅因为它触及加密行业的未来，更因为它直接触及银行业的根基。对于传统银行而言，存款并不是一个中性的数字，而是其资产负债表运转的起点。谁掌握存款，谁就掌握了贷款扩张、利差收益和金融分发的基础。对于加密平台而言，稳定币则正在提供一种新的可能性：通过更低摩擦的技术架构，将原本由银行体系内部消化的收益，更直接地传导给终端用户。

但这一变化绝不意味着传统银行会被简单替代。加密平台确实在收益率、流动性和产品创新上展现出结构性优势；与此同时，它们在监管合规、法律保护、流动性管理和技术安全上仍存在显著缺口。我们既看到了稳定币与收益型产品迅速吸引资金的一面，也看到了围绕《GENIUS 法案》、《CLARITY 法案》、欧洲 MiCA 和香港稳定币规则展开的监管博弈，正将这一竞争迅速拉入主流金融政策议程。

因此，本报告并不试图预设某一方的胜利，也不将这场变化简化为“银行将被颠覆”或“加密只是补充工具”的二元判断。更准确的说法是：我们正处于一次金融架构重组的起点。一边是以存款和银行牌照为核心的旧体系，一边是以稳定币、钱包、托管和链上收益协议为核心的新体系。未来几年，真正值得观察的，不只是稳定币能不能继续增长，而是货币、存款、收益、清算和监管之间的关系，会如何被重新定义。

本报告将围绕以下几个问题展开：

● 稳定币为什么开始从支付工具演变为“收益型美元”？

● 它为什么对存款市场构成了边际上的竞争压力？

● 加密新锐银行与传统银行在底层结构上到底有何不同？

● “收益型美元”的收益从哪里来，风险又由谁承担？

● 监管究竟在约束什么，又在保护什么？

● 传统银行会被替代，还是会吸收这场创新并重构自身？

在这个意义上，本报告希望提供的，不是一份预言，而是一张理解这场金融重组的坐标图。

作为火币HTX 的全球投资部门，HTX Ventures 长期跟踪稳定币、链上金融基础设施与新型金融科技项目的演进路径，并通过投资与孵化深度参与了这一重构进程。火币HTX 在稳定币交易与收益型产品上的全球业务布局，也使我们能够从用户行为、资金流动与产品形态的真实数据中观察这场结构性变化。本报告所呈现的判断，既来自HTX Ventures 对全球加密金融项目的长期跟踪，也参考了火币HTX 平台在稳定币与收益型产品上的实践经验。

1. 从支付工具到“收益型美元”：市场正在发生什么变化

长久以来，传统金融机构高度依赖这些海量的低成本存款作为核心资金来源，通过吸收储户资金来发放贷款，从而在资金池的运转中赚取稳定的息差利润。《亚洲银行家》旗下的研究机构 TABInsights 最新数据显示，全球最大的 1000 家银行持有客户存款规模超 103 万亿美元。

这一看似牢不可破的模式，如今正面临历史上最严峻的挑战。挑战者并非另一家银行，而是诞生于区块链上的稳定币。稳定币的崛起，在链上世界引入了一种全新形态的数字货币，它不仅具备极高的流动性和智能合约赋予的可编程性，更彻底摆脱了传统银行遗留系统的效率束缚。与受限于营业时间和跨境清算节点的传统存款不同，稳定币在区块链基础设施上原生运行，极大地提升了资本的周转速率。

截止 2026 年 3 月，全球稳定币市值已超 3,190 亿美元，并持续高速扩张。美国财政部长贝森特表示，到 2028 年，稳定币市值可能突破 2 万亿美元，到本十年末这一数字或将达到 3.7 万亿美元。从总量上看，稳定币仍远未达到可以替代银行体系的程度。如果仅从绝对体量出发，得出“稳定币正在系统性替代银行”的结论，显然过于超前。

但从功能变化、资金流向与用户行为来看，另一种趋势已经出现：稳定币正在从交易工具，逐步演变为一种面向更广泛用户的“收益型美元账户”。

在较早阶段，稳定币主要承担三类功能。第一，它是交易所之间与交易所内部的结算资产；第二，它是链上资产交易的美元计价媒介；第三，它是加密生态中的“美元替代物”，帮助用户在无需退出加密网络的情况下持有相对稳定的美元敞口。在这一阶段，稳定币最重要的价值是支付效率和结算便利性。

但进入2024年以后，这一定位开始发生明显变化。越来越多用户不再只是“使用稳定币”，而是开始“持有稳定币”；稳定币不再只是交易时短暂停泊的资产，而逐渐成为资产配置与现金管理的一部分；平台也开始围绕稳定币设计各种收益产品，使其从结算工具转向“可生息的美元账户”。

这一变化背后，至少有两个核心驱动因素。

1.1 宏观利率环境的变化

在高利率周期下，美元资产本身具备可观回报。合规稳定币发行方将储备配置于短期美国国债、逆回购和其他高流动性现金等价物，这意味着稳定币体系天然连接到了美国基准利率。当传统银行仍向大量储户支付接近于零的活期利息时，围绕稳定币建立的平台和协议，则有能力将更高比例的底层收益，以更低摩擦的方式传导给用户。

换句话说，稳定币真正构成竞争力的，并不只是“在链上”，而是它通过技术与产品结构，将原本沉淀在银行资产负债表内部的收益显性化了。用户第一次可以更直观地比较：同样持有美元，为什么在不同体系里的收益差异如此之大？

1.2 产品形态的演进

另一项关键变化来自产品包装。过去，获取链上收益往往意味着用户必须自己理解钱包、Gas、协议交互、抵押逻辑或风险参数，这显著限制了参与人群。如今，越来越多平台开始将复杂的底层资产配置封装为简单的“收益型账户”或“理财入口”。对于普通用户而言，体验已经不再是“参与 DeFi 协议”，而是“把美元放进一个可以随时转出、还能产生收益的账户”。

