Something strange happened this week in crypto. Not the usual kind of strange — not a hack, not a rug pull, not another memecoin making someone rich overnight. This week, an AI program borrowed money from a lending protocol. Without putting up any collateral. Based solely on its "credit history&
There's a moment in every industry's evolution when the people who built the old world stop watching from the sidelines and start laying bricks in the new one. This week, that moment arrived — not once, but three times — and the signals are so loud that ignoring
How Project Crypto, the USDT depeg crisis, and Australia's licensing countdown are quietly redrawing the rules of global finance — while most people aren't paying attention. For the better part of a decade, two of America's most powerful financial regulators have been locked in a
APAC FinStab+ Weekly Intelligence Brief | January 26 - February 2, 2026 The Week Everything Changed Something unusual happened in the last week of January 2026. While Bitcoin crashed 40% from its all-time high and $17.4 billion in leveraged positions got liquidated in a single cascade, the most important developments
The 7-Day Regulatory Earthquake Something remarkable happened between January 19 and January 25, 2026. In just seven days, three nations on three different continents made decisions that will reshape how billions of people interact with digital money. Russia legalized cryptocurrency for 140 million citizens. India banned privacy-focused digital currencies. And
The $300 Billion Secret Hiding in Plain Sight Here's something that should be on the front page of every financial newspaper but isn't: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and BNP Paribas are running validator nodes on the same blockchain network. Together. Right now. The network is called Canton.
The tokenization of real-world assets has reached an inflection point. Global RWA market cap (excluding stablecoins) surpassed $30 billion in Q3 2025, with private credit (~$17B) and U.S. Treasuries (~$7.3B) dominating the asset mix. Institutional players—BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon—are no longer experimenting; they
Three Stories That Changed Everything This Week If you've been waiting for a sign that cryptocurrency is ready for serious money, this was the week. Not because Bitcoin hit a new high. Not because some influencer made a prediction. But because three completely unrelated events happened within seven
The Courtroom That Could Change Everything In four days, a courtroom in Podgorica, Montenegro will hand down a sentence that has nothing to do with the price of Bitcoin—and everything to do with the future of cryptocurrency. Do Kwon, the architect of the $60 billion Terra/LUNA collapse that
APAC FINSTAB Research Note | December 2025 Introduction: Why We Need a "Regulatory API" Over the past 18 months, we've observed a curious pattern: ICM (Internet Capital Markets) founders and investors spend considerable time analyzing tokenomics, bonding curve parameters, and fee-sharing ratios—yet often ask the critical
When the world's largest payment network validates blockchain settlement, and the SEC starts handing out permission slips, we're no longer talking about speculation. We're watching infrastructure get built. The Quiet Revolution Happening in Plain Sight Last week, while most financial headlines focused on interest
While retail investors panic-sold at the lowest fear levels since 2018, institutions deployed over $200 million in a single week. Here's what they're seeing that you're not. The Panic Nobody's Talking About Last week, something remarkable happened in crypto markets—and almost