2026-09-24 04:00

Binance bought $100 million of Circle stock in a private placement that closed on 17 September, alongside a five-year deal to promote USDC, per an SEC 8-K filing. Circle’s filing states that it issued 1,237,011 Class A shares at $80.84 each to the exchange. The price reflected a discount to Circle’s market price before the deal closed, though the filing does not say how large it was. Circle pays Binance to promote USDC Under the five-year agreement, Circle will pay Binance a monthly incentive fee calculated as a percentage of USDC held through Circle’s Modular Smart Contract Wallet infrastructure, while Binance carries out promotional activities for the stablecoin. The fee percentage is not disclosed. Binance cannot sell, transfer, pledge, assign or hedge the shares for up to two years, subject to customary exceptions, unless it terminates the commercial agreement under certain circumstances. It keeps its voting rights during the lockup. The shares were sold unregistered, so resale is limited unless they are registered or an exemption applies. Either party can end the partnership early if specified events occur; the filing does not detail them. Third tie-up in under two years The new arrangement supersedes agreements the two companies signed in November 2024 and August 2025. The first tie-up was unveiled at Abu Dhabi Finance Week in December 2024, when Binance said it would make USDC available across its products and hold it in its corporate treasury. Binance now holds a direct equity stake in the issuer of the second-largest dollar stablecoin, aligning its incentives with USDC’s growth for five years. The filing landed a day after a report that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Binance breached US sanctions on Iran. Richard Teng, co-CEO of Binance, said the investment and five-year commitment represent “long-duration conviction”. Market reaction Circle’s NYSE-listed stock (CRCL) closed Monday 21 September at either $94.29 or $94.49, depending on the market data used, and rose more than 1.3% in Tuesday premarket trading. At the higher close, Binance’s stake would be worth around $116.9 million, roughly $16.9 million more than it paid, none of which it can realise during the lockup. The stock is still down about 34% over 12 months, against a 16.5% gain for the S&P 500. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/24/binance-buys-100-million-circle-stake-usdc-deal/

2026-09-23 03:40

EU central banks ask Brussels to drop MiCA’s bank-deposit rule The European Central Bank and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) formally asked the European Commission on 22 September 2026 to delete MiCA’s rule forcing stablecoin issuers to hold up to 60% of reserves as bank deposits. The recommendation appears in the ESCB’s consultation response to the Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Under the current framework, issuers of non-significant tokens must keep at least 30% of reserves in bank deposits, rising to 60% for tokens classified as significant. The ESCB argues the mandate creates a direct link between issuers and credit institutions that could expose banks to liquidity problems if a stablecoin run forced rapid withdrawals. It proposes replacing percentage-based deposits with liquidity thresholds, requiring reserve assets to mature within one to five working days, and pointed to overnight reverse repos and short-term sovereign bonds as suitable instruments. Two rulebooks for one market The proposal would move the EU closer to the model in the United States. The GENIUS Act regulates stablecoin reserves without the rigid deposit-percentage requirements MiCA imposes. If the Commission adopts the ESCB’s recommendation, the practical difference between the EU and US rulebooks narrows to maturity-based liquidity floors rather than where the money must sit, and issuers operating in both markets would face less divergence in how they structure reserves. The ESCB did not put specific percentages on its own proposal. It cited the European Banking Authority’s 2024 draft rules as reference, which required significant stablecoins to hold at least 40% of reserves in assets maturing within one working day and 60% within five working days, with 20% and 30% thresholds respectively for non-significant tokens. Those figures are the EBA’s, not necessarily what the central banks propose. A rare regulator-industry alignment The ESCB’s argument echoes one Tether’s chief executive has made since 2024. Paolo Ardoino said on X that Europe’s central banks now want Brussels to delete the very clause over which Tether refused an EU licence. That refusal is his own characterisation, not an independently verified filing. Ardoino warned in an October 2024 interview that a stablecoin holding €10 billion in reserves, €6 billion of it in bank deposits, would be left with just €600 million if the bank lent out 90%. The risks run both ways, the central banks argued. They cited the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which triggered a run on Circle’s USDC after Circle disclosed $3.3 billion of reserves held at the bank. The ESCB also warned of material challenges enforcing MiCA, saying non-compliant crypto companies operating outside EU borders can still reach EU customers, and treated the reserve question in macro-financial terms without singling out any issuer. The response is a recommendation to the Commission’s MiCA review, not a change in law, and neither the ECB nor the Commission has given a timeline for adopting the recommendation. MiCA’s stablecoin provisions became fully applicable during 2024 and 2025, making Europe the first major jurisdiction with a full crypto-asset framework. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/23/ecb-mica-stablecoin-reserve-rule/