这一步很关键，因为它使稳定币从原本偏专业、偏交易场景的工具，开始接近传统金融中最广泛的零售产品类别：储蓄与现金管理产品。

2. 为什么稳定币开始具备“类存款吸引力”

如果要理解稳定币为何开始与银行存款形成竞争关系，就必须回到一个基础问题：用户为什么把钱存进银行？

传统上，答案包含三个核心要素：安全性、流动性和收益。

● 安全性意味着资金不易损失，且在大多数司法辖区内受到明确法律框架和存款保险保护

● 流动性意味着资金可以随时调用，用于支付、转账和资产配置

● 收益则意味着储户虽然放弃了资金的直接控制权，但能换取一定的利息回报

而在链上金融体系中，这三者正在被重新组合。

2.1 资产形态的变化：从账户记录到数字资产

在传统银行体系中，用户看到的“余额”本质上是银行账本上的一条记录，这一记录代表银行对储户的负债。储户拥有的是对银行的债权，而不是对某个独立资产的直接控制。

稳定币则不同。它作为链上资产存在，可以被存放在交易平台、机构托管账户或用户自托管钱包中。它不仅是一笔价值记录，更是一种可以被转移、调用、组合和嵌入协议的数字资产。换言之，资金的表现形式从“账户”变成了“资产”。

这一步看似技术性，但影响极大。因为一旦资金以可编程资产的形式存在，它就不再只能停留在单一机构的账本里，而可以在更开放的网络中流动、定价和生息。

2.2 流动性结构的变化：从工作日结算到全天候转移

传统银行体系的流动性能力受到营业时间、本地支付网络、跨境代理行和清算周期的约束。即便是在数字银行和移动支付高度普及的今天，很多跨境汇款、对公结算和高金额支付，仍然受制于工作时间、T+1/T+2 清算和多层中介系统。

相比之下，区块链网络提供了 7×24 小时的实时结算能力。稳定币可以在数秒或数分钟内完成全球转移，而无需等待银行开门、清算节点排队或代理行确认。

这意味着，对越来越多用户而言，资金的“流动性”不再只是能否随时提现，而是能否在全球范围内、以极低摩擦完成转移与再配置。尤其在跨境交易、全球资产配置和高频资金管理场景中，这种优势非常明显。

2.3 收益分配结构的变化：从银行留存到向用户外溢

最关键的变化发生在收益分配方式上。

传统银行的基本模式是：

● 用户将资金存入银行

● 银行将其配置为贷款、债券或其他资产

● 银行赚取资产端收益，并仅向储户支付较低利息

● 利差成为银行利润的核心来源

这一模式本身并没有问题，它支撑了数百年的商业银行制度。但它也意味着，大量收益被保留在机构资产负债表内部，用户只能分享其中很小的一部分。

而在稳定币与链上收益体系中，情况开始发生变化：

● 平台或协议可以将资金配置到短期国债、链上借贷、RWA 信贷或交易策略中

● 用户则通过持有稳定币、参与收益产品或将资金停放于平台账户，获得更直接的收益分配

这并不意味着风险消失，恰恰相反，它意味着：

原本由银行体系内部吸收和管理的风险，开始部分向用户端外溢，并以更高收益的形式体现。

因此，稳定币开始具备“类存款吸引力”，并不是因为它简单地复制了银行账户，而是因为它在三个维度上同时发生了变化：

● 持有方式：账户 → 钱包或托管

● 流动方式：周期清算 → 实时结算

● 收益分配：银行留存 → 向用户外溢

当这三者同时变化时，用户对“资金应当放在哪里”的答案，自然也会发生变化。

3. 两代数字银行：从体验升级到金融结构重构

要理解今天的格局，必须回溯数字银行业从“界面美化”到“底层架构重构”的两个关键浪潮，每一次浪潮都比前一次走得更深、破坏力更强。

3.1 第一波浪潮：金融科技新银行

2010 年代，Chime、Nubank、WeBank、Revolut、Monzo 等金融科技新银行应运而生。这一阶段的创新本质上是一场针对传统银行效率低下的用户体验战争。创新集中在用户体验层面：移动端优先的界面设计、近乎为零的转账费用、即时到账的通知推送。它们取消了昂贵的物理网点，将节省下来的成本转化为更低的手续费和更高的用户留存。

然而，第一波浪潮存在一个致命的局限性：尽管前端 App 流畅华丽，后端的资金清算依然依赖 ACH、SWIFT 或各国本地清算系统。一旦涉及跨境清算或复杂金融指令，依然无法摆脱传统银行体系的结算延迟与资本摩擦。如 Chime 的存款仍托管于 Bancorp Bank 的资产负债表上。新锐银行改变了外壳，但未能撼动内核。

3.2 第二波浪潮：加密新锐银行

随着区块链技术的成熟，以 Coinbase、Cash App、Robinhood 和 Crypto.com 为代表的加密新锐银行（Crypto Neobanks）正式登场。这一阶段的演变不再只局限于 UI，而是关乎金融资产的定义与托管方式的根本改变。

这一浪潮带来了三项决定性的创新：

● 原生托管账户： 不同于传统银行账户仅作为账本上的一个数字，加密新锐银行提供的是基于私钥管理或多方计算（MPC）技术的资产托管服务，支持多种链上资产的直接持有。

● 稳定币支付网络： 通过集成稳定币，这些平台实现了 7×24 的即时结算，彻底绕过了传统银行的电汇周期。

● 集成化收益产品： 借助 DeFi 协议或合规的国债代币化产品，平台能将底层资产的真实收益率直接传导给用户，打破了传统银行对利差的垄断。

这场演变中最具历史意义的转向在于资产负债表的重构。在传统语境下，用户的财富表现为银行的存款，即银行的负债。银行利用这些负债进行期限错配，赚取息差。但在第二波浪潮中，用户的资产正在从银行存款大规模迁移至数字资产托管。

