finance

According to CoinDesk, Mastercard is expanding its settlement network to support regulated stablecoins, planning to offer stablecoin settlement, intraday settlement, weekend and holiday settlement services to meet the demand for real-time fund flow.The new framework will run in parallel with existing fiat settlement processes, aiming to provide financial institutions with more flexible liquidity management. Mastercard will initially support Circle's USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple's RLUSD, and SoFiUSD, covering blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, and XRPL. Financial institutions such as Cross River, Lead Bank, CBW Bank, ARQ, and Nuvei will be among the first participants.

Gate announced a strategic partnership with Alpaca, a global leader in brokerage infrastructure services, to soon launch stock and ETF trading services for Gate users, bridging the investment channel between digital assets and traditional financial markets. Leveraging Gate's global digital asset ecosystem and Alpaca's brokerage infrastructure and market access capabilities, both parties will work together to create a more convenient and efficient multi-asset investment experience. Through this collaboration, Gate will introduce stock trading services, providing users with trading opportunities for over 10,000 stocks and ETFs covering major U.S. securities markets, including assets listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. At the same time, the platform will support fractional share trading starting from as low as $1, offering users a more diversified global asset allocation choice.Gate founder and CEO Dr. Han stated that the financial system is evolving towards greater integration and connectivity. As the connection between digital assets and traditional financial markets continues to strengthen, the demand for efficient access to diverse investment opportunities is growing. By collaborating with Alpaca, Gate will provide users seamless access to real stock market investments while maintaining the convenience and efficiency of the digital asset platform. We believe that multi-asset investment access will become an important component of the next generation of global financial services. In the future, Gate will continue to explore new models connecting digital assets and traditional finance with Alpaca, enhancing global market access capabilities and jointly promoting the development of a more open, efficient, and interconnected multi-asset investment ecosystem.

According to official news, the RWA tokenization platform Ondo Finance is expected to launch the RWA perpetual contract platform Ondo Perps in the coming weeks, supporting trading with tokenized RWA as collateral.

According to Cointelegraph, Ondo Finance CEO Ian De Bode stated that the first perpetual contract platform for real-world assets (RWA), Ondo Perps, will be launched in the coming weeks.

From June 7 to 9, 2026, the Global Digital Finance Ecosystem Forum, co-hosted by XAUT ECO, the Binance community, and ListaDAO, will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.The forum will conduct in-depth discussions on core topics such as decentralized security and stablecoin payment permissions, the global circulation and regulation of gold-backed stablecoins, the on-chain representation of real-world assets (RWA), Web3 payments and on-chain settlement, and the USD1 stablecoin ecosystem and global liquidity.The event aims to bring together global digital finance institutions and ecosystem partners to jointly explore the evolutionary path of digital gold and stablecoins, promoting the co-construction and development of a new global digital finance ecosystem.

ZachXBT stated that approximately $12.4 million in funds in the Zama cUSDC contract, which was blacklisted by Circle, may be associated with the DeFi project Overnight Finance, which has recently been embroiled in controversy due to accusations against its team of a Rug Pull.

According to Bitcoin News, Greek politician and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis admitted that he once held 2,000 bitcoins.Yanis Varoufakis stated that he later donated all of his bitcoins due to his disagreement with the ideology represented by bitcoin.

According to Jinshi, the German Ministry of Finance stated that it seeks to implement EU-level regulation on important cryptocurrency service providers and stablecoins.

Falcon Finance officially announced the joint launch of the USD stablecoin fUSD with Anchorage Digital Bank. This product is positioned as an institutional-grade payment stablecoin compliant with the GENIUS Act framework and has been launched on Ceffu's custody and staking infrastructure.It is reported that fUSD is backed by reserves such as U.S. Treasury securities and is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, but it does not directly pay interest or returns to holders.

According to Cryptopolitan, Kenya's 2026 Finance Bill proposes a 10% consumption tax on virtual asset service providers, which is double the 5% rate for the gambling industry. The bill also requires crypto companies to pay a one-time licensing fee of 150 million Kenyan Shillings and an annual renewal fee of 2 million Kenyan Shillings before operating in Kenya, and to submit an annual report to the Kenya Revenue Authority containing user and transaction details.Analysts believe this move could force crypto trading platforms and users to relocate their business to countries that are more friendly to cryptocurrencies, undermining Kenya's significance in the African crypto market. Protests led by GenZ have resumed in places like Nairobi, protesting the increased tax burden on digital services, cryptocurrencies, mobile, and financial transactions.