2026-09-22 03:00

ECB puts its own cash into tokenised bonds, following a 2026 wave The European Central Bank said on 21 September 2026 that it is preparing to invest part of its own funds in tokenised securities, with settlement in central bank money through its new Pontes service. Initial purchases will focus on euro-denominated debt issued by euro-area governments, public agencies and European supranational institutions, the bank said in its announcement. The money comes from the ECB’s own-funds portfolio, a non-monetary-policy pot whose income helps cover operating expenses unrelated to supervisory duties. No amount has been disclosed and no start date is set; the Executive Board will decide after preparatory work is complete. One of several central banks now acting as investors The move places the ECB in a small group of central banks that have shifted from building settlement infrastructure to holding tokenised instruments themselves. India launched a pilot earlier in September 2026 to issue and settle tokenised corporate bonds using its wholesale digital rupee, while JPMorgan filed in May for a tokenised Ethereum money-market fund and New York Life Investment Management introduced a tokenised bond fund in June. Those three moves were reported separately and are not ECB statements. For a central bank that spent years running experiments and exploratory work on distributed ledger settlement, becoming a direct participant is the change. The ECB said that by investing directly it will gain first-hand experience across the full investment lifecycle, including trade execution, settlement, systems and portfolio management activities. Why settlement in central bank money matters Pontes, launched on 21 September, combines three tested systems into one service and lets transactions settle either with cash tokens or through the Eurosystem’s T2 payment system. The ECB said the service will run alongside Appia, its initiative developing a blueprint for a tokenised financial system in Europe. Settling in central bank money is the deliberate part. “Pontes will allow market participants, including those who took part in the exploratory work, to further enhance their services, thereby supporting market developments while preserving the anchoring role of central bank money,” the ECB said. For traders, the practical point is that a major central bank is signalling DLT-based settlement is production-grade while keeping the final settlement asset anchored to the Eurosystem rather than to commercial tokens. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/22/ecb-invest-own-funds-tokenised-securities/

2026-09-21 06:50

Saudi Arabia’s central bank has withdrawn from mBridge, the China-led cross-border payments platform built on central bank digital currencies, leaving the project without the institutional backing it launched under. The exit was first reported on 20 September 2026 and follows the Bank for International Settlements’ own departure from the project in October 2024. From BIS project to Hong Kong entity mBridge was launched in 2021 through the BIS Innovation Hub to fix slow and heavily intermediated cross-border payments, with wholesale CBDCs settled on shared distributed ledger infrastructure that could in theory cut settlement from days to seconds. The BIS exited active involvement in October 2024, framing its departure as a natural consequence of project maturity and arguing the partners could run things independently. They now do. The remaining members are the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE, which are continuing development toward a commercial rollout under a new Hong Kong-based entity. The name and governance details of that entity have not been made public. Saudi departure and the compliance question SAMA, the Saudi central bank, joined as an observing member in 2023 and became a full participant in June 2024. It completed its minimum viable product proof of concept on 13 May 2025 and chose not to continue, describing its involvement as always intended to be exploratory rather than operational. The timing of the public report, more than a year after the proof of concept, is unexplained, and SAMA has not stated a direct reason for the withdrawal. The platform has reportedly processed roughly $55.5 billion in transactions by late 2025, a figure carried without a named source. Analysis of the move, not a statement from SAMA, suggests Riyadh was unwilling to be associated with a platform that bypasses SWIFT and dollar clearing and so creates channels outside the infrastructure Western governments have used to enforce sanctions. The kingdom balances membership of BRICS with deep defence and energy ties to the United States. Without the BIS and now Saudi Arabia, mBridge faces increased questions over governance and international standards compliance, particularly on sanctions, as it moves from a BIS-backed project to one independently operated from Hong Kong. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/21/saudi-arabias-exit-leaves-mbridge-running-without-its-western-architects/

