In today’s edition:
🏦 Citi launched Digital Depositary Receipts, giving wealthy and institutional clients tokenized exposure to private company shares, with Citi as both issuer and custodian
💰 Digital Asset, the developer behind the Canton Network, raised $355 million led by a16z crypto, with HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, and Apollo joining
📉 JPMorgan says the "debasement trade" retreat has accelerated for bitcoin, tied to easing US-Iran tensions, as June ETF outflows hit $2.1 billion
🇯🇵 Japan's lower house passed a sweeping bill to regulate crypto like stocks, moving it under securities law with a path to a 20% flat tax and ETFs
Citigroup unveiled a blockchain-based product Thursday that lets wealthy and institutional investors gain exposure to private company shares, the latest sign of Wall Street moving traditional assets onchain.
The product, called Digital Depositary Receipts, adapts a longstanding financial instrument for private markets. Investors own a bank-issued receipt rather than the underlying shares, with Citi acting as both issuer and custodian. The securities are recorded on blockchain infrastructure run by Swiss market operator SIX.
The launch comes as companies stay private longer, leaving investors with fewer ways to access sought-after firms. It debuted with a transaction involving Kaleido, a tokenization company backed by Citi Ventures. Citi said it plans to expand the offering over time, including to public blockchains. "Our focus with Digital Depositary Receipts is to continue to expand responsible access to digital asset markets," a Citi spokesperson said.
Canton's Developer Raises $355M to Bring Wall Street Onchain
Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton Network, raised $355 million in a round led by a16z crypto, the firm announced Thursday. The capital will fund Canton's growth as institutions move assets and regulated workflows onchain.
The investor list reads like a Wall Street roster: ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, HSBC, SBI Group, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, alongside Coinbase Ventures, CME Ventures, S&P Global, and Tradeweb.
Canton is a layer-one blockchain built for institutional privacy and compliance, with more than 700 ecosystem participants. "For capital markets to move onchain, institutions need infrastructure that reflects how they actually operate," said Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz. The round lands amid a wave of institutional blockchain funding, with Stripe's Tempo and Circle's Arc raising similar sums.
The debasement trade that drove demand for bitcoin and gold this year is unwinding, and the retreat has accelerated for bitcoin, JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a report.
The debasement trade refers to buying bitcoin and gold as hedges against inflation, rising government debt, and fiat weakness. JPMorgan tied the reversal to easing US-Iran tensions and called it a "broad based retreat" by both retail and institutional investors. Gold ETFs saw about $20 billion of outflows in the week through June 5; bitcoin ETF outflows have built over four weeks.
Bitcoin ETFs have shed roughly $2.1 billion in June. Sygnum CIO Fabian Dori offered a complementary read: much of the outflow reflects unwinding cash-and-carry arbitrage trades, not investors fleeing crypto, as CME futures open interest has fallen alongside redemptions.
Japan Moves to Regulate Crypto Like Stocks
Japan's lower house passed a sweeping bill Thursday to regulate crypto like stocks, moving digital assets under the same legal framework that governs securities.
The bill amends the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), shifting crypto out of the Payment Services Act and bringing disclosure obligations, insider-trading penalties, and investor protections. It heads to the upper house, where passage is widely expected, with implementation due within a year.
The reclassification opens a path to crypto ETFs in Japan and pairs with a planned tax change, cutting the rate on crypto gains from as high as 55% to a flat 20%, matching stocks, expected in 2028. Stablecoins are excluded and stay under the Payment Services Act. "We aim to foster more innovation by creating a sound trading environment," an FSA representative told Bloomberg.
Your Bits + Bips checklist after the big move:
☐ Subscribed on Apple Podcasts ☐ Subscribed on Spotify ☐ Followed on YouTube ☐ Followed on X and LinkedIn ☐ Bookmarked the show page on Unchained
The show has already migrated to its own feed.
🤖 Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents, setting up dedicated accounts that let AI bots trade and make payments on a user's behalf within preset permissions. The move positions Coinbase as a financial layer for the autonomous agents that companies are racing to deploy.
📊 Ondo Finance hired former Invesco ETF chief John Hoffman to build out its onchain investment products. The hire is the latest in a steady migration of senior TradFi product talent into tokenization startups.
💸 Nakamoto, the Nasdaq-listed bitcoin firm, sold BTC to cut debt and authorized a share buyback. The reversal is notable for a bitcoin treasury company, a model built on accumulating rather than selling coins, and signals balance-sheet pressure amid the downturn.
🇵🇭 The Philippines' central bank said Binance and its local partner lack licenses to operate in the country. The statement escalates regulatory pressure on the exchange in one of Southeast Asia's largest crypto markets.
🇰🇷 South Korean police booked Bithumb's CEO as a bribery suspect in a probe over a lawmaker-hiring scheme, according to Yonhap. It is the latest legal cloud over the country's second-largest exchange.
⚖️ The DOJ charged two people over a crypto laundering service that allegedly moved $389 million. Prosecutors say the operation, nicknamed "AudiA6," laundered criminal proceeds through cryptocurrency on behalf of clients.
🇭🇺 Hungary moved to scrap Orban-era crypto rules that carried criminal penalties, including jail terms, for crypto trading. The reversal would decriminalize activity that the previous framework had made prosecutable.
🇳🇵 The IMF urged Nepal to monitor crypto as usage climbs despite a nationwide ban. The fund recommended building oversight capacity rather than relying on prohibition alone.
🏛️ A US House bill would create a crypto-theft task force spanning federal law enforcement agencies. The measure aims to coordinate investigations into digital asset theft, which has accelerated alongside a wave of large exchange and bridge hacks.
📱 Arbitrum's token jumped 5% after news that LG Electronics is building a new blockchain on Arbitrum's technology. Fortune reported the chain will underpin an advertising platform for the Korean electronics maker.
🏠 Figure agreed to acquire Kiavi, a real-estate lender, to bolster its blockchain-native marketplace. The deal expands Figure's loan-origination pipeline as it pushes more lending activity onchain.
Shaunda Devens: Addressing Hyperliquid's HIP-3 Deployer Bottleneck
Jayesh: The Road to the Complete Vault
