This issue of the Weekly covers the statistical period from July 24, 2026, to July 31, 2026.
This week, the total on-chain market value of RWA stabilized at $36.8 billion, and the number of holders reached another all-time high, with a net increase of over 420,000 in a single month. However, the monthly transfer volume in the stablecoin market continued to decline sharply by nearly 30%, indicating persistently low on-chain settlement demand. The market is mired in a stalemate characterized by "accelerating capital accumulation and shrinking on-chain activity."
On the regulatory front, South Korea is advancing stablecoin legislation and considering abolishing cryptocurrency taxes, Kenya has lowered the capital threshold for issuers to $2.32 million to attract global players, Zimbabwe has launched a crypto sandbox, and regulatory frameworks in multiple countries are becoming increasingly clear.
On the project front, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)-led Project Agorá completed a real cross-border payment test involving six currencies and $1 million, with an average settlement time of 80 seconds, marking the transition of wholesale tokenization from experimentation to practical operation. Ten European financial institutions jointly established the RL1 blockchain cooperative to build infrastructure for tokenized assets.
Simultaneously, RWA use cases are extending from financial assets to trade and physical assets: South Korea's POSCO International is tokenizing commercial invoices, and Brazilian farmers have put cows on-chain to secure financing of nearly $20,000.
Data Perspective
RWA Sector Overview
According to the latest data from RWA.xyz, as of July 31, 2026, the total on-chain market value of RWA rose to $36.82 billion, a month-on-month increase of 2.43%, maintaining moderate growth. The total number of asset holders surged to 1.4469 million, a significant month-on-month increase of 40.81%, with a net addition of over 420,000 in a single month, marking the largest monthly increase ever. This indicates investors are accelerating their entry into the RWA sector, with market participation rapidly intensifying.
Stablecoin Market
The total stablecoin market value saw slight fluctuations, settling at $2,966.3 billion, a month-on-month micro-decline of 0.05%. Liquidity remained largely flat, and the overall scale stayed stable. Monthly transfer volume fell to $5.07 trillion, a significant month-on-month decline of 29.29%, continuing a deep downward trend, indicating persistently low market settlement demand.
The total number of monthly active addresses dropped to 53.67 million, a month-on-month decline of 1.55%. The total number of holders increased to 279 million, a steady month-on-month expansion of 3.13%. This divergence shows that retail allocation demand is still growing, but on-chain trading participation continues to shrink, leaving the market in a stalemate of "capital accumulation and declining activity."
The leading stablecoins are USDT, USDC, and USDS. Among them, USDT's market value increased by 1.27% month-on-month; USDC's market value saw a slight month-on-month decline of 0.28%; and USDS's market value plummeted by 14.56% month-on-month.
Regulatory News
South Korea Plans Stablecoin Rules, While Opposition Party Pushes to Abolish Cryptocurrency Tax
According to Cointelegraph, South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) plans to jointly advance a comprehensive Digital Asset Basic Act with the ruling party, covering standards for stablecoin issuance and circulation, digital asset business rules, exchange access, disclosure, internal controls, and system resilience. Currently, there are ten separate digital asset and stablecoin bills pending in the National Assembly. Points of contention include whether issuers of KRW-pegged stablecoins should be bank-held and whether major cryptocurrency exchanges should have shareholding caps.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly's Planning and Finance Committee will review a cryptocurrency tax abolition bill proposed by the opposition party. This bill, proposed in March by People Power Party lawmaker Song Eon-seok, aims to delete the clauses taxing income from digital asset transfers or lending. This tax was originally scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027, imposing a 20% tax rate plus a 2% local income tax on annual crypto income exceeding 2.5 million KRW (approximately $1,700).
Zimbabwe Securities Regulator Approves Seven Crypto and Tokenization Projects for Sandbox
According to Bitcoin.com News, the Zimbabwe Securities and Exchange Commission (SECZ) has approved seven fintech companies for its regulatory sandbox testing framework. These include the blockchain financing platform "Zimbabwe Startup Exchange," asset tokenization platform Ndarama Standard, synthetic trading platform Questview Brokers, crowdfunding platform Crowdaxe Capital, and three other institutions focusing on asset, infrastructure, or securities tokenization: Procode Platforms, Financial Securities Exchange, and Colmin Resources Zimbabwe. SECZ stated that the sandbox aims to foster responsible innovation, enhance financial inclusion, and promote capital market development. Participants will be under strict regulatory supervision, and SECZ reserves the right to issue further guidance or operational requirements.
Kenya Reduces Stablecoin Issuer Capital Requirement by 40% to $2.32 Million
According to Bitcoin.com News, Kenya's Treasury Ministry has released revised regulatory rules, lowering the minimum paid-up capital requirement for stablecoin issuers by 40% from the nearly $3.9 million in the previous draft to approximately $2.32 million (300 million Kenyan Shillings). This aims to lower the entry barrier for global issuers into the local market.