2026-09-20 10:20

Stablecoins lose access to one wholesale settlement channel from 1 October Brazil’s central bank has barred stablecoins and other virtual assets from settling the wholesale foreign-exchange leg between regulated FX providers and their overseas counterparties from 1 October 2026, under Resolution 561. The restriction does not touch individual international transfers, which remain permitted under the existing framework. Resolution 561 requires that the settlement leg between a regulated foreign-exchange provider and its foreign counterparty run through a licensed FX transaction or a qualifying non-resident real account instead. The rule closes part of a gap left open since 2022, when Brazil’s virtual assets law gave the central bank authority to decide which crypto operations count as foreign-exchange activity. The specific rules never followed, and some market participants used the gap to their advantage, as the central bank has now moved to shut down the aggregated channel. The market the rule lands on The timing matters because Brazil is one of the largest stablecoin markets in the world. Brazil’s tax authority, the Receita Federal, recorded R$1.13 trillion in declared stablecoin transactions between August 2019 and December 2025, roughly 72% of all declared crypto activity in that window, and stablecoins made up close to 80% of declared crypto volume in 2025 alone. USDT accounted for nearly 89% of the stablecoin total. Those figures cover declared activity across all uses, not the settlement channel the resolution restricts. No publicly isolated figure for the affected eFX settlement volume is available, and the tax-authority data does not measure the restricted channel directly. Who feels it: brokers, not remittance senders Shawn Yan, chief executive of payments infrastructure firm Cregis, said brokers use stablecoins internally for treasury management, moving liquidity between entities and internal settlement, all invisible to the end client. Legal expert Oscar Guillermo Farah Osorio, founding partner at Zanella & Farah, expects the added foreign-exchange, correspondent-bank and SWIFT fees that stablecoin settlement previously avoided will eventually land on Brazilian consumers and businesses. The cost argument has a counterweight. A July study by Banca d’Italia tested $200 USDC transfers across ten international corridors, including Brazil, and found total costs between 0.3% and nearly 9%, with no consistent advantage over conventional payment channels; the blockchain leg itself was a marginal share of the cost, and settlement in the study finished in under 20 minutes where instant payment systems existed. The Financial Stability Board reached a similar conclusion in July. Farah also questions why individual international stablecoin transfers stay permitted while the aggregated eFX version does not, given that regulated providers could plausibly supply the same underlying transaction data the central bank wants either way. Resolution 561 takes effect on 1 October 2026. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/20/brazil-resolution-561-stablecoin-efx-settlement/

2026-09-19 14:29

The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order on 17 September 2026 granting Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) a five-year conditional exemption from the legal definition of an exchange, letting qualified venues trade tokenised National Market System stocks onchain through permissioned AMM Liquidity Pools, confirmed in the announcement. Chairman Paul S. Atkins said the move brings America’s capital markets into the digital age: “Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a significant step forward, within its statutory authority, to bring America’s capital markets into the digital age by facilitating onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks through the ‘Innovation Exemption.'” What the order permits A TSV can operate without registering as an exchange so long as its smart contracts are auditable, public and deployed on a public, permissionless distributed ledger, with participants permissioned. Liquidity providers supplying tokenised stock with proprietary capital also gain conditional relief from the dealer definition under Exchange Act section 3(a)(5). Entry is by notice rather than designation: any platform that believes it can meet the SEC’s definition and comply with the conditions only needs to provide notice before opening a tokenisation operation, according to the agency. The exemptions expire five years after Federal Register publication, a date not yet set, so the clock has not started. The relief is hedged with conditions. Tokenised stock must give holders the same rights as the traditional shares, including dividends and voting. Synthetic or derivative tokens that merely track price are explicitly excluded. Venues face limits on the number of symbols and volume traded, must halt tokenised trading whenever the underlying stock is halted on its primary exchange, and must publish USD-denominated transaction data including prices, sizes and daily volumes. How much money is on the table Citi analysts have estimated that tokenised assets could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030, and Nasdaq and the NYSE are already exploring tokenised stock offerings. Because entry requires only notice, the framework lowers the barrier for exchanges and newer crypto-native venues alike to compete for that lane within the five-year window. The order arrives days after the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act stalled in the Senate on 15 September, with 49 of the 60 votes needed to proceed, meaning the framework rests on agency authority rather than statute. Atkins said the exemption must be followed by durable rulemaking to keep onchain markets a viable pathway, and his agency solicited public comment on possible modifications while hosting a roundtable on around-the-clock trading the same day. https://www.forexcrunch.com/blog/2026/09/19/sec-innovation-exemption-tokenized-stocks/