当资产负债表从法币存款驱动转向数字资产托管驱动时，金融机构的角色也从“资金掮客”转变为“资产网关”。这不仅提高了资本的流动效率，也为未来全球 100 万亿美元存款的重新定价奠定了技术基础。

2025 年第三季度，Coinbase 从稳定币业务中获得 3.55 亿美元收入，占总收入约 19%。这一比例正在稳步上升，标志着一家交易所正在向金融基础设施平台加速转型。

因此，前一波数字银行改变的是“银行怎么用”，后一波改变的则是“钱如何存在、流动和产生收益”。

4. 链上金融堆栈：资金是如何运作的

如果说加密新锐银行与传统银行最大的区别，不在于界面，而在于底层结构，那么就必须进一步拆解：用户资金进入这一体系后，究竟经历了什么？

从逻辑上看，当前围绕稳定币形成的“收益型美元”体系，大致由三个相互支撑的层级构成：托管层、稳定币层和收益层。

4.1 托管层

在传统金融中，托管意味着将资产的所有权移交给第三方。但在加密银行架构中，托管层是整个堆栈的物理底座。与传统银行的账户体系不同，加密托管基于钱包架构，资产以代币形式记录在区块链上，产权关系清晰、可验证，无需依赖中介机构的信用背书。

这一层的核心逻辑从“信任机构”转向了“信任密码学”。通过多方计算和硬件安全模块技术，资产的控制权不再依赖于单一的物理保险库，而是分布式的分片私钥。

主要基础设施提供商包括 Fireblocks、BitGo 和 Anchorage。这些机构为加密新银行提供机构级别的资产托管、结算和合规身份验证服务。托管层的成熟，是加密银行业从零售市场进军机构市场的关键前提。

4.2 稳定币层

稳定币是整套架构的流通媒介。以美元为锚的稳定币充当了传统法币与链上生态之间的可编程接口。稳定币不仅解决了加密资产的价格波动问题，更重要的意义在于其实现了金融的程序化，其具备即时结算和高流动性的技术特征。

目前最广泛使用的链上美元是以 USDT 和 USDC 为代表的法币抵押型稳定币。其次便是加密货币抵押稳定币 USDS 和合成美元 USDe。

截至 2026 年第一季度，全球稳定币流通量已突破 3,190 亿美元，USDT 作为市场的绝对支柱，其市值约 1,840 亿美元。尽管面临更严格的合规审计，其日均交易量依然稳健。USDC 凭借其在北美及全球机构间的稳健合规形象，市值稳定在 790 亿美元左右。值得注意的是，2026 年初的数据显示，USDC 在经调整后的链上交易量上一度超越 USDT，反映出其在支付清算与机构级应用中的主导地位正在加强。

稳定币的重要性不仅在于“锚定美元”，更在于它使金融资产首次具备了程序化流动能力：

● 可以作为结算媒介使用

● 可以被快速跨境转移

● 可以被嵌入借贷、支付、衍生品与收益策略

它不只是“数字现金”，更是整个链上金融堆栈的流动性骨架。

4.3 收益层

收益层是整套架构中最具颠覆性的创新。稳定币持有者不再像持有现金一样坐等通胀侵蚀购买力，而是可以通过多种渠道获取真实收益。

当前主流收益来源大致分为四类：

4.3.1 国债收益：最接近传统无风险利率的来源

当前最容易理解的一类收益，来自短期美国国债与类似现金等价物。合规稳定币发行方与部分 RWA 协议将美元储备配置到短期国债，再通过产品结构将这部分收益部分传导给终端用户。

这一模式的核心，是将原本属于银行或货币市场中介的利率收益，更低摩擦地呈现在用户面前。它之所以在近两年吸引力强，主要是因为美国高利率环境本身使短债收益率维持在较高区间。

4.3.2 DeFi 借贷收益：来自链上资金需求

第二类收益来自借贷市场。当交易者、做市商或协议用户希望借入稳定币时，他们愿意支付利息，而资金提供者则获得收益。Aave、Morpho 等协议提供了一个相对透明的利率市场，利率会根据供需变化自动调整。

与国债不同，这类收益不是宏观利率的直接映射，而是链上资金需求与抵押融资结构的结果。因此，它通常波动更大，在市场活跃时更高，在活动减弱时则迅速下滑。

4.3.3 RWA 信贷收益：来自现实世界信用资产

第三类收益，来自链下信用资产，即所谓 RWA 信贷。这类产品可能将用户资金配置于企业贷款、应收账款融资、贸易融资或其他现实世界信用资产，收益因此高于纯国债产品。

它的吸引力在于：为稳定币体系提供了超越链上原生需求的收益来源，使“链上美元”可以分享部分传统信用市场回报。

但这一模式也意味着，用户承担的不再只是技术和流动性风险，而是更接近传统金融中的违约风险、追索风险与法律执行风险。

4.3.4 交易与策略收益：来自市场结构，而非天然无风险利率

第四类收益，来自交易、套利与做市策略，包括 Delta 中性、Basis 交易、资金费率套利和流动性做市等。这些收益在行情波动较大、衍生品活跃或资金结构失衡时，往往最具吸引力。

但它们也是最容易被误解的一类收益。因为很多看起来远高于银行的回报，并不是“数字美元天然应该有这么高利率”，而是用户通过平台间接承担了更复杂的市场与风控风险。

这些策略的组合，使稳定币年化收益率普遍达到 3% 至 8%，部分激进策略甚至更高。以火币 HTX 等头部平台的理财业务为例，加密平台正在通过更高效的资金流转和丰富的产品线，与传统银行储蓄展开直接竞争。其核心优势体系集中体现在以下几个维度 ：

