Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina, confirmed that the country was prepared to roll out its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in two months, following the timeline it laid out last year. 

According to a Thursday report from Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Nabiullina said that “everyone is ready” for a Sept. 1 digital ruble launch. The CBDC will launch as a complement to Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, and will initially be accepted by financial and credit institutions.

“We want the digital ruble to be in demand by people and businesses, to be convenient, and, of course, we’re constantly discussing […] what functionality to develop,” said Nabiullina in a translated statement.

Pile of 5000 ruble banknotes next to a keyboard on a white surface, viewed from above. Source: Polina Tankilevitch, Pexels

The launch of a digital ruble, whose development began in 2021, has already been targeted by preemptive sanctions from European Union authorities, which announced restrictions on the CBDC in April. The European Council said that the sanctions package was in response to Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine,” which it started in February 2022.

According to the Bank of Russia’s first deputy governor, Vladimir Chistyukhin, the law allowing the digital ruble will be enacted on Sept. 1 with a transition period until July 2027.

Related: Russia targets British 17-year-old for alleging digital assets were skirting sanctions

Dr. Jack Jarmon, who worked as a USAID technical adviser for the Russian government in the 1990s, said in a February 2025 report that the country could face “structural limitations” should its digital ruble plans fail and it relies on Bitcoin (BTC) and other proof-of-work (PoW) digital currencies as methods of evading sanctions.

“While Russia is replete with a surplus of oil and gas, the rest of its energy infrastructure is not well suited to handle such significant increases in demand for energy,” said Jarmon, referring to PoW mining. “Its power grid is old and in need of investment and upgrade.”

He added:

“The sanctions that Putin seeks to circumvent have cut Russia off from financial capital and technology. It has no domestic semiconductor industry to meet its needs and must rely on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for components […]”

US President weighing legislation with four-year CBDC ban

In contrast to Russia, the United States is one step away from having a ban on the country’s central bank issuing or creating a CBDC until 2030. This week, US President Donald Trump received the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a housing bill containing a ban on a digital dollar as part of a package of housing affordability laws.

Although Trump has said he will not sign the bill, expecting Republicans to first pass legislation requiring voters to provide proof of US citizenship in person to register, it will automatically become law in 10 days with no action on the president’s part. This timeline would put the law into effect in July. 

Magazine: Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says tokenization could fundamentally reshape how financial markets operate, marking one of the strongest acknowledgments yet from a global policymaker that blockchain-based infrastructure is moving into the financial mainstream.

In a blog published Thursday, Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counselor and director of its Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said tokenization is more than a niche crypto innovation. By bringing assets, settlement and recordkeeping onto a shared ledger, tokenization could compress today’s multi-day settlement process into near-instant transactions.

Adrian also warned that tokenization shifts risks away from traditional financial intermediaries and toward the underlying infrastructure, including smart contracts, distributed ledgers and service providers. Without common standards and coordinated regulation, tokenized financial markets could become fragmented across incompatible platforms, creating new sources of systemic risk.

Source: IMF

The report comes as financial institutions accelerate efforts to integrate tokenization into traditional markets. The Clearing House, whose owners include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Barclays, reportedly plans to launch a tokenized deposit network in early 2027 to keep deposits within the regulated banking system while enabling faster, programmable payments.

The IMF’s assessment aligns with recent research from PwC, which found that tokenization could address longstanding inefficiencies in traditional finance, including payment settlement and the transfer of asset ownership. It also follows a May report from Moody’s showing that traditional financial institutions are actively preparing for a shift toward tokenized finance. 

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

Regulators race to define tokenized finance

The IMF report emphasized the growing role of regulators in shaping tokenized finance. Adrian said policymakers have a narrow window to determine how tokenized markets evolve, arguing that decisions on settlement assets, governance, interoperability and the role of central banks will help determine whether tokenization makes the financial system more efficient or introduces new systemic risks.

In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken steps to clarify how existing securities laws apply to tokenized assets rather than creating a separate regulatory framework. 

Source: Cointelegraph

The agency has also signaled it is considering an “innovation exemption” that could allow market participants to test blockchain-based trading platforms for tokenized securities while a longer-term regulatory framework is developed.

Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?

Ondo Finance has completed the first live onchain deployment of third-party tokenized U.S. securities under a structure designed to operate within the existing U.S. regulatory framework.

