TradFi & Fintech

Singapore largest bank will let retail customers buy, hold and trade tokenized gold backed by 1 gram of physical bullion stored in a DBS vault, launching via its digibank app in H2 2026.

Binance has activated its tokenized-equity layer, converting live stock positions on its brokerage platform into BNB Chain tokens tradable around the clock. The first five bStocks include Nvidia, Tesla, Circle, Micron, and Sandisk.

Citigroup is making tokenized interests in private companies available to wealth-management and institutional clients on SIX Digital Exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has already completed its first transaction and is in talks with additional private firms.

Binance's direct stock-trading platform drew more than 80% of its first-week volume from emerging markets, with assets under management crossing $400 million within seven days. The 2% share of TradFi-referenced perpetuals volume positions the June 1 launch as a distribution play for underserved retail users.

Robinhood Securities has received approval to serve as an IPO underwriter, CEO Vlad Tenev announced Tuesday, positioning the zero-commission broker to compete directly with Wall Street banks on the mega-IPO pipeline.

Ripple released the XRPL AI Starter Kit on Wednesday, giving developers tools to build AI-agent payment applications on the XRP Ledger using XRP and RLUSD. The launch lands alongside Mastercard naming Ripple as a partner in Agent Pay for Machines, its agentic-commerce network.

Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) Wednesday, extending its payments network to autonomous AI agents with 30-plus crypto and fintech launch partners including Coinbase, Ripple, Solana Foundation, Polygon, Aave Labs and Stellar.

Japan’s three largest banks have formalized their stablecoin ambitions, forming a joint council to govern infrastructure and governance for a yen-denominated stablecoin targeting live transactions by the end of Japan’s fiscal year.

Janus Henderson Investors, the $480 billion asset manager, has announced a four-part partnership with Ethena covering CLO fund distribution, a strategic ENA token investment, USDe treasury deployment, and exploration of exchange-traded instruments for USDe distribution.

JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and more than a dozen peers have announced a joint initiative to put commercial bank deposits onchain, operated by The Clearing House and targeting a first-half 2027 launch.