Blockchain & Digital Assets Weekly Briefing - Week 6
- Feb 6
- 17 min read
Week ending 6th February 2026
This week: ING is rolling out crypto product access for German retail clients, while Deutsche Börse’s 360T and Bitpanda expand institutional trading rails. The Bank of England is reviewing tokenised collateral eligibility, BBVA has joined a euro-stablecoin consortium, and Tether is investing in Anchorage Digital’s regulated infrastructure.
ING enables German retail clients to buy Bitcoin, Ether and Solana products directly from bank accounts.
Deutsche Börse’s 360T partners with Bitpanda to expand institutional crypto access.
Bank of England weighs widening tokenised asset collateral in financing operations.
Euro-pegged stablecoin project moves ahead as BBVA joins twelve-bank consortium.
Tether invests $100 million in Anchorage Digital to bolster regulated crypto infrastructure.
Beyond the Brief
ING enables German retail clients to buy Bitcoin, Ether and Solana products directly from bank accounts
ING Deutschland has integrated cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes (ETNs) into its standard securities platform, allowing German clients to gain price exposure to digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ether directly through their existing brokerage accounts. The rollout places crypto-linked instruments inside one of the country’s largest retail banking investment channels and signals continued institutional normalization of digital assets across major financial markets.
According to ING’s official product documentation, customers can now trade a broad selection of crypto ETNs through their regular securities depot, without using a separate crypto exchange interface. These ETNs are listed on regulated exchanges and structured to track the performance of underlying digital assets. The offering also supports recurring investment plans, allowing crypto-linked instruments to be included in automated allocation strategies alongside equities and funds.
Distribution scale matters
What makes this development noteworthy is distribution scale rather than product novelty. Crypto exchange-traded products have been available on European exchanges for several years, but access has typically required specialised brokers or more active trading setups. By embedding crypto ETNs directly inside a major retail bank’s brokerage environment — at a bank that serves more than 10 million customers in Germany as the country’s third-largest retail bank — ING materially expands reach and lowers structural access barriers for digital asset exposure.
From blockchain pilots to retail crypto distribution
This step does not represent ING’s first contact with digital assets or blockchain infrastructure. The group has previously participated in multiple distributed-ledger and tokenization initiatives at the institutional level, including blockchain-based trade finance and settlement pilots and industry consortium projects focused on digital asset infrastructure. Those earlier efforts were largely wholesale and technology-focused. The current ETN integration is different in scope: it brings regulated crypto market exposure into a core retail investment channel rather than an experimental or back-office environment.
Global regulation and product wrappers are accelerating crypto adoption
The timing also aligns with broader regulatory and market momentum. Europe is progressing through the staged implementation of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, which provides clearer compliance pathways for crypto-linked financial products. In parallel, U.S. spot crypto ETFs and expanding regulated digital asset products in parts of Asia are reinforcing a global pattern — digital asset exposure is increasingly delivered through familiar investment wrappers instead of standalone crypto platforms.
From a market-structure perspective, large retail banks act as adoption multipliers. When crypto-linked instruments become selectable alongside stocks, ETFs and bonds inside mainstream banking platforms, they shift from niche allocation tools to standard portfolio components. ING’s move therefore reflects not just product expansion, but continued convergence between traditional finance distribution and digital asset markets.
Deutsche Börse’s 360T partners with Bitpanda to expand institutional crypto access
Beyond retail banking, Germany’s crypto push is showing up in market infrastructure too, as 360T links up with Bitpanda.
Deutsche Börse Group’s trading platform arm 360T has entered a strategic partnership with Austrian digital-asset broker Bitpanda to broaden institutional access to crypto and digital asset services under Europe’s evolving regulatory rules.
The collaboration connects 360T’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR)-regulated crypto trading venue, known as 3DX, with the technology and service stack from Bitpanda to create a modular infrastructure aimed at banks, asset managers and large financial firms seeking to offer digital-asset trading or services without building bespoke systems from scratch.
