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The Deputy Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of Hong Kong, Chan Ho Lam, stated at the 2026 Annual Tax Seminar of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Hong Kong Branch that the OECD has revised the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) to include new digital financial products such as central bank digital currencies and has optimized the reporting and due diligence requirements for financial institutions.In addition, the OECD has released the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) so that tax jurisdictions can automatically exchange crypto-asset transaction information to enhance transaction transparency. The Hong Kong Legislative Council has expressed support, with the goal of completing legislation by 2026.

According to Cointelegraph, the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has released a formal regulatory framework for cryptocurrency exchange-traded derivatives, allowing retail customers to participate in trading after a suitability assessment.The new regulations cover requirements such as customer suitability, leverage and margin controls, asset segregation, disclosure standards, and regulatory intervention powers. The leverage limit for retail investors is set at 5 times, and exchanges must restrict access when products are deemed unsuitable for specific customer groups. VARA stated that during periods of market stress or trading disruptions, regulators have the authority to take intervention measures, including suspending products, requiring liquidation, increasing margin requirements, and in emergencies, demanding immediate action without prior notice.

According to The Block, Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst and Zisk founder Jordi Baylina jointly announced the "Ethereum Economic Zone" (EEZ) plan at the EthCC conference in Cannes on Sunday, which is co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation.The EEZ aims to create a framework for Rollups, allowing smart contracts on connected Rollups to perform synchronous composable calls with the Ethereum mainnet and other EEZ Rollups, with security guarantees equivalent to those directly deployed on Ethereum. The framework defaults to using ETH as the Gas token, eliminating the need for additional cross-chain bridge infrastructure. Ernst stated, "Ethereum does not have a scalability problem; it has a fragmentation problem. Every new L2 that goes live has its own liquidity pool and bridging, creating another isolated walled garden."Founding members of the EEZ alliance include the DeFi lending protocol Aave, block builders Titan and Beaver Build, the RWA platform Centrifuge, and the tokenized stock project xStocks. The project will operate as a Swiss non-profit organization, with all software released as open-source, aiming to minimize governance and ultimately achieve non-upgradability. Technical specifications and performance benchmarks are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Ethereum developers decided during a virtual meeting on Thursday not to include "frame transactions" as a key proposal for the Hegota upgrade expected to be launched in the second half of 2026, despite Vitalik Buterin's public support. Client developers believe the proposal is too complex and are concerned it may delay the upgrade process.Frame transactions aim to introduce native account abstraction and quantum resistance to Ethereum, providing users with a login experience similar to traditional networks and supporting fee-less transactions. Supporters warn that if it is not prioritized, native account abstraction may be difficult to achieve in the long term. The first confirmed key proposal for Hegota is FOCIL, which aims to enhance the network's censorship resistance. Frame transactions were ultimately marked as "consider for inclusion" and will continue to be reviewed as a non-key proposal in subsequent meetings.

Aave releases the Aave Will Win framework ARFC proposal. Aave Will Win is a coalition framework launched by Aave Labs that is token-centric, directing 100% of product revenue to the Aave DAO treasury, and establishing a one-year budget for ongoing development under an accountability framework. The proposal also commits to protecting the Aave brand and its intellectual property. Based on community feedback, the approval of Aave V4 and the detailed structure of brand governance have been separated from this proposal and will be elaborated in a separate special governance proposal.In terms of budget, Aave Labs plans to request $25 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE over the next year for the development and maintenance of: core protocol, GHO, user-facing applications (such as Aave Pro, Aave App), and developer tools (such as Aave Kit).

According to the official blog, Plume Network's General Counsel Salman Banaei stated at a hearing held by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee that tokenized securities should not be viewed as a completely new asset class, nor should new rules or exemptions be created for them.He argued that regulation should be driven by the economic nature and risks of financial products, rather than the technology used, and thus should incorporate new technological realities into the existing regulatory framework through targeted amendments to current regulations.Salman pointed out that utilizing public blockchains and on-chain compliance tools (such as Plume's built-in protocol-level anti-money laundering screening) can significantly enhance market transparency, reduce costs, and decrease reliance on intermediaries while maintaining or even exceeding existing regulatory standards.Finally, Salman issued a warning: the competition for global tokenized infrastructure is accelerating, with regions like Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE actively positioning themselves. If the U.S. falls behind in regulation due to policy uncertainty, it risks losing its leadership position in the digital transformation of global capital markets, allowing this strategic opportunity to shift to foreign competitors with different geopolitical objectives.

According to market news, U.S. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig stated that U.S. cryptocurrency regulation "will soon welcome a clear framework."

