Crypto World
Brazil Central Bank Mandates Daily Crypto Asset Reports
TLDR
- Brazil’s central bank will require licensed crypto exchanges to prove asset sufficiency daily starting Jan. 1, 2027.
- The new framework aligns crypto trading platforms with commercial banking standards on capital and reporting.
- Exchanges must fully separate company funds from customer fiat and cryptocurrency holdings.
- Platforms must follow a specialized accounting manual for recording and valuing digital assets.
- The rules impose stricter data protection and confidentiality obligations on crypto intermediaries.
Brazil’s central bank will require licensed crypto exchanges to prove asset sufficiency daily from Jan. 1, 2027. The authority published the framework on March 3 through official market communications. The rules align crypto intermediaries with commercial banking standards on capital, accounting, and data controls.
Brazil Tightens Oversight With Daily Reserve Reporting
The central bank said exchanges must submit daily attestations of asset sufficiency starting in 2027. Supervisors will review reports to confirm that platforms hold adequate fiat and crypto reserves. The authority said exchanges must cover operational, liquidity, and cyber risks. It stated that daily reporting will reduce sudden shortfalls and customer losses.
The framework requires strict segregation of client and company assets. Exchanges must separate their own accounts from customer fiat and crypto holdings. The bank said segregation will prevent commingling and misuse of client funds. It added that regulators will gain clearer views of assets attributable to users.
Exchanges Must Follow Bank-style Accounting and Data Rules
The central bank ordered exchanges to record crypto assets under a specialized accounting manual. Platforms must follow standardized rules on classification, valuation, and impairment of digital assets. Officials said consistent accounting will improve comparability across regulated entities. The bank stated that financial statements must reflect crypto exposures clearly.
The authority also imposed bank-level data protection and confidentiality standards. Exchanges must implement strict controls over customer records and internal communications. The central bank said firms must limit unauthorized access and data leaks. It added that platforms must maintain detailed documentation for supervisory audits.
Cross-border Crypto Transfers Face Enhanced Scrutiny
The framework expands oversight of cross-border crypto transfers handled by domestic exchanges. Platforms must report origin, destination, and on-chain pathways of international transactions. Supervisors will use blockchain analytics to monitor transaction traceability. The bank said enhanced audits will address money laundering and tax evasion risks.
Authorities will coordinate with tax agencies and financial intelligence units on reporting standards. Exchanges must integrate compliance systems that flag suspicious cross-border flows in near real time. The central bank stated that firms must retain sufficient records for inspections. The rules will apply to all licensed trading venues operating in Brazil.
The central bank said larger exchanges may rely on existing compliance infrastructure. Smaller platforms must upgrade custody, reporting, and monitoring systems before 2027. Officials confirmed that the rules apply regardless of the token type traded. BTC and ETH traded lower on the announcement date, according to market data.
The authority stated that the framework targets operational resilience and customer fund protection. It confirmed that licensed exchanges must comply by Jan. 1, 2027. Supervisors will issue further technical guidance before implementation. The central bank published the measures through official communications on March 3.
TLDR:
- Korea’s chip dominance creates a single-point failure risk for the global AI supply chain during energy route disruptions.
- Memory inventory levels remain too low to absorb a prolonged shock from Middle East shipping instability.
- Defense stocks surged as capital rotated from tech growth into security-linked sectors during the crash.
- Crypto and AI markets both face exposure to hardware delays driven by rising energy and logistics costs.
South Korea’s stock market recorded one of its sharpest two-day declines this year after renewed geopolitical tensions shook global risk sentiment.
The selloff erased hundreds of billions in value and pushed semiconductor shares sharply lower.
While oil prices and regional conflict dominated headlines, a deeper structural weakness emerged. The market reaction highlighted how the AI boom depends on fragile energy and logistics links.
AI Supply Chain Crisis Reveals Korea’s Memory Chip Vulnerability
The benchmark KOSPI index fell more than 15% in 48 hours after circuit breakers halted trading for the first time in over a year. Roughly $270 billion in market value disappeared in a single session, according to exchange data shared by Shanaka Anslem Perera.
Shares of Samsung dropped about 10%, while SK Hynix slid nearly 12%. Together, the two firms dominate global memory supply for artificial intelligence hardware.