The new rules retain stringent regulatory requirements: the Central Bank of Kenya will exercise broad regulatory oversight over stablecoin issuers and other virtual asset service providers; stablecoins must be 1:1 backed by compliant reserve assets, and customers can redeem them at face value within two business days. Regarding reserve arrangements, at least 30% of customer funds must be held in segregated trust accounts at Kenyan commercial banks, with the remaining funds invested in qualified local assets; fiat-pegged stablecoins must also be backed by reserve assets in the same currency as their pegged currency.
Project Updates
BIS-Led Project Agorá Completes $1 Million Tokenized Fund Cross-Border Payment Test
According to The Block, Project Agorá, led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), has completed a real cross-border payment test with participation from five central banks and 28 commercial banks, including JPMorgan, Citibank, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Standard Chartered. The test used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to execute approximately $1 million in real transactions involving six currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, and KRW, with an average settlement time of about 80 seconds.
The test used a shared ledger, allowing banks to complete transactions on a single record, and tested synchronized foreign exchange settlement to reduce counterparty risk. Project Agorá is one of several wholesale tokenization projects aimed at exploring how digital technology can modernize the infrastructure of global financial markets.
Ten European Financial Institutions Jointly Establish RL1 Blockchain Cooperative Focused on Tokenized Assets
According to Cointelegraph, ten European financial institutions have jointly established the Regulated Layer One (RL1) blockchain cooperative to provide infrastructure for regulated financial markets and tokenized assets. Founding members include ING, Spain's Cecabank, France's Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, Germany's DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, France's Natixis CIB, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and Seturion, among others.
RL1 is a European cooperative registered in Luxembourg, where each member has equal governance decision-making rights. This private, permissioned chain is based on infrastructure developed by German fintech company SWIAT, which has transferred ownership of the network to the cooperative. RL1 aims to support institutional use cases such as digital currencies, tokenized bonds, collateral, and blockchain settlement, reducing fragmentation caused by financial institutions running their own distributed ledger systems. Former SWIAT Managing Director Henning Vollbehr will lead RL1. KfW and L-Bank will continue to support the initiative, and RL1 is in discussions with institutions like NatWest about joining.
Aviva Investors Gets Irish Central Bank Approval to Launch Tokenized USD Liquidity Fund
According to Cointelegraph, London-based asset manager Aviva Investors, after receiving approval from the Irish Central Bank, has launched tokenized shares of its USD Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger. Qualified investors can participate via digital wallets. The fund's underlying assets are still held by custodian Bank of New York Mellon, with Komainu providing digital asset custody and Licuido providing tokenization infrastructure. The fund invests in high-rated short-term USD-denominated debt securities and money market instruments, and the tokenized shares share the same investment objectives and liquidity characteristics as the traditional fund.
South Korean Trade Giant POSCO International and LG CNS Are Tokenizing Commercial Invoices Using Injective Network
According to Coindesk, South Korea's largest trading company, POSCO International, is collaborating with LG CNS, the technology arm of the LG Group, to tokenize actual commercial invoices using the Injective network. POSCO International is using real commercial invoices generated from trade between its global subsidiaries (not simulated data) for tokenization, aiming to accelerate cross-border payment processes. Through the blockchain's shared ledger, a single transferable record is created, embedding compliance rules, reducing reconciliation time between buyers, sellers, and banks, and improving capital turnover efficiency.
Brazilian Farmers Put Cows On-Chain, Securing Nearly $20,000 in Financing; Smart Collars Prevent Double-Spending
According to CoinDesk, farmers in Paraná, Brazil, tokenized 10 cows as Real World Assets (RWAs) on the B3 stock exchange, obtaining nearly $20,000 in credit lines to cope with local banks tightening loans to small agricultural businesses. Led by Brazilian agritech company Cowmed, the project equips each cow with an AI-powered Smarty Collar that monitors health, behavior, and location in real-time. The raw data is encrypted to generate a corresponding digital identity and written into the credit agreement with B3. Continuous tracking prevents the same cow from being double-pledged and allows for the replacement of a deceased cow with another living one. Cowmed currently monitors approximately 100,000 cows, with total asset value exceeding $395 million. It is estimated that up to 20% of the network may adopt this financing model, potentially unlocking around $77.6 million in agricultural credit.
BNY Mellon Moving Its Core Transfer Agency Record-Keeping to Blockchain
According to CoinDesk, BNY Mellon, one of the world's largest custodians, is migrating its core Transfer Agency (TA) business to blockchain. This will establish a single on-chain holder register for approximately $8.6 trillion in assets across 7.6 million accounts, aiming to reduce multiple intermediaries and reconciliation costs. Initial clients include Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, and BNY's own Dreyfus. Among them, Baillie Gifford will launch the first fully native, UK-regulated tokenized fund, while BlackRock and Dreyfus plan to issue more tokenized products on this system. BNY Mellon will also maintain its traditional TA system, expecting the traditional and on-chain architectures to run in parallel for a considerable time. It emphasizes that cybersecurity risks, such as smart contract vulnerabilities, still need to be addressed.