● 极致的安全底座与流动性： 区别于传统银行的长周期定期锁定，平台支持资金随存随取，提供了超级灵活的流动性管理。同时，火币HTX 连续超 30 个月 0 风险事件，为大额资金沉淀提供了信任基础。

● 高收益与高频复利引擎： 摒弃了传统银行的按月或按季结息，平台实行按小时复利计息的模式，通过高频计算帮助用户赚取更多收益。在整体收益表现上，其稳定币理财最高收益可达 15%，具备极强的市场护城河与明显的行业优势。

● 深度的资产供给网络： 平台完成了简单赚币、结构化产品、链上产品三大核心业务的布局，其赚币产品覆盖了 300 多个币种，并上架了 390 多个项目。对于具有进阶对冲需求的专业资金，平台还提供具有独家报价优势和申购收益立得的“双币赢”等结构化衍生品。

以基于 2026 年 4 月 23 日行业数据的头部 CEX 稳定币活期理财 APY 结构对比，可以看出，各平台普遍采用金额阶梯利率来保持行业竞争力并吸引长尾用户 ：

5. 收益率改变一切

理解稳定币对传统银行的冲击，必须从最基本的商业逻辑出发。如果说技术是这场变革的发动机，那么收益率就是引燃一切的燃料。金融史上的每一次大迁徙，本质上都是资金在追求更高效率与更优回报。

数百年来，传统银行的商业逻辑始终围绕着净息差展开。以极低成本吸纳储户存款，以显著更高的利率发放贷款，扣除运营成本后，贷款利息与存款利息之间的巨大差额即为银行的利润。这套模式的核心在于对资金定价权的掌控，以及依靠信息不对称和转换成本构筑的竞争壁垒。

稳定币通过直接穿透底层资产，如美国国债、RWA、或高效的链上套利策略，将收益直接传导给终端持有者，其收益率通常维持在 3% — 8% 甚至更高。这种模式将原本属于银行中介的利润直接归还给了资金的实际所有者。

当用户发现：

● 银行账户里的美元利率接近于零或远低于基准利率

● 而平台或协议可以通过不同结构，提供更高的可见收益

那么资金流向自然会受到影响。

这并不一定意味着大规模“存款搬家”已经发生，但意味着银行长期独占利率分配的格局，已经首次遇到来自技术与产品结构的正面挑战。根据美联储在《Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Some Possible Implications for Deposits, Credit, and Financial Intermediation》中研究显示，在适度的稳定币采用情景下，银行贷款能力可能减少 1,900 亿至 4,080 亿美元。这一量级足以动摇整个银行信贷体系的流动性基础。

6. 存款争夺战：三条战线的交锋

这场竞争已不再是传统银行间的市场份额之争，而演变为两种完全不同金融范式的正面博弈。

6.1 收益率竞争

稳定币平台提供的收益率在绝大多数市场环境下显著高于传统银行存款。Coinbase 旗下平台提供 USDC 持有收益，年化利率曾达到 4.25%，是当时美国银行平均存款利率的四倍以上。区别于传统银行按月结息，领先平台如 HTX 已实现按小时复利计息，极大提升了长尾资金的利用效能。

更激进的策略来自 DeFi 领域，Ethena 的 USDe 质押代币 sUSDe 在 2024 年平均年化收益率约 18%，目前利率在 5% 至 30% 之间波动。这样的回报率在传统金融世界几乎不可想象，除非承担极高的风险。

6.2 资本流动性

数字资产的流动性远超传统金融资产。区块链网络实现了 7×24 小时不间断结算，资金可以在几秒内跨越国界，无需银行工作日的限制，彻底打破了传统金融 T+2 或跨境汇款的周期限制。

6.3 数字用户体验

相比传统银行臃肿的线下网点和繁琐的开户流程，加密平台提供了极致简化的移动端体验和产品精选优化。加密新银行的产品设计是移动原生的，支持一键开户、实时余额更新、无边界转账、可编程的自动化策略。

7. 监管博弈：“货币定义权”之争

随着百万亿美元级别的资金开始在传统金融与链上协议之间重新定价，一场关于“货币定义权”的战争已经全面打响。这不仅是技术层面的竞争，更是当前全球金融体系中最核心的政策辩论。监管层、传统银行业务捍卫者与加密原生创新者正在围绕稳定币的本质与边界展开激烈的角力。

7.1《GENIUS 法案》：美国稳定币监管的里程碑

2025 年 7 月，美国总统签署《GENIUS 法案》（Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act），这是美国首部专门针对支付型稳定币的联邦立法。法案确立了几个关键原则：

● 发行人必须以现金或短期国债 1:1 足额储备支撑稳定币发行；

● 每月公布储备构成，并接受独立审计；

● 遵守反洗钱（AML）及《银行保密法》合规要求；

● 明确禁止发行人直接向稳定币持有者支付利息或收益。

《GENIUS 法案》明确禁止稳定币发行方向持有者提供任何形式的利息或收益。同时，该法案禁止发行方使用”欺骗性名称”进行营销，例如声称其稳定币获得美国政府全额信用背书、政府保证或联邦存款保险覆盖。

然而，法案文本的模糊性立即为下一轮博弈埋下了伏笔。《GENIUS 法案》禁止稳定币发行方支付任何形式的利息或收益，但并未明确禁止关联方或第三方安排提供利息类产品。法案的通过并未终结争论，反而将其引向了更复杂、更激烈的新阶段。

7.2 传统银行的防守：系统性风险的警告

对于传统银行而言，带有收益属性的数字美元构成了对其资产负债表最直接的生存威胁。代表传统金融利益的游说团体和经济学家提出了三个核心反对意见：

● 收益型稳定币本质上模仿了银行存款： 银行认为，当加密平台向用户承诺固定或浮动的年化收益，并允许用户随时提取资金时，这种产品的经济实质就是“未注册的活期存款”。它们在功能上替代了银行账户，却绕过了严苛的资本充足率和流动性覆盖率监管。

