The European Central Bank has picked 36 payment providers from 50+ applicants for a 12-month digital euro pilot starting H2 2027. Selected names include Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, BPCE, Revolut Bank UAB, Stripe, and Adyen.

Providers will either distribute beta digital euro accounts to Eurosystem staff or help merchants accept beta payments. The pilot covers P2P and P2B transactions, both online and offline, across the ECB and 19 national central banks.

Board member Piero Cipollone said the strong response shows the private sector is ready to move fast on the project. A first issuance is targeted for 2029, pending 2026 regulatory approval.

The news follows Isabel Schnabel's remarks that CBDCs are key to protecting central bank money as stablecoins grow, a view that clashes with the US, where Treasury Secretary Bessent has rejected a US CBDC in favor of the Clarity Act.

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC and UBS are joining the U.K. government’s tokenization taskforce.

Backed by the City of London Corporation, the initiative will spend the next year testing live tokenization use cases in UK financial markets, starting with tokenized repo. The goal is clear: bring tokenization deeper into traditional finance and keep London competitive as the race for RWA infrastructure accelerates.

According to a BCG estimate, the tokenized real-world assets market could reach $88 trillion by 2035, while the U.K. says the shift could add billions in annual economic output and tax revenue.

The message coming out of London is clear: tokenization is no longer being treated as a side experiment or a niche innovation. It is steadily moving into the center of financial infrastructure, where the next generation of markets will be built.

Michael Saylor's Strategy raised $466.7M through at-the-market stock sales last week, lifting its USD reserve to $3B — but it bought no new Bitcoin, leaving its stack untouched at 843,775 BTC across the period.

The cash cushion is earmarked for dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its debt, as the firm's once-relentless BTC accumulation pauses. It underscores a shift in Strategy's playbook: after years of relentless buying, Saylor's Bitcoin machine has downshifted to raising and holding cash.

SBI Holdings has struck a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation to build an onchain financial market in Japan, folding the foundation into its SBI R3 Japan unit — now renamed SBI Solana Global.

The venture will roll out yen-backed stablecoins, tokenized bonds, funds and real estate, plus cross-border payment rails for institutions — starting in Japan, then expanding across Asia and beyond. It's another leg of SBI's aggressive onchain push, positioning Japan's largest financial group as a regional hub for regulated tokenized finance.

Startale Group unveiled Startale Card at WebX 2026 — a self-custodial Visa card that lets users spend Soneium assets at 150M+ merchants worldwide, with the waitlist now open.

Unlike custodial crypto cards, eligible holdings keep earning yield right up until they're spent, and every purchase returns cashback paid in USDSC. Built on Soneium — the Ethereum L2 Startale co-developed with Sony — it's Startale's bet on bringing onchain assets into everyday payments.

SBI Group is rolling out a lending service for JPYSC — Japan's first trust-bank-backed yen stablecoin — through its crypto arm SBI VC Trade, with applications opening July 16.

The fixed-term product pays a 3% annual yield over a 12-week term, giving holders of the month-old stablecoin a regulated way to earn on idle yen. It deepens SBI's onchain push — recently backed by a $289M Bitbank buyout and fresh $125M and $76M crypto funding rounds — as Japan races to build regulated stablecoin rails.

According to DWF Ventures, trading on Polymarket and Kalshi has shifted sharply since the 2024 U.S. election. Politics, elections, and macro now make up a much smaller share of volume, while sports and parlay-style products are taking over.

That’s good for volume and liquidity, but it also raises a bigger question: are prediction markets still acting as “truth engines”, or slowly becoming more like sportsbooks?

The main concern is the RFQ parlay model. Retail users cannot see or verify how combinations are priced, which creates a clear information asymmetry.

At the same time, more casual volume can deepen liquidity, reduce manipulation risk, and help prediction markets scale beyond their early crypto/politics user base.

So the real challenge is not whether this shift is happening, it clearly is. The question is whether prediction markets can keep their forecasting edge while expanding into a broader entertainment audience.

Revolut has integrated its crypto exchange, Revolut X, with third-party AI assistants, enabling users to analyze markets, monitor portfolios, and execute trades using natural language prompts. Supported platforms include Claude, Gemini, OpenClaw, and Cursor, with no coding required.

The integration allows traders to access real-time market data, review portfolio performance, set custom price alerts, place market and limit orders, and manage open positions directly through AI assistants. Users can also test trading strategies, receive historical performance analysis, and optimize risk before placing trades.

Revolut emphasized that all orders still require user approval before execution. The company also noted it is not responsible for trading losses or errors resulting from third-party AI assistants.

Earlier this year, Gemini, Liquid, and Robinhood introduced AI-powered trading tools, highlighting a broader shift toward AI-driven investing and automated trading workflows.

OpenAI has launched the GPT-5.6 family, introducing Sol, Terra, and Luna. The flagship GPT-5.6 Sol delivers stronger performance across coding, science, cybersecurity, and knowledge work while using fewer tokens and lowering costs.

OpenAI also introduced Ultra, a multi-agent mode designed for complex tasks. GPT-5.6 improves computer use, tool calling, software engineering, and the creation of documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.

The company highlighted significant gains in cybersecurity and scientific research while introducing its strongest safety system yet. GPT-5.6 combines enhanced safeguards, continuous monitoring, and expanded misuse protections.

GPT-5.6 is now rolling out across ChatGPT, Codex, and the OpenAI API. The three models are available with API pricing starting at $1 per million input tokens for Luna and $5 for Sol.

Some of crypto's largest venture firms are broadening their investment focus beyond digital assets. Paradigm recently raised a $1.2 billion fund to invest in crypto alongside AI, robotics, and other frontier technologies, while Framework Ventures and Haun Ventures have also launched funds targeting sectors beyond traditional crypto.

The shift comes as the crypto venture market cools. According to Galaxy Research, crypto VCs deployed around $4 billion across 355 deals in Q1 2026, while the number of new crypto venture funds fell to its lowest level since Q3 2020. Meanwhile, AI accounted for nearly 70% of global startup funding in Q2, highlighting where investor demand is moving.

Industry participants say the market is evolving as crypto becomes more integrated into the broader financial system. With regulated markets, institutional adoption, and increasing competition from traditional investors, crypto is no longer viewed as a standalone investment category but as part of a wider technology landscape.