Good morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:
Welcome to the Asia Morning Briefing, a daily overview of top stories in US hours and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Six years after China’s eCNY debut, Hong Kong’s FinTech Week showed how the digital money narrative has shifted to stablecoins, as Brazil’s Drex pivot (the country’s own CBDC project) underscored waning momentum for central bank projects.
Once billed as the future of sovereign money, central bank digital currencies are slipping out of sight as market-driven stablecoins take center stage. At this year’s Hong Kong FinTech Week, banks, fintechs and regulators focused on tokenized deposits and HKD-backed stablecoins rather than government-issued digital cash.
The shift marks a turning point in the global digital currency experiment: Central banks are curbing their retail ambitions, Brazil’s Drex pause being the clearest example, while private issuers are building the infrastructure that CBDCs were supposed to provide.
It can be argued that CBDCs were never born out of pure innovation, but out of fear. When Facebook unveiled its Libra project in 2019, proposing a global digital currency backed by a basket of sovereign assets aimed at its user base of 1.7 billion people, central bankers panicked at the prospect of a private company controlling the world’s payment rails.
Libra’s collapse years later left the same central banks scrambling to build digital currencies without a clear purpose. What began as a defensive move to protect monetary sovereignty has since become a slow, bureaucratic experiment that the faster, more adaptable stablecoin market has already rendered obsolete.
According to the Atlantic Council, 137 countries and currency unions, covering almost the entire global GDP, have some form of CBDC efforts. Yet despite years of hype, only three have managed to launch one: the Bahamas’ Sand Dollar, Jamaica’s Jam-Dex and Nigeria’s eNaira – not the world’s largest economies.
The rest remain mired in committees, pilot programs and engineering studies, unsure if the public will even want what they’re building.
While central banks are still debating design papers, the private sector is already building the future of money.
“Virtually all transactions will be settled on blockchains eventually and all money will be digital,” Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said at FinTech Week.
And what did he mention?
Stablecoins.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin trading at around $105,930, little changed over 24 hours as the market consolidates following recent volatility and profit taking by leveraged traders.
ETH: Ethereum trading near $3,578, slipping slightly as traders rotate into Bitcoin and liquidate leveraged DeFi positions, although network activity and staking demand continue to anchor support around current levels.
Gold: Gold rose over 2% to around $4,085 an ounce as soft US economic data and an agreement to end the government shutdown boosted expectations of a Fed rate cut in December, fueling renewed safe-haven demand.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets rose on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 up nearly 1% as investors followed Wall Street’s rally fueled by renewed AI optimism and growing confidence that the U.S. government shutdown will end soon.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- Winklevoss’s Gemini Crypto Exchange Falls as Losses Disappoint (Bloomberg)
- Bank of England Confirms Plans for ‘Temporary’ Stablecoin Holding Limits (CoinDesk)