Industry figures show the pair controls about 67% of worldwide DRAM production and close to 80% of high-bandwidth memory revenue. HBM is a core component for modern AI processors used in data centers and cloud infrastructure.
This concentration has turned South Korea into a critical chokepoint for AI hardware. Every new hyperscaler expansion depends on uninterrupted output from Korean fabrication plants.
However, the country imports around 97% of its energy needs. Most of that supply travels through the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor now under renewed threat after tensions involving Iran escalated.
Energy Route Risk Tests Global AI and Crypto Market Assumptions
Shanaka’s data shows global DRAM inventories sit at just two to three weeks, while NAND reserves last only three to four weeks. Any prolonged disruption would force production cuts and delay hardware delivery schedules.
The projected memory market is expected to exceed $440 billion in 2026, driven by demand from AI data centers and advanced chips such as those produced by NVIDIA. Those forecasts assume stable energy access for manufacturing hubs.
Defense-linked stocks moved in the opposite direction during the selloff. Hanwha Aerospace rose about 20%, and LIG Nex1 gained nearly 30%, according to Korean market data.
This shift suggests investors rotated toward security and energy resilience rather than exiting the market entirely. Capital flows pointed to concern over infrastructure risk, not just short-term geopolitics.
Foreign investors also sold roughly 5 trillion won per session during the downturn. The weaker won raised import costs and increased pressure on semiconductor margins.
In crypto-linked markets, traders tracked the move as a signal of potential delays in AI hardware deployment. AI narratives tied to blockchain scaling and GPU demand remain sensitive to supply chain shocks and energy price swings.
Market data provided by Shanaka showed that oil staying above $85 for several weeks could force revisions to semiconductor cost models. The episode exposed how tightly the AI economy links to energy logistics and narrow geographic production bases.
Ripple is expanding its stablecoin payments platform for banks and fintechs, aiming to reduce the need to park money overseas and speed up cross-border transactions.
Ripple Payments, the company’s global payments platform that connects financial institutions to blockchain-based settlement rails, has been upgraded to support a broader stablecoin workflow, including collection, custody, conversion and payout, the San Francisco-based company announced Tuesday.
The move positions Ripple to compete more directly with legacy payment providers, as it is designed to reduce reliance on pre-funded accounts and traditional correspondent banking networks, which can tie up capital and delay cross-border transactions.
The privately held fintech is valued at $17.7 billion, according to pre-IPO shares platform Forge Global.
Ripple Payments is live in more than 60 markets and has processed over $100 billion in transaction volume to date. The company cited Switzerland’s AMINA Bank, Brazil’s Banco Genial, Malaysia’s ECIB and Philippines-based AltPayNet as examples of companies participating in the network.
Ripple said the expansion builds on its recent acquisitions of custody and treasury automation company Palisade, and Rail, a platform that enables customers to hold and exchange fiat and stablecoins. Ripple acquired Rail last August for $200 million.
Related: Ripple expands European footprint with Amina stablecoin payment partnership
Ripple deepens institutional bet as RLUSD supply reaches $1.5 billion
The expansion comes as Ripple continues to grow its stablecoin payment services, alongside deeper integration of its dollar-pegged token, Ripple USD (RLUSD).
RLUSD accounts for a small but growing share of the global stablecoin market, with a circulating supply of about $1.5 billion.
Regulatory momentum has accompanied that growth. In December, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved national trust bank charters for Ripple’s planned Ripple National Trust Bank, as well as for other crypto companies, including Circle, BitGo, Paxos Trust Company and Fidelity Digital Assets.
If finalized, the charters would allow Ripple and its peers to manage assets and stablecoin reserves under federal oversight, though it would not authorize deposit-taking or lending, as traditional banks do.
The expansion also coincides with ongoing discussions in Washington, DC, around a US crypto market structure bill, where lawmakers and industry groups are negotiating how stablecoins should be regulated.
Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, attended a February meeting at the White House with other crypto and banking representatives to discuss the legislation’s stablecoin provisions, underscoring the company’s involvement in shaping emerging regulatory frameworks.
