Appold Market Watch - Week ending 20 February 2026

Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 20 February 2026

🔷 Societe Generale has launched its euro-pegged stablecoin EUR CoinVertible on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), marking its third blockchain integration following deployments on Ethereum and Solana. XRPL was reportedly chosen by Société Générale’s digital assets arm SG-FORGE for its low transaction costs and fast settlement, with custody managed via Ripple Custody. The deployment also enables the use of EUR CoinVertible in Ripple’s broader payment-related product offerings.

Appold View: As competition between blockchains intensifies to host tokenised deposits, bonds and settlement assets, this listing represents a valuable institutional endorsement of XRPL and strengthens its perception as a compliant infrastructure layer for tokenised finance.

🔷 Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the U.S., has introduced U.S.-compliant stablecoin rails for non-U.S. banks. The new service offers issuance, custody, and blockchain-native settlement as an alternative to traditional correspondent banking for cross-border asset movement.

Appold View: We view this as a targeted move to intermediate cross-border flows at lower cost and higher speed, leveraging regulatory status as a competitive differentiator. If adopted at scale, such infrastructure could displace elements of legacy correspondent banking economics, particularly in corridors where settlement friction remains structurally high.

🔷 Digital asset exchange OKX has secured a Payments Institution license in Malta, enabling it to expand regulated stablecoin payment services and digital asset card offerings across the European Union in compliance with the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Appold View: This is indicative of the sector’s structural maturation, where growth in digital asset platforms is now increasingly contingent on regulatory authorisation, capital standards and supervisory alignment consistent with traditional payments institutions. Jurisdictional licensing is becoming a prerequisite for scale rather than a strategic option.

🔷 OpenAI has partnered with digital asset investment firm Paradigm to launch EVMbench, a benchmarking framework designed to evaluate how effectively AI agents can detect, patch, and exploit vulnerabilities in Ethereum Virtual Machine-based smart contracts.

Appold View: We see AI-enabled code auditing as an emerging layer of competitive infrastructure in decentralised finance, with automated vulnerability detection increasingly embedded in development lifecycles. Over time, continuous AI-driven testing frameworks are likely to become integral to institutional risk assurance and protocol credibility.

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