● 缺乏存款保险的系统性兜底： 传统存款享有国家级存款保险的保护，这在市场恐慌时能有效防止挤兑。银行警告称，加密平台的理财资金池缺乏类似的刚性兑付保障。一旦底层资产出现违约，极易引发类似“影子银行”体系的连环崩盘。

● 可能破坏底层融资市场的稳定性 ： 这是宏观经济层面的最大担忧。传统银行依赖稳定的核心存款来发放长期限的实体经济贷款。如果收益型稳定币引发大规模的存款搬家，银行将被迫大幅缩减信贷规模或以极高的成本在同业市场拆借资金。这种流动性抽干将直接推高全社会的融资成本，甚至引发信贷危机。

7.3《CLARITY 法案》：一场未竟的立法拉锯战

立法层面的博弈在《数字资产市场清晰法案》（CLARITY Act）的审议过程中达到了最激烈的状态。国会以《CLARITY 法案》回应银行业的压力，将收益禁令扩展至所有数字资产服务提供方。然而在 2026 年 1 月，Coinbase 宣布撤回对法案的支持，参议院表决被无限期推迟。

2026 年 3 月 20 日，参议员 Tillis 和 Alsobrooks 宣布了一项折衷方案：禁止被动收益，允许基于活动的奖励。然而 Coinbase 随即再度拒绝接受这一草案，表示无法支持任何禁止”直接或间接”支付收益，或任何”在经济上等同于银行利息”的条款。

美联储在这一议题上保持了相对审慎的立场，但其研究成果已对政策讨论产生深远影响。美联储研究人员发现，稳定币的行为更接近于货币市场基金等投资工具，而非核心存款；美国货币政策冲击会导致资金流入优质货币市场基金，并流出稳定币，表明两者之间存在替代关系。

整个监管争论的核心，归根结底是一道关于资产分类的难题：稳定币到底属于支付工具、投资工具，还是存款替代品？

这场监管博弈的结果，将直接决定数万亿美元的利益归属，以及未来十年美国金融体系的基本架构。

8. 传统银行的反击：代币化与底层架构重构

面对加密平台对存款基础的蚕食以及数字美元在收益率上的降维打击，传统银行业已跨越了最初的防守与指责阶段，开始在系统底层展开实质性的反击。这一反击的核心策略并非彻底拥抱无许可的加密原生架构，而是通过吸收区块链技术的效率优势，开发出能够在合规框架内与加密新锐银行直接抗衡的竞争模型。银行正试图用技术手段证明，传统信用体系同样可以实现全天候的资金流转，从而夺回被稳定币分流的机构与长尾资金。

8.1 代币化存款

在这场底层架构的重构中，代币化存款构成了传统金融反击的主力武器。其终极目标是实现基于区块链的存款体系，让受监管的商业银行货币具备类似稳定币的可编程性与即时清算能力，同时又保留了传统金融体系下的存款保险和监管背书。

摩根大通自 2015 年启动区块链探索，2019 年在私有许可链上推出区块链存款账户（Kinexys Digital Payments）。2025 年 6 月，其区块链业务部门 Kinexys 正式发布美元计价存款代币 JPMD，运行于以太坊 L2 公链 Base 之上，标志着这家全球最大银行首次将存款产品部署至公共区块链。2025 年 11 月，摩根大通向机构客户正式开放 JPMD，B2C2、Coinbase 和 Mastercard 均已完成测试交易。Kinexys 联席负责人 Naveen Mallela 表示，Kinexys 目前年化支付规模已超过一万亿美元，若将日均数万亿美元的支付业务部分迁移至区块链，其规模将远超整个稳定币行业。

与此同时，花旗银行持续推进 Citi Token Services，计划于 2026 年推出加密资产托管服务并开发代币化存款产品。纽约梅隆银行正在评估允许客户通过区块链轨道进行支付的代币化存款方案。英国的巴克莱、劳埃德和汇丰已启动代币化英镑存款试点。

8.2 银行发行稳定币

除了改造既有的商业存款账户，传统金融机构和巨头也开始直接试水发行受监管的银行系稳定币及联盟代币，试图在公共区块链生态中建立属于传统金融的流动性蓄水池。

作为拥有数亿用户的传统支付巨头 PayPal 推出了 PYUSD，通过合规发行商将法币美元直接映射到公共区块链上，此举彻底模糊了传统金融科技与加密网络之间的界限。

此外，由多家受保银行组成的银行联盟，如 USDF Consortium 也在积极推进联盟级别代币的发行。这些联盟旨在通过在区块链上铸造统一标准的代币化法定存款，解决不同中小银行之间清算效率低下的痛点，并以此对抗非银行系稳定币 USDC 和 USDT 在支付领域的市场垄断地位。

8.3 区块链结算导轨的采用与现实困境

无论是代币化存款的内部创新，还是银行系稳定币的外部突围，其背后的技术实质都指向了区块链结算网络的全面铺设。传统银行正在积极整合即时结算与代币化支付机制，试图彻底消除传统金融体系中 T+2 交收周期、高昂的电汇费用以及复杂代理行网络带来的摩擦成本。

然而，尽管战略愿景宏大，传统银行业对这一新架构的整体采用依然非常缓慢。这种迟缓并非源于技术可行性的缺失，而是受制于沉重的历史包袱与复杂的结构性阻力。

当加密新锐银行能够以敏捷的软件迭代速度在全球范围内快速部署高收益的生息资产时，传统银行的代币化步伐往往仍受困于无休止的概念验证、冗长的合规审批和内部部门的利益博弈之中。

