Virtu Financial, M1X Global and Tradeweb have completed an onchain repo transaction that used a tokenized sovereign digital bond as collateral and settled the full repurchase cycle on the Canton Network. According to the parties involved, the transaction was executed between regulated counterparties and finished end-to-end in under 10 minutes.

The collateral in the deal was USDM1, a US dollar-denominated sovereign bond issued onchain by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The bond is designed to pay a coupon while also functioning as collateral, and it is backed 1:1 by short-term US Treasurys. Its structure is governed under New York law and is described as a fully collateralized sovereign obligation.

Key takeaways

• Three institutions—Virtu Financial, M1X Global and Tradeweb—completed a repo using tokenized sovereign collateral with settlement on Canton.
• USDM1 collateral is structured as a coupon-paying, fully collateralized sovereign bond backed 1:1 by short-term US Treasurys.
• Atomic settlement claim: the parties say it was the first repo combining natively issued sovereign collateral with fully onchain atomic settlement.
• Under 10 minutes was cited for the full repo and repurchase cycle from execution to completion.
• Adoption remains uncertain: the transaction is framed as an early example, with no clear indication yet of broad scaling in institutional repo markets.

USDM1 becomes collateral in a full onchain repo

While tokenized bonds have often been positioned as tradable assets or issuance rails, this transaction focuses on their role inside institutional financing. The deal demonstrates how tokenized sovereign debt can be used not just for ownership and trading, but also as functional collateral through the repo lifecycle.

In the reported structure, USDM1 was used as the collateral layer within a repurchase agreement process, with the full transaction settling on Canton. The parties emphasize that the workflow targeted the repo and repurchase cycle as a complete “atomic” onchain settlement process, rather than splitting settlement across different systems or steps.

Tradeweb acted as the platform for execution between regulated counterparties. For custody, the release names Anchorage Digital, BitGo and tZERO as institutional custody providers supporting access to USDM1 through the electronic trading venue.

Why Canton’s permissioned design matters for institutional finance

Canton Network is built for institutional financial use cases, with features aimed at regulated trading and tokenized asset workflows, including permissioning and privacy controls. The repo example comes after multiple other Canton-linked developments that show how the network is being used to move tokenized instruments and settle transactions.

In an earlier July transaction, Tradeweb facilitated a real-time transfer of a tokenized US Treasury from Franklin Templeton to Virtu Financial on Canton, with settlement executed against USDCx. That prior example centered on token transfer and settlement mechanics; the latest repo follows by applying Canton’s approach to a financing structure that depends heavily on collateral management.

For market participants, this distinction is important: repo is operationally and legally complex, and it typically involves tightly coordinated settlement steps. If tokenized sovereign collateral can be integrated into that process with rapid onchain settlement, it may reduce operational friction and shorten the time between execution and completion—at least within the confines of controlled test or pilot environments.

Momentum builds: cross-chain swaps and native stablecoins on Canton

The new repo arrives as activity on Canton increased during August, according to earlier reporting and announcements referenced in the source. FalconX and Interstice launched a cross-chain swap engine linking Canton with Ethereum, Solana and Robinhood Chain, expanding how assets can be routed across ecosystems while using Canton as the institutional settlement environment.

At the same time, World Liberty Financial launched a native USD1 stablecoin on Canton. In addition to payment and settlement utility, native stablecoin deployment can also influence how institutions model liquidity and collateral flows within tokenized workflows.

Broader plans were also mentioned involving Digital Asset and the American Idea Foundation, founded by former US House Speaker Paul Ryan. The parties announced plans this month for a 2027 pilot that would use Canton to distribute state-administered benefits across three US states.

Taken together, these items suggest Canton is being used as more than a single-application testnet. Instead, the ecosystem is gradually incorporating exchange-like capabilities, stablecoin issuance, and settlement for institutional workflows—components that are often prerequisites for scaling to wider capital markets use.

What this means for institutional repo markets—today and next

The latest repo is positioned as an early-stage milestone: the parties involved are effectively using tokenized sovereign debt as collateral inside a real repo process, and then completing the cycle onchain. The speed reported—under 10 minutes for the full repo and repurchase cycle—signals that operational complexity is being addressed in practice, at least in this instance.

However, the release also leaves open the central question facing the market: whether this model will translate into broader adoption across institutional repo markets. Repo is a core part of the fixed-income funding ecosystem, and widespread deployment typically depends on standardization across counterparties, legal frameworks, operational integration with existing back-office systems, and consistent liquidity for collateral tokens.

One clear development to watch is whether additional repo participants adopt natively issued sovereign token collateral in similar atomic settlement workflows, and whether the approach expands beyond controlled counterparties and specific venue support. Investors and builders should also look for incremental improvements in how collateral, stablecoin settlement assets, and cross-chain liquidity integrate under Canton’s permissioned architecture.