Related: Barclays probes blockchain for banking functions like payments, deposits: Report
Key takeaways:
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Bitcoin shows resilience by decoupling from traditional equities and gold despite increasing US dollar strength.
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Institutional demand for Bitcoin remains robust, as evidenced by the $1.5 billion in recent ETF net inflows in seven days.
Bitcoin (BTC) successfully defended the $68,000 level on Tuesday despite a 1% decline in the Nasdaq 100 Index and a 3.6% drop in gold prices. Although Bitcoin initially decoupled from traditional markets, traders remain concerned as the US dollar strengthened against other major fiat currencies, even as the United States risks a prolonged war with Iran.
The US dollar index (DXY) reached 99.4 on Tuesday, rising from 96.6 only three weeks earlier. This strength in the US dollar is attributed to investors seeking safety in cash and government bonds, signals typically associated with a risk-off environment. Conversely, periods of DXY weakness usually coincide with positive returns for Bitcoin, such as the bull run observed from March to August 2025.
However, a broader analysis shows the US Dollar Index remains well below the 105–110 range maintained from November 2024 to March 2025. The past 12 months in fact reflect consolidation rather than sustained strength. Bitcoin’s recent decoupling from tech stocks appears more significant, as the correlation had previously surged even with the Nasdaq 100 trading just 6% below its all-time high.
The 30-day rolling correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 dropped to 69% after peaking at 92% one week prior. Bitcoin’s market identity has shifted repeatedly over time, being viewed variously as an independent monetary system, digital gold, an unstoppable onchain database or a speculative vehicle. Therefore, predicting a Bitcoin crash based solely on US dollar strength seems unjustified.
An undeniable lack of bullish momentum persists, likely driven by factors such as the Oct. 10, 2025, flash crash, quantum computing concerns, disappointment with the progress of a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the shift of investor attention toward AI. Traders are also still searching for a specific catalyst for the decline toward $60,000, which heightens prevailing fear and uncertainty.
Bitcoin’s bear market enhances the impact of negative news
A recent US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing from MARA Holdings (MARA US) led market participants to misinterpret the company’s Bitcoin reserve strategy. Traders expressed concern that MARA might replicate the actions of other prominent listed miners, such as Cango (CANG US), Bitdeer (BTDR UR) and Core Scientific (CORZ US), which recently liquidated their entire Bitcoin holdings.
Robert Samuels, MARA vice president of investor relations, denied those rumors, explaining that the company “may buy or sell from time to time,” which does not mean there is an intention to liquidate the majority of their reserves. Market participants may have acted impulsively before this clarification, largely because Bitcoin has been in a bear market while competitors shifted their core business models toward AI data centers.
Related: Bitcoin price chart ‘death cross’ is back, reviving late-cycle fears
Relative strength in the US Dollar Index should not be viewed as an automatic sell signal for Bitcoin. This is particularly true as the cryptocurrency shows resilience while gold exhibits signs of exhaustion, retesting $5,000 support following a 25% year-to-date rally in 2026. Bitcoin holders still face a difficult path toward regaining full confidence after a 52% contraction from the all-time high, though overall sentiment is beginning to improve.
The $1.5 billion in net inflows into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds since Feb. 24 serves as a clear indicator that institutional demand is accelerating. Nevertheless, traders will likely wait for a definitive breakout above $75,000 before concluding that the bear market has ended. Until that threshold is met, data points like the US Dollar Index will likely continue to exert some negative pressure on Bitcoin, regardless of the currently weak correlation.
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US President Donald Trump has taken a shot at banks for stalling the crypto market structure bill from advancing in the Senate over stablecoin yield payments.
“The Genius Act is being threatened and undermined by the Banks, and that is unacceptable — We are not going to allow it,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, mentioning the GENIUS Act that Congress passed in July to regulate stablecoins. He added:
“The U.S. needs to get Market Structure done, ASAP. The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto Agenda that will end up going to China, and other Countries if we don’t get The Clarity Act taken care of.”
Trump has touted the GENIUS Act as his crowning achievement to attract crypto companies to the US. The law gives stablecoin issuers a path to regulation, but bans them from directly offering yield payments to holders.
