Weekly briefing · Edition 14 · 2 August 2026 · covering 27 July to 2 August
OpenAssets and Partior complete proof of concept for atomic DvP with tokenised deposits as the settlement asset
Edited by Cliffton Lee · Singapore · 18 items covered from 479 sources reviewed
Key points
BNY launched a Digital Transfer Agency for natively digital funds on 29 July 2026, running alongside a conventional transfer agency servicing around $8.6 trillion in assets, with Baillie Gifford, BlackRock's BSTBL share class, and BNY's own Dreyfus BLIQUID money-market fund as early deployments.
The BIS published Project Agorá results on 30 July 2026 showing 22 financial institutions and 5 central banks settled 30 real-money transactions worth roughly CHF 800,000 across 6 currencies, averaging about 80 seconds from initiation to settlement, with the New York Fed absent from the live phase.
Anchorpoint, the Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT, and Animoca Brands joint venture and one of the HKMA's first two licensed stablecoin issuers, was reported on 29 July 2026 to be within two weeks of publicly issuing the HKDAP Hong Kong dollar stablecoin on Ethereum mainnet.
Circle received a New York trust charter on 31 July 2026, pairing an NYDFS trust as USDC issuer with its OCC-approved First National Digital Currency Bank in a dual-charter structure that Ripple mirrors and Paxos has rejected in favour of a single national trust.
KB Kookmin Bank partnered with JPMorgan on 27 July 2026 to offer clients 24/7 dollar payments over Kinexys blockchain deposit accounts across 10 corridors, on a network averaging $7 billion in daily transaction volume.
Around it, the Bank for International Settlements published results on 30 July 2026 showing Project Agorá's first real-money phase settled 30 transactions worth roughly CHF 800,000 across 6 currencies in about 80 seconds on average, and Hong Kong's first licensed Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, HKDAP, was reported to be within two weeks of public issuance.
The PoC integrated OpenAssets' digital asset infrastructure with Partior's tokenised-deposit network for atomic delivery-versus-payment (DvP) across digital assets, regulated stablecoins, and commercial bank money, and the main thrust reads as stablecoin redemption and clearing settled in tokenised deposits, on a per-transaction or bulk basis. OpenAssets shares a backer with Partior in Valor Capital and is closely tied to Tether, whose Hadron tokenisation platform its CEO advises, so the architecture sketches how Tether-adjacent flows could clear through the bank-money network built around DBS, JPMorgan, and Standard Chartered.
Local reports as of 29 July 2026 put public issuance of HKDAP, from the Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT, and Animoca Brands joint venture, within two weeks, moving one of the HKMA's first two Stablecoins Ordinance licensees from approval to live issuance. The token launches on Ethereum mainnet after a May transfer test with OSL and Futu-backed PantherTrade, with 1:1 segregated Hong Kong dollar reserves and a B2B2C rollout first, which would make HKDAP the first bank-backed HKD stablecoin live on a public chain under a dedicated licensing regime, while Korea's won-stablecoin bill is still waiting on its September reintroduction.
BPI, the country's second-largest bank, partnered with stablecoin infrastructure firm Meridian for inbound remittances, starting with payroll credits for freelancers and virtual assistants and expanding ahead of the ASEAN Summit in November, in coordination with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The Philippines received $38.34 billion in inbound remittances in 2024, and the defensive logic is explicit: many Filipinos already use stablecoins, and BPI wants the cash landing in deposit accounts rather than leaking to external wallets.
KB Kookmin, part of Korea's largest financial group by assets, will offer clients 24/7 dollar payments through Kinexys blockchain deposit accounts across 10 corridors including Korea, the US, Singapore, and the Gulf, rolling out via local branches and Singapore on a network averaging $7 billion in daily transactions as of the 27 July 2026 report. Unlike POSCO International's own-payments deal with Kinexys last year, this is client-facing distribution, and the corridor list maps exactly to where JPMorgan offers blockchain deposit accounts.
Korea's largest trading company is issuing, transferring, and settling real intragroup trade receivables on Injective with LG CNS as technology partner, with plans to move to live production after the pilot completes later this year. The design puts a single transferable record with embedded compliance rules on receivables, a working-capital asset class banks currently securitise offline, which extends Korean corporate tokenisation beyond funds and payments into trade finance.
Project Agorá's first real-value phase processed 30 transactions worth roughly CHF 800,000 ($984,000) across 6 currencies with 22 financial institutions and 5 central banks, backed by actual central bank reserves and tokenised deposits, averaging around 80 seconds from initiation to settlement per the 30 July 2026 report. Lloyds confirmed involvement in 3 transactions, the dollar was the only tested currency whose central bank sat out the live phase, and the project remains explicitly experimental with no production commitment.
