Good morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the market:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing. We bring you a daily summary of the top news US time, as well as an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US market, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Six years after China’s eCNY debut, Hong Kong’s FinTech Week showed how the digital money story has shifted to stablecoins, as Brazil’s Drex pivot (the country’s own CBDC project) highlights the central bank project’s waning momentum.
Central bank digital currencies, once touted as the future of sovereign money, are disappearing from the picture as market-driven stablecoins take center stage. At this year’s Hong Kong FinTech Week, banks, fintechs and regulators focused on tokenized deposits and Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoins rather than state-issued digital cash.
This change marks a turning point in global digital currency experimentation. Central banks are slowing their retail ambitions, with the suspension of Brazil’s Drex being the most obvious example, while private issuers are building out the infrastructure that CBDCs were supposed to provide.
One could argue that CBDCs were born out of fear rather than pure innovation. When Facebook announced its Libra project in 2019, proposing a global digital currency backed by a basket of sovereign wealth for a user base of 1.7 billion, central banks panicked at the prospect of private companies controlling the world’s payment rails.
When Libra collapsed a few years later, those same central banks raced to build digital currencies with no clear purpose. What started as a defensive move to protect monetary sovereignty has since become a time-consuming bureaucratic experiment, rendering the faster, more adaptable stablecoin market obsolete.
According to the Atlantic Council, 137 countries and monetary unions covering nearly all of the world’s GDP have some kind of CBDC initiative in place. But despite years of hype, only three companies have been able to launch it: Sand Dollar in the Bahamas, Jamdex in Jamaica, and Einaira in Nigeria, and none of the world’s largest economies.
The remaining companies are still bogged down in committees, pilot programs, and technical research, unsure if the public even wants what they’re building.
While central banks are still debating the blueprint, the private sector is already building the future of money.
“Eventually, almost all transactions will be settled on the blockchain and all money will be digital,” Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered, told FinTech Week.
And what did he say next?
stablecoin.
market movements
Bitcoin: Bitcoin It is trading around $105,930, little changed in 24 hours, as the market stabilizes following recent volatility and profit-taking by leveraged traders.
Ethereum: Ethereum is trading around $3,578, declining slightly as traders turn to Bitcoin and unwind leveraged DeFi positions, but network activity and staking demand continue to anchor support near current levels.
gold: Gold rose more than 2% to about $4,085 an ounce as weak U.S. economic data and an agreement to end the government shutdown raised hopes of a December Fed rate cut, reinvigorating demand as a safe-haven asset.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets rose on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei stock average rising nearly 1% as investors tracked gains on Wall Street driven by renewed optimism in AI and growing confidence that the U.S. government shutdown will soon end.
Elsewhere for cryptocurrencies
- Winklevoss’ Gemini cryptocurrency exchange falls due to disappointing losses (Bloomberg)
- Bank of England confirms plans for “temporary” stablecoin holding limits (CoinDesk)