However, third-party platforms such as crypto exchanges can still offer yield to users who hold stablecoins.
Banking groups have argued that it is a legal loophole and are pushing for the Senate’s crypto market structure bill to include a ban on all stablecoin yield payments. The House passed its version of the bill, called the CLARITY Act, in July.
“The Banks should not be trying to undercut The Genius Act, or hold The Clarity Act hostage. They need to make a good deal with the Crypto Industry because that’s what’s in best interest of the American People,” Trump said.
Crypto executives and lobbyists have resisted the banks’ efforts to include a ban on stablecoin yield payments in the bill, with major lobbyist Coinbase pulling its support for the legislation in January over the issue.
The legislation has since been sd as th,e Senate Banking Committee postponed a markup on the bill after Coinbase withdrew support in January, and as yet to set a date to review the leitking groups have said that stablecoin yield payments would see momove move fank accounts to staintoecoins and risk the stability of the banking system.
Related: What’s at stake for crypto as 3 US states kick off party primaries?
Crypto and banking groups have had three meetings at the White House this year to agree on language that could move the bill forward, but no deal has been reached yet.
Trump is pushing to have the bill passed as a policy win to take to the midterms in November, where crypto lobbying groups have raised more than $200 million to back those supportive of the industry.
Hill says Senate should consider passing House bill
Representative French Hill, a senior Republican and chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said at an event on Tuesday that the Senate should consider passing the House’s version of the crypto bill if it can’t move forward with its own.
Hill said the House’s CLARITY Act had “reasserted the language in [the GENIUS Act] on a bicameral, bipartisan basis, that stablecoins were a payment device on a blockchain and not an investment device, that they would not pay interest, per se.”
“If the Senate can’t come to a straightforward conclusion here, I recommend they use the language that we have in the House-passed Clarity Act with 78 Democratic votes on it, and use that as the solution,” he said.
Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026
Bitcoin has now dropped from the $70,000 level three times since the Feb. 5 crash as Wednesday’s Asian session found the market back at $67,600 after another failed attempt earlier in the week.
BTC was trading at $67,612 as of Asian morning hours on Wednesday, down 0.7% over the past 24 hours but up 3.4% on the week as the post-strike recovery held. Ether slipped 2.2% to $1,957, giving back some of its bounce but still up 2.6% on a seven-day basis. BNB was the quiet outperformer, up 5.2% on the week at $629.
The damage was concentrated further down the board. Dogecoin fell 2.9% in 24 hours and is down 3.9% on the week. Cardano dropped 4.2% on the day and 3.5% over seven days. Solana lost 0.8% to $85.16 and remains the worst-performing major on a weekly basis at -4.2%, still carrying the weight of Saturday’s sell-off. XRP held relatively flat, down 1.3% to $1.35 with a modest 1.5% weekly gain.
The pattern across the board is the same. Most majors recovered from the weekend lows but couldn’t hold Tuesday’s highs, leaving the market in a holding pattern while it waits for clarity on the Iran situation and Monday’s traditional market reaction to settle.
“BTC bouncing back to $70K looks like a classic shock, flush, rebuild move. A lot of the weekend selling was forced, and liquidity was thin, so the rebound can be fast once pressure lifts,” said Wojciech Kaszycki, CSO of BTCS SA, said in an email. “After BTC’s move back above $70K, the real signal isn’t the price spike. It’s whether ETF inflows stay steady this week.”
FxPro chief analyst Alex Kuptsikevich noted that Tuesday’s rejection “forces us to consider a decline to $63K as a working scenario” if the upper boundary continues to hold.
The macro backdrop isn’t helping. Asian equities sold off hard Wednesday, with South Korean stocks posting their biggest two-day decline since 2008 as the Iran conflict continued to rattle investors.
Tech stocks across the MSCI Asia Pacific index fell 4%, dragging Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea lower. The Indian rupee dropped to a record low on the oil price hit. Gold climbed higher, pulling silver with it for the first time this week.
Oil remains the key variable. Brent jumped again Wednesday despite the U.S. announcing plans to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since the weekend strikes.
Meanwhile, U.S president Donald Trump floated an insurance scheme for oil tankers but provided no details. The longer the strait stays disrupted, the more energy prices feed into inflation expectations, which pushes rate cuts further out, which tightens the liquidity environment that drives risk assets.
