Blockchain & Digital Assets Weekly Briefing - Week 4
- danae317
- 7 days ago
- 13 min read
Week ending 23rd January 2026
This week’s developments show major institutions and governments integrating digital assets into core financial activity. The New York Stock Exchange is building a tokenized securities platform for on-chain settlement, while Interactive Brokers now allows clients to fund accounts with stablecoins at any time. In payments, WalletConnect and Ingenico are bringing stablecoin transactions to physical retail stores. At the state level, Bermuda has announced plans for a fully on-chain national economy, and Iran’s central bank reportedly turned to USDT purchases to support the rial under sanctions pressure. Together, these moves suggest that both market infrastructure and public policy are increasingly engaging with blockchain-based finance.
NYSE builds new tokenized securities platform to support 24/7 trading and on-chain settlement.
Interactive Brokers now lets clients fund brokerage accounts with stablecoins 24/7.
From wallets to tills: WalletConnect and Ingenico roll out stablecoin payments in stores.
Bermuda unveils plan to build the first fully onchain national economy.
Iran’s central bank bought $507m in USDT to support rial amid sanctions pressure.
Beyond the Brief
NYSE builds new tokenized securities platform to support 24/7 trading and on-chain settlement
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), part of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE), has announced the development of a novel trading platform that uses blockchain technology to enable 24-hour, seven-day trading and on-chain settlement of tokenized securities, including U.S. equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
In a press release dated January 19, 2026, NYSE said the platform—still subject to regulatory approval—will combine its established Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade systems. This approach aims to support constant trading hours, instant settlement via tokenized capital, and stablecoin-based funding, while allowing orders to be placed in dollar amounts rather than traditional share counts.
Under the design, tokenized shares will remain fully fungible with conventional securities and grant holders the same dividend rights and governance privileges as existing stockowners. Access will be open to all qualified broker-dealers, and the platform will support multiple blockchain networks for settlement and custody.
ICE’s announcement highlights that this platform forms part of a broader digital strategy, which includes extending clearing infrastructure and exploring tokenized collateral to support continuous trading. The initiative also involves collaboration with major banks, including BNY Mellon and Citigroup, to facilitate tokenized deposits that operate outside traditional banking hours.
Context and Industry Position
Tokenization refers to representing financial instruments—such as stocks or ETF shares—as digital tokens on distributed ledgers. Proponents argue this can reduce settlement times, lower costs, and expand access to markets. NYSE’s move reflects wider industry efforts; other exchanges, such as Nasdaq, have been pursuing regulatory approvals for tokenized trading infrastructure.
However, the timeline for deployment remains uncertain. The platform must secure approval from U.S. regulators, particularly given the complexity of blending blockchain mechanisms with traditional securities market protections. Critics caution that blockchain-based trading may introduce operational risks and require robust oversight to maintain fairness and stability for investors.
Critical Considerations
Regulatory approval: The NYSE’s rollout depends on clearance from U.S. market regulators, who will assess the platform’s compliance with investor protection and market-integrity rules.
Market adoption: Long-standing market participants must weigh the benefits of blockchain (speed, transparency) against integration costs and systemic risks.
Competition: Other exchanges and financial institutions are actively exploring similar digital asset infrastructures, suggesting a broader industry shift rather than an NYSE-specific transformation.
Interactive Brokers now lets clients fund brokerage accounts with stablecoins 24/7
On January 15, 2026, Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR) announced a new feature allowing eligible clients to fund their brokerage accounts using stablecoins with around-the-clock availability, including weekends and holidays.
Under the new capability, clients can transfer USDC—a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar—from an external crypto wallet into a secure wallet provided via a partnership with ZeroHash. Once received, funds are automatically converted into U.S. dollars and credited to the client’s brokerage account, enabling near-instant access to trade across 170 global markets.
Interactive Brokers plans to add support for additional stablecoins, including Ripple’s RLUSD and PayPal’s PYUSD, within the following week.
The firm does not charge fees for stablecoin deposits, though clients remain responsible for any blockchain network fees, and ZeroHash charges a conversion fee of 0.30% per deposit (minimum $1).
Background and Market Context
Traditional brokerage account funding often relies on bank wires or fiat transfers that are limited by business hours, can be slow, and may incur higher costs, especially for international clients. The stablecoin funding option addresses these limitations by enabling 24/7 deposits that settle much faster and at lower cost than conventional cross-border payment systems.