Two weeks after launching the Visa Stablecoin Platform on OpenUSD, CEO Ryan McInerney said Visa will fold the platform into Pismo, its cloud-native issuer-processing and core-banking subsidiary, which already supports tokenised deposits for financial institutions, and confirmed willingness to acquire across the stablecoin stack.
BNY launched a Digital Transfer Agency alongside a conventional business servicing around $8.6 trillion in assets across 7.6 million accounts as of 29 July 2026, putting the fund register onchain as a single source of ownership rather than a reconciled digital twin, with stablecoins and fiat both accepted to settle issuance and redemption. Baillie Gifford co-designed the offering and used it for its UK digitally native fund on Ethereum and Solana, BNY's Dreyfus unit will deploy it for a new natively digital money-market fund, BLIQUID, and BlackRock is expected to use it for BSTBL, its digital share class targeting stablecoin issuers, which puts a G-SIB custodian in direct competition with Securitize for the digital transfer agent role BlackRock already sources for BUIDL.
The Central Bank of Ireland approved digital tokens for the Aviva Investors USD Liquidity Fund, whose other share classes hold $1.23 billion in assets as of the 31 July 2026 announcement, issued with Ripple on the public XRP Ledger, but each token mirrors a conventional book entry, cannot exist independently of it, and is non-transferable, which caps the collateral-mobility case that usually justifies tokenising an MMF.
Open Standard, the independent company governing OpenUSD, counts more than 140 organisations including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Coinbase, and Western Union as of 31 July 2026, and plans to distribute reserve earnings to ecosystem partners with fee-free minting and redemption, though launch timing, issuance structure, reserve composition, and the compliance framework all remain undisclosed.
MSSE and MSOL launch on NYSE Arca at a 0.14% expense ratio with staking rewards passed through, following the April bitcoin trust that drew more than $381 million through 16 July 2026, extending the wirehouse's packaged digital-asset shelf while its tokenised MMF exploration continues in the background.
The NYDFS trust replaces the BitLicense as USDC's issuance vehicle and will direct Circle's OCC-approved national trust, First National Digital Currency Bank, on custody and eventually reserve management, mirroring Ripple's RLUSD structure while Paxos goes the other way and converts its NYDFS trust into a single national trust.
A mystery-shopping study of 200 USDC transfers across 10 corridors found total costs from 0.3% to almost 9% of the amount sent, with exchange fees, FX spreads, and local banking charges, not blockchain fees, driving the bill, concentrating the cost problem in the fiat last mile rather than the rails.
Two banking-association responses to the Federal Reserve's May consultation seek safeguards and a narrower scope for the cut-down master-account alternative, including a push for the Fed to publish its eligibility interpretation, which matters because the OCC national-trust wave would mostly land in Tier 3 unless holding companies also come under Fed oversight.
The Bank of Russia's draft extends securities-market rules to digital assets, creating regulated digital depositories with tiered capital of 50 million to 250 million rubles ($570,000 to $2.8 million), under a framework due in full force by September 2026.
Ondo Finance shelved its planned Ondo Chain in favour of Ondo Network, separating fast, private trade execution from settlement on public blockchains, with perpetual futures collateralised by tokenised assets as the first application; the firm holds about $2.6 billion in tokenised Treasury products and roughly $850 million in tokenised equities as of 28 July 2026 per rwa.xyz.
Digital Prime Technologies' lending venue, live since May, now counts Galaxy, Marex, LTP, Flow Traders, Clear Street, EDX Markets, Ripple Prime, QCP, GSR, and StoneX Digital as launch partners representing more than $1 billion in day-one inventory and demand as of 29 July 2026, in a centralised digital-asset lending market where Tether holds a 62.25% share.
SWIAT transferred its DLT platform to the Luxembourg-based RL1 cooperative, now 10 members across five countries including ABN Amro, DekaBank, DZ Bank, LBBW, Natixis CIB, Cecabank, Crédit Mutuel, and Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, positioning a neutral European settlement network ahead of the Eurosystem's Project Pontes going live in September with wholesale CBDC settlement.
Worth watching next
Whether Anchorpoint confirms HKDAP public issuance within the reported two-week window, and which distribution platforms carry it first.
Project Agorá’s decision on a next phase, and whether the Federal Reserve and Bank of Canada join live testing after sitting out the real-money leg.
OUSD’s missing disclosures: issuance structure, reserve composition, and launch timeline, and whether consortium members commit settlement volume beyond the announcement.
The Federal Reserve’s response to the Skinny payment-account consultation, and whether it publishes a master-account eligibility interpretation.
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