South Korea’s internet agency and science ministry have kicked off a project to extend the central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot “Project Hangang” into private-sector payments. Led by the Korea Financial Settlement Institute, the initiative involves nine banks, eight payment gateways and two major demand-side participants with a budget of 9.6 billion won, aiming to cut transaction fees for small merchants. The system uses existing payment rails, allowing consumers to pay via bank-issued deposit token wallets without merchants needing new terminals. The government also plans to trial deposit tokens for official travel expenses and explore treasury cash management integration with its dBrain platform.

Daily trading volume across South Korea’s five major won-based exchanges has collapsed to approximately 412.7 billion won, down 88% from a year ago, while global crypto market cap has shrunk 41% to $2.322 trillion. Market leader Dunamu saw its first-quarter revenue and operating profit plunge 55% and 78% year-on-year, respectively. Smaller exchanges are under even greater pressure—Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, already operating at a loss last year, are expected to remain in the red this year. Korbit has liquidated holdings three times this year, most recently selling 15 bitcoin and 60 ether within ten days to raise about 1.6 billion won in cash. A Tiger Research executive described the environment as a “second crypto winter.”

Binance has launched Quanto perpetual contracts for HK0700USDT (Tencent) and HK1810USDT (Xiaomi), allowing users to trade non-USD-denominated equities without forex conversion and lowering entry barriers. The exchange’s TradFi product suite now supports 140 trading pairs, with perpetuals volume nearing $100 billion over the past week. The move underscores growing demand for tokenized traditional assets on crypto-native platforms and strengthens Binance’s position in Asia’s equity-linked derivatives market.

Tron has published GreatVoyage-v4.8.2 (Pyrrho), a mandatory upgrade that node operators must install before 23:59 Singapore time on August 16, 2026 to maintain block synchronization. The release adds compatibility with Ethereum’s Pectra and Osaka upgrades, including a new CLZ instruction and secp256r1 signature verification precompile, while migrating monitoring from InfluxDB to Prometheus and swapping JSON parsing to Jackson. The enhancements bolster Tron’s smart contract interoperability and node management capabilities amid growing Asian developer activity.

OSL Group, a Hong Kong-listed stablecoin payment and trading platform, has again been ranked among the World’s Top Fintech Companies 2026 by CNBC and Statista. It remains the only Hong Kong-based stablecoin platform on the list. CFO Ivan Wong said the repeat recognition underscores OSL’s commitment to innovation and compliance, reinforcing Hong Kong’s role as a regulated digital-asset hub in Asia.

Algorithmic stablecoin Balance Coin crashed from near $1 to approximately $0.001358 after an estimated $915,000 attack on BSC-based decentralized organization 42DAO, which governs the protocol and its BLC token. Security firm PeckShield confirmed the depeg was triggered by the exploit on Binance Smart Chain, a network widely used by Asian retail traders. The incident reignites concerns about the security of algorithmic stablecoins and cross-chain governance vulnerabilities in the region.

Bitcoin briefly fell under the $66,000 mark, trading at $65,973.90 on OKX, a widely used Asian exchange, marking a 1.05% intraday decline. The move comes amid a broader market recalibration after recent gains, with Asian trading sessions providing key directional cues. The dip underscores the sensitivity of the region’s spot markets to near-term volatility.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee noted a capital rotation from memory chip stocks into ether, with ether outperforming the Roundhill Memory ETF by 72 percentage points since June 25—ether up 24% while the DRAM ETF fell 38%. The ETF has 41% combined weight in SK Hynix and Samsung, two South Korean giants central to the Asian semiconductor supply chain. The shift highlights how crypto assets are increasingly competing with traditional tech investments for AI-related capital flows in the region.

South Korean conglomerate Samsung is reportedly in discussions to join a funding round for French AI startup Mistral at a valuation of about 20 billion euros, potentially committing around 1 billion euros. The investment comes as European demand for technological autonomy has intensified after the US restricted foreign access to certain advanced AI models. The round would also include Sweden’s EQT Scaleup Europe Fund, signaling Asia’s deepening involvement in global AI infrastructure.

A whale identified by address 0x007d has built a $68.2 million long position on the Nasdaq 100 via Hyperliquid’s XYZ100 contract, using 20-fold leverage with a liquidation price of $26,833.85. The position was accumulated over 20 hours on the platform, which sees heavy usage from Asian derivatives traders. The oversized bet reflects aggressive risk appetite in the region’s perpetuals market amid improving sentiment.