It has been a busy week in the fintech space. Joining me is Anastasia Kinsky, Fintech TV correspondent and editor of The Signal newsletter. Anastasia, welcome to the show. Standard Chartered just issued $200 million in digital bonds using blockchain technology — the first major global bank to do so. Why does that matter?
It is a very exciting moment because the industry has been looking for bonds to be digitalised for a very long time. This is a major global bank moving to do that, and they have been working with Euroclear and their FMI. So you are seeing the FMI space also moving into the digital space, which is a very significant move for the entire ecosystem. The first time a bank of this size has been able to do this. Nothing fundamentally changes for the people buying these bonds — but this opens up enormous opportunities in the bond space. Faster settlement, greater transparency, programmability, and the ability to integrate bonds with smart contracts and the wider digital finance ecosystem. It is certainly an important step forward in creating clear standards for how banks and other financial institutions can issue bonds in a digital manner.
The SEC just proposed a new set of rules called Regulation Crypto Assets. What would this actually change for crypto companies?
This is the biggest story of the week for a lot of people in our audience. We have been watching the Clarity Act and looking for legislative clarity. We are now seeing the SEC say — given that we are not going to get a congressional vote until September, we can move forward and put forward some regulatory rules in the meantime. They still want the Clarity Act because the SEC and the CFTC keep repeating that another administration could come in and change regulatory guidance. However, this is still moving the regulatory clarity needle. A few clear rules have been put forward: a bigger fundraising exemption — companies can now raise up to $75 million a year as long as they provide all the necessary audits and ongoing reporting. There is also a safe harbour provision — if a token meets certain conditions, it can be treated as not a security, removing it from SEC oversight going forward. It also supersedes state-by-state rules, which has been a major question across the US. This is not a replacement for the Clarity Act — the SEC and CFTC are still looking for that to become law. But these regulatory bodies are perfectly capable of building regulation in regardless of how the vote goes.
HSBC and Standard Chartered just completed the first live transaction using a new blockchain system built by Swift. What did they actually do and why is it a big deal?
This is the first live transaction on Swift's new blockchain-based ledger — a really important moment, especially for Swift. A lot of people early in this conversation were saying — what is the point of Swift if you can just transact blockchain to blockchain and settle instantly? But we have seen that there is still a role for these parties in creating the environments needed to digitalise financial services. In this pilot, 17 banks across six continents used tokenised deposits for real-time cross-border settlement. The goal is to cut costs, speed up payments, and preserve existing regulatory oversight — innovating within the framework that already exists rather than gutting the rails of the financial services industry. Bank executives are saying that tokenised deposits and stablecoins will coexist — and this is a very clear example of that. Whether you are looking at stablecoins, tokenised deposits, or CBDCs, you are seeing an acknowledgement that these digital processes can sit alongside traditional ones, creating the optionality that finance needs. And it shows how institutions like Swift and banks can modernise and stay relevant as finance becomes more digital.
Thank you, Anastasia. And to stay ahead of the biggest stories shaping fintech, sign up for The Signal newsletter at Fintech TV.
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