Early reporting by independent outlets highlights that Interactive Brokers’ move positions the firm among a growing number of institutional financial services bridging traditional finance with digital assets, enhancing capital accessibility and potentially exerting pressure on competitors to adopt similar digital asset integrations.
Critical Considerations
Benefits acknowledged:
Speed and availability: Instant or near-instant funding at all hours, breaking the constraint of banking windows.
Expanded market access: Funds become trade-ready across multiple global markets shortly after transfer.
Low or no broker fees: No deposit fee from Interactive Brokers itself.
Risks and limitations:
Custody and conversion risks: Stablecoins remain subject to their underlying smart-contract and custodial risks; automatic conversion to USD introduces counterparty and basis risk tied to the conversion mechanism. (Implicit in the feature’s design and inherent to stablecoin use; risks are not fully detailed in the press release.)
Eligibility constraints: The service is only available to “eligible clients,” with criteria and regional availability not fully transparent in the announcement.
From wallets to tills: WalletConnect and Ingenico roll out stablecoin payments in stores
In January 2026, new developments in the digital payments sector showed that crypto-based payments are moving from concept toward real retail use. A blog post by WalletConnect argued that stablecoin and crypto payments are now a business reality with real transaction volumes, while a press release the week before from Ingenico announced a partnership with WalletConnect Pay to enable stablecoin acceptance at physical checkouts.
Why Ingenico matters in this rollout
Ingenico is a leading global provider of payment acceptance solutions, best known for point-of-sale (POS) terminals and related merchant services. The company is widely cited as the market leader in POS terminals, with more than 40 million devices deployed across over 120 countries. It serves more than 1,000 banks and acquirers and supports millions of daily transactions in retail, hospitality, transportation, fuel, vending, and other sectors.
This scale is critical because it means stablecoin payments are being introduced directly into mainstream retail infrastructure rather than through separate, crypto-specific checkout systems.
What WalletConnect and WalletConnect Pay provide
WalletConnect is an open protocol and infrastructure layer that securely connects crypto wallets to applications. It originally became widely used for connecting wallets to decentralized applications through QR-code scanning and transaction signing. WalletConnect Pay is the company’s dedicated payments product, designed to support compliant crypto and stablecoin payments from compatible wallets across multiple blockchains, with low fees and fast settlement, and without requiring merchants to hold digital assets.
WalletConnect reports compatibility with more than 700 wallets, which is intended to reduce friction for consumers by avoiding single-wallet dependencies.
What is actually being deployed
Under the January 2026 partnership, WalletConnect Pay is integrated into Ingenico’s Android-based POS terminals through a software update. Merchants do not need to replace terminals or add external hardware. Instead, acquirers and payment service providers enable the feature on their side, and merchants receive it as part of their existing payment setup.
The initial rollout targets acquirers and payment service providers starting in January 2026, with merchant availability expected first in Europe during the first half of 2026 and the possibility of expansion to other regions afterward. At checkout, customers can pay using any WalletConnect-compatible wallet and supported stablecoins, including USDC, EURC, and USDT, across several EVM-compatible blockchains such as Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Base, and Arbitrum.
From the merchant perspective, settlement is designed to occur quickly in fiat currency through their existing payment service provider. This means merchants do not need to manage crypto custody, private keys, or blockchain operations, and accounting remains largely aligned with traditional card payments.
WalletConnect: crypto payments are already big business
In its January 19 blog post, WalletConnect argued that crypto payments, particularly via stablecoins, are already operating at significant scale. The company cited stablecoin transfer volumes of roughly 27.6 trillion dollars and a global crypto-holding population exceeding 560 million people as indicators that digital currencies are being used for real economic activity rather than only speculation.
This isn’t just top-down innovation from payment platforms. It’s bottom-up demand from merchants. Last week, we posted a message on X announcing our Ingenico partnership. The response was overwhelming from merchants, not just one or two messages; it was hundreds. Coffee shops. Wine bars. Retail stores. Local businesses. All are asking the same thing: “How do we accept crypto?” and “Can we start using WalletConnect Pay?” Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect
WalletConnect also pointed to growing support from established payment companies as evidence that crypto payments are being integrated into existing commerce rather than remaining isolated in crypto-native environments.
What this partnership changes
Despite those uncertainties, the WalletConnect–Ingenico partnership lowers one of the main historical barriers to crypto payments: integration into everyday checkout systems. By embedding stablecoin acceptance into existing POS terminals and routing settlement through traditional payment service providers, the model shifts crypto payments from experimental pilots to a format that merchants can enable with minimal operational change.