Under the agreement, 3DX continues to operate as a regulated trading venue under the MiCAR, providing institutional-grade execution and order routing, while Bitpanda contributes the backend infrastructure needed to support retail-oriented crypto services. This structure enables institutional clients to integrate broader digital-asset offerings and manage liquidity within the existing 3DX framework, while each party remains responsible for its regulated activities.
Executives from both companies framed the partnership as a building block for next-generation institutional participation in digital assets. Bitpanda’s chief executive described the deal as part of a broader effort to position Europe as a global hub for regulated digital-asset infrastructure, while 360T’s leadership highlighted the expanded options for clients seeking compliant, flexible access to crypto markets without the overhead of in-house development.:
“3DX was built to serve institutional clients with clarity, compliance, and flexibility. By integrating Bitpanda’s services, we are expanding the options available to our clients, particularly those looking to support downstream use cases such as client-facing digital asset offerings, without having to build sophisticated infrastructure themselves” commented Carlo Kölzer, CEO of 360T and Global Head of FX & Digital Assets at Deutsche Börse Group
Why It Matters
Deutsche Börse is not a peripheral market participant but a central pillar of Germany’s financial system, operating core infrastructure across trading, clearing, settlement and custody for equities, derivatives, FX and securities services. Decisions taken by the group therefore tend to reflect institutional demand rather than speculative positioning. Its move into digital assets has followed the same infrastructure-first logic. In March 2024, the group launched a fully regulated institutional spot trading platform under the Deutsche Börse Digital Exchange (DBDX) banner to provide trading, settlement and custody services for crypto assets leveraging established market infrastructure. By the end of 2024, that platform had already processed its first institutional trades, underscoring real market take-up.
In March 2025, the group’s post-trade arm Clearstream, working with subsidiary Crypto Finance, began offering regulated custody and settlement services for Bitcoin and Ether to institutional clients, signalling demand for end-to-end services. In May 2025, 360T — Deutsche Börse’s FX and execution business — absorbed and rebranded these efforts under the 3DX Digital Exchange, a MiCAR-compliant venue authorised by BaFin for institutional crypto spot trading.
More recently, Deutsche Börse has pursued partnerships to bring stablecoins into regulated market infrastructure and to connect traditional data and execution services to blockchain ecosystems. Taken together, these steps show an expanding suite of regulated digital-asset services geared toward institutions — and suggest that institutional clients are seeking compliant access and infrastructure, not just experimental offerings.
Bank of England weighs widening tokenised asset collateral in financing operations
The Bank of England is actively considering expanding the range of tokenised assets it will accept as collateral in its financing operations, signaling potential regulatory evolution for digital financial instruments. The announcement was made by Sasha Mills, Executive Director of Financial Market Infrastructure, at a Tokenization Summit in London on 29 January 2026.
At the core of the update is a policy shift in tone rather than an immediate rule change. The central bank confirmed it is open to extending collateral eligibility to more tokenised instruments — including potentially tokenised forms of assets that are not currently accepted — provided risk, legal certainty, and operational resilience standards are met.
Collateral plays a central role in central bank liquidity operations. Traditionally, only highly rated and well-understood financial instruments qualify. Tokenisation — the representation of assets using distributed ledger technology — introduces different settlement mechanics and operational dependencies. The Bank’s position suggests it does not see tokenisation itself as a barrier, but it does not grant automatic eligibility either. Token structure, legal enforceability, and technical robustness remain decisive filters when assessing whether a tokenised asset can be used as collateral in its market operations. In practice, this means satisfying established risk and settlement standards before an asset — in tokenised form — can be accepted.
Currently accepted collateral
Under its existing market operations framework, the Bank accepts a broad range of high-quality traditional financial instruments as eligible collateral against liquidity facilities. This includes assets classified into categories such as Level A, Level B and Level C securities — for example, government bonds, high-grade corporate debt, and other rated securities that meet minimum credit and liquidity standards. These assets are delivered through conventional settlement systems and are deemed sufficiently secure to protect the Bank’s balance sheet if counterparties fail to repay.
