Vietnam launches five-year pilot to regulate crypto asset trading

Coins.ph leads Digital Asset Exchange Alliance in Southeast AsiaCoins.ph, a leading Filipino cryptocurrency exchange, has taken a step towards promoting responsible and secure cryptocurrency usage in Southeast Asia through the establishment of the Digital Asset Exchange Alliance (DAEA).Photo by Mike L on UnsplashRegional industry partnershipIn a press release published on Friday, the company announced the formation of the industry body. The strategic partnership includes other prominent licensed exchanges in the region, namely Coinhako (Singapore), Indodax (Indonesia) and Bitkub (Thailand).Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.ph, expressed enthusiasm about the collaborative effort, stating:“Coins.ph is excited to work with our Southeast Asian counterparts in advancing the responsible and secure use of cryptocurrencies and promoting the development of user-friendly and compliant products for users.”Zhou emphasized the belief that the alliance’s combined efforts would contribute to building a more robust and resilient cryptocurrency ecosystem in Southeast Asia.Unifying licensed exchangesThe DAEA represents a milestone in unifying licensed exchanges across the Southeast Asian region, aiming to enhance regulatory advocacy by leveraging the collective expertise and experience of the four founding exchanges. It seeks to foster collaboration by sharing protocols and best practices to elevate service quality and bolster security measures.Educating users about the benefits of trading on licensed exchanges and the importance of following regulatory guidelines is a core commitment of the Alliance. This extends to promoting financial literacy, consumer protection and responsible trading practices in the cryptocurrency space.The cryptocurrency sector has experienced an outsized proportion of scams and fraud. Within that, Southeast Asian crypto users and platforms have been hardest hit, with instances in recent months of malicious activity across the region, from pig butchering scams to exchange hacks and crypto-related phishing. Regulators have started to counteract such problems, but a level of greater organization within crypto through bodies like the DAEA will go some way further towards protecting crypto users.Building a safer ecosystemYusho Liu, CEO of Coinhako, highlighted the significance of the Alliance for the entire cryptocurrency industry, emphasizing the role of licensed exchanges in fostering trust and growth. He stated:“By collaborating with Coins.ph, Indodax, and Bitkub, we are taking a monumental step towards building a safer and more transparent ecosystem for users in the region.”As the blockchain space evolves with a growing emphasis on regulatory compliance, Coins.ph, along with Coinhako, Indodax and Bitkub, has distinguished itself by prioritizing security and trust through obtaining licenses from their respective regulatory bodies.Moving towards self-regulation2022 brought with it some spectacular crypto platform failures such as FTX, which affected locations like Singapore disproportionately. A regulatory backlash has resulted in 2023, and it is amid that backdrop that we are seeing increasing efforts towards better organization and self-regulation within the crypto sector.The formation of the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance in South Korea, involving a consortium of the top five exchange businesses in the country in July of this year, is a stand-out example. In Taiwan, regulators have been actively fostering self-regulation. Those efforts have resulted in the establishment of an industry group of Taiwanese Exchanges.

MARBLEX Partners with Aptos to Expand Its Multichain EndeavorsMARBLEX, a blockchain subsidiary of South Korean gaming developer Netmarble, has made an announcement today about its new collaboration with Aptos Foundation, a layer-1 blockchain company.Designed with key principles such as scalability, safety, and upgradeability, the Aptos blockchain aims to address prevalent issues within the blockchain sphere, including frequent outages, high costs, throughput limitations, and security concerns.Photo by Shubham Dhage on UnsplashMARBLEX WARP BridgeThrough the strategic partnership between the two companies, MARBLEX plans to leverage the MARBLEX WARP Bridge, a technology connecting diverse blockchain ecosystems, to introduce the MBX ecosystem’s games, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other services to Aptos users.MARBLEX’s multichain collaborationsThis partnership is part of MARBLEX’s effort to expand its multichain endeavors. MARBLEX has already established collaborations with renowned entities such as global cryptocurrency exchange Binance and blockchain project NEAR Foundation.Moon Jun-ki, Business Division Director of MARBLEX, said that this partnership will create synergy, particularly in terms of enhancing scalability and fostering interactions among users of both networks.Bashar Lazaar, Ecosystem and Grants Lead at Aptos Foundation, noted that this collaboration will drive innovation in Web3-based gaming experiences, benefiting global users.

Bitcoin’s long-standing four-year market cycle tied to halving events may be losing influence, according to a new outlook from crypto exchange Bybit and research firm Block Scholes that examines market conditions through 2026. The report suggests that Bitcoin price action may be increasingly influenced by macroeconomic policy, institutional participation, and market structure rather than by new supply reductions. It says historical cycles have tended to track changes in global liquidity, often measured by global M2, and that this relationship has become more visible, while Bitcoin continues to respond to shifts in expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts.Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on UnsplashETFs reshaping demand dynamicsThe analysis points to structural changes in demand, citing the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the growth of corporate digital asset treasuries (DATs). The report says ETF flows and corporate balance-sheet allocations are playing a larger role in price formation than retail trading. That shift is disrupting the traditional capital rotation from Bitcoin into Ethereum and then into smaller altcoins and memecoins. As a result, the report suggests broad altcoin rallies may be harder to ignite, with gains depending on whether assets can be incorporated into institutional products such as ETFs. On the macro front, the report says markets are pricing in further Federal Reserve easing, with looser financial conditions potentially supporting a closer relationship between Bitcoin and major stock indexes despite recent underperformance versus U.S. equities. Based on options pricing, the report estimates a 10.3% implied probability that Bitcoin reaches $150,000 by the end of 2026. At present, Bitcoin is trading slightly above $91,000. Index criteria and Japan policy in viewThe analysis also highlights policy risks, including potential volatility tied to concerns over the possible exclusion of Strategy from major stock indexes, which could affect companies holding digital assets on their balance sheets. That risk has since eased after MSCI paused a proposal that would have excluded firms with digital asset reserves, though Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer cautioned that the issue could resurface in future rule reviews. The Bybit-Block Scholes report also cites potential policy tightening by the Bank of Japan later this year as another source of cross-asset risk, following its December rate hike of 25 basis points to a 30-year high of 0.75%. RWA and stablecoinsOne area of focus in the report for 2026 is real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, which it describes as building on the stablecoin adoption that gathered pace last year. That view is echoed in a separate outlook from Moody’s, cited by Cointelegraph, which says fiat-backed stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits are functioning as “digital cash” for settlement, liquidity management, and collateral movement. Moody’s estimates stablecoins processed about $9 trillion in on-chain settlement volume in 2025 and projects banks, asset managers, and infrastructure providers could invest more than $300 billion in digital finance by 2030. As an example, Moody’s cited JPMorgan’s U.S. dollar–denominated deposit token, JPM Coin, as a way digital-cash layers can operate on top of existing banking systems. The bank’s Kinexys unit plans to work with Digital Asset to bring JPM Coin to Digital Asset’s Canton Network in a phased rollout during 2026. This follows JPMorgan’s expansion of the project onto Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base for institutional clients.