In this issue:

Stablecoin Products Launch in U.S. and Abroad

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

The digital asset subsidiary of a major U.S. fintech and payments firm and a major U.S. financial services company recently announced “a new card-issuing product” that will allow fintech developers to offer stablecoin-linked debit cards to their end customers in multiple countries through a single API integration. According to a press release, “[c]ardholders will be able to make everyday purchases from a stablecoin balance at any merchant location” that accepts cards issued by the financial services company.

In more payments news, Polygon recently announced the launch of “private payments available through the Polygon wallet via Hinkal, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify every transfer.” According to a Polygon blog post, with the new offering “self custodial users can send stablecoins on the Polygon network without publishing the sender, the receiver, or the amount on chain.”

Polygon also recently announced that a major U.S. technology company is now offering USDC payments “to select creators in Colombia and the Philippines, with support for payouts on Polygon and Solana.” According to a blog post, the program uses “Polygon, the settlement layer of the Open Money Stack, Polygon Labs’ end-to-end solution for global stablecoin payments.”

In a final notable item, Tetra Digital Group recently announced the launch of CADD, “Canada’s only stablecoin issued through a Canadian financial institution.” According to a press release, CADD is backed 1:1 by Canadian dollars and is now live on Base, Ethereum and Tempo, and will soon be live on Solana.

For more information, please refer to the following links:

U.S. Trading Platforms Announce Crypto Derivatives Initiatives

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

A major global derivatives marketplace recently announced “plans to expand its digital asset suite with the launch of Bitcoin Volatility futures on June 1, pending regulatory review.” According to a press release, “[t]hese first-of-their-kind regulated futures contracts will allow investors to more precisely manage their market and portfolio positions by isolating their volatility risks from price direction.” The press release notes that “[r]ather than tracking price, the index is derived from real-time … Bitcoin options order books to isolate market expectations.”

In another development, a major U.S. crypto exchange recently announced that its affiliate company has received a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to a press release, the license allows the company to “act as a clearinghouse for regulated derivatives trading, including prediction markets.”

For more information, please refer to the following links:

Announcements, Reports Detail Tokenized RWA Market Developments

By Robert A. Musiala Jr.

According to recent reports, multiple major U.S. financial institutions recently completed what has been described as the first near-real-time cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund. The pilot was reportedly processed in under five seconds on the XRP Ledger, using OUSG, a tokenized short-term U.S. Treasuries product launched by Ondo Finance, a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) platform.

In a separate announcement, Ondo Finance revealed a partnership with a major U.S. fintech company to enable “holders of third party tokenized stocks and ETFs to participate in proxy voting.” According to a press release, “[t]hrough this integration with a new Web3-enabled solution … holders of more than 250 Ondo tokenized stocks and ETFs will also be able to review prospectuses, regulatory filings, and other governance information for underlying securities, leveraging … trusted investor communications and proxy infrastructure.”

In related news, a recent report found that the size of the tokenized RWA market has increased by more than 420 percent since the beginning of 2025. Among other findings, the report notes that tokenized U.S. Treasuries showed the largest increase, from $3.9 billion at the start of 2025 to currently more than $15 billion, followed by tokenized commodities.

For more information, please refer to the following links:

Man Sentenced to 78 Months in Prison for Cryptocurrency Hardware Heist

By Ariana Dindiyal

In a recent press release, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that a 20-year-old man from Santa Ana, California, was sentenced to prison in connection with his role in a cryptocurrency heist. Marlon Ferro, aka “GothFerrari,” pled guilty on Oct. 17, 2025, to one count of conspiracy to participate in a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization. In addition to 78 months in prison, a federal judge ordered three years of supervised release and $2.5 million in restitution.  

According to the DOJ press release, Ferro’s guilty plea was the culmination of his role in a social engineering enterprise whereby he and his co-conspirators defrauded victims of more than $250 million in cryptocurrency. Members of the enterprise engaged in specialized actions including database hacking, target identification, fraudulent phone calls, money laundering and residential burglary to steal cryptocurrency. The operation typically targeted digital wallets. But when his co-conspirators could not access their victims’ cryptocurrency remotely, they relied on Ferro to break into homes to steal hardware wallets storing cryptocurrency.

Ferro also laundered stolen crypto using fraudulent identification documents obtained from a foreign national to open a digital payment card account at a geo-blocked platform, allowing enterprise members to spend stolen cryptocurrency at retail locations and nightclubs in Miami and elsewhere. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro described the scheme as blending “sophisticated online fraud with old-fashioned burglary to drain victims of millions of dollars in digital assets.”

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Wasabi Protocol Exploited for $5M; Admin Key Compromise Spans Three Chains

By Amos Kim

According to a recent report, the decentralized finance (DeFi) leverage trading protocol Wasabi suffered an exploit resulting in the loss of an estimated $4.5 million to $5.5 million across three blockchains. The report notes that an attacker seized control of the protocol’s deployer admin key, which served as the sole administrative key controlling its contracts. The analysis indicates that the incident was a key-management failure rather than a smart contract vulnerability. By abusing the protocol’s upgradeable proxy architecture, the attacker reportedly granted administrative roles to malicious contracts and executed unauthorized upgrades to sweep collateral and pool balances across Ethereum, Base and Blast.

​Following the breach, the stolen assets were consolidated into ETH, bridged, and distributed across multiple addresses, with some activity linked to the Tornado Cash mixing service, according to the report. In response to the exploit, Virtuals Protocol, which powered margin deposits through Wasabi, froze all margin deposits while confirming its own security remained fully intact. The report states that the incident fits a pattern observed across DeFi in 2026, in which upgradeable proxy contracts paired with centralized admin keys create a single point of failure that can bypass even well-audited code.

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