Tokenised collateral today
At present, the Bank has not formally published a list of specific tokenised assets that are already accepted as collateral in its lending operations. What is clear from its 2025 speech and consultation work is that tokenised versions of assets that are already eligible in their traditional form could be considered for eligibility, provided the associated risks from blockchain infrastructure, enforceability of rights, and operational resilience are appropriately mitigated. In other words, a tokenised gilt, corporate bond or similar asset might, in future, qualify if it replicates the legal and risk characteristics of the underlying traditional security.
To date, real-world use of tokenised collateral remains limited: industry initiatives tend to be in pilot or testing environments such as the Bank’s Digital Securities Sandbox, and there is no broad, live market for tokenised collateral accepted in central bank operations. Acceptance is conditional on further guidance under the UK’s version of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), which the Bank plans to publish later in 2026.
In parallel, the Bank plans to use its digital securities sandbox to test how tokenised securities and regulated stablecoins could function in wholesale settlement environments. This controlled testing approach reflects a preference for staged validation over rapid deployment.
The Bank also linked this work to its broader digital asset agenda, notably the development of a supervisory regime for systemic stablecoins. These are stablecoins considered large enough in payment usage to pose financial stability implications. The proposed regime is being designed jointly with UK regulators and is expected to impose safeguards similar in outcome to those applied to traditional payment money. Measures under consideration include tighter backing requirements, strong redemption rights, and — potentially — access to central bank facilities such as deposit accounts or liquidity support, subject to strict conditions.
The UK is also preparing a digitally native sovereign bond pilot through DIGIT, a tokenised gilt to be issued by HM Treasury within the Digital Securities Sandbox run with the Bank of England and the FCA. DIGIT is designed to be issued and settled directly on distributed ledger infrastructure via a Digital Securities Depository, rather than tokenised after issuance. The pilot will test DLT across the full sovereign debt lifecycle, including on-chain settlement of both securities and cash, while ensuring interoperability with existing market infrastructure and keeping experimentation inside a supervised regulatory framework.
Euro-pegged stablecoin project moves ahead as BBVA joins twelve-bank consortium
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (BBVA) — Spain’s second-largest bank and a major European financial institution — has joined a consortium of banks developing a regulated euro-pegged stablecoin, marking another step in its expanding engagement with digital assets.
BBVA’s growing role in digital finance
BBVA is a multinational financial services company headquartered in Bilbao and Madrid, with operations across Europe, the Americas and beyond, serving over 77 million customers and managing assets of roughly €772 billion. In recent years the bank has increasingly integrated digital technologies into its services and strategy: it launched regulated Bitcoin and Ether trading and custody services for retail customers in Spain in 2025, under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework, and has expanded crypto custodial offerings via institutional partnerships.
Joining the Euro stablecoin consortium
In early 2026 BBVA became the 12th member of an Amsterdam-based banking consortium — often reported under the name Qivalis — aiming to issue a euro-pegged stablecoin under EU regulatory standards. The project is backed by several large European banks and seeks to offer a regulated digital euro token for payments and settlement of tokenised assets, with a commercial launch targeted for the second half of 2026.
Supporters of the initiative argue that a regulated euro-pegged stablecoin could lower cross-border transaction costs and provide compliant blockchain-native payment rails for financial institutions and corporates. Critics, by contrast, note that stablecoin projects must navigate complex reserve backing, regulatory scrutiny and competition from established dollar-pegged tokens that dominate the global stablecoin market.
Context within broader digital asset trends
BBVA’s involvement reflects a broader strategy by traditional banks to explore digital asset infrastructure while operating within regulated frameworks. Alongside stablecoin efforts, BBVA has expanded blockchain and crypto services, demonstrating institutional interest in integrating emerging technologies into conventional banking products.
Overall, BBVA’s participation in the Euro stablecoin project underscores how regulated financial institutions are engaging with digital asset initiatives — balancing innovation ambitions with regulatory compliance and risk considerations.