For now, the key takeaway is that tokenized sovereign bonds are moving from “asset onchain” to “collateral in institutional finance,” and Canton’s growing set of settlement and integration features will likely determine how quickly similar strategies can move from demonstrations to repeatable market infrastructure.

Mirae Asset has set a 150 trillion won or about $109 billion target for a digital asset business spanning cryptocurrency, stablecoins, real-world assets and tokenized securities.

Digital X will anchor Mirae Asset’s $109B plan

The Korea Times reported the target after Mirae Asset founder and chairman Park Hyeon-joo presented the strategy to Digital X employees at an event in Seoul on Wednesday.

Under the plan, the financial group will develop its digital asset operations around four areas: cryptocurrency, stablecoins, real-world assets, and security token offerings. Mirae Asset also intends to digitize physical and financial assets, with gold, silver, and electricity among the examples identified by the company.

Digital X, the exchange formerly known as Korbit, will form the main operating base for the strategy. Mirae Asset is using its 1,500 trillion won in client assets as the foundation for a digital asset business equal to about 10% of that amount.

“Our initial goal is to make Digital X a core pillar of ‘Mirae Asset 3.0,’” Park said, according to The Korea Times.

Park also said the group plans to make its digital asset operations profitable in 2027. Mirae Asset has not released a timetable for reaching the full 150 trillion won target or explained how much of the figure will come from exchange assets, stablecoins, tokenized products, or other services.

The scale of the target goes far beyond Digital X’s existing exchange business. Korbit controlled only 0.5% of South Korea’s cryptocurrency trading market in 2025, according to the country’s Fair Trade Commission, leaving it well behind market leaders Upbit and Bithumb.

Founded in 2013, Korbit was South Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange. Its early entry did not translate into a large market position, but Mirae Asset’s ownership gives the platform access to capital, financial infrastructure and an established client base that it did not previously have.

Korbit acquisition gave Mirae Asset control of an exchange

Mirae Asset Consulting completed its purchase of a 97.15% stake in Korbit in July, paying a cumulative 141.4 billion won for control of the exchange. As crypto.news previously reported, the transaction made Mirae Asset the first South Korean financial group to control a domestic cryptocurrency exchange through an affiliate.

Following the Korbit takeover and rebrand, Park told employees that the new name represented the planned connection between conventional finance and digital assets. Trading, deposits, withdrawals, customer accounts, and custody arrangements continued without interruption after the ownership change.

Mirae Asset initially agreed to buy 92.06% of Korbit for about 133.48 billion won. Additional share purchases later raised its interest to 97.15% and brought the total acquisition cost to approximately 141.4 billion won.

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission approved the combination on July 9 after deciding that the transaction was unlikely to restrict competition. Korbit’s 0.5% domestic market share was central to the regulator’s assessment.

Financial support followed the takeover. On Aug. 12, Digital X’s board approved a 50 billion won injection through the issue of 10,078,614 common shares priced at 4,961 won each.

Mirae Asset Consulting was due to receive all of the newly issued shares through a third-party allotment, with payment scheduled for Aug. 27. Digital X said the proceeds would strengthen its financial structure and cover management funding needs.

The funding addresses a business that remains small and loss-making despite its long operating history. Korbit generated about 9.8 billion won in operating revenue during 2025 but posted an operating loss of 15.4 billion won, according to figures cited in the earlier report.

Unlike the 141.4 billion won spent buying shares from existing owners, the additional 50 billion won enters Digital X itself. The company has not provided a detailed breakdown showing how much will be spent on exchange operations, compliance systems, or the planned tokenization products.

South Korea is preparing rules for tokenized securities

Mirae Asset’s plans are taking shape as South Korea establishes legal infrastructure for tokenized financial products. The National Assembly passed amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and Capital Markets Act on Jan. 15, creating a route for issuing and trading securities whose ownership records are maintained through distributed ledgers.

According to South Korea’s Financial Services Commission, the revised laws recognize a blockchain-based distributed ledger as a securities registry. Issuers will still need to meet registration requirements involving the Korea Securities Depository, while offerings must follow the disclosure and securities rules applied to conventional products.

The amended legislation is scheduled to take effect on Feb. 4, 2027. Before implementation, regulators are preparing supporting rules and infrastructure for issuance, distribution and over-the-counter trading.

An August report on corporate crypto access said the regulatory program also covers about 3,500 listed companies and professional investors, which are being prepared to use real-name accounts connected to domestic exchanges.

Financial companies were excluded from that corporate trading group, while eligible businesses entered through a controlled pilot. South Korean companies had effectively been unable to trade crypto on local exchanges since 2017 because banks did not provide the real-name accounts required for corporate activity.