“We think that Bitcoin is an emerging reserve asset,” said Gracy Chen, CEO at Bitget. “Many people simply cannot fully accept this yet because it is easier to invest into gold, which has existed for many years, than into Bitcoin, which is still young and risky.”
Chen pointed to the broader disappointment in crypto markets following earlier crashes, noting that “the current decline in Bitcoin is largely driven by this disappointment, especially against the backdrop of rising equities, gold, silver, and stock indices reaching new highs.”
Australia could unlock 24 billion Australian dollars ($17 billion) annually from advances in tokenized markets and digital assets, but only if lawmakers start moving forward with regulation, according to a new report from a local fintech research group.
In a report titled “Unlocking Australia’s $24b Digital Finance Opportunity,” which was published on Monday, the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) said regulatory uncertainty, coordination challenges and limited pathways for pilot projects to grow are the biggest constraints facing the industry.
One way to address the shortcomings would be to establish a sandbox for testing new technology, such as tokenized financial market use cases, said the DFCRC. This would lead to ongoing collaboration between regulators and industry participants and improve licensing frameworks, it said.
The research group also suggested deploying tokenized government bonds and a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the sandbox to underpin the development of tokenized markets, collateralized lending, and related financial services.
The DFCRC report was jointly produced with the Digital Economy Council of Australia and was financed by crypto exchange OKX.
Better markets, payments and assets are the key
DFCRC estimates that billions could be generated annually from markets with broader investor access, deeper liquidity and higher market participation, creating additional gains from trade.
At the same time, tokenized money, such as stablecoins and CBDCs, could streamline cross-border and domestic transactions, creating gains by reducing reliance on correspondent banks, which charge high fees.
Tokenization will create assets with increased transparency, usability, and flexibility, which could also increase their utility and make them directly “usable within automated trading, lending, and collateral-management systems,” according to the report.
“Nearly half of the asset-related economic gains arise from enabling collateralized lending, repo, and invoice financing markets on tokenized rails, where smart contracts automate collateral management, margining, and settlement,” the report states.
Without better regulation, the $17 billion is off the table
Kate Cooper, the CEO of crypto exchange OKX, said that without better regulation, the estimated economic gains will be much smaller over the next few years.
Related: Australian crypto execs upbeat on progress despite lingering issues
On the current trajectory, and without substantial industry-wide changes, DFCRC estimates that Australia will secure only 1 billion Australian dollars ($710 million) in economic gains from crypto by 2030.
“Long-term economic benefits will only be realised through clear regulatory frameworks and infrastructure built to institutional standards. That is how Australia strengthens trust, attracts capital and secures its place in the next era of global finance,” Cooper added.
Magazine: 6 massive challenges Bitcoin faces on the road to quantum security
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says he’s drastically cut his estimates of when “on-chain finance” will take off after seeing investors pile into crypto platforms such as Hyperliquid to trade tokenized assets amid the US-Israel attack on Iran.
In a post on Tuesday titled “The weekend that changed finance,” Hougan said crypto perps futures platform Hyperliquid became the epicenter for trading real-world assets like crude oil and tokenized gold while the US, European and Asian stock exchanges were closed at the time of the first attack on Saturday at about 3:30 am UTC.
“For most of Sunday, onchain finance was the center of the financial world,” he said, adding that he previously expected traditional markets to take five to 10 years to move onchain but now sees that shift happening much sooner.
“This weekend proved me wrong. Now I’m convinced it’s going to happen much faster than that,” Hougan said, adding that blockchain’s 24/7 trading rails make “stock exchanges and T+1 settlement look archaic.”
Hougan said much of the weekend RWA trading activity took place on Hyperliquid, which saw over $11.5 billion in trading volume across Saturday and Sunday.
“When Bloomberg wanted to write about how crude oil responded to the bombing, it cited the Hyperliquid crude oil contract as the most relevant price,” Hougan said.
Tether’s tokenized gold product, Tether Gold (XAUt), also saw its 24-hour trading volume spike to over $300 million, while prediction markets volumes on Kalshi and Polymarket also rose, he noted.