Tether invests $100 million in Anchorage Digital to bolster regulated crypto infrastructure
Tether has announced a $100 million strategic equity investment in Anchorage Digital, a U.S. federally chartered digital-asset bank, deepening an existing partnership centered on regulated stablecoin issuance and institutional crypto infrastructure.
The investment gives Tether a minority ownership stake and strengthens its alignment with a regulated U.S. platform that provides custody, settlement, staking, and governance services for digital assets. Anchorage Digital Bank is also involved in issuing Tether’s U.S.-regulated stablecoin product, and the transaction comes shortly after that new regulated stablecoin (USAT) went live in the United States.
According to the company announcement, the deal is intended to support the build-out of compliant, secure, and scalable infrastructure for digital assets, particularly for institutional and enterprise users. The two firms already had a working relationship around stablecoin operations, and this equity investment formalizes and extends that collaboration.
Anchorage Digital disclosed a company valuation of roughly $4.2 billion in connection with the transaction and paired the funding round with its first employee tender offer, enabling early staff to sell part of their holdings without a public listing. The fresh capital is expected to support product expansion and regulated service capacity.
This move is significant for several reasons. First, it links the largest stablecoin issuer by market capitalization with one of the few U.S. digital-asset firms that holds a federal banking charter, highlighting a growing convergence between stablecoin activity and regulated financial frameworks. Second, it reinforces the role of regulated custodians and banks as core infrastructure providers as institutional participation in crypto markets expands. Third, it signals that capital is increasingly flowing toward compliance-oriented platforms rather than purely offshore or lightly regulated venues.
For the digital assets sector, the deal illustrates a broader shift: major issuers and infrastructure providers are building tighter partnerships within regulated environments to support product distribution, custody, and on-chain dollar instruments at scale.
Beyond the Brief
Stablecoins and Banks: When Monetary History Rhymes — but the Plumbing Changes
The Current Debate in Context
The passage of the GENIUS Act in July 2025 — the first federal U.S. law explicitly regulating payment stablecoins — set off a renewed debate about the future of money, banking, and credit markets. Under the Act, stablecoins must be backed one-for-one by low-risk assets such as cash, bank deposits, and short-term U.S. government securities, with disclosure and audit requirements designed to anchor them firmly within the financial regulatory perimeter.
Since the Act’s passage, the stablecoin market has continued to expand. Fiat-backed tokens such as USDT and USDC now exceed roughly $255 billion in circulation globally, and industry and policy forecasts project totals of $2 trillion or more by 2028. At that scale, stablecoin issuers are becoming meaningful buyers of short-dated U.S. Treasury bills — adding an important macro-fiscal dimension to the debate. By design, the GENIUS Act channels stablecoin growth into demand for the very securities the U.S. Treasury must issue in increasing volume to finance persistent deficits.
This alignment helps explain why the U.S. policy response has focused on regulation and integration rather than prohibition. Stablecoins are no longer merely a fintech experiment; they are becoming embedded in sovereign funding markets, making it politically and economically harder to argue for their elimination.
At the same time, analysts warn that large inflows into stablecoins could divert hundreds of billions of dollars from bank deposits over time, putting pressure on banks’ traditional funding models. That concern has surfaced repeatedly in debates around broader market-structure legislation, including proposals that would restrict stablecoin-linked yield.
Yet despite regulatory clarity, rapid growth, and sustained political attention, there has been no large-scale migration of core retail deposits out of banks into stablecoins. This gap between feared disruption and observed behavior raises the central question of the moment: Are stablecoins fundamentally reshaping money markets — or are they nudging the financial system toward adaptation and restructuring, much as earlier innovations did?
To answer that, it helps to revisit earlier episodes when new financial instruments challenged banks’ funding models — and where the eventual outcome was structural change, not institutional collapse.