In practical terms, this is not just a proof of concept. It is a live commercial deployment pathway, starting with European merchants in early 2026 and potentially expanding globally, depending on regulatory approvals and acquirer participation.
Bermuda unveils plan to build the first fully onchain national economy
The government of Bermuda has announced an initiative to transform its entire economic infrastructure onto public blockchain systems, aiming to become the first nation to operate a “fully onchain” national economy in partnership with digital asset firms Circle and Coinbase.
At the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Bermuda’s premier David Burt outlined a strategy to integrate blockchain-based payments, digital wallets, and tokenization tools across public agencies, financial institutions, merchants and consumers. Under the plan, stablecoins such as USDC will be piloted for government payments and everyday transactions, with Circle and Coinbase supplying digital asset infrastructure, enterprise tools and technical support.
Bermuda’s government frames the shift as a response to persistent constraints of traditional payment systems, especially high fees and slow settlement times that affect small and medium businesses in island economies. Officials predict that using blockchain and stablecoins could reduce transaction costs, enlarge access to global finance, and retain more economic value locally.
The initiative builds on Bermuda’s long-standing digital asset regulatory framework, first established with the digital asset business act in 2018, which enabled early licensing of Circle and Coinbase. Previous pilot efforts, including a USDC airdrop at the Bermuda digital finance forum in 2025 that encouraged local merchant adoption of onchain payments, are cited by officials as evidence of early traction.
Bermuda’s approach includes nationwide digital finance education and onboarding programmes to ensure broader public and institutional participation. Government agencies will start by piloting stablecoin-based payments, while banks and insurers explore tokenization of financial products. The Bermuda digital finance forum scheduled for may 11–14, 2026 is expected to accelerate these efforts with expanded business engagement.
Critical considerations and context
The announcement is notable for its ambition but also raises practical questions that are not fully addressed in official statements and press coverage:
Technical and regulatory readiness: Integrating blockchain systems into core national economic functions presents technical, cybersecurity and legal challenges, especially around consumer protection, operational resilience and regulatory oversight.
Market adoption: Existing onchain use in Bermuda remains limited, and widespread stablecoin adoption for everyday payments has not yet been proven at national scale outside pilot environments.
Risk and volatility: While stablecoins aim to maintain price stability, they remain subject to regulatory scrutiny and operational risks distinct from fiat currency systems.
These issues suggest that transitioning to a fully onchain economy, if pursued, will require careful phased implementation and transparent evaluation of outcomes.
Iran’s central bank bought $507m in USDT to support rial amid sanctions pressure
Recent blockchain research reveals that the central bank of Iran acquired approximately $507 million worth of the stablecoin Tether’s USDT over the past year in an apparent effort to stabilise the Iranian rial and facilitate trade outside traditional financial systems.
According to a report by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, investigators were able to map cryptocurrency wallets linked to the central bank and found evidence of systematic accumulation of USDT in April and May 2025, with payments reportedly made in United Arab Emirates dirhams. This use of a dollar-pegged digital asset appears aimed at offsetting the collapse of the rial and circumventing restrictions tied to international sanctions that limit Iran’s access to conventional banking and settlement infrastructure.
Before June 2025, most of the purchased USDT was reportedly routed to Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, where it could be traded into rials or other assets. After a security breach at the exchange, Elliptic’s analysis indicates the central bank’s wallets shifted to using cross-chain bridges and decentralised exchanges to move and convert the assets.
Elliptic researchers interpret this pattern as a form of foreign exchange intervention conducted outside traditional reserves, as well as an attempt to build what the firm describes as a sanctions-resistant financial layer by holding dollar-equivalent value through stablecoins rather than through conventional banks.
The report also notes that on-chain transparency enabled the tracing of these flows, and that stablecoin issuers can intervene: in mid-2025, Tether reportedly blacklisted some wallets linked to the central bank, freezing a portion of USDT, illustrating how digital-asset systems still offer points of control despite their use to avoid formal financial channels.
Independent analysis of Iran’s use of cryptocurrency must account for the country’s long-standing tensions with global financial systems and sanctions regimes, which have historically driven state and private actors in Iran to explore alternative mechanisms, including cryptocurrency, to conduct international transactions.