NYSE is building a 24/7 tokenization platform
In January, the New York Stock Exchange and its parent, the Intercontinental Exchange, said it would enable 24/7 trading and instant settlement of stocks and exchange-traded funds with a blockchain post-trade system, including multi-chain support and custody features.
Related: Ray Dalio cautions on Bitcoin, says ‘there is only one gold’
However, no timeline was provided for the platform’s launch, nor were details shared about which blockchain it would be built on or whether it would operate in a permissionless or permissioned environment.
For now, Hougan said hedge funds, banks and other investors who want to “trade competitively” have no other choice but to set up a stablecoin wallet and learn how to trade on crypto perps platforms like Hyperliquid.
Magazine: South Korea gets rich from crypto… North Korea gets weapons
The program allows fintech firms and wallet providers to offer cards that let users spend stablecoin balances at any of Visa’s 175 million merchants worldwide.
Visa and Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure platform now owned by Stripe, announced a major expansion of their collaboration that will bring stablecoin-linked Visa cards to more than 100 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East by the end of 2026, according to an announcement posted on the Visa website today.
The program, which is already live in 18 countries, allows fintech firms and wallet providers to offer cards that let users spend stablecoin balances at any of Visa’s 175 million merchant locations worldwide, the announcement said.
Onchain Settlement
Under the expanded partnership, Bridge’s stablecoin-funded cards will leverage Visa’s payments network while settlement can occur on-chain through a pilot involving Lead Bank, a participating issuer in Visa’s stablecoin settlement initiative. Lead Bank settles Visa’s stablecoin transactions on the Solana blockchain as part of Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot.
The pilot is evaluating whether settling card transactions with stablecoins can increase operational efficiency, improve reconciliation and give issuers more flexibility in how value moves across payment networks.
“Visa is committed to meeting businesses where they operate, and increasingly, that’s onchain,” said Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto.
Crypto Rails for Payments
Sheffield described the expanded Bridge collaboration as a step toward integrating blockchain-native currency settlement into the broader payments ecosystem while maintaining the convenience and ubiquity of Visa’s network.
Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge in 2025 underpins much of the technical infrastructure for the offering, enabling developers and fintech platforms to issue stablecoin-backed Visa cards through a single API.
Popular digital wallet providers such as Phantom and MetaMask are already using the solution, giving millions of users the ability to spend stablecoins for everyday purchases, the announcement said.
Custom Stablecoins
Bridge’s co-founder Zach Abrams said the expansion will help businesses launching custom stablecoins integrate them seamlessly into card programs, an approach he described as part of a multi-year effort to help firms “own their own financial stack.”
The announcement comes days after MoonPay and M0 launched PYUSDx, a platform designed to simplify the creation and management of application-specific stablecoins. PYUSDx leverages PYUSD, the stablecoin developed by PayPal and issued by Paxos Trust Company.
Industry analysts see the rollout as emblematic of how traditional payments firms and crypto infrastructure providers are increasingly working together. Stablecoin-linked cards have grown rapidly as a bridge between digital assets and real-world spending, offering a way for stablecoins to be used at scale without requiring direct merchant acceptance of blockchain payments.
Visa’s move also aligns with broader experimentation in the payments industry around stablecoins and blockchain settlement, as regulatory frameworks such as the GENIUS Act in the U.S. establish clearer rules for stablecoin issuance and use.
Ripple is no longer just moving money. It wants to be the entire pipe.
The company shared with CoinDesk on Wednesday a press release that outlines a major expansion of Ripple Payments which turns the platform into a full-stack infrastructure layer for fiat and stablecoin money movement.
Businesses can now collect, hold, exchange, and pay out in both traditional currencies and stablecoins through a single provider, rather than stitching together separate vendors for custody, collections, conversion, and settlement.
The new capabilities come from two recent acquisitions. Palisade, which handles custody and treasury automation, powers the managed custody layer that lets businesses provision wallets at scale and sweep funds into operational accounts.
Rail, a virtual accounts and collections platform, enables businesses to accept fiat and stablecoin pay-ins through named virtual accounts with automated conversion and settlement.