Regulation Q and the Rise of Money Market Funds (MMF)
Under Regulation Q, introduced in the 1930s, U.S. banks were legally barred from paying interest on certain deposit accounts and subject to ceilings on others. Regulators believed limiting rate competition would reduce destabilizing bank runs. For decades, those ceilings were not binding. But by the late 1960s and especially the 1970s, market interest rates rose far above the caps, and banks were forbidden by law from offering comparable yields.
The first money market mutual fund appeared in 1971, created to offer market-based returns by investing in short-term money market instruments. Early MMFs were largely the preserve of institutions and wealthier investors, often accessed through brokerage accounts with meaningful minimum investment sizes. Over the course of the 1970s, declining minimums, check-writing features, and broader distribution through retail brokerages made MMFs increasingly accessible to ordinary households — just as Regulation Q ceilings became most binding.
These products grew quickly because they did exactly what banks were prohibited from doing: compete on yield. Policymakers ultimately responded by phasing out Regulation Q ceilings — not by banning MMFs, but by allowing banks to compete again.
[One often overlooked detail is that regulatory philosophy had already begun shifting. While bank regulation from 1933 through the late 1950s focused on limiting competition, by the 1960s and 1970s regulators were increasingly emphasizing competition among depository institutions, weakening the intellectual justification for interest caps before their most painful effects fully emerged.]
It also matters who paid the price. Research compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond shows that in the mid-1970s, small household savers lost roughly $6–9 billion in foregone interest income due to binding rate ceilings. Wealthier investors could access MMFs earlier; smaller savers often could not. The cost of suppression fell disproportionately on everyday households.
A Cautionary Episode: What Happened to Money Market Funds in 2008
Barry Eichengreen’s caution also draws on the experience of money market funds during the 2008 financial crisis. Prior to 2008, MMFs were legally investment products, not deposits. The widely assumed $1 net asset value (NAV) was a convention, not a promise: fund disclosures explicitly warned that investors could lose money, even though decades of stability led markets to treat MMFs as cash equivalents.
That assumption broke in September 2008, when the Reserve Primary Fund — a large institutional prime MMF — held Lehman Brothers commercial paper that became nearly worthless after Lehman’s collapse. The fund’s NAV fell to $0.97, an event known as “breaking the buck.” The result was a rapid run on MMFs, driven largely by institutional investors withdrawing hundreds of billions of dollars. Because prime MMFs were major buyers of short-term corporate and bank debt, the run threatened to shut down key funding markets.
To halt contagion, the U.S. government intervened. The Treasury introduced a temporary guarantee program for MMFs, and the Federal Reserve created emergency liquidity facilities. In effect, an explicit public backstop was added after confidence had already broken — not because such a guarantee had existed, but because the system could not function without it.
This episode is instructive, but the differences matter. Under the GENIUS Act, stablecoins are constrained ex ante in ways MMFs were not in 2008. The framework requires:
a statutory one-to-one redemption obligation by the issuer,
asset segregation to protect holders,
strict reserve composition rules, limited to cash, bank deposits, and U.S. Treasuries with maturities of 93 days or less, and
ongoing disclosure and audit requirements.
Stablecoins still do not carry an explicit government guarantee, but unlike pre-2008 MMFs, they are designed to avoid reliance on implicit promises or conventions.
Historical Parallel: Stablecoins and MMFs — Same Fear, Different Mechanism
It is tempting to draw a straight line from MMFs in the 1970s to stablecoins today. Both emerged as alternatives when traditional banking products looked constrained or outdated. But the mechanics differ.
In the 1970s, banks were legally prevented from competing on yield; today they can reprice deposits but choose how to balance margin, costs, and competition. MMFs did not function as payment systems; stablecoins are designed for payments and settlement. And stablecoins cannot legally pay interest directly to holders, even if third-party platforms layer rewards — a regulatory distinction absent in the MMF era.
The anxiety is familiar. The structure is not.
How Banks Operate — and How They Are Already Transforming
At their core, banks transform short-term liabilities (deposits) into longer-term assets (loans and investments), earning a spread and selling complementary services such as payments and credit. They hold reserves and liquid assets to meet settlement needs and regulatory requirements, and rely on capital and supervision to absorb losses.