Ondo Finance announced that its founder and CEO Nathan Allman has passed away unexpectedly. Ondo stated, "Nate's talent, humility, and execution shaped Ondo as it is today. He always believed that technology could create a more open and accessible financial system, and this philosophy will continue to be reflected in everything we build in the future."The announcement stated that Ondo has established an experienced management team, and Ondo Finance's long-time president Ian De Bode will take over as CEO. Ondo noted that Ian has led the company's strategy, products, and daily operations for over two years and has the full support of the management team.

According to the latest report from BlockBeats, as the demand for trading traditional financial assets increases among crypto users, Gate is accelerating the evolution of its crypto trading platform into a multi-asset comprehensive financial platform through the "Unified Account" system. Users can trade and allocate five major types of assets within the Gate App, including CFD contracts, perpetual contracts, spot tokens, Pre-IPOs, and crypto assets, further reducing the barriers to cross-platform capital allocation and trading.The report points out that Gate has currently built a unified margin system around TradFi and on-chain assets. Users can conduct cross-product trading through a single USDT account, enhancing capital efficiency. As of May 2026, Gate has launched over 440 CFD targets, covering asset classes such as foreign exchange, metals, global stock indices, popular stocks, and commodities, while maintaining a high frequency of new listings. Additionally, Gate has partnered with platforms like Ondo and xStocks to launch over 75 tokenized stock targets, supporting 24-hour trading of on-chain metal assets such as gold and silver, continuously expanding its layout in the tokenized stock and RWA market.Furthermore, Gate recently launched the SpaceX Pre-IPO project SPCX, with applications for purchasing shares exceeding $353 million within 24 hours, reflecting the rapidly growing market demand for on-chain Pre-IPO asset allocation. In the future, Gate will continue to promote the layout of the next-generation comprehensive financial platform around the unified account, on-chain infrastructure, and global liquidity network.

Tom Lee, the chairman of BitMine, Ethereum's largest treasury, stated that Ethereum has a strong group of leaders and developers who can ensure it continues to be the future settlement layer for finance and AI.Currently, much of the bearish sentiment is just despair and mutual blame at the bottom of the crypto winter. Blockchain is the only viable way for agentic AI to conduct business interactions while significantly improving the profitability of the financial system. I will continue to be optimistic about ETH.

a16z crypto general partner Guy Wuollet pointed out that the financial industry is undergoing a "digital migration" similar to the era of cloud computing, with blockchain becoming the core infrastructure driving this transformation. Wall Street's adoption of blockchain is not driven by the idea of "decentralization," but rather by the practical needs for counterparty risk management, settlement efficiency, and fair ordering mechanisms.The so-called "digital assets" essentially represent the process of migrating the underlying architecture of the financial system onto the blockchain, similar to the transition of enterprise IT systems from on-premises deployment to cloud services. When financial assets operate on programmable shared infrastructure, it brings the core advantage of "composability," allowing assets to be freely combined and expanded like software, significantly reducing development costs and enhancing the overall innovation efficiency of the financial system. This trend will drive traditional finance from a "closed reconciliation system" to an "on-chain coordination network," and blockchain technology will gradually become a standard component of the financial infrastructure layer in this process.

According to TASS, the Russian Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Russia plan to finalize the draft law for cryptocurrency market regulation next week and submit it to the State Duma for a second reading.Deputy Minister of Finance Ivan Chebeskov announced this news to reporters during the "Russian Digital Financial System: Digital Currency, Tokenization, and Artificial Intelligence" conference.

According to The Block, Sarah Breeden, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability at the Bank of England, presented a vision for the digitization of the UK financial system at the 2026 London City Week conference, focusing on the integration of regulated stablecoins. A draft rule for systemic stablecoins is planned to be released next month, with the final version to be completed by the end of the year. Breeden pointed out that future retail payment systems should include various interchangeable forms of currency, including digital deposits and stablecoins.She stated that shared ledger technology is expected to reduce payment costs and accelerate processing speeds, minimizing intermediaries. In addition, smart contracts support customization, conditionality, and automation, further enhancing the efficiency of retail payments. Breeden emphasized that the Bank of England will actively support the responsible adoption of AI technology, including agent payments and commercial transactions.