Tokenized securities operate under a separate legal structure. The planned system places them within South Korea’s existing capital markets framework instead of treating them as unregulated crypto assets, with licensed intermediaries handling distribution and the Korea Securities Depository maintaining formal records.

Mirae Asset has not specified which assets it will tokenize first, who will hold the underlying gold or silver, or how tokens linked to electricity would be structured. The group has also not disclosed whether the products will be limited to South Korean investors.

U.S. rules also keep tokenized assets under securities law

For U.S. investors, Mirae Asset’s planned security tokens would not automatically become available through American exchanges or brokerages. Any U.S. offer would have to comply with applicable securities, broker-dealer, trading, and disclosure requirements.

In a January statement on tokenized securities, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission distinguished between products sponsored by the original issuer and tokens created by an unrelated third party.

The SEC said third-party structures may provide direct or indirect ownership rights, contractual exposure, or synthetic exposure, depending on how the product is designed. Investors may also face risks connected to the third party, including bankruptcy exposure that may not apply to someone holding the underlying security directly.

SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said in February that tokenized versions of securities remain subject to securities regulation and that moving an instrument on-chain does not remove its legal obligations. His remarks identified issuance, custody, and trading as areas where existing requirements must work with blockchain-based systems.

Digital X has meanwhile started using lower trading costs to attract activity before the planned products arrive. On Monday, the exchange removed trading fees for every won-denominated asset, with the zero-fee program scheduled to remain in place through Aug. 24, 2027.

US President Donald Trump’s family-linked crypto ventures have left investors at least an estimated $4.7 billion underwater while generating about $1.4 billion for the president in 2025, according to Public Citizen.

Trump crypto losses reached an estimated $4.7 billion

Public Citizen estimated investor losses across five Trump-linked products, including the Official Trump memecoin, World Liberty Financial’s WLFI governance token, USD1 stablecoin, Trump Digital Trading Cards and Trump Media’s digital-asset treasury.

Most of the total came from TRUMP, which the nonprofit estimated had put buyers $3.2 billion underwater. World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token accounted for at least $1 billion, while Trump Media’s digital-asset treasury produced an estimated $450 million loss for shareholders.

Trump’s NFT trading cards added at least $9.3 million to the calculation. Public Citizen assigned no major loss to USD1 because the World Liberty stablecoin is designed to retain a value of $1 and has not suffered a sustained break from its peg.

The organization said its $4.7 billion estimate included both realized and unrealized losses. Buyers who continue to hold depreciated tokens have not locked in those losses, meaning the final amount could change if prices recover or fall further.

Public Citizen also said TRUMP trading had mainly moved wealth from later buyers to a small group that entered early, rather than causing the entire amount to disappear. Citing an analysis by blockchain intelligence company Nansen, the report said about 1 million retail wallets, or 65% of those studied, were underwater by a combined $3.2 billion.

Only about $400 million of the TRUMP total represented losses realized through sales, according to the analysis. The top 1% of profitable wallets captured roughly $2.7 billion, equal to about 80% of all gains, while wallets that entered during the token’s first two days collected almost 90% of the profits.

TRUMP launched on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before the president returned to the White House. Its price climbed from less than $1 to an all-time high of $73.43 as buyers entered, but later surrendered most of that value.

In July, crypto.news reported Nansen’s findings that nearly 989,000 wallets had accumulated $3.81 billion in realized and paper losses through the end of June. Different wallet filters and measurement dates can produce different totals, which explains why that analysis does not match Public Citizen’s $3.2 billion estimate.

Trump earned hundreds of millions from TRUMP and WLFI

While buyers absorbed losses, Public Citizen calculated that Trump received $635 million in licensing fees linked to the TRUMP memecoin during 2025. CIC Digital LLC, a Trump-owned company, licensed its name and brand to the token venture rather than buying the coins as an ordinary investor.

Two companies linked to the project retained 80% of TRUMP’s one billion-token supply, with the holdings scheduled to enter circulation over three years. According to the watchdog, the businesses also receive revenue from trading activity, allowing them to earn fees even when the token’s market price falls.

World Liberty Financial provided another large source of income. Trump received $527 million from WLFI token sales in 2025 after earning about $30 million from sales during the project’s first three months in 2024, bringing his estimated proceeds from the governance token to $557 million.

An equity transaction added $65.6 million, the organization said. Trump owns 70% of an entity that holds a 38.25% equity interest in World Liberty and receives 75% of WLFI token-sale proceeds after certain deductions, according to company documents, court records, and his financial disclosure.

World Liberty’s public-market buyers have experienced a different result. WLFI reached a record price of $0.3313 on Sept. 1, 2025, but Public Citizen valued it at $0.05744 when preparing its report. Buyers who entered at the peak were therefore down as much as 83%.

