Instant Settlement via JPMorgan

Dubai-based Emirates NBD has become one of the first financial institutions in the Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye (MENAT) region to launch real-time cross-border U.S. dollar payments using blockchain technology. The banking group announced July 14 that it has gone live on the Partior network, a multi-currency, blockchain-based clearing and settlement platform.

The activation follows a successful live transaction where JPMorgan functioned as both the settlement and beneficiary bank. Following the pilot, Emirates NBD is rolling out the capability to its corporate and institutional clients, allowing them to execute instant U.S. dollar payments to beneficiaries holding accounts at JPMorgan.

The launch represents the first phase of a broader multi-currency roadmap. Emirates NBD plans to scale the service by connecting with more global banks and introducing additional currencies, settlement corridors and programmable liquidity management tools.

According to a media statement, the milestone marks the commercial execution of a strategic relationship and equity investment initiated through Emirates NBD’s Innovation Fund.

“Moving from partnership to live execution on the Partior network enables us to offer faster USD settlement for JPMorgan beneficiaries, supporting more efficient treasury operations for our clients,” said Anith Daniel, group head of transaction banking services at Emirates NBD. Daniel noted that the platform enables the bank to deploy payment solutions that are secure, scalable and proven in live environments.

The move comes amid a broader industry shift, as global financial institutions increasingly look toward blockchain-based distributed ledgers to bypass traditional correspondent banking friction, enhance transparency and accelerate cross-border capital flows.

Humphrey Valenbreder, chief executive officer at Partior, said the collaboration combines Emirates NBD’s regional presence with Partior’s clearing infrastructure to establish speed and transparency in transaction processing. “The focus now is on expanding participation across currencies and markets as more banks connect and transact on the network,” Valenbreder said.

The integration with Partior follows a decade-long digital transformation strategy at Emirates NBD. In 2016, the bank launched a major digital overhaul, committing about $272 million to modernize its technology infrastructure and core banking systems. A year later, it introduced Liv, the region’s first lifestyle-focused, mobile-only digital bank aimed at millennial and digital-native consumers.

To formalize its work with emerging technologies, Emirates NBD manages fintech collaborations through a structured sandbox framework designed to scout, evaluate and scale external software into enterprise operations. The bank has increasingly opened its core systems to external integration through its API Souq developer portal, enabling corporate clients to embed banking workflows directly into their own systems.

The bank’s recent technology investments have moved deeper into next-generation infrastructure. Before the Partior rollout, the group launched a Digital Asset Lab to research decentralized finance and tokenization protocols, alongside a partnership with tech accelerator Techstars to source enterprise-grade artificial intelligence and fintech platforms across the MENAT region.

A Change of Guard

The number of wallets holding tokenized real-world assets ( RWAs) on Solana topped 300,000 for the first time earlier this week, placing the network first among all blockchains by holder count and extending a lead the network established over Ethereum earlier this year.

The tracker’s live dashboard listed 2,121 tokenized assets on Solana, with a distributed RWA value of $3.32 billion, up 11.09% over the past 30 days. Transfer volume tied to those assets reached $7.65 billion over the same window, a 34.53% month-over-month increase.

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo, whose firm issues some of the largest tokenized funds, described the forces behind the trend, stating:

Tokenization is most powerful when it combines quality assets with the speed, efficiency and accessibility of blockchain infrastructure.

RWAs are traditional financial instruments (U.S. Treasury funds, private credit, commodities and equities) issued as tokens on a public blockchain. The structure lets investors hold and transfer regulated products onchain, often with lower minimums and faster settlement than conventional market rails provide.

A Six-Month Sprint Past Ethereum

Solana’s climb has been rapid, given the network first crossed the 200,000-holder mark in late April, and by June 18, it counted 285,971 wallets, or about 31% of the global tokenized asset market. Ethereum held 199,191 RWA wallets at that reading, with BNB Chain third at 101,902.

The growth has compounded monthly, with holder numbers expanding 29.3% in the 30 days into mid-June alone, implying that Solana added roughly 100,000 tokenized asset holders in under three months. Value has followed the wallets as Solana’s RWA market reached a record $3.62 billion in July, more than double the roughly $1.4 billion it started the year with in January 2026.

Ethereum Keeps the Value Crown

The holder lead does not yet mean value dominance because Ethereum still hosts $16.3 billion in tokenized assets (roughly five times Solana’s total) anchored by large institutional funds. Ethereum’s RWA value slipped 4.7% over 30 days at the June reading; however, Solana’s distributed value rose by 14%.

