Coindesk

Real-world assets (RWAs) are now a $10 billion category, according to data curated by DeFiLlama, with Maker, BlackRock's BUIDL and Ethena's USDtb each accounting for more than $1 billion in total value locked (TVL).Of the three, USDtb — a stablecoin designed to contrast with Ethena's USDe — has had the fastest growth, adding over 1,000% in TVL in the last month.USDtb is backed by tokenized BlackRock money-market fund shares whereas USDe uses crypto-assets and perpetual futures strategies for crypto-driven yields.CoinDesk previously reported that Treasury-backed tokens reached a record $4.2 billion market cap in the first quarter, driven by growth in Ondo Finance's OUSG and USDY tokens, BlackRock and Securitize's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI and Superstate's USTB.Treasury-backed tokens dominate, according to...

Bakkt Holdings (BKKT) is bringing on Akshay Naheta as co-CEO and entering a strategic partnership with Naheta’s payments startup, Distributed Technologies Research (DTR), as the firm moves to unlock new revenue streams.Naheta, a former SoftBank executive with past investments in Nvidia and ARM, will officially join Bakkt’s leadership team from today. Alongside current CEO Andy Main, he’s expected to help steer the company deeper into blockchain-enabled payments. Naheta is also joining Bakkt’s board of directors.The centerpiece of the announcement is a planned integration of Bakkt’s trading and brokerage platform with DTR’s stablecoin-based payments infrastructure. DTR’s infrastructure, according to a press release, leverages a suite of APIs, blockchain technology, and a proprietary routing system to help reduce costs and complexity in...

Bitcoin (BTC) and other major tokens lost more than 3% as Thursday’s rally was met with profit-taking during Asian morning hours Friday — in line with expectations.Overall crypto market capitalization fell 3.2% in the past 24 hours, with BTC sliding from $86,000 to under $84,000, ether (ETH) dropping below $2,000 and Solana's SOL falling 5%.XRP showed steady declines bringing Wednesday’s 10% spike to a 4.8% gain over a weekly basis, while BNB Chain’s BNB continued to edge higher, bringing weekly gains to over 8%. At press time, Tron’s TRX and TON were the only major tokens in the green, rising 2% each. TRX was floated on Solana for the first time ever on late Thursday in an attempt to expand...

The Australian Government announced an ambitious whole-of-government approach to regulating and integrating digital assets into the broader economy, inspired by work done in the European Union (EU) and Singapore.In a white paper published by the Australian Treasury, the country's government says it will embrace tokenization, real-world assets (RWAs), and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as part of a broader push to modernize its financial system.While ruling out a retail CBDC for now, the government sees a wholesale CBDC version and tokenized settlement infrastructure as key to unlocking market efficiency and broader asset access.The government says that the Australian Treasury, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, as well as the Reserve Bank of Australia are planning to launch pilot trials that...

The Lazarus Group, a hacking group closely associated with North Korean, holds more bitcoin (BTC) than Tesla (TSLA), the electric car manufacturer led by Elon Musk, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. At press time, Lazarus held 13,441 BTC worth $1.14 billion, according to data source Arkham Intelligence. That's 16% more than Tesla's bitcoin stash of 11,509 BTC.Last month, Lazarus Group struck crypto exchange Bybit, draining $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the platform. Recently, some of the stolen funds have been converted into bitcoin, with 12,836 BTC distributed across 9,117 unique wallets, as Bybit's CEO Ben Zhou confirmed.Tesla acquired its bitcoin stash four years ago and has been HODLing ever since, making it the world's fourth-largest publicly listed company in terms...