Appold Market Watch - Week ending 17 April 2026

Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 17 April 2026

🔷 The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has published its ‘Cryptoasset Perimeter Guidance’ on how to determine whether an activity falls within the regulatory scope of the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA), which will be expanded to include digital asset activities on 25 October 2027. Individuals conducting regulated digital asset activities following this date will need to apply for authorisation with the FCA before operating in the UK. The FCA has requested views on its Perimeter Guidance until 3 June 2026.

Appold View: One thing that is clear from the proposed Guidance is that the FCA intends to cast its supervisory net wide, with a broad range of activities expected to fall within the new regulatory perimeter. While October 2027 may seem like a long time away, this guidance should be a wake-up call for firms operating in the UK to ensure they understand how FSMA may impact them.

🔷 Trading platform eToro is to acquire digital asset wallet provider Zengo Wallet. The acquisition will allow eToro to integrate Zengo’s self-custody offering into its trading platform and support eToro’s plans for further expansion into digital assets, including tokenised assets and decentralised markets. 

Appold View: While eToro’s platform already offers a custodial model for its digital asset services, acquiring Zengo will allow it to appeal to those who are less comfortable with using custodians to safeguard their assets and add an estimated 1.5 million users to the eToro platform. 

🔷 The UK’s largest asset manager, Legal & General Asset Management, has moved more than £50 billion in liquidity funds on-chain using Calastone’s tokenisation solution, the Tokenised Distribution Network. Calastone’s tokenisation solution supports the issuance of tokenised share classes for L&G’s GBP, EUR and USD funds on the Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains. 

Appold View: This is likely to be one of the largest institutional tokenisation moves in finance, and further validates tokenisation as a scalable solution for major asset managers. We would expect to see L&G’s peers now moving to keep pace.

🔷 Ripple Labs has partnered with one of Korea’s largest life insurers, KYOBO Life Insurance, to explore tokenised settlement for Korean government bonds using the Ripple Custody platform, with a focus on near real-time post-trade processes.

Appold View: This is just the latest move in Ripple’s efforts to cement itself as a settlement layer for financial institutions in Asia, and follows other custody and payment partnerships in Japan, Singapore, and the UAE. Ripple’s success in finding regulated partners is particularly striking given that its five-year legal battle with U.S. regulators for allegedly violating securities law only ended in August 2025.

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