9. 未来金融架构的演进路径

这场底层货币形态与商业模式的博弈，最终将导向何种结局？基于当前的监管动态、技术迭代速度以及资本的逐利本能，未来金融架构的演进可能呈现出三种截然不同的路径。

9.1 情景一：加密新锐银行取得全面胜利

在最为激进的演变路径中，稳定币将主导全球支付和储蓄市场，加密新锐银行成为新一代金融基础设施的核心。

对于传统商业银行而言，这将是一场系统性的溃败。一旦储户习惯了由底层资产直接驱动且全天候流转的“生息现金”，银行将不可避免地流失作为其核心生命线的大规模低成本存款。紧随其后的，将是银行业务中利润最丰厚的支付清算手续费与跨境汇兑利润的彻底枯竭。传统银行将被迫退化为仅服务于特定重资产行业或强监管领域的低利润信贷提供商。

9.2 情景二：传统银行代币化反击成功

与第一种情景截然相对的，是传统金融机构成功完成底层技术换代。银行不仅利用信任背书守住了庞大的储户资金池，还通过代币化存款实现了跨行、跨国的实时清算与复杂金融合约的自动执行。加密基础设施演变为银行的技术服务层，而非竞争对手。

摩根大通的 Kinexys 路径，代表了这一情景最清晰的实践尝试。如果大型银行能够在机构客户群中建立稳固的代币化存款网络，并利用其现有的分发渠道和监管关系形成壁垒，这一路径具有相当的可行性。

在这一格局下，加密原生的新锐银行及其背后的底层公链技术，将不再作为颠覆者存在，而是退居幕后，成为支撑整个传统金融体系运转的纯后端基础设施。

9.3 情景三：混合金融堆栈的最终成型

尽管前两种情景构成了理论上的两极，但从金融体系的演进历史与当前的监管博弈来看，构建一个多层次融合的混合金融堆栈是最具现实可能性的未来图景。

在这一终局架构中，未来的金融服务不再是单一体系的封闭循环，而是由多种组件无缝拼接而成的开放式垂直网络。

在混合架构的最前端，去中心化或混合托管的数字钱包将取代传统的银行账户体系，成为个人与企业通用的超级数字身份与金融入口。在资产流通层，由非银行机构发行的合规稳定币与商业银行发行的代币化存款将并行运转，共同充当全球数字商业的结算媒介与价值载体，满足不同场景下的风险偏好。

而传统商业银行依然会保留其核心地位，发挥大额信贷创造与宏观流动性管理的系统性作用，同时将其底层核心账本与开放的链上协议深度打通。通过这种混合模式，全球资本既能享受到加密网络带来的极致效率与生息平权，又能维系传统金融所需的宏观稳定与监管底线。

10. 投资版图与资本流向

资本的流向往往是底层金融范式转移的最敏锐先行指标。这场变革催生了庞大的投资机会，资本正在沿着价值链的各个节点加速集聚。从直接触达用户的加密新锐银行，到驱动资产流转的底层基础设施，资本的聚焦点主要划分为四大核心赛道。

10.1 加密新锐银行：流量入口与资产网关

处于生态最前端的是直接掌控用户关系的加密新锐银行。它们正在完成从“单一交易平台”向“全能型财富管理与储蓄中枢”的蜕变。

作为合规加密入口的绝对龙头 Coinbase 正深度绑定 USDC 生态，通过向平台用户提供稳定币的无缝转换与原生收益。并且，Coinbase 多元化的收入结构，如交易手续费、稳定币收益、Base 链生态手续费、机构托管服务，使其正在从交易所向金融基础设施平台转型。

从免佣金股票交易起家的 Robinhood 正在加速整合数字钱包和链上生息功能，试图将其庞大的年轻散户群体从传统银行账户彻底迁移至其闭环金融生态中。

10.2 稳定币基础设施：数字美元的“铸币局”

稳定币基础设施是数字时代的“商业央行”。资本高度青睐这一赛道，因为其商业模式已被证明是当前加密市场中最具持续盈利能力的现金牛。

Tether 发行的 USDT 作为全球流动性最强、市值最大的稳定币发行方，成为跨境支付与新兴市场财富储存的底层共识。

Circle 凭借极高的透明度和与美国监管框架的深度融合，赢得了机构资金的青睐，并成为众多 DeFi 协议和传统金融链上试水的首选计价本位。

PayPal 通过 PYUSD 将稳定币发行与其全球支付网络整合，代表了传统支付机构的进入路径，将为数亿 PayPal 既有用户打通通往链上收益协议的合规桥梁。

10.3 收益层基础设施：链上利率的核心

收益层基础设施是“收益型货币”得以成立的核心技术引擎。资本正在密集布局那些能够提供透明、可持续且风险可控收益的去中心化或混合型协议。

Aave 作为 DeFi 借贷领域的龙头建立了一个庞大且久经考验的资金池模型，通过算法自动调节供需利率，为全球稳定币持有者提供了最基础的链上无风险及低风险基准收益率。

Morpho 是建立于底层借贷协议之上的优化层，Morpho 通过点对点匹配机制极大地提升了资金效率，为放贷人提供更高收益，为借款人降低成本，代表了链上信贷向更高精细度演进的趋势。

Ondo Finance 作为 RWA 赛道的领军者，成功将美国国债代币化。它打通了传统宏观利率与加密原生资产的通道，为庞大的稳定币资金提供了规模化、合规的国债生息路径。

10.4 托管层基础设施：机构入场的“物理金库”

