CoinSpotMarket Update
Major Australian Bank Tests Blockchain & DeFi Tokens Rally
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3 days ago
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Several companies continue to add Bitcoin (BTC) to their corporate treasuries, following an approach popularised by Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy).
Just this week, Japanese hotel group Metaplanet unveiled plans to raise up to $8.3B ($5.4B USD) to add to its large stockpile of BTC. Similarly, video game retailer GameStop announced plans to raise $2.7B ($1.75B USD), seemingly to add to the BTC it purchased in late May.
Meanwhile, Strategy continues to accumulate. Earlier this week, the company announced it purchased another 1,045 BTC—worth $169M ($110M USD)—between June 2 and 8. It now holds 582,000 BTC, or 2.77% of the total supply.
Projects in the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector—such as Uniswap (UNI) and Aave (AAVE)—rallied this week after remarks from Paul Atkins, the new chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Speaking during the latest of a series of roundtable discussions with industry leaders, Atkins emphasised that self-custody is a “foundational American value” and aligned DeFi with principles of economic liberty, private property rights, and innovation. n Paul Atkins suggested the regulator is working on guidance or a formal rule exemption to aid DeFi.
Atkins’ views towards DeFi are markedly different from those of his predecessor, Gary Gensler, who was widely seen as having conjured a restrictive environment for DeFi innovation.
Visa and Chainlink completed a key milestone in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA) e-HKD Pilot Programme, successfully testing a cross-border blockchain transaction using a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and stablecoin pegged to the Australian dollar.
Of note, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) participated in the pilot, with the bank’s private blockchain used in a test environment alongside Chainlink’s cross-chain infrastructure and a public Ethereum testnet. Results from further phases are expected by year-end.
Commenting on why ANZ is tinkering with blockchain use cases, Nigel Dobson (ANZ Banking Services Portfolio Lead) said, “tokenised asset markets are still highly fragmented, with assets and related services being developed across a range of blockchains that lack native interoperability. As part of our ongoing commitment to advancing the digital asset ecosystem, we are actively exploring interoperability solutions.”
This is not the first time ANZ has experimented with blockchain technology. For example, in 2022, ANZ became the first Australian bank to issue an AUD-referenced stablecoin. And last year, it joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) ‘Project Guardian’ to explore broader access to tokenised real-world assets in financial markets.
Diagram showing the exchange of an Australian stablecoin against a Hong Kong CBDC using Chainlink CCIP (Source: Visa)
This week, Stripe announced the acquisition of Privy, a crypto wallet infrastructure provider. This marks the second crypto acquisition for Stripe, with the global payments company having recently acquired Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company, for $1.5B ($1.1B USD).