According to Ondo Finance, the deployment brings shares of BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) and Micron Technology (MU) onto the Ethereum blockchain while keeping the underlying securities inside the traditional U.S. custody system.

The company said the rollout coincides with July 4, when the United States celebrates 250 years of independence, and represents its first live implementation of this issuance model.

SEC-aligned structure keeps traditional custody intact

Unlike many tokenized stock offerings launched outside the United States, Ondo said its model follows the third-party custodial framework outlined in a January 2025 staff statement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Under that structure, the underlying IVV and Micron shares remain with regulated custodians instead of moving onto a blockchain.

Ondo said its registered transfer agent, Oasis Pro, issues Ethereum-based tokens backed 1:1 by the underlying shares. Financial infrastructure company Broadridge manages shareholder communications, proxy voting, and regulatory disclosures, allowing token holders to receive the same shareholder rights as investors holding the securities through traditional U.S. brokerage accounts.

Discussing the rollout, Ondo Finance CEO Ian De Bode said the milestone demonstrates the company’s approach to issuing tokenized securities within existing U.S. regulatory requirements.

“Ondo has built the regulatory, product, and service infrastructure to support all major models within the United States. Today’s milestone shows we can tokenize securities in ways that satisfy both market and regulatory requirements.”

The company noted that the product is not yet available to U.S. investors and is currently intended for eligible international users outside the country.

Tokenized securities race gathers momentum

The launch comes as regulated tokenized securities continue to attract investment across financial markets. As previously reported by crypto.news, Ondo Finance recently partnered with Exodus Movement to introduce Exodus Markets, enabling eligible users in selected jurisdictions to trade more than 200 tokenized stocks, exchange-traded funds, and real-world assets through the Exodus self-custodial wallet on the Solana blockchain.

Competition in the sector has also intensified following Securitize’s public listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ after its SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners II. Backed by BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, the company became the first publicly traded tokenization platform.

Questions over shareholder rights have remained a major issue for tokenized equities. The debate intensified in mid-2025 after OpenAI stated that it had not authorized Robinhood’s tokenized product linked to its shares and clarified that the tokens did not represent equity ownership in the company. The incident increased calls for clearer regulatory standards governing tokenized securities.

Ondo said its issuance framework addresses those concerns by routing token creation through a registered transfer agent while preserving the conventional custody chain, a structure the company believes aligns with existing U.S. market requirements.

Industry forecasts also point to continued expansion. In its June 2026 report, Citi projected the tokenized securities market could reach about $5.5 trillion by 2030. At the same time, Robinhood has introduced a public blockchain for tokenized stocks, the DTCC has expanded its blockchain infrastructure, and both the NYSE and Nasdaq have disclosed tokenization initiatives.

Ondo said it already manages more than $1 billion in tokenized stocks and ETFs covering over 430 securities outside the U.S. Separately, Ripple recently unveiled a lending protocol on the XRP Ledger that allows banks to borrow against tokenized assets, adding another example of financial institutions building infrastructure around tokenized real-world assets.

FBI Director Kash Patel has reportedly failed to disclose a Strategy (MSTR) stock purchase on time under the U.S. STOCK Act, prompting renewed attention to how government officials report crypto-adjacent investments and other financial holdings.

According to a report published Wednesday by the nonpartisan nonprofit news organization NOTUS, Patel “inadvertently omitted” a Strategy investment that was worth up to $250,000. NOTUS says the purchase was made on Nov. 21, 2025, but did not appear in Patel’s December 2025 financial disclosures filed under the STOCK Act.

Key takeaways

• NOTUS reports that FBI Director Kash Patel omitted a Strategy (MSTR) purchase from required December 2025 disclosures.
• Under the STOCK Act, covered officials generally must disclose reportable trades within 45 days of execution.
• Patel later filed an amended report on May 26, stating the Strategy holding was “inadvertently omitted” and that he believes no current conflict exists.
• The case feeds into broader congressional criticism of weak penalties for STOCK Act violations.
• Capitol Trades data cited by NOTUS also points to other officials reporting Strategy-related holdings late.

What NOTUS says Patel got wrong—and how he corrected it

NOTUS’s report centers on a specific compliance lapse tied to the STOCK Act, a law designed to curb conflicts of interest by requiring timely disclosure of certain financial transactions by members of Congress and other covered officials.