对于资本规模庞大的养老金、主权基金、大型对冲基金而言，规模化入场的前提是具备足够的安全托管基础。托管基础设施是连接传统合规要求与密码学原生资产的必由之路。

Fireblocks 凭借其领先的多方计算技术已成为行业标准，为成千上万家机构提供数字资产的安全传输、存储和发行网络，其实质上构建了加密金融的后台清算中枢。

Anchorage 作为首家获得美国联邦特许状的加密数字银行，将顶级密码学安全与等同于传统大型银行的合规地位结合在一起，为华尔街正规军进入“收益型货币”市场提供了最高级别的政策安全垫。

11. 核心风险评估

尽管加密新锐银行通过“收益型货币”和即时流动性正在重塑全球存款格局，但这一新兴的金融堆栈并非坚不可摧。相比传统银行体系，其风险并非集中于单一点，而是分布在收益结构、流动性机制、技术架构与政治监管环境之中，并在极端情况下呈现出更强的联动性。在数字美元全面颠覆传统银行模型之前，资本与市场参与者必须正视其底层架构及外部环境面临的四大核心风险。

11.1 收益率的监管限制

收益率的监管限制是加密新锐银行面临的最直接、最具破坏性的政策风险。正如前文所述，“收益率”是驱动传统存款向链上网络迁移的核心动力。然而，全球监管机构对“未经注册的生息产品”始终保持高度警惕。

如果监管机构明确将带有固定或浮动收益的稳定币理财产品定性为“未注册证券”，平台将面临巨额罚款并被迫下架核心产品。

类似于《GENIUS 法案》等旨在规范稳定币的立法，往往倾向于禁止合规稳定币发行方直接向持有人支付利息。如果这种限制向下传导，阻断了加密新锐银行将底层国债收益穿透给用户的通道，那么其对抗传统银行的“高息护城河”将不复存在。同时，欧盟 MiCA、香港《稳定币条例》与美国《GENIUS 法案》形成差异化框架，也将跨境合规成本上升。

11.2 流动性风险与挤兑危机

虽然加密理财平台普遍承诺“随存随取”，但其底层收益来源 — — 无论是国债、DeFi 借贷、RWA 信贷还是策略资产 — — 都存在不同程度的期限结构、流动性差异与清算依赖。这种流动性错觉在极端市场压力下极其脆弱。在正常市场环境下，这种错配被隐藏；但在极端压力下，它会迅速显性化。

典型传导路径包括：

1）用户集中赎回 → 平台需要变现底层资产 2）底层资产流动性不足 → 被迫折价出售 3）资产价格下跌 → 抵押品价值下降（DeFi） 4）触发连环清算 → 流动性进一步收缩 5）提现延迟或冻结 → 信心崩塌 → 二次挤兑

即使收益来源于最安全的美国短期国债，在遭遇全网恐慌性挤兑时，平台若被迫在二级市场以折价抛售国债以换取现金兑付，同样会产生巨大的流动性缺口。最新数据显示，Tether 和 Circle 合计持有的美国国债已超过沙特阿拉伯。大规模赎回可能对短期国债市场产生冲击。

在链上体系中，这一风险还被进一步放大：

● DeFi 借贷依赖抵押物与清算机制

● 跨链资产依赖桥接与资产映射

● 收益策略依赖持续市场流动性

一旦其中任一环节失效，流动性压力会通过系统迅速放大。

许多加密银行将资金接入链上借贷协议以获取高息。一旦市场发生剧烈波动，链上抵押物价值骤降引发连环清算，资金池可能会面临瞬间干涸，导致用户的取款请求被无限期延迟或阻断。并且，收益策略依赖的协议存在代码漏洞和治理攻击的可能性。

11.3 托管失效与技术漏洞

在传统金融中，存款安全性由国家级的存款保险刚性兜底，如美国的 FDIC 机制。而在加密金融堆栈中，安全性的基础从“国家信用”转变为“代码与密码学”，这也带来了全新的系统性失效点。2022 年 Celsius 案中，法院裁定 Earn 账户中的资产属于清算财产，用户持有的是无担保债权。这一法律先例提醒用户，将资产委托给加密平台，并不等同于银行存款的法律保护。

如 Fireblocks、BitGo 等头部托管商采用了先进的多方计算技术，但加密平台的钱包架构、API 接口及内部风控流程仍是黑客攻击的重灾区。一旦私钥被盗或内部员工发生越权操作，资金将面临不可逆的永久损失。

11.4 结构性风险：收益来源本身的脆弱性

不同收益来源在极端环境下的抗压能力存在显著差异。

● 国债类：最稳、最抗链上事故；但高度依赖利率周期，降息即收益下滑；存在托管/披露与链下执行链条风险。

● DeFi 借贷：依赖抵押 — 预言机 — 清算链条；在价格剧烈波动时易因抵押品失真与清算拥堵放大风险。

● RWA 信贷：对链上事故敏感度低，但核心在信用违约与法律执行；存在期限错配与信息披露风险。

● 交易/策略：收益弹性最高、也最不稳定；依赖波动与价差，极端行情下易流动性蒸发与策略失效。

Kelp DAO 等事件已经表明，即使单个协议本身安全，只要跨链资产、抵押结构或流动性层出现问题，风险也会通过系统放大。

这意味着：收益型货币体系并非单一风险，而是“多风险叠加结构”。

当宏观利率下行、链上流动性收缩、信用违约上升或市场波动失效时，不同收益来源可能同时承压。

11.5 传统银行业的游说压力

加密新锐银行的崛起正在切断传统商业银行的利润大动脉，后者绝不会坐以待毙。传统银行可能会通过游说，推动监管机构实施更严厉的资本充足率要求，迫使加密平台承担与大型银行完全对等的沉重合规成本，从而抹平其边际成本优势。

银行业可以通过切断结算网络和拒绝提供法币托管账户，类似历史上的扼喉行动 2.0（Operation Choke Point 2.0），从物理上掐断加密新锐银行与法币世界的流动性桥梁，将其孤立在封闭的链上系统中。