Two different adoption curves are seemingly implied by such a split, i.e. while institutions continue to park large tokenized funds on Ethereum, a broader retail base spreads smaller positions across Solana. The network’s low fees and fast settlement have made it a natural venue for high-ticket-count, low-value activity, from stablecoin payments to a fully onchain prediction market that went live inside the Phantom wallet this month.

Solana’s wider onchain economy reinforces the pattern, with stablecoin transfer volumes on the network hitting $557 billion over the past 30 days and stablecoin supply on the chain surpassing $16 billion (as tokenization firms and asset managers have continued to build out institutional momentum heading into the second half of the year.

The competitive map, in other words, is being redrawn holder by holder. Solana is winning distribution, Ethereum is defending value, and BNB Chain is holding third on both counts.

A Fault Line in Bitcoin Philosophy

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor’s argument pushing back against BIP-110 has stepped directly into one of the most polarizing philosophical fault lines Bitcoin has seen in years. He argued that weaponizing consensus changes to police blockspace sets a perilous precedent of censorship and risks invalidating otherwise legitimate, fee-paying transactions.

Saylor’s fierce pushback instantly ignited a firestorm across the ecosystem, drawing sharp, immediate friction from factions who accused the Strategy founder of harboring a messiah complex—a trait they warn could fracture the network’s decentralized ethos. Simultaneously, his remarks alienated the very bedrock of the network: purist node operators already buckling under skyrocketing transaction fees and an increasingly bloated blockchain, who fiercely condemned his dismissive stance.

To them, dismissing ordinals traffic as “no problem” ignored the practical realities of small-scale users being priced out of on-chain transactions. Some accused Saylor of looking at Bitcoin purely through an institutional, “store-of-value” lens rather than caring about its utility as a peer-to-peer cash network.

Despite the vocal pushback from the ranks, Saylor’s underlying technical warning appeared to align him with heavyweight veteran cypherpunks, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back and core developers like Greg Maxwell and Peter Todd. They agreed that trying to push BIP-110 via a user-activated soft fork without broad miner consensus was reckless and highly likely to split the network into two competing chains.

A Call for Protocol Agnosticism

Others in the space called for a return to first principles. Himanshu Sahay, co-founder and CTO at Arch, emphasized the necessity of a calculated, emotionless assessment of BIP-110 over tribal alignment behind any single voice. Addressing Saylor’s assertion that economic demand alone defines transaction validity, Sahay told Bitcoin.com News that at the consensus layer, Bitcoin deliberately operates without a moral compass—remaining entirely indifferent to the nature of the data being anchored to its ledger.

“Consensus verifies whether a transaction satisfies the protocol’s rules,” Sahay said. “It doesn’t determine whether the underlying use case is financially meaningful or whether someone else considers it spam.”

According to Sahay, this is the reason much of this debate exists outside consensus. While valid, these conversations are different from changing the rules that determine whether a transaction is valid, he added.

While BIP-110 faces enormous opposition, there is a possibility that some miners will still opt to activate it anyway, thus raising the possibility of yet another chain split. Still, initiating the split does not guarantee that the fork will garner enough support across the wider ecosystem.

“Until there’s meaningful alignment across those groups, it’s difficult to predict the outcome with confidence,” Sahay said. “Most institutional infrastructure providers prioritize stability and operational certainty, so any decision to support a forked asset would likely be based on factors such as security, liquidity, customer demand and ecosystem adoption rather than the technical proposal alone.”

Stephen “Cap” Newnham, who leads the Solana community group Superteam UK, said he will run as an independent candidate in the Aug. 13 parliamentary by-election in Clacton against Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

On Tuesday, Newnham outlined five campaign pledges, including support for local entrepreneurs, digital and artificial intelligence education, financial literacy in schools and onchain political transparency. He announced his intention to stand as an independent candidate on July 9.

Newnham’s fourth pledge, “You should own your pension,” argues that existing structures like self-invested personal pensions and small self-administered schemes allow savers to choose where their assets are held. He also pledged full transparency, with donations and meetings published in plain English and onchain. 

The campaign has not detailed a role for blockchain technology in managing pension assets or proposed changes to pension law. A blockchain could make published records more difficult to alter, but it would not by itself ensure that every donation or meeting had been disclosed.

Cointelegraph contacted Newnham for more information about his proposals but had not received a response by publication.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Newnham studied economics at the University of Edinburgh before joining the Solana ecosystem. He leads Superteam UK and has co-authored a report on blockchain and the future of work with Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto campaign and the DLT Science Foundation.

Superteam UK said the Cap for Clacton community was established to help retain technical talent in Britain by supporting founders and developers building on Solana, arguing that many entrepreneurs leave the country in search of better funding and startup opportunities abroad.