The result is that a fintech doing cross-border payouts no longer needs one provider for custody, another for foreign exchange, a third for stablecoin liquidity, and a fourth for local payout rails. Ripple is consolidating all of that into one platform with one integration.
“For the global financial system to evolve, fintechs and financial institutions need infrastructure that treats digital assets with the same rigor as traditional finance,” said Monica Long, president at Ripple, said in a prepared statement. “Ripple has built the blueprint for blockchain-based enterprise solutions designed to operate at global scale for regulated finance.”
Meanwhile, Ripple said the platform has now processed more than $100 billion in total volume. That milestone lands against a broader backdrop of stablecoin adoption accelerating across the financial system, with global annual transaction volumes reaching $33 trillion last year and stablecoins now accounting for 30% of all onchain transaction volume.
The expansion comes at an interesting time for Ripple specifically.
XRP has been under pressure, down roughly 5% over the past week, according to CoinDesk market data, amid the broader market sell-off driven by the U.S.-Iran conflict.
But the payments business operates largely independently of the token’s price, and the institutional adoption trajectory suggests Ripple’s enterprise strategy is gaining traction regardless of what the spot market does.
A Bitcoin Policy Institute study delves into how artificial intelligence models choose among money forms in a variety of hypothetical scenarios, revealing a strong inclination toward Bitcoin and digital money over fiat in most cases. The research tested 36 models across six providers and generated more than 9,000 responses across a spectrum of monetary tasks, from long-term value preservation to everyday payments. The findings show Bitcoin outpacing stablecoins in many contexts, while stablecoins regain sway in transactional use cases like micropayments and cross-border transfers. The study’s authors emphasize that the results reflect training data patterns and framing rather than widespread real-world adoption, but they nonetheless offer a unique lens on how AI interprets money in a digital era, with results released via MoneyForAI.org.
Key takeaways
- 36 AI models across six providers produced 9,072 responses to monetary scenarios; Bitcoin was selected in 48.3% of cases, the most-used instrument overall.
- When asked to preserve purchasing power over multi-year horizons, 79.1% of responses favored Bitcoin, the study’s most lopsided result.
- In payments, micropayments, and cross-border transfers, stablecoins were chosen 53.2% of the time versus 36% for Bitcoin, highlighting a transactional edge for stablecoins in certain contexts.
- Nearly 91% of responses preferred digitally native instruments (including Bitcoin or other digital assets) over fiat, with zero models rating fiat as their top choice.
- Model-provider differences emerged: Anthropic models averaged 68% BTC preference; OpenAI 26%; Google 43%; and xAI 39%, illustrating how training data shapes outputs rather than deterministic financial forecasting.
Tickers mentioned: $BTC
Market context: The study arrives amid ongoing experimentation with digital money in AI-assisted scenarios, underscoring how institutional and research communities are evaluating Bitcoin’s role as a borderless, programmable asset alongside stablecoins and other digital instruments.
What to watch next – The Bitcoin Policy Institute plans to broaden the model set and providers, test different prompt framings, and explore additional monetary scenarios to validate whether these preferences hold under varied conditions.
Why it matters
For users and investors, the findings offer a nuanced view of how AI systems—trained on vast data corpora—perceive money forms in a digital economy. The recurring tilt toward Bitcoin in long-horizon scenarios reinforces Bitcoin’s narrative as a non-sovereign store of value that can operate independently of any single country’s monetary policy. Yet the study also highlights practical reasons stablecoins remain appealing for transactions: near-instant settlement, compatibility with existing payment rails, and the ability to freeze or limit access in certain jurisdictions, which some participants see as a drawback for a universally accessible currency. The methodological caveats matter for interpretation: the results reflect synthetic prompts and model training data rather than current market adoption or consumer behavior.
From a development perspective, the research underscores how AI agents—when asked to optimize for efficiency or resilience in simulated economies—tend to converge on a small set of digital money forms. This convergence could inform the design of wallet interfaces, AI-driven financial planning tools, and cyber-physical systems that rely on digital value transfers. It also raises policy questions about the role of programmable money in cross-border ecosystems and how guardians of financial stability might respond to AI-generated preferences that favor digital currencies in abstract decision environments. In other words, the study is less about predicting the next price move and more about understanding how AI framing shapes perceptions of what “money” should look like in a digitized world.
