charter

According to a report by The Block, Standard Chartered Bank has postponed its prediction for the stablecoin market to reach a scale of $2 trillion from 2028 to 2030. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital asset research, stated that the $2 trillion scale estimate remains unchanged, but he believes the market will need an additional two years to reach it. Over the past 12 months, the supply of stablecoins has remained in the range of $300 billion to $320 billion, currently around $309 billion. Kendrick believes this slowdown is cyclical rather than structural, as it occurs during a period of weak activity in the cryptocurrency market.Kendrick pointed out that despite the stagnation in supply growth, the use and trading activity of stablecoins continue to rise. The on-chain original transfer amount set a monthly record of $19 trillion in May, with an average monthly scale of nearly $10 trillion this year, higher than the $4 trillion expected in 2025.The monthly average circulation velocity, which measures the number of times each dollar of stablecoin is transferred, has doubled this year to about 30 times, compared to 15 times in 2025, with USDT maintaining around 7 times, while USDC has increased from 45 times to about 80 times. Kendrick stated that the differences stem from different uses, with USDT primarily used for dollar savings in emerging markets, while USDC is more used for payments, financial transactions, and early payments between AI agents.Kendrick expects that competition in stablecoin payments and trading in developed markets will be the most intense, with potential challengers including Open USD, stablecoin infrastructure provider M^0, and the A+ network, which plans to allow banks to issue shared stablecoins and retain reserve earnings.

According to official disclosure, Standard Chartered announced that it has received approval from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in the UAE to officially launch cryptocurrency trading solutions for professional investors in the UAE.Eligible affluent clients can buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) directly through their existing bank accounts, without the need to set up a separate wallet or use third-party platforms.

Standard Chartered Bank announced that it has launched institutional custody services for Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD through its Dubai International Financial Centre branch, supporting the operation of this stablecoin on the XRP Ledger, allowing qualified institutional clients to use its digital asset custody infrastructure.Standard Chartered plans to extend the collateral mirroring model to institutional trading company LMAX Group, allowing clients to use RLUSD as trading collateral while the tokens remain held in the bank's custody. This model enables LMAX to confirm the value of qualified RLUSD holdings without requiring clients to transfer tokens, which Standard Chartered claims reduces transfer-related risks and helps institutions manage counterparty exposure.The issuer of RLUSD, Ripple, and LMAX Group announced a partnership in January 2026 to expand the institutional use of this stablecoin. Standard Chartered stated that the new collateral functionality still needs to meet conditions such as final documentation, testing, regulatory requirements, and internal approvals.

According to The Block, Standard Chartered Bank's Singapore branch plans to provide custody services for specific crypto assets, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets to institutional investors.The bank stated that this service will expand its existing crypto asset custody business, which currently covers the UAE, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong.

According to Bloomberg, cryptocurrency exchange platform OKX has completed a new round of financing with a valuation of $25 billion, with existing partners and hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies participating in the investment.OKX stated that Circle Internet Group, Ripple, and SC Ventures, the investment arm of Standard Chartered Bank, all participated in this round of financing. OKX declined to disclose the specific amount of financing but indicated that this round is an extension of the financing from March of this year. At that time, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested approximately $200 million in OKX at the same valuation of $25 billion.

ICBA accuses OCC of lacking regulatory safeguards in granting banking charters to cryptocurrency companies. The cryptocurrency lobbying group CCI supports OCC, stating that the lawsuit aims to stifle financial innovation.

According to a research report released by Geoff Kendrick, the Global Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered Bank, Standard Chartered has officially launched coverage research on Ethena (ENA), predicting that the ENA token will rise to $2 by the end of 2028.The report points out that Ethena is currently the fourth largest stablecoin issuer in the world (after Tether, Circle, and Sky), and its stablecoin USDe quickly became the fastest stablecoin to surpass a market capitalization of $10 billion after its launch at the end of 2023. Currently, yield-bearing stablecoins account for about 5% of the overall stablecoin market, and this proportion is expected to continue to expand as user demand for yield grows.In terms of sources of yield, USDe has gradually diversified from its early reliance on crypto basis trading (which once provided over 20% annualized yield) to include real-world assets (RWA) and stock perpetual contract basis. Standard Chartered predicts that the on-chain RWA scale will grow from the current approximately $40 billion to $2 trillion by the end of 2028, providing support for ENA's buyback plan and price increase.