Farage funding scrutiny shapes contest

The candidacy brings an explicit crypto platform into a contest triggered when Farage resigned from Parliament on Wednesday and opted to recontest his Clacton seat amid a parliamentary standards investigation into whether Farage should have declared a 5 million pound ($6.7 million) personal gift from crypto investor Christopher Harborne. Farage has said he was not required to declare the gift because it was received before he entered Parliament. 

Farage has faced additional scrutiny over reported financial support from crypto entrepreneur George Cottrell and allegations that his financial relationships intersected with his advocacy on digital asset policy. Farage has denied wrongdoing and said he followed parliamentary rules.

Related: Bank of England governor denies Farage lobbying swayed CBDC policy: Report

National poll favors Count Binface

At the time of writing, Democracy Club lists 11 prospective candidates, including Newnham, Farage and satirical candidate Count Binface, though the council is not expected to confirm the official field until July 17. 

On Friday, an Ipsos survey of 1,000 British adults found 33% would prefer Binface to win, compared with 21% for Farage, but the national poll did not measure voting intentions among Clacton residents. 

Early survey results on the upcoming by-election. Source: Ipsos

Despite the unconventional field, the result is being closely watched because of Farage’s involvement and the scrutiny surrounding his decision to force a new vote.

Magazine: Thai scammer’s $122M wallet, Japan embraces crypto credit: Asia Express

The United Kingdom could add as much as 33 billion British pounds ($44 billion) to its annual economic output by 2035 by becoming a leader in tokenized financial markets, according to a government-backed industry task force. 

The estimate appears in the first report from Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Chris Woolard, who was appointed by HM Treasury to help implement the government’s digital markets strategy. 

Developed with an industry task force, the report sets out a 12-month plan to test blockchain in a financial transaction where securities are used to borrow cash. It also calls for the UK to issue its first tokenized government bond by the first quarter of 2027.

The industry task force brings together more than 50 companies from traditional finance and crypto, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Kraken, DTCC and Euroclear.

The roadmap attempts to move UK tokenization beyond isolated pilots and into live markets where securities can be traded, settled and used as collateral. The report said the task was now to move “from pilots to scale” and “from ambition to action.”

Ripple, which is listed among the task force’s industry members, backed the initiative on Monday. “Onchain funds, bonds and repo aren’t experiments,” the company said, adding that such instruments are already proving “cheaper, better and faster than their legacy equivalents.”

UK builds on digital gilt and settlement initiatives

The digital government bond, or gilt, itself is not a new proposal. The UK first announced the Digital Gilt Instrument pilot in November 2024.

This was followed by a July 2025 update outlining plans for onchain settlement, over-the-counter trading and secondary-market development. On Feb. 12, the government appointed HSBC’s Orion platform to support the pilot.

The new report adds a timetable and expands the intended role for the financial instrument. Beyond calling for issuance, the report seeks subsequent digital-gilt offerings, live secondary-market trading and eligibility for use as central bank collateral. 

The report said tokenized securities have limited value unless they can be traded or used to raise cash, and urged the Bank of England to accept digital gilts as collateral. 

Related: UK politicians mull permanent crypto donation ban in wake of Nigel Farage scandal

The UK also has a blockchain-based wholesale payment infrastructure that could support such markets. In December 2023, London-based Fnality launched a sterling-denominated payment system tied to central bank reserves, designed to support real-time repo, tokenized securities settlement and cross-currency payments.

Magazine: Has Bitcoin bottomed for this cycle? Analysts say ‘not yet’

Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) chairman Bilal bin Saqib has called for continued dialogue on the treatment of digital assets under Islamic law after meeting prominent scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani, who backed a ruling against purchases made with crypto.

In a Saturday post, Saqib said the discussion covered blockchain technology, digital assets, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), as well as the need to protect Pakistanis from fraud, exploitation and financial harm.

Saqib said the different categories of digital assets merit “careful technical assessment alongside rigorous Shariah examination, rather than being viewed through a single lens.”

The exchange highlights tension between Pakistan’s push to build a regulated crypto market and religious objections that could shape public acceptance. Religious views could carry significant weight in Pakistan, where about 231.7 million people, or 96.35% of the population, identified as Muslim in the 2023 census. 

Pakistan’s crypto framework meets religious scrutiny

According to Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Usmani and five other scholars signed an Islamic legal ruling issued by Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi, a prominent Islamic seminary, on Friday. 

The ruling reportedly said purchases made with crypto, including stablecoins such as USDT, were not permitted because digital tokens did not qualify as recognized property or wealth under their interpretation of Islamic law.

