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AI financial software Fragment announced on Wednesday the completion of a $12 million Series A funding round. This round is set to close in mid-2025, led by FirstMark and BoxGroup. The company's CEO Thomas Neckel did not disclose the post-round valuation.Fragment was founded by Thomas Neckel, with co-founder and CTO being former Robinhood engineer Varun Mohan. Developers can integrate Fragment into their own software, which uses double-entry bookkeeping to verify the sources and uses of funds, confirming account balances before funds move. Neckel stated that the product is a financial building block for automating business activities for agents.The company previously completed a $11 million seed round led by Stripe, with participants including BoxGroup, as well as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Plaid CEO Zach Perret. Fragment claims to currently have about 50 to 60 paying customers, including Ramp, BILL, and Whop, for sharing transaction records and reducing manual reconciliation. FirstMark managing partner Adam Nelson stated that the goal is to become the standard toolkit for providing financial capabilities to agents.

On October 8, the IMF published a blog based on Chapter 3 of the Global Financial Stability Report for October 2026, indicating that the tokenized market is growing rapidly but remains very small and highly fragmented. The average daily trading volume of tokenized repurchase agreements is about $300 billion to $350 billion, while other tokenized assets amount to about $65 billion, compared to an average daily volume of about $13 trillion in the U.S. repurchase market, and a total global capital market asset size of $300 trillion.The report points out that investors have shown interest in certain tokenized features, with more than half of the trades occurring outside traditional market hours, and about 80% of tokenized stock trades being less than 1 share. However, the tokenized market has lower liquidity and higher volatility than traditional markets, and cross-platform fragmentation weakens network effects. The IMF believes that legal certainty, regulatory clarity, interoperability, and secure settlement assets are four mutually reinforcing constraints.The report also warns that scaling up could amplify traditional financial risks such as sell-offs, liquidity squeezes, and contagion. Policymakers should adopt a technology-neutral approach, clarify the legal rights of tokenized assets, ensure consistent regulation for similar activities, support interoperability between tokenized platforms and the traditional financial system, and continuously monitor interconnectedness, leverage, and liquidity risks.

European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone stated during the MNI Connect Webcast that without a pan-European digital payment solution covering various daily transactions, the fragmentation risk between tokenization platforms may increase, thereby undermining Europe's "resilience and monetary sovereignty." He pointed out that the goal of the European Central Bank should be to create a digital euro that can be exchanged between banks and used for daily transactions.Cipollone emphasized, "Our goal is not to replace the role of banks." He stated that the digital euro will provide banks with the infrastructure needed to compete in the digital age and help banks expand the coverage and application scenarios of their own solutions.According to him, the European Central Bank has not yet decided whether to issue a digital euro but plans to complete the legislative process by the end of 2026. If the project advances, a 12-month pilot program will be launched in the second half of 2027, with a potential official issuance in 2029. The European Central Bank first proposed introducing a digital euro in October 2020 as a complementary digital payment option to cash. Critics argue that the central bank digital currency could give EU officials the means to monitor or even control residents' spending. Cipollone stated in September 2025 that the digital euro will ensure that all Europeans can use a free and widely accepted digital payment method at any time, even in the event of significant disruptions.

Payments industry publication PaymentsJournal has published a deep-dive article, Navigating Latin America’s Complex Payment Ecosystem, examining the region’s evolving payments landscape, including domestic payment rails, cross-border settlement, stablecoins and payment orchestration. The article draws on PhotonPay’s research report, The Next Payment Infrastructure in LATAM, as a reference for its analysis. The article highlights the highly fragmented nature of Latin America’s payments market, where countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have developed distinct payment systems, currencies, providers and regulatory frameworks. At the same time, stablecoins are gaining traction in cross-border payments, offering an additional layer for liquidity and settlement, while local payment rails remain essential for reaching businesses and consumers in individual markets. PaymentsJournal argues that the next phase of payment infrastructure in Latin America may not be about creating a single regional rail, but about connecting diverse local payment systems, currencies and global liquidity through a more unified infrastructure layer. In this model, stablecoins can facilitate cross-border movement and settlement of value, while payment orchestration connects and manages the local rails, providers and fund flows businesses need to navigate. PhotonPay’s research explores these infrastructure trends and the changing dynamics of payments across the region.