Geoff Kendrick, the Global Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, stated that ARB is expected to reach $10 by the end of 2030. This prediction is based on a reference price of $0.14, which is approximately 48 times the current price of $0.21; its annual targets also include $0.5 in 2026, $1.5 in 2027, $3.5 in 2028, and $6.5 in 2029.Arbitrum's monthly revenue is expected to reach $5 million, more than five times the growth before the launch of Robinhood Chain. Robinhood Chain launched its public blockchain mainnet on July 1, based on the Arbitrum platform, targeting tokenized assets and decentralized finance applications; according to the Expansion Program, 10% of the protocol's net revenue is returned to the Arbitrum ecosystem, with 8% going to the ArbitrumDAO treasury and 2% supporting the Arbitrum Developer Guild.ARB is the ERC-20 governance token used for voting on ArbitrumDAO proposals, and currently does not represent ownership of on-chain assets, nor does it have a mechanism for directly capturing Arbitrum revenue. Standard Chartered pointed out that the slowdown in the tokenization process, competitive blockchains, and the lack of a direct value capture mechanism for ARB are the main risks facing this prediction.

Standard Chartered Bank has initiated coverage of Arbitrum's ARB token, predicting it will rise from approximately $0.14 to $10 by the end of 2030, citing revenue from networks like Robinhood Chain.The bank also warns that ARB holders cannot directly share in Arbitrum's revenue, and there are risks such as a slowdown in the tokenization process and competition from peers.

According to The Block, Standard Chartered Bank has initiated coverage research on the Arbitrum (ARB) token for the first time, giving a target price of $10 by the end of 2030, which is approximately a 70-fold increase from the current price.Geoff Kendrick, the global head of digital asset research at the bank, stated in a report to clients that ARB is expected to outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum during the forecast period. Standard Chartered also predicts that Ethereum will reach $4,000 by the end of 2026 and $40,000 by the end of 2030, while Bitcoin will reach $100,000 by the end of 2026 and $500,000 by the end of 2030.Kendrick pointed out that Arbitrum is acting as an enterprise-level infrastructure provider, helping traditional financial institutions migrate assets on-chain. According to the Arbitrum expansion plan, the network can receive a rolling fee equivalent to 10% of net protocol revenue from external chains using its tech stack. After the launch of Robinhood Chain on July 1, Standard Chartered estimates that Arbitrum could earn about $5 million in AEP fees in September; the average daily fee revenue for Robinhood Chain in the first two weeks of September was $2.8 million, and Arbitrum's monthly total revenue has increased more than fivefold compared to the levels before the chain's launch.

"The Sovereign Chain Central Bank" The Standard Reserve has completed the minting of Genesis Charters. This minting raised a total of 583.6 ETH (approximately 1.47 million USD). The whitelist minting price was 0.15 ETH, and the majority of the public auction transaction prices fell between 1.23 and 1.25 ETH. The proceeds from the minting will be 100% allocated to initial liquidity and the protocol treasury, with no profit sharing for the team.According to GMGN market data, the market capitalization of STANDARD briefly reached 18.38 million USD, with the current market capitalization at 17.06 million USD. The first hour of STANDARD token trading set a temporary anti-sniping tax, starting at 90% and exponentially decaying, with most of the decay occurring in the first 5 minutes, and the tax fees going into the protocol; after 1 hour, regular trading fees will resume.

Geoff Kendrick, the Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered, stated in a research report that SKY could reach $0.325 by the end of 2028, which is five times the benchmark price of $0.065 set in the report. The bank expects that the price increase of SKY will roughly synchronize with ETH and outperform Bitcoin before the end of 2028.Sky is a decentralized finance platform that will adopt its current name in 2024 and launch USDS and the governance token SKY. Since September 2024, Sky's agency has borrowed $5.9 billion USDS; the supply of USDS reached $10.04 billion in June, a year-on-year increase of 96.9%, down from $11.14 billion in May. Standard Chartered stated that further growth in USDS supply will drive protocol revenue and increase distributions to token holders, while staking rewards and a token buyback mechanism will be used to distribute value to SKY holders. The bank expects that the value distributed to holders will at least double in the next 12 months and noted that the slower-than-expected growth of yield-bearing stablecoins is a major risk to SKY's outlook.