Beyond the Brief
Lagarde at Davos and the Fiscal Reality Governments Can No Longer Avoid
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, ECB President Christine Lagarde made a remark that quietly challenges one of the most comfortable assumptions in post-crisis macroeconomics: that central banks will always be able, and politically allowed, to stabilize government finances when debt becomes excessive. Her words were carefully framed:
“I’m not going to tell you that there is a red line. I’m not going to tell you that central banks will always be around either. But I think that the nature of the purpose for which debt is subscribed will matter more than the actual volume.”
This was not a prediction of institutional collapse, nor a threat of imminent policy withdrawal. It was a reminder that monetary policy cannot permanently compensate for weak or politically constrained fiscal policy, and that the sustainability of public debt depends not only on accounting ratios but on how investors and voters perceive the use of borrowed funds.
That warning lands at a time when governments across advanced economies are facing a fiscal equation that is becoming increasingly difficult to solve. Public debt remains historically high after years of crisis-era spending, and servicing that debt becomes more expensive when interest rates normalize and central banks stop expanding their balance sheets. At the same time, structural spending pressures are rising rather than falling. Aging populations push up pension and healthcare costs, while geopolitical tensions make it politically and strategically difficult to cut defense budgets, and in many cases require them to increase. In this environment, relying on monetary expansion effectively becomes a hidden tax through currency devaluation, something that recent inflation has made painfully visible. Governments are being forced back toward fiscal policy whether they like it or not.
Raising broad-based taxes on average households, however, is deeply unpopular in most democracies. That reality helps explain why policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to high-net-worth individuals. As Bloomberg reported in January, debt-pressured governments from London to California are exploring wealth taxes, exit taxes and higher levies on the wealthy as a way to stabilize public finances. From a political standpoint, the appeal is obvious: taxing a small and unpopular minority is easier than asking the broader electorate to accept higher consumption or income taxes. But the economic consequences of that approach are not neutral.
Wealthy individuals are not only taxpayers; they are also business owners, investors, employers and major contributors to capital formation. When tax burdens rise sharply or become unpredictable, some relocate, taking investment, consumption and corporate activity with them. The United Kingdom’s recent experience with changes to the non-domicile tax regime has already triggered debate over whether higher tax rates may be offset by departures of high earners and investors, shrinking the long-term tax base. Even when the scale of such outflows is disputed, the risk itself shapes behavior. If enough capital and talent leave, government revenues can fall rather than rise, while spending obligations remain unchanged. The fiscal gap then shifts back toward the remaining taxpayers, meaning the political constraint that initially pushed governments to avoid taxing the middle class eventually reappears, only under worse budget conditions.
This is where the purpose of debt matters more than the volume. Sovereign borrowing used for infrastructure, industrial capacity, technology or security tends to remain financeable because investors believe it supports future economic output. Borrowing that mainly sustains current consumption without strengthening productive capacity is far more vulnerable to shifts in sentiment. When financing becomes fragile, yields rise, budgets tighten and pressure grows for some form of intervention to prevent disorderly markets. At that point, the temptation is always to fall back on central banks to stabilize the system once again, even if doing so conflicts with inflation control or long-term credibility.
What ultimately turns this into a political problem is not that people suddenly understand macroeconomics, but that pressure on household finances becomes impossible to ignore. Raise taxes on average workers and governments are voted out. Rely on money creation and inflation erodes purchasing power, and governments are voted out anyway. People don’t need to understand policy to react to falling living standards.
That leaves shrinking room to maneuver. Spending cuts are politically toxic in aging societies with rising healthcare and security costs. Taxing the wealthy may buy time, but capital is mobile and the tax base does not always stay put. If inflation is no longer tolerated and debt becomes harder to sell, the familiar escape routes start closing at the same time. So the real question is simple: when governments can’t print, can’t borrow cheaply, and can’t raise taxes without backlash, what do they do next — and who ultimately pays?
WHAT WE ARE READING (OR WATCHING)
The Cryptography Frontier
The Stablecoin Standard
Venezuela shows how locals turn to Tether-issued USDT stablecoin as governments wobble
Stablecoin Volume Surged 690% As Enterprises Embraced Digital Dollars
Governance Watch
US Senate Banking Committee Delays Crypto Market Structure Bill Again Until Late February or March
The Onboarding Wave
The Global Pulse
‘Soak the Rich’ Battle Cry is Rising From London to California
What is Trump's Board of Peace - and is it going to replace the UN?
Bessent says Europe dumping US debt over Greenland would 'defy logic'
"I'm not going to tell you that central banks will always be around" Christine Lagarde at Davos
Beyond the Chain
Netherlands likely to start taxing capital gains annually by 2028
This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Please do your own research or consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.
