Crypto Currents: Major banks back $136M blockchain payment initiative

A consortium of major banks pours millions into a tokenized payment system and a market-wide selloff puts pressure on bitcoin and ether. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with “Crypto Currents,” daily from The Fly. Join us 2 PM daily for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel for the Crypto Fly By weekly recap.

BANKING GIANTS BACK TOKENIZED PAYMENTS: A group of major financial institutions, including Bank of America (BAC), Citi (C), and Goldman Sachs (GS), are backing a $136M funding round for Fnality, a fintech firm building blockchain-based payment systems, CoinDesk reports. The investment, which also includes asset manager WisdomTree (WT) and trading platform Tradeweb (TW), highlights a growing institutional push to tokenize real-world assets and currencies. In an interview with CNBC, JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon stated he is “not particularly worried” about stablecoins posing a threat to the banking sector, even as his firm and others explore the technology.

CRYPTO MARKETS FACE MAJOR SELLOFF: The broader cryptocurrency market experienced a significant downturn, with the total market cap falling below $4T, as reported by crypto.news. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) dropped below $114,000, while ether (ETH-USD) fell from a peak of $4,500 to below $4,200. Other major cryptocurrencies, including solana (SOL-USD) and binance coin (BNB-USD), also saw sharp declines. The sell-off led to over $1.5B in liquidations, putting significant pressure on the market.

FRANCE’S SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE LISTS STABLECOIN: Société Générale-Forge (SCGLY) has launched its new stablecoin, USD CoinVertible, with the Bullish (BLSH) Europe  platform being the first to list it for trading. This move, which follows the bank’s earlier launch of a euro-pegged stablecoin, aims to serve both retail and institutional markets for various uses, including remittances and payments. The debut of USD CoinVertible is part of a larger trend of regulated stablecoins emerging in the E.U. from entities like Deutsche Bank (DB) and Paxos. However, despite this growth in regulated digital assets, top European financial officials, including  European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, have expressed concerns that foreign stablecoins issued in another country, particularly those from the United States, could introduce significant financial risks and challenge the dominance of the euro.

PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $112,884.15, while ether was trading at $4,187.72, according to price data from CoinDesk.