According to DL News, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has once again expressed support for asset tokenization technology, believing it can effectively lower investment barriers and allow more ordinary people to participate in the capital markets.Fink pointed out that nearly half of Americans are currently not participating in public market investments, and the development of artificial intelligence will further exacerbate wealth concentration issues. Tokenization may be the key to breaking this deadlock. BlackRock predicts that the tokenization market size will reach $20 trillion by 2030, covering traditional financial assets such as stocks, ETFs, indices, and commodities.Currently, institutions like Robinhood and Kraken have taken the lead in launching tokenized stock products. Fink also emphasized that market development still relies on the establishment of a clear regulatory framework, including buyer protection mechanisms, counterparty risk standards, and supporting systems for digital identity verification.

According to market news, two legislators in Delaware have proposed the Delaware Banking Modernization Act (Senate Bill 16) and the Delaware Payment Stablecoin Act (Senate Bill 19), aimed at establishing a licensing framework for stablecoin issuers.The Stablecoin Act intends to implement licensing management for stablecoin issuers and digital asset service providers operating in Delaware, adopting relevant definitions and statements from the U.S. federal Stablecoin Act (GENIUS Act), and setting regulatory requirements such as reserve shortfall remediation mechanisms, mandatory redemption time limits, capital requirements, and anti-money laundering obligations. If approved, the state banking commissioner will be responsible for implementing the relevant rules within the specified timeframe. The Banking Modernization Act primarily updates corporate governance for traditional financial institutions while introducing a definition of digital assets to enhance regulatory certainty. Both bills still need to be reviewed by the Senate Banking Committee and debated by the full Senate.Delaware Governor Matt Meyer stated that this legislation aims to attract future industries and provide residents with more convenient financial services.

According to CoinDesk, the Solana Foundation released a report titled "Privacy on Solana: A Comprehensive Approach for Modern Enterprises," which suggests that enterprise-level adoption requires flexible privacy controls and positions privacy as a customizable feature rather than a trade-off.The report argues that the next phase of crypto adoption will depend more on allowing enterprises to control the subjects and content of information disclosure, rather than solely relying on transparency. The Solana Foundation proposes that privacy encompasses four different modes: pseudonymity, confidentiality, anonymity, and complete privacy systems. Pseudonymity hides identity while transaction data is visible; confidentiality allows participants to be known but encrypts sensitive information; anonymity hides participant identities while transaction data is visible; and complete privacy systems obscure both identity and transaction data through technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation.The report emphasizes that there is no single privacy model suitable for all scenarios, and enterprises can mix different tools according to their needs. The report notes that Solana's high throughput and low latency enable advanced privacy technologies to operate at near-network speeds, making applications such as encrypted order books or private credit risk calculations possible. The Solana Foundation also proposed mechanisms such as "audit keys," allowing designated parties to decrypt transactions when necessary, thus achieving coexistence between privacy and regulation.

Fidelity, in a letter to the SEC, suggested establishing a regulatory framework that allows broker-dealers to trade crypto assets through alternative trading systems (ATS).The proposal aims to promote the inclusion of crypto asset trading into the existing financial system, enhancing market compliance and institutional participation.

According to market news, the World Gold Council, established in 1987, is collaborating with the Boston Consulting Group to propose a "Gold as a Service" framework aimed at establishing standards for tokenized gold, challenging crypto-native issuers such as Tether Gold and PAX Gold.This service will provide a shared network that allows companies issuing tokenized gold to access a unified platform for managing physical reserves, enhancing trust through continuous audits, and establishing interchangeability between products. Currently, the tokenized gold market, dominated by Paxos and Tether, has a total market capitalization of approximately $4.9 billion, with each having established independent custody and issuance systems.The World Gold Council previously launched the first physical gold ETF in the U.S., SPDR Gold Shares, in 2004, which currently has a market capitalization of $126 billion. The council stated that the new service could lower the entry barriers for issuers and is expected to give rise to hundreds of tokenized gold products.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed that the Tether AI team has released a new version of QVAC Fabric, which integrates the cross-platform BitNet LoRA framework, enabling the training and inference of billion-parameter large models on consumer-grade GPUs and smartphones.The new version of QVAC Fabric LLM has achieved cross-platform operation of BitNet LoRA fine-tuning and inference on AMD, Intel, Apple Metal, and mobile GPUs for the first time. On flagship devices, GPU inference speed is improved by 2 to 11 times compared to CPU, and memory usage is reduced by up to 90% compared to full precision models. The Tether team has completed fine-tuning of models with up to 3.8 billion parameters on flagship smartphones such as Pixel 9, S25, and iPhone 16, and has achieved fine-tuning of models with up to 13 billion parameters on the iPhone 16. The related code has been open-sourced to GitHub.