According to Cointelegraph, Juan Marchetti, the Director of the Trade in Services and Investment Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO), stated at the event in Geneva for the release of the WTO stablecoin trade research report that the key obstacle to the widespread adoption of stablecoins in international trade is not technology, but rather the lack of a regulatory framework and its fragmentation.He cited a report from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in October 2025, which indicated that among the 28 jurisdictions surveyed, only 11 (about 39%) have completed the establishment of a regulatory framework for stablecoins.The WTO report shows that stablecoins currently account for only 3% of the total global international payments, but from 2020 to mid-2024, the scale of stablecoin cross-border payments has grown by 35 times. The report also points out that stablecoins are expected to improve five major pain points in international trade financing: high costs, low speed, limited access, lack of transparency, and foreign exchange conversion.

According to Ledger Insights, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) recently published the "Trends, Risks, and Vulnerabilities Report for the First Half of 2026," in which digital assets and prediction markets occupy three chapters. Regarding crypto assets, the report warns that the increasing ties between cryptocurrencies and the traditional financial sector pose risks. Concerning tokenization, the report points out that issuing different tokenized versions of the same stock may lead to fragmented liquidity.As for prediction markets, the report believes that prediction markets have not yet seen significant development in Europe. This is because major platforms do not yet hold EU licenses, and in most cases, they need to obtain licenses. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) outlines some potential advantages of tokenization, including increased efficiency, expanded investor access, programmability, and atomic settlement. On the other hand, ESMA also questions how much these advantages are actually realized within these encapsulated structures.Since the ownership of the underlying stocks is off-chain, there is no single data source on-chain, and self-custody can only be achieved indirectly through these structures. Tokenization structures also introduce additional layers of intermediaries, leading to complexity and risk. The settlement advantages are also difficult to realize. Even if token transfers occur on-chain, the cash portion of the transaction is usually settled separately, whether through bank payments or other channels. This means that for certain transactions, the promised atomic settlement (i.e., simultaneous delivery of securities and cash) has not yet been achieved.

Binance founder CZ stated that he supports tokenization across all blockchains. He pointed out that although this will bring about the issue of "fragmented liquidity," it is the fastest way to drive the industry's development and can be promoted collaboratively by multiple parties.

On August 17, WEEX announced the official launch of the sixth phase of "Contract Mining," with the event running from 8/17 14:00 to 9/6 23:59:59 (UTC+8), and a total prize pool valued at 1 million USDT. During the event, users can earn real-time fee rebates in WXT by engaging in contract trading. The larger the cumulative contract trading volume, the higher the miner level, and the higher the rebate ratio.While continuing the core gameplay of "Contract Mining," the sixth phase introduces a new "Treasure Map" exploration feature: users can complete tasks such as recharging, trading, upgrading miner levels, and inviting friends to earn treasure map fragments. Collecting fragments can unlock the treasure map and claim corresponding rewards. Additionally, users can participate in leaderboard competition based on their cumulative trading volume during the event to share in extra USDT rewards.

Vitalik Buterin and Etherealize co-founder and CEO Vivek Raman, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, warned that Wall Street's renewed enthusiasm for private, permissioned "consortium chains" is recreating a fragmented system, undermining the interoperability and liquidity that blockchain should bring, akin to "race to the bottom." He pointed out the rise of gated networks such as Digital Asset's Canton Network, Circle's ARC, and Stripe's Tempo, reminiscent of the R3 and Hyperledger consortium chains 2.0 from years past, where institutions will ultimately find themselves in a situation of competing consortium chains, needing permission or membership to participate.Raman emphasized that the Ethereum mainnet should serve as a globally open, permissionless foundation layer similar to HTTP, where institutions can overlay permission and privacy features at the application layer or L2 to achieve maximum interoperability and liquidity. Etherealize is committed to attracting TradFi to embrace Ethereum, which has already hosted billions of dollars in tokenized assets and supported a large amount of DeFi settlements. The company received seed funding from Buterin and the foundation in January 2025 and completed a $40 million Series A financing in the same year.He cited examples such as BlackRock's new fund based on Ethereum, stating that once regulations are clear, institutional funds are more inclined towards open network tracks that are not proprietary; choosing consortium chains would require paying the consortium and being bound by its rules, with incentives for non-early members quickly fading. Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, also pointed out that if permissioned networks driven by enterprise sales become mainstream, some competitive benefits of blockchain may not be realized.

Bitget appeared as a sponsor at the WikiFX exhibition. Bitget CFD Chief Analyst Lewis Huang delivered a speech titled "One Account, Invest Globally: The Cross-Asset Trading Revolution in the UEX Era," pointing out the core pain points faced by active traders today: "Opportunities are global, but capital is fragmented."In response to this situation, Bitget proposed the concept of the panoramic exchange UEX. Lewis Huang stated that what traders need is not more apps, but a highly integrated trading ecosystem. Relying on the Bitget UEX architecture and cross-asset margin mechanism, users only need one account, one KYC verification, and a unified capital pool to configure diverse assets such as cryptocurrencies, U.S. stocks, foreign exchange, precious metals, and global indices. This helps traders quickly seize opportunities when macro trends arise, achieving a global, cross-asset one-stop layout.