AI Financial Corporation, formerly ALT5 Sigma, accounted for most of the estimated WLFI loss. The Nasdaq-listed company acquired 7.28 billion WLFI tokens for about $1.46 billion in August 2025 and valued the position at $421 million by the end of June 2026, leaving it with a paper loss of roughly $1.04 billion.

Among 31,000 likely retail wallets that purchased WLFI through decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, Nansen found that 25,000, or 82%, were underwater as of Aug. 3. Losing wallets were down $54 million, compared with $24 million in gains among profitable wallets.

Centralized exchange activity was not included because the necessary account-level data is not public. Public Citizen therefore described its $1 billion WLFI calculation as a minimum estimate.

Financial disclosure showed $1.4 billion in crypto income

Trump’s June 2026 annual disclosure placed his crypto-related income for 2025 at more than $1 billion, with some calculations putting the amount near $1.4 billion. The earnings came mainly from memecoin licensing, World Liberty token distributions, an equity sale, and revenue tied to USD1.

As the financial disclosure showed, income and current holdings are separate figures. Licensing payments and token-sale proceeds record money received during the reporting period, while holdings describe assets still owned when the filing was prepared.

Trump reported a cold-wallet Bitcoin position worth more than $50 million, a smaller Ethereum holding, and ether staking rewards of about $1.8 million. The disclosure also recorded continuing exposure to WLFI and USD1, though federal ethics forms often place asset values within ranges rather than giving exact balances.

Public Citizen estimated that Trump earned at least $7.2 million from licensing fees and secondary-market royalties tied to four series of digital trading cards. About 175,000 cards were issued, and three of the collections covered by its calculation originally generated $12.3 million in sales but carried an aggregate market value of about $3 million when assessed.

For Trump Media shareholders, the organization estimated a $450 million loss connected to the company’s digital-asset treasury. Public Citizen included the equity exposure because investors bought shares in a publicly traded US company that later placed corporate funds into cryptocurrencies.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has denied that the president’s business interests create an ethics problem. She has said that neither Trump nor his family has engaged in conflicts of interest, while the White House maintains that the president does not participate in the management of his companies.

CLARITY Act faces renewed ethics demands

Following its loss estimate, Public Citizen called for the CLARITY Act to require a sitting president and immediate family members to divest from crypto ventures. The organization argued that federal digital-asset policy and the president’s private financial interests “cannot be separated.”

The bill would establish federal categories for digital assets and divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It also contains registration, custody, disclosure, and customer-asset provisions for companies serving US investors.

Ethics restrictions remain one of the disputed parts of the Senate negotiations, alongside decentralized finance rules and rewards paid on stablecoin balances. Democratic lawmakers have pressed for limits on crypto holdings held by elected officials, while the White House has rejected claims that Trump’s ventures affect his policy decisions.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal separately asked the SEC in August to investigate whether the TRUMP token facilitated fraud or improper enrichment after its price fell about 98% from its peak. Their request did not establish that securities fraud occurred, and the agency would need to determine whether federal securities laws apply to the token before pursuing such a case.

Trump met crypto executives and federal regulators at the White House on Aug. 19, where he asked lawmakers to approve a “fair version” of the legislation. Attendees included executives from Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, Ripple, and other digital-asset companies.

The Senate’s scheduled procedural vote is set for Sept. 15 at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Sixty senators must support cloture to begin considering the bill, and passage of the procedural motion would still leave amendments, a final Senate vote, and reconciliation with the House-approved text.

Since stepping into the role of U.N. Human Rights Office’s first chief of digital technology and human rights earlier this year, Wafa Ben-Hassine has been thinking about ways to better work with decisionmakers on AI. “Instead of just writing endless papers that collect dust, what can we actually do to talk to companies about how they build this technology and to pressure governments to hold them accountable?” asks Wafa Ben-Hassine. “The problem now is that there’s such a lack of accountability and a lack of transparency in how the companies operate, and it’s just getting worse.”

Thus she’s setting about to do “a lot of campaigning, a lot of pressure, a lot of meetings, building relationships and trust” to persuade U.N. member states “to use the tools that they have at hand to allow for greater accountability.” Specifically, she’s concerned with AI trampling on privacy, freedom of expression, and “the right to have a decent life.” She’s not new to these questions, coming to Geneva after over five years at the Omidyar Network, a social-change philanthropy, in Washington, D.C. In that role, she co-founded Humanity AI, a coalition of foundations that have pooled some $500 million to grant to projects that support humane deployments of the technology.

“I really want my section to be the authority on human rights online,” she says. “I want people to come to us to be able to ask really tough questions around child safety and privacy. I want different actors in this space to feel they can trust the expertise and guidance my section produces.”