According to market news, the RWA platform Matrixdock has announced the launch of the institutional-grade silver token XAGm, bringing silver, a widely traded precious metal commodity in traditional markets, into on-chain finance.This product is backed by fully physically allocated silver as the underlying asset and introduces silver bar assets that comply with LBMA Good Delivery standards, which are custodied through institutional-grade vaults. XAGm adopts Matrixdock's FRS (Fungible Reserve Standard) issuance framework, establishing a verifiable correspondence between on-chain token supply and underlying asset holdings, and will initially be deployed on the Ethereum network, with plans to expand to more blockchain ecosystems in the future.Eva Meng, head of Matrixdock, stated that there are still relatively few tokenized silver products that meet institutional-grade standards in the market. XAGm will bring fully physically allocated silver assets, custodied by professional vaults, onto the chain and operate within a clear and verifiable framework.This release also marks further expansion of the Matrixdock Reserve Layer system and enriches the on-chain precious metal reserve asset system.

According to market news, the Australian Senate Economic Legislation Committee has released a report supporting the legislative proposal to include cryptocurrency platforms and custodial services in the country's financial services system.The bill will amend the Corporations Act and the ASIC Act to establish a licensing and compliance regime for businesses that hold or manage digital tokens on behalf of clients. Under the framework, digital asset platforms and tokenized custodial service operators will generally be required to hold an Australian Financial Services License, comply with asset protection standards, and meet disclosure requirements when accepting retail clients. The bill aims to fill regulatory gaps, ensuring that intermediaries holding clients' digital assets are governed by existing financial services laws rather than regulating the blockchain technology itself. If passed, it will provide a six-month transition period for providers that do not yet hold an AFSL.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) announced that it will submit public comments on the Federal Reserve's upcoming proposal for the Basel framework implementation, advocating for changes to the risk weight treatment of BTC within the banking regulatory system.BPI Executive Director Conner Brown stated that BTC is classified as a high-risk asset under the Basel framework, subject to a 1,250% risk weight, higher than almost all other asset classes, and is characterized as "the most stringent classification." In contrast, the risk weights for cash, physical gold, and government bonds are all 0%. The 1,250% capital requirement means that banks must hold BTC with a 1:1 ratio of compliant collateral, significantly increasing the cost for banks to hold this asset and limiting their ability to provide financial services to BTC-related businesses.

According to The Block, Starknet is developing a new privacy feature aimed at enabling teams to issue protected stablecoins and other assets while maintaining compliance.This feature is called the STRK20 framework, developed by StarkWare, and is expected to be deployed on Starknet later this year.The framework is designed to provide token-level privacy protection for assets issued on Starknet, keeping transactions and balances confidential while being compatible with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. According to the team, Starknet's solution is expected to support ERC-20 tokens—the standard used by most fungible assets on Ethereum.

According to The Block, the Federal Reserve has released a Q&A document clarifying that banks should treat tokenized securities according to existing capital rules, emphasizing that the current framework is "technology neutral."The Federal Reserve stated that the technology used to issue or transfer securities (including blockchain technology) will not affect its regulatory capital treatment, and eligible tokenized securities should be treated under the same rules as non-tokenized securities. Tokenized securities that meet the same legal and risk management requirements as traditional securities can be used as financial collateral. The Federal Reserve added that capital rules do not provide differential treatment regardless of whether a permissioned or permissionless chain is used. This move follows the SEC's clarification in January that tokenized securities must still comply with federal securities laws, providing further guidance from regulators on the application of traditional assets on-chain.

According to Reuters, negotiations on cryptocurrency legislation in the U.S. have hit a new impasse as the banking sector has stated it cannot support the compromise proposed by the White House. This proposal allows stablecoin issuers to offer yield products in specific scenarios such as peer-to-peer payments, but prohibits offering yields on idle holdings. Crypto companies have accepted this compromise, but banks still wish to strictly limit the scope of businesses that can offer rewards, believing that the related terms could trigger deposit outflows. Standard Chartered estimates that by the end of 2028, stablecoins could siphon off about $500 billion in deposits from the U.S. banking system.Trump posted on the Truth Social platform that he would not allow the banking sector to "undermine our strong crypto agenda." Companies in the crypto industry, including Coinbase, Ripple, and the Blockchain Association, have participated in the negotiations. Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger stated that "the path to a viable agreement is clearer than it was a month ago."The bill also faces other challenges: it needs the support of at least seven Democratic senators, and some Democrats are calling for a ban on elected officials profiting from crypto businesses, while other lawmakers are urging the inclusion of stricter anti-money laundering provisions. The bill also needs to be reconciled with the version from the Senate Agriculture Committee and compete for scheduling in a limited Senate agenda alongside other bills such as housing policy reform. Adrian Wall, Managing Director of the Digital Sovereignty Alliance, stated that if the bill is not sent to the president for signing by July, the midterm elections will close the window for passage.