🪙 Bitcoin hits $90k, Tether's Tokenisation Platform & Goldman Unveil Digital Assets Platform

Sunday is here.

Welcome back to another newsletter from us at The Merge.

Tokenisation News

🪙 Tether Announces Hadron

🇺🇸 Goldman Unveils Plans for Digital Asset Platform

🌐 First Tokenised Fund Rated by both Moody’s (Tradfi) and Particula (Defi)

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Global Market Overview

Real World Assets on-chain (excl stablecoins) are worth $13.19 billion (↑0.44% from last month).

There are 65,879 Total Asset Holders (↑3.6% from last month).

• $183.81b is in Stablecoins

• $9.32b is within Private Credit

• $2.39b is in US Treasury Debt

• $1.03b is in Commodities

• $103.53m is in Global Bonds

• $10.42m is in Stocks

The top 3 networks are 🥇Ethereum ($101.4b in Total Value Locked) 🥈Tron ($63.6b in TVL) &🥉Binance Smart Chain ($5.24b in TVL).

Fancy taking a look for yourself? Check it out here.

So, what’s being tokenised this week?

Private Credit

Currently, there are $9.3 billion in active-value loans and $15.59 billion in total loan value across all protocols.

As of today, the top 3 current protocols with outstanding loans are 🥇Figure ($8.7b)🥈Maple Finance ($291m) &🥉Centrifuge ($85m).

Top stories this week?

🌐 Anemoy’s Liquid Treasury Fund Becomes First Tokenised Fund Rated by Moody’s and Particula

Anemoy, a web3 asset manager built on Centrifuge, has hit a major milestone with its Liquid Treasury Fund, which is managed by Janus Henderson.

The fund recently became the first tokenised fund to receive ratings from both Moody’s (CeFI) and Particula (DeFI) 🚀

Moody’s awarded the fund an Aa rating, reflecting confidence in the quality of its assets and strong operational oversight. Meanwhile, Particula gave it an A+ rating, highlighting the fund’s solid structure and transparent management.

These ratings represent a big step forward for tokenised assets, signalling growing trust from traditional finance players in blockchain-powered investments.

This not only validates the potential of tokenisation to revolutionise asset management but also bridges the gap between decentralised technology and institutional finance, paving the way for more innovation in this space.

Stablecoins

Currently, the market cap of stablecoins is $183.81 billion (↑7.4% from last month)

As of today, it makes up 0.88% (↑7.4% from last month) of all M2 Money Supply with Monthly Transfer Volume totalling $1.89 trillion (↑26.09% from last month).

The top 3 current entities are 🥇Tether ($128.5b)🥈Circle ($36.8b) &🥉Binance ($4.6b).

Top stories this week?

🪙 Tether Announces Hadron

Tether's new tokenisation platform as a service, which is accessible to professionals and institutions, incorporates all of the tokenisation technology that Tether has developed over the past ten years.

Customers can issue and oversee the whole lifecycle of stablecoins (fiat-peg, commodity-backed, etc.) using Hadron including:

• Tokenised funds, bonds, and stocks

• Structured goods that are tokenised (collateral as basket, etc.)

• Tokenised artwork and real estate; loyalty points

Hadron by Tether supports several blockchains and is completely non-custodial, meaning that users always maintain complete ownership and accountability including a comprehensive set of tools for KYC, AML and risk management.

It makes use of an extremely user-friendly UI to set up and configure hardware wallets as well as multi-signature wallets.

Currently, it is under private beta however the team have presented to multiple institutions and governments garnering positive feedback and interest already. They are making moves already to implement Quantoz - a company with 2 MiCAR-compliant European grassroots stablecoins.

Commodities

Currently, the market cap of commodities is $1.03b (↓6.62% from last week).

As of today, the Monthly Transfer Volume totals $309.9m (↑73% from last month) with 57.2k addresses that are current holders.

The top 3 current entities are 🥇Paxos ($505.7m)🥈Tether ($500.7m) & 🥉Comtech Gold ($10.8m).

Top stories this week?

🇺🇸 Goldman Unveils Plans for Digital Asset Platform

Goldman Sachs is planning to spin off its digital assets platform in the next 12 to 18 months, marking a big step in its push into blockchain and crypto.

This platform has been central to the bank's efforts to develop tools for trading cryptocurrencies and tokenised assets.

The decision comes as interest in digital assets continues to grow, especially with the U.S. SEC recently approving spot bitcoin ETFs—a sign of the market maturing and Trump’s positive position on Crypto which only adds to investor and institutional sentiment of the US market.

By spinning off the platform, Goldman aims to create a more flexible, standalone business that can better keep up with the rapid changes in the digital asset space.

It also opens the door for new partnerships and investments, helping Goldman position itself as a leader in what could be the future of finance.

Bonds

Currently, the total value of bonds is $103.53m (↓0.51% from last week).

As of today, the Average Yield to Maturity is 0%. There are 450 Holders (↓3.11% from last week).

The top 3 current entities are 🥇Spiko ($77.9m)🥈 Backed Finance ($20.32m)🥉 OpenTrade ($5.31m).

Top stories this week?

💶 Institutions urge ECB to extend wholesale DLT trials

Participants in the European Central Bank's (ECB) wholesale DLT trials are urging the institution to extend the program, recognising the transformative potential of integrating tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) with central bank money.

The trials, involving entities like Clearstream, DekaBank, and Union Investment, explored the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to streamline the settlement of tokenised assets.

The participants believe that the tokenisation of RWAs can lower operational costs, reduce settlement risks, and significantly improve market efficiencies by leveraging central bank digital money for instant and secure transactions.

The feedback highlights that tokenisation could be key to creating a digital capital markets union in Europe, where tokenised securities and central bank money coexist seamlessly.

Participants are pressing the ECB to outline a roadmap for further testing and implementation to capitalise on the momentum gained during the trials.

Stocks

Currently, the total value of stocks is $10.42m (↑30.42% from last month).

As of today, the Monthly Transfer Volume totals $339.83k (↑272.79% from last month🔥) with 88 Active Addresses and 317 Current Holders.

The top 3 current entities are 🥇Coinbase Global ($6.4m)🥈iShares Core S&P 500 ($2.1m) &🥉Nvidia ($1.44m).

Weekly Resource List

🌐 RWA.xyz: On-Chain RWA Analytics

Explore tokenised real-world assets and the investors, issuers and service providers participating in public blockchains. View protocol statistics, industry aggregate metrics, and the issuers all in one place (link)

🔎 Santiment: Crypto Intelligence Tool

A behaviour analytics platform for crypto, sourcing on-chain, social and development information on thousands of coins, including market signals. For RWA’s insights check out this (link) 

💳 Coinbase Wallet: The Crypto Wallet of Choice

You’ve more than likely heard and probably used Coinbase, so no introduction is needed. This is by far one of the easiest and non-crypto native wallets to be picked up and used by anyone. They even have a ‘Simple Mode’ for beginners. (link) 

As always, thanks for reading.

Vote below and let us know your thoughts this week —we’d love to hear from you.

See you next Sunday,

Merge