Saqib did not directly challenge the claim. Instead, he called for scholars, regulators and industry participants to continue discussing distinctions among digital-asset categories. 

“I shared that blockchain, digital assets, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets represent a broad spectrum of technologies and use cases,” he said. 

Related: PUSD stablecoin deploys on ADI Chain, targeting $3T Islamic finance market

The discussion comes as Pakistan relaxes restrictions toward a licensed virtual-asset sector. On April 15, the State Bank of Pakistan allowed banks to open accounts for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) licensed by the PVARA, ending an eight-year restriction on regulated institutions dealing with crypto. 

The move followed the passage of the country’s Virtual Assets Act 2026 in March, which established PVARA as the statutory body responsible for licensing and oversight of virtual asset activities. 

Magazine: Bitcoin nearing late stages of bear market: Jamie Coutts, Real Vision

Dollar stablecoins could improve access to foreign currency in economies with fixed or heavily managed exchange rates, but may also amplify currency runs when pressure on the domestic currency becomes severe, according to a new paper published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

The findings come from a working paper by economist Brandon Joel Tan. Titled “Stablecoins and Fragility in Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes,” the paper modeled how stablecoins affect parallel foreign-exchange (FX) markets when official dollar access is rationed. 

The findings highlight that stablecoins can help people get access to dollars when banks or official exchange channels cannot meet demand. However, during a currency crisis, the same widely watched stablecoin price could prompt many people to abandon the local currency simultaneously, suggesting that regulators may need temporary limits on unusually large or panic-driven transactions. 

Tan argued that stablecoins make “dollar-like claims easier to access” while creating a visible, high-frequency price for dollar demand. When a country’s official exchange rate is far from the market rate, that price can signal growing dollar scarcity and prompt more people to move out of the local currency at the same time. 

Stablecoins emerge as parallel FX benchmarks

The paper’s argument reflects how stablecoins are already being used in countries where official access to dollars is limited. On June 9, 2025, Bolivian airport retailers were seen pricing goods using USDT as a reference, while still accepting US dollars or bolivianos. 

In 2024, Cointelegraph reported that Argentines were using underground “crypto caves” to exchange pesos for dollar-stablecoins at rates closer to the unofficial market. The practice gave residents another way to preserve savings as the peso lost value and currency controls restricted access to the dollar. 

Related: Tokenization makes finance more efficient but introduces risks: IMF

While these uses highlighted the benefits of stablecoins, regulators have also recently warned about broader risks. On March 24, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) said dollar stablecoins could expose emerging economies to currency substitution, weaker monetary policy and the circumvention of capital-flow measures. 

The FSB urged lawmakers to assess how the stablecoin sector develops to understand and respond to liquidity and operational risks as stablecoins interlink with the broader financial system. 

Magazine: Will the crypto lobby’s $189M campaign get CLARITY over the line?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Wall Street banks are restricting employee trading on prediction market platforms due to fears that they may use nonpublic information to trade event contracts.

Goldman Sachs has reportedly banned its employees from trading on event contracts that are specific to the bank, including financial markets, macroeconomic events, elections and geopolitics, CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Unidentified sources from Morgan Stanley also told CNBC that the bank has policies regarding prediction market trading by employees, while a spokesperson for Bank of America said the bank was in the process of issuing new prohibitive measures for employees on prediction market trading.

The report adds to insider trading fears regarding prediction markets, which have attracted the attention of the White House and US lawmakers, who proposed legislation aimed at restricting political prediction market trading by government officials. 

Cointelegraph approached Goldman Sachs to ask what triggered the preventive policies. A spokesperson for the bank declined to comment.

In May, the US Justice Department and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said that Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo profited $1.2 million on Polymarket after accessing nonpublic information at work.

On June 18, Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil introduced a law to prevent certain public officials from “wagering on public policy issues and political outcomes,” but didn’t mention any White House officials by name.

One major flashpoint arose in January, when a soldier allegedly made more than $400,000 betting on the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was ousted and captured by US forces.

Related: Suspected insider wallets rack up $1.2M betting on ZachXBT’s Axiom exposé

Polymarket seeks broader US access

Meanwhile, Polymarket is seeking regulatory approval to offer margin trading for US users, which would enable them to bet on events with less capital upfront.

The prediction market filed an application to become a futures commission merchant through its affiliate, Coming Home GBA LLC, according to a July 3 filing with the National Futures Association (NFA).

The filing marks Polymarket’s latest attempt to expand its US footprint and attract more users. Cointelegraph approached Polymarket for comment on the matter. The platform also needs authorization from the CFTC to allow non-fully collateralized trading for users. 