According to The Block, the Ink Foundation, an Ethereum L2 network under Kraken, has jointly established the Charter Foundation with crypto market maker GSR, law firms Carey Olsen, Renno & Co, Cooley, Fenwick, and auditing firms ChainSecurity, Zellic, among others. The aim is to provide a standardized shared legal framework for crypto projects to reduce token issuance costs. A spokesperson for the Ink Foundation stated that the organization is unrelated to Kraken.Currently, crypto projects typically need to independently establish a "three-entity structure" that includes a research and development entity (Labs), a Cayman Islands foundation, and a British Virgin Islands (BVI) subsidiary for issuance. The setup and independent director fees before the Token Generation Event (TGE) often exceed $100,000.The Charter Foundation aims to reduce the initial legal framework costs for token issuance by more than half by establishing a dedicated Cayman Islands exempt company as the launch structure for each project, with governance involving professional offshore compliance experts. Once the token is successfully issued, the Cayman entity will convert into an independent foundation and separate from Charter, ensuring the project's long-term independence.

Cointelegraph reported that the crypto-friendly bank Revolut has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to obtain a national bank charter in the United States.The company aims to launch related services by 2027, which will include loans, credit cards, custodial deposits, and cryptocurrency access services.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has preliminarily approved OpenReserve's application for a national bank charter. The company completed a $25 million seed round of financing in April, led by a16z crypto, with participation from Jump Capital, Acrew, Coinbase Ventures, Clocktower, Quona, and the Middle Eastern venture capital fund AAF Management.OpenReserve is led by fintech executives including Dee Choubey, co-founder of MoneyLion, and is committed to combining traditional banking, blockchain infrastructure, and digital asset services, utilizing digital assets and technology to achieve 24/7 operations. OpenReserve is also applying for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance and has submitted its application to the FDIC.

Geoff Kendrick, the Global Head of Digital Assets at Standard Chartered Bank, stated that the global monthly trading volume of stablecoins has reached approximately $7 trillion, with Solana accounting for about one-fifth of stablecoin transactions.The interview also discussed the development trends of stablecoin payments and settlements by 2026, as well as how different blockchain networks are forming their own application positioning. Geoff Kendrick shared the progress of enterprises adopting stablecoins and stated that enterprise-level applications will become an important driving force for the further popularization of stablecoins.

According to Zhitong Finance, Standard Chartered Bank stated that it will expand its institutional-level Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading business from the UK to the UAE and will launch this business.

According to CoinDesk, Standard Chartered Bank, headquartered in London with assets of $850 billion, announced that it will become the first bank to distribute Hong Kong-regulated stablecoins. The institution stated in an email announcement released on Monday that it will first assist its eligible institutional clients and partners in integrating the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP issued by Anchorpoint Financial, of which Standard Chartered is the majority shareholder.Standard Chartered also indicated plans to launch several new HKDAP commercial applications within the next month, with use cases including market fund subscriptions, settlements with asset management managers, inter-departmental settlements within the bank's global network, and cross-border payments. Anchorpoint Financial began a limited rollout of HKDAP on August 12, having just obtained one of the first two issuance licenses in Hong Kong four months prior. The initial rollout will focus on institutional payments and settlements, with more access channels and cross-border applications to be added later.Another licensed institution, HSBC, is preparing to launch its stablecoin in the second half of 2026 and may distribute it through PayMe, which has 3.3 million users. Additionally, Kraken's parent company Payward has expanded its stablecoin business in Hong Kong through a $600 million acquisition of Reap Technologies.

According to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, has received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter, intending to establish World Liberty Trust Company. After final approval, the institution will be able to issue and redeem the stablecoin USD1 directly, manage its reserve assets, and provide digital asset custody services.This application comes at a time when the approval process for new bank charters in the United States has significantly accelerated. OCC data shows that 22 bank charter applications have been approved in the 19 months prior to Trump's second term, exceeding the total from the previous five years, with several being fintech and digital asset companies. World Liberty Trust Company is not a traditional commercial bank and cannot accept deposits insured by the FDIC or issue traditional loans.