Deep Tide TechFlow published an in-depth article titled "From 'Fragmented Entry' to 'One Account': Gate TradFi Makes Global Asset Allocation Within Reach." The article points out that as traditional financial assets and the crypto market accelerate their integration, traders' demand for unified, multi-asset trading platforms is increasing, and TradFi has become an important strategic direction for leading crypto trading platforms.The article emphasizes Gate TradFi's product layout and development, including support for users to trade over 10,000 real stocks and ETFs, covering more than 440 CFD products such as foreign exchange, metals, indices, and commodities, as well as diversified asset categories like Pre-IPO, tokenized stocks, and ETFs. Data shows that Gate TradFi's CFD business has reached a daily trading volume of over $30 billion, demonstrating the platform's activity and market demand in the global traditional financial asset trading field. The article believes that Gate is bridging crypto assets and traditional financial markets through a unified account system, providing users with a one-stop global asset allocation experience.In addition, the article also points out that against the backdrop of most trading platforms laying out TradFi business, Gate is forming a differentiated competitive advantage through asset coverage speed, product innovation capabilities, and the construction of a multi-asset trading ecosystem, continuously lowering the threshold for global asset allocation and gradually promoting the concept of "one account trading global assets."

Tiger Research's Research Director Ryan Yoon stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is preparing to launch an "innovation exemption" framework that allows third parties to tokenize listed stocks without the issuer's approval.Ryan Yoon warned that this move could cause two major structural shocks to traditional exchanges: first, liquidity fragmentation, as funds will disperse from centralized exchanges to multiple blockchain platforms; second, revenue fragmentation, as trading fees and intermediary income may flow to overseas or competing platforms, threatening the competitiveness of U.S. finance.He believes that traditional exchanges are like monopolistic superstores, while tokenized stocks are akin to allowing anyone to set up a street stall, which will significantly change the concentration of capital markets. The SEC is advancing this framework at this time to keep global financial income within the domestic regulatory scope.

The Chief Information Security Officer of Slow Fog, 23pds, disclosed that a privilege escalation vulnerability named Dirty Frag has been exposed in Linux systems, with complete details and exploit code now public. This vulnerability allows any local low-privilege user to directly obtain root privileges on almost all mainstream Linux distributions. It is classified as a deterministic logic flaw, and the attack does not rely on complex race conditions, resulting in a very high success rate without causing kernel crashes, posing significant danger. Linux users are advised to upgrade their systems promptly.

According to The Block, despite the renewed tensions between the United States and Iran disrupting expectations in the Strait of Hormuz, leading to fluctuations in the oil, stock, and cryptocurrency markets, Bitcoin stabilized around $75,200 on Monday.Analysts stated that the net inflow into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs last week was $996.4 million, marking the strongest weekly performance since mid-January, with institutional demand providing support for the market. However, the current market remains in a "fragile balance," with stablecoin balances continuing to grow, indicating that liquidity in the crypto market is more rotating internally rather than flowing out.

Pablo Hernandez de Cos, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), stated that global coordination on stablecoin regulation is crucial to prevent severe market fragmentation; otherwise, regulatory differences across jurisdictions could lead to regulatory arbitrage.He pointed out that stablecoins are typically pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, which could undermine monetary and fiscal policy, trigger pressures in financial markets, and hinder efforts to combat illegal financing. Currently, the two major stablecoins issued by Tether and Circle account for about 85% of the global circulation of stablecoins, which is approximately $315 billion. He also mentioned that these two types of stablecoins are closer to securities rather than currencies in terms of redemption friction and operate more like ETFs.

According to CCTV News, on April 8 local time, U.S. Vice President Pence stated during an event in Hungary that the ceasefire reached between the U.S. and Iran is a "fragile truce." He did not disclose more details, only stating that the agreement includes a ceasefire, advancing negotiations, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Pence mentioned that President Trump has asked the U.S. representative responsible for negotiations with Iran to engage in discussions "in good faith," but also stated that Trump is "eager to see progress."He also stated that the U.S. is prepared to use "extraordinary economic leverage," but Trump has instructed the U.S. side to "not use these means for the time being." Pence said that if Iran negotiates "in good faith," there is a possibility for the U.S. to reach an agreement, but "how the negotiations ultimately proceed depends on Iran."

According to the UAE's state news agency, the relevant authorities handled an incident involving shrapnel falling in a residential area of Abu Dhabi, which resulted in some material damage and the death of an Asian national.