收益型货币的未来并不仅仅取决于技术的优越性，更取决于它能在多大程度上抵御上述四大系统性风险。对于投资者和行业从业者而言，加密新锐银行不仅需要具备安全工程能力，更需要高超的政治智慧与合规平衡。

11.6 风险不是缺陷，而是体系本身

综合来看，收益型货币体系的风险并不是某个单点缺陷，而是其结构本身的一部分。

● 更高收益意味着更复杂的风险组合

● 更高流动性意味着更敏感的挤兑传导

● 更开放的架构意味着更少的制度性兜底

因此，真正的问题不是“这套体系有没有风险”，而是：

在不同宏观周期与极端情景下，这套体系是否仍然能够维持稳定与可赎回性。

对于投资者与行业参与者而言，判断一个平台的关键，不在于其当前 APY，而在于：

● 收益来源是否透明

● 风险承担是否清晰

● 流动性结构是否匹配

● 在压力测试下是否具备生存能力

收益型货币的未来，不仅取决于技术与产品创新，更取决于它能否在收益之外，逐步建立起可验证的安全边界与制度性信任。

结论

历经数个世纪的演进，全球金融体系正站在一个具有决定性意义的分水岭上。从早期的物理网点到移动互联网时代的 Fintech 交互革命，银行业的创新大多停留在表层体验的修补。加密新锐银行与全新链上金融堆栈的崛起，带来的是一场深达资产负债表底层的结构性颠覆。

这场金融革命的核心基石，在于稳定币引入了一个前所未有的全新资产类别“收益型可编程货币”。它同时具备货币的流通功能和储蓄的收益功能，且运行在无需许可的全球网络上。这打破了传统银行业的核心逻辑：储户的存款不再只能选择接受接近零的利率，而是拥有了真实的替代方案。收益型可编程货币既具备 7×24 全球即时清算的终极流动性，又能够以低摩擦的方式直接穿透并分配底层的高息收益。当“智能代码”取代了臃肿的银行信贷部门，金钱本身便获得了自我生息与自动化流转的能力。

这一全新概念的普及，正在引发全球资本市场的结构性转移。

从宏观视角看，这场变革的影响是多层次的：

● 对银行业：净息差将面临持续压缩压力，融资成本中枢可能上移，信贷创造能力受到约束

● 对监管机构：如何在鼓励创新与防范系统性风险之间寻找平衡，将是未来数年最艰难的政策挑战

● 对储户和用户：数字金融的普惠红利正在兑现，全球任何有智能手机的人，都可以接入接近机构级别的收益率

● 对国际货币体系：美元稳定币的全球扩张，可能强化美元的“外汇特权”，但也可能引发去美元化的反弹

展望未来，传统银行与加密新锐平台之间的界限将变得愈发模糊，而决定胜负的终极战场已经非常清晰：未来的银行业，本质上是一场关于“谁能掌控数字存款”的殊死搏斗。

无论是 Coinbase、Robinhood 等加密平台通过稳定币基础设施构建的高息储蓄池，还是摩根大通、花旗等华尔街巨头奋力推进的代币化存款，所有参与者都在争夺同一个目标，成为下一代数字资本的终极网关。

在这场博弈中，最终的赢家可能未必是某一项单一的技术或某一种特定的机构形态，而是那些能够完美融合绝对安全性、全球即时流动性与透明市场收益率的金融网络。在这个即将到来的新周期里，资本将毫无保留地流向效率最高的地方，而传统银行如果无法适应这种由“一行代码”驱动的生息逻辑，终将面临被时代边缘化的命运。真正的赢家，将是那些能够在两个世界之间架桥的参与者。

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关于 HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures 是火币HTX 的全球投资部门，集投资、孵化和研究于一体，识别全球最优秀和最聪明的团队。作为行业先驱，HTX Ventures拥有超过11年的区块链建设经验，擅长识别该领域内的前沿技术和新兴商业模式。为了在区块链生态系统内推动增长，我们为项目提供全面支持，包括融资、资源和战略建议。

HTX Ventures 目前支持超过 300 个项目，涵盖多个区块链领域，部分高质量项目已经在火币HTX 交易。此外，作为最活跃的FOF基金之一，HTX Ventures 投资于全球30家顶级基金， 并与 Polychain、Dragonfly、Bankless、Gitcoin、Figment 、Nomad、Animoca和 Hack VC 等全球顶级区块链基金合作，共同打造区块链生态系统。访问我们。

如需投资和合作，请随时联系 VC@htx-inc.com

参考列表

1. TABInsights. Largest Banks in the World 2025.

https://tabinsights.com/ab1000/largest-banks-in-the-world

2. DefiLlama. Stablecoin Market Cap Chart，Supply & Peg Data.

https://defillama.com/stablecoins

3. Bloomberg. Bessent Says $2 Trillion Reasonable for Dollar Stablecoin Market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-11/bessent-says-2-trillion-reasonable-for-dollar-stablecoin-market

4. SEC. Coinbase Q3 2025 Shareholder Letter.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001679788/000167978825000207/q325shareholderletter.htm

5. Congress.gov. GENIUS Act of 2025.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/394

6. Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Some Possible Implications for Deposits, Credit, and Financial Intermediation.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/banks-in-the-age-of-stablecoins-implications-for-deposits-credit-and-financial-intermediation-20251217.html

7. European Union. Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R1114

8. CoinDesk. JPMorgan’s tokenized dollars are quietly rewiring how Wall Street moves money

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/12/18/jpmorgan-s-tokenized-dollars-are-quietly-rewiring-how-wall-street-moves-money

9. Stretto. Celsius Network Case.

https://cases.stretto.com/celsius/

10. House Financial Services Committee. Meuser: The Biden Administration’s Operation Choke Point 2.0 Was Carried Out by The Prudential Regulators to Target and Debank the Digital Asset Ecosystem.

https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409457