A crucial feature of this model is behavioral: many retail depositors accept very low interest rates in exchange for bundled services — physical branches, integrated payments, and relationship-based credit — implicitly trading yield for convenience and perceived safety. Observed behavior suggests that if customers routinely tolerate large gaps between deposit rates and market rates in return for these services, it is unlikely that marginal yield alone will prompt a mass shift into purely digital, standalone payment instruments.
Banks are also not reacting in a uniform way. As Brian Brooks has argued, institutions whose business models depend heavily on stable, low-cost retail deposits tend to view stablecoins defensively, while mid-sized banks and digital-first neobanks increasingly see them as tools for customer acquisition, balance-sheet efficiency, and adjacent revenue streams such as payments or crypto services. Stablecoins, in this view, are not substitutes for deposits so much as new interfaces through which deposits and financial relationships can be formed.
This divergence fits historical patterns. Even before stablecoins gained regulatory clarity, banks were experimenting with tokenized deposits — traditional bank liabilities represented on distributed ledgers. These preserve balance-sheet funding, capital requirements, and safety nets, while enabling faster settlement and programmability. The likely outcome is not banks versus crypto, but reconfiguration, with winners and losers inside the banking sector itself.
A Deeper Historical Parallel: National Bank Notes
Stablecoins may feel novel, but structurally they echo an earlier form of privately issued money: National bank notes, which circulated in the U.S. from 1863 through 1935. These notes were issued by federally chartered banks that held U.S. government bonds as backing, overcollateralized by depositing those bonds with the Treasury. National bank notes were redeemable in legal tender and, despite thousands of bank failures in that era, holders did not lose principal because of the overcollateralization and Treasury backing.
The parallels are striking in form if not in technology: both National bank notes and modern stablecoins are privately issued money backed by government securities, with redemption expectations built into their design. In both cases, issuance creates demand for government debt and transfers some seigniorage — the revenue from money creation — away from sovereign issuers to private entities authorized to back and circulate the money.
Historically, however, the use of National bank notes declined as deposit systems improved and became more useful for payments, illustrating that newer forms of money can coexist with and eventually be overtaken by alternatives that better meet user needs. Today’s steady increase in both stablecoin supply and bank deposits suggests a similar coexistence dynamic rather than outright displacement.
Stablecoin Issuers Evolving: Skinny Fed Accounts and Bank Charters
Policymakers are also exploring limited access models — sometimes termed “skinny Fed accounts” — that would allow regulated non-bank payment firms to settle directly on central-bank rails without full banking privileges. This mirrors earlier expansions of payment-system access rather than wholesale chartering.
At the same time, some stablecoin issuers are pursuing trust bank charters, which would allow them to custody reserves directly rather than rely on third-party banks. In this model, stablecoin backing assets would sit on the issuer’s own regulated balance sheet, reducing dependence on commercial banks for custody rather than recycling deposits back into the banking system. Both paths point toward deeper institutional integration, not separation.
Structural Change, Not Collapse
The stablecoin debate echoes earlier fears of disintermediation, but history points to a more familiar outcome: adaptation, not destruction. Stablecoins are tightly constrained, backed by safe assets, and increasingly aligned with macroeconomic infrastructure, yet they lack the guarantees and balance-sheet support that bank deposits provide. They sit alongside banks, not in place of them.
Payments are becoming faster and programmable. Deposits are becoming more mobile. Banking models are diverging. Some institutions will feel pressure; others will integrate new rails and thrive.
The lesson from Regulation Q and earlier monetary history is clear: suppressing competition did not protect households — it cost them. Regulated competition, by contrast, tends to drive restructuring, innovation, and better outcomes. Stablecoins fit that pattern — and as in past transitions, the ultimate beneficiaries are likely to be the people whose money it is.
WHAT WE ARE READING (OR WATCHING)
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The Global Pulse
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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.
