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Pontes vs. Private Stablecoins, RQD's $74M & Bitcoin's Fed Retreat
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The ECB confirms a September 2026 launch for Pontes as Europe and the US diverge sharply on who should own blockchain settlement rails. Plus: $142M in institutional crypto infrastructure funding and Bitcoin's pullback after Jackson Hole.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The European Central Bank has confirmed a September twenty twenty-six launch for Pontes, its live blockchain settlement bridge, and it draws a sharp line between how Europe and the United States are each betting on the future of on-chain finance. Europe is building the public infrastructure first.
Here's what's still unresolved on the European side. If an automated margin call fails, or a smart-contract collateral substitution goes wrong, who carries that liability?
On the funding side, the market is voting clearly on where the money goes. RQD Clearing secured seventy-four million dollars in a Bain Capital-led round to build out digital asset custody and tokenized securities clearing across the US, Europe, and Asia.
Away from Europe, India's Reserve Bank is bringing a CBDC interoperability proposal to the BRICS summit on September twelfth and thirteenth. The pitch is linked digital currencies enabling seamless cross-border payments, reducing transaction costs, and shifting trade away from dollar-denominated rails.
Bitcoin pulled back from eighty-one thousand five hundred dollars to seventy-eight thousand two hundred after Fed Chair Warsh's Jackson Hole speech reinforced a restrictive policy stance, citing inflation above the two percent target. That move came despite nine consecutive sessions of ETF inflows and over three billion dollars in August spot ETF demand.
Total weekly crypto infrastructure funding reached a hundred and eighty-four million dollars across eight deals. Every significant round was concentrated in settlement, custody, clearing, and tokenized asset platforms.
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