NOTUS says Patel purchased Strategy shares on Nov. 21, 2025. The trade was not included in Patel’s December 2025 disclosure filing, even though the law requires disclosure of financial transactions above a certain threshold within a set window—NOTUS notes that transactions exceeding $1,000 must generally be reported no later than 45 days after execution.

Rather than leaving the omission unaddressed, Patel filed an amended report on May 26, according to NOTUS. The filing described the Strategy holdings as “inadvertently omitted,” and stated that there is “no current conflict exists” involving the investment.

Strategy—formerly known as MicroStrategy—is a U.S.-registered government contractor, a detail that NOTUS highlights as a potential flashpoint for conflict-of-interest concerns when senior officials hold positions in firms with government contracting ties.

Why the STOCK Act debate is resurfacing

Signed in 2012, the STOCK Act has faced repeated scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog advocates who argue that enforcement and penalties do not meaningfully deter late or incomplete reporting.

NOTUS points to criticisms that first-time violations can result in relatively limited consequences—citing that the law provides for a $200 fine for first offenders. The same criticism notes that these penalties fall well short of the large amounts sometimes at stake in financial disclosures.

In other words, even when omissions are corrected after the fact, critics argue the system may not impose strong enough repercussions to ensure compliance from the start. Patel’s amended filing—paired with the relatively modest penalty structure described by NOTUS—adds another data point to the broader oversight conversation.

Strategy disclosures: not an isolated pattern

Patel’s case appears within a wider pattern of late reporting involving Strategy investments, at least based on the examples NOTUS cites.

NOTUS also references Capitol Trades, a website that tracks politicians’ investment activity. The report says Representative Shri Thanedar “waited” until August 2025 to report a Strategy investment made in June 2024, which Capitol Trades lists as a range between $15,001 and $50,000.

While the underlying details differ by individual and timeframe, the common thread is that Strategy-related holdings can end up reported outside the law’s intended window. For traders, compliance officers, and policy watchers, timing matters because disclosures are meant to reduce the informational advantage that comes from acting on nonpublic knowledge and then reporting after the fact.

Crypto income disclosures in the background

Patel’s reported late correction comes as U.S. political attention to crypto-linked income and reporting remains intense.

The NOTUS report is framed alongside President Donald Trump’s publication of financial records showing his cryptocurrency ventures generated more than $1.4 billion in income in 2025—more than income reported from his real estate businesses, according to a link cited by NOTUS from earlier coverage by Cointelegraph.

That reporting has also fueled political disputes about whether crypto activities, including memecoin-related developments and other crypto platforms described in the cited coverage, create conflicts between official duties and private financial interests.

Although Patel’s situation involves the STOCK Act rather than presidential financial disclosure reporting, it sits in the same ecosystem of public accountability questions: who discloses what, when, and whether the disclosure regime is stringent enough to maintain trust.

Going forward, the key question for observers is how strictly oversight bodies evaluate the “inadvertently omitted” explanation in Patel’s amended filing, and whether the broader push for stronger STOCK Act penalties gains momentum. Readers should also watch for further examples of timing-related omissions in high-profile crypto-adjacent holdings, since the credibility of the disclosure system ultimately depends on consistent enforcement—not just post-hoc corrections.

The opportunity has drawn growing interest across Wall Street. Citi projected that tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, while Boston Consulting Group and Ripple estimated the market could grow to $18.9 trillion by 2033.

“We have long said that public equities are moving onchain, and there is no stronger validation of that belief than tokenizing our own public stock on day one,” CEO Carlos Domingo said in a statement.

Issuer-sponsored tokenization

Unlike many existing tokenized stock products, which are issued by third parties or offered outside the United States, Securitize said SECZ is an issuer-sponsored tokenization of the company’s own shares. Eligible U.S. investors can buy the tokenized stock through Securitize’s platform after completing identity verification and meeting securities law requirements.

The launch doubles as a showcase for Securitize’s business.

The company, founded in 2017, has spent years building tokenization infrastructure for firms including BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane and VanEck, providing issuance, transfer agency and fund administration services for blockchain-based securities.

Earlier this year, NYSE parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) partnered with Securitize to develop infrastructure for tokenized equities. It also teamed up with Computershare and Continental, two of the world’s largest transfer agents, to help public firms issue their shares in token form on blockchain rails.