Polymarket’s main rival already received US regulatory approval to provide margin trading, after its affiliate, Kinetic Markets LLC, received an NFA authorization in March.

Coming Home GBA LLC, filing. Source: nfa.futures.org 

Polymarket reached a record $713 million in daily taker volume on June 20, according to Dune data. The milestone came more than a week after the World Cup kicked off on June 11.

Kalshi also posted a record monthly trading volume of nearly $9.4 billion in June, as the 2026 FIFA World Cup fueled activity across prediction markets.

Magazine: Prediction market battle gets closer to Supreme Court

Expanding Self-Custody Access

Trust Wallet has integrated Robinhood Chain into its mobile application and browser extension, enabling users to manage assets on the network within a self-custody framework. According to a company announcement, the integration allows users to send, receive, store, and swap digital tokens issued on Robinhood Chain while maintaining total control of their private keys.

An Ethereum-compatible Layer-2 network, Robinhood Chain is designed to streamline on-chain finance by hosting tokenized markets, cryptocurrencies, and real-world assets ( RWAs) on a low-latency, intermediary-free infrastructure.

“Adding Robinhood Chain expands Trust Wallet’s multi-chain coverage and gives you smoother access to a network built for onchain finance,” the company stated, noting that the update removes traditional platform lock-in constraints.

Remarking on the network’s utility, Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev said: “While we’re building Robinhood Chain to be the best chain for RWA … it works great for memes too.”

The integration directly addresses the high costs associated with the Ethereum mainnet, where transactions compete for limited block space, driving up gas fees during peak congestion. To circumvent this, Robinhood Chain processes transactions off-chain, bundling them into a single, compressed summary submitted back to Ethereum. This architecture reportedly slashes individual transaction costs to fractions of a cent and significantly accelerates confirmation speeds.

For everyday users, the integration bridges the gap between traditional fintech efficiency and Web3 self-custody. Trust Wallet users can also now use the built-in swap functions on the Robinhood Chain without risking failed transactions due to fluctuating gas prices or long wait times.

To access the new functionalities—which include home-screen shortcuts for deposits, withdrawals, and asset swaps—users must update to the latest version of the application. Looking ahead, Trust Wallet indicated that the technical integration is part of a broader rollout, hinting at upcoming collaborative campaigns with Robinhood.

Overcoming Settlement Barriers

Blockchain infrastructure company AEREDIUM has joined the Lava Tokenization Sandbox, a collaborative initiative led by the Lava Foundation and Bretagne Holding Limited, to test how next-generation tokenized asset infrastructure could operate across traditional and digital financial systems. The sandbox will use Alba Bay — a large, capital-backed master-planned development in the Dominican Republic — as a real-world testing environment.

Unlike conventional blockchain pilots, the project allows participants to evaluate tokenization, payments, and settlement under actual development conditions rather than isolated technical simulations.

As real-world asset tokenization accelerates, one of the biggest barriers to institutional adoption remains settlement. While creating a token is straightforward, enabling investors to purchase tokenized assets using familiar payment methods — and allowing developers to receive secure, compliant settlement without managing fragmented digital asset treasuries — continues to slow industry progress.

According to a media statement, Bretagne Holding Limited’s role in the sandbox will be to provide development expertise and a real-world project framework for evaluating future innovation models. The Lava Network will supply decentralized RPC and API infrastructure to ensure blockchain connectivity without a single point of failure.

AEREDIUM will test payment-agnostic settlement infrastructure enabling buyers to pay with bank transfers, cards, stablecoins, or digital assets across multiple blockchains. Through atomic settlement, payments are converted into the asset developers choose to receive, creating a single, auditable transaction across blockchains and banking systems.

For developers, this model removes the need to manage multiple digital asset treasuries and reduces compliance burdens associated with accepting various tokens.

Albert Dadon, founder and CEO of AEREDIUM, said the initiative targets one of the biggest obstacles to institutional adoption: “A buyer should be able to pay with any currency, on any rail, while the developer receives secure, auditable settlement in the asset they choose.”

Yossi Abadi, CEO of Bretagne Holding Limited, or BHL, said the initiative will help clarify how emerging technologies may improve efficiency and transparency in global real estate development.

Nimrod Knoller, head of foundation at the Lava Foundation, emphasized that tokenized assets “are only as reliable as the infrastructure beneath them.”

The partners say the sandbox represents a shift in the tokenization conversation. While early efforts focused on bringing assets on-chain, the next phase depends on infrastructure that makes tokenized assets as easy to buy and settle as traditional financial products.

The initiative is exploratory and does not involve any public offering, token sale, or formal tokenization structure.