The research also points to distinct differences across AI families. Anthropic models leaned most toward Bitcoin, while other providers displayed broader variance. These disparities remind readers that the results are contingent on the models’ training data and internal prompts rather than a universal forecast for asset demand. While some may interpret the Bitcoin bias as an endorsement of BTC in all contexts, the authors are careful to emphasize that the observed preferences do not translate directly into real-world adoption or policy outcomes. They describe the results as patterns emerging from the interplay between model design and the digital money landscape rather than a prescriptive verdict on fiat, stablecoins, or Bitcoin itself.
What to watch next
- Expanded model coverage: expect the BPI to include more AI models and more providers to test whether the BTC preference persists across the broader AI ecosystem.
- Framing sensitivity: researchers will experiment with alternative prompts to determine how wording and context influence outcomes.
- Broader scenarios: additional situations—such as storing earnings across multiple countries and complex settlement schemes—could further illuminate how AI perceives money in varied environments.
- Implications for tooling: developers building AI-assisted financial tools may use these insights to shape asset-selection features and risk disclosures in simulated environments.
Sources & verification
Bitcoin’s role in AI-driven monetary tests: what the study reveals
Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) emerged as the leading instrument across the majority of prompts, appearing in 48.3% of the 9,072 responses generated by 36 models across six providers, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s report released on MoneyForAI.org. The exercise probed a range of economic scenarios—from preserving purchasing power over years to everyday payments—testing how AI agents allocate value across money forms. The result is a strong tilt toward digital money, particularly Bitcoin, as the substrate for economic activity that can function across borders and regulatory regimes.
In long-horizon scenarios, the study found 79.1% of AI responses favored Bitcoin, marking the most pronounced bias in any tested category. This constellation of results suggests that, when asked to optimize for durability and sovereignty, AI agents consistently gravitate toward assets that retain value independently of any single country’s monetary policy. The digital-money axis appears to be the most favored frame for multi-year planning within the tested prompts, hinting at how future AI tools might simulate or advise on wealth preservation in a world where fiat policies are volatile or opaque.
Conversely, when the focus shifts to payments and transactions—whether micropayments or cross-border transfers—stablecoins win a higher share: 53.2% of responses favored stablecoins, while Bitcoin attracted 36%. The transactional efficiency and network familiarity of stablecoins explain their appeal in these contexts, where rapid settlement and compatibility with existing systems can matter as much as asset selection in a simulated environment. A prominent industry observer noted that stablecoins’ ability to be frozen is a double-edged sword: it provides control in certain regulatory settings but removes a layer of confidence for users seeking an uninterrupted transfer capability. Jeff Park, the chief investment officer at Bitwise, framed the context succinctly: the “most obvious explanation” for stablecoins’ relative performance in these scenarios is the ability to freeze, whereas Bitcoin cannot be frozen, offering a durable trust anchor in a digital suite of tools.
Across all responses, the AI agents favored digitally native instruments—Bitcoin, stablecoins, altcoins, tokenized real-world assets, or compute units—over fiat in roughly 91% of cases. The study’s authors emphasize that fiat relevance did not appear as a top overall choice in any of the 36 models tested. They caution readers that these results reflect patterns in training data and prompt design more than real-world adoption patterns. In other words, the study captures how AI systems interpret monetary constructs when asked to optimize for hypothetical outcomes, rather than a forecast of consumer behavior or regulatory impact.
The analysis also reveals notable differences among model families. Anthropic models averaged a Bitcoin preference of 68%, with OpenAI at 26%, Google at 43%, and xAI at 39%. These numbers illustrate how distinctive training corpora and prompt engineering shape outputs, reinforcing the study’s central caveat: responses are indicative of data patterns rather than prescriptive predictions about the future of money. The researchers acknowledge that the prompt framing used in several scenarios may have steered results toward certain instruments, and they plan to explore alternative framings in future work to measure sensitivity and robustness of the observed preferences. Aside from the methodological note, the study contributes to a growing discourse about how AI agents conceptualize money in a highly digitized financial landscape, where fiat, stablecoins, and digital assets coexist in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
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