Securitize Obtains SEC Advisor License, Expanding Its Regulated Platform
According to The Block, Securitize Capital, a subsidiary of the tokenization company Securitize, has officially obtained its registration as a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Registered Investment Adviser. This enables it to collaborate more closely with asset managers and institutional investors on tokenized investment strategies. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo stated this is a significant step in the platform's continued expansion. With this, Securitize's U.S. platform now integrates four regulated businesses: SEC-registered investment adviser, SEC-registered broker-dealer (operating an Alternative Trading System/ATS), SEC-registered transfer agent, and fund administration services. Securitize went public via SPAC merger on July 2.
Ondo Launches New Execution Network Ondo Network, Replacing Original Ondo Chain Roadmap
According to The Block, Ondo Finance announced the launch of a new execution layer, Ondo Network, describing it as an "evolution" of the previously planned Ondo Chain and stating it will not run in parallel with Ondo Chain. While developing the perpetual futures exchange Ondo Perps, Ondo discovered that trading bottlenecks primarily lie in execution rather than settlement. Therefore, it decouples execution from settlement and validation: secure hardware enclaves handle high-speed, privacy-preserving transaction execution by default, a decentralized attestor network verifies its running code, asset settlement currently occurs on Ethereum (with support for more public chains planned), and state is periodically committed on-chain. Ondo Network is a general-purpose execution layer that, beyond perpetual futures, can be extended to spot trading, lending, structured products, and other applications requiring fast, private, and verifiable execution. The role of the ONDO token remains as the core for governance and incentives.
Stablecoin Open USD to Deploy on Ethereum Network on Launch Day
Ethereum Institutional, an Ethereum ecosystem nonprofit, posted on platform X that the stablecoin Open USD will be deployed on the Ethereum network on its launch day. The project has received support from over 140 institutions, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and BNY Mellon. All reserve earnings will flow to partners driving its growth.
Tether's Compliant Stablecoin USA₮ Officially Launches on Celo, Its Second Mainnet Deployment After Ethereum
According to The Block, Tether's compliant stablecoin USA₮ (USAT) has officially launched on the Celo mainnet, marking its second mainnet deployment after Ethereum. The token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo, and can be used directly for on-chain Gas payments leveraging Celo's fee abstraction mechanism. USAT launched earlier this year and currently has a market cap of approximately $185 million.
U.S. Stock Token Trading Platform MSTX Lists 1 New U.S. Stock Contract Token
The U.S. stock token trading platform MSTX has launched contract trading for the global leader in advanced packaging and testing, $AMKR.M.
Insights Collection
RWA Issuance Competition Second Half: Amidst Utilization Dilemma, On-Chain Assets Worth Billions Awake
PANews Overview: Although the total on-chain RWA scale has surpassed $32 billion, reaching a new high, approximately 90% of assets are dormant, facing a severe DeFi utilization dilemma.
Leading platforms show significant divergence: Issuers like Securitize and Ondo have extremely low DeFi utilization (less than 3%), while credit protocols like Maple achieve high utilization of 62% thanks to application scenarios. Main reasons for low utilization include: treasury assets primarily held for yield, KYC whitelist restrictions hindering permissionless circulation, and a lack of market-making and secondary market infrastructure.
Currently, the RWA competition is shifting from "asset issuance" to "application and distribution channels," with gateway channels like Robinhood becoming key to breaking the deadlock. The future lies in improving liquidity and compliance ecosystems to make tokenized assets truly "usable."
25-Year-Old Founder's Financial Dream: How to Raise $180 Million to Build "Stablecoin Clearing Bank" Augustus
PANews Overview: European payments company Augustus (formerly Ivy), led by 25-year-old founder Ferdinand Dabitz, recently completed a $180 million funding round, valuing the company at $1 billion, and received conditional approval for a U.S. OCC national bank charter.
The company is transforming from its early focus on open banking merchant checkout APIs into a "stablecoin wholesale bank" encompassing tokenized deposits and digital asset wallets. Despite its strong funding background and high-profile attention, its founding team lacks experience in managing the balance sheet of a regulated bank. Furthermore, its proprietary platform's cost-reduction capabilities and actual business conversion rates face severe challenges.
Stablecoin War: OUSD's Three Core Fronts Challenging USDC
PANews Overview: At the end of June 2026, the Open Standard alliance, comprising over 140 institutions including Visa and Stripe, launched a new stablecoin, OUSD. It breaks the model where traditional issuers like Circle exclusively keep reserve interest earnings by redistributing treasury yield income to partners. This poses a structural challenge to Circle's distribution channels and profit margins.
However, OUSD also faces headwinds such as long application cycles (18-24 months) for independent compliance licenses, potentially inefficient alliance governance coordination, and high infrastructure development costs. In contrast, USDC has a deep network effect and the CCTP cross-chain technology moat within open DeFi, and Circle could counter by establishing its own profit-sharing mechanism. The future competition between the two may unfold in the areas of enterprise settlement and B2B payments.
