Appold Market Watch - Week ending 14 August 2026
Market Update and Industry News - Week Ending 14 August 2026
🔷 Tether.io completed a full audit by KPMG for its 2025 financial statements and was issued an unqualified opinion under U.S. GAAP. Tether said audited reserves exceeded token liabilities by US$6.814bn.
Appold View: A full audit was long overdue from a governance perspective, but its completion is welcome. It's Tether’s most consequential governance upgrade, raising the transparency benchmark for large stablecoin issuers, although Institutional users should still scrutinise its scope and reserve composition. Let’s hope the audit becomes a repeatable annual process.
🔷 Japan’s MUFG has launched a proof-of-concept for Japanese government bond repo transactions on Canton Network. The initiative will test delivery-versus-payment using digital money, including potential tokenised deposits or Stablecoins, and smart-contract automation of the repo lifecycle.
Appold View: This brings tokenisation into a systemically important collateral market, with the potential to improve settlement efficiency and liquidity. The critical tests will include synchronisation with existing book-entry records and the model's ability to scale to a multi-participant market.
🔷 Figure Technology Solutions, a Nasdaq-listed blockchain-native capital markets company, reported Consumer Loan Marketplace volume of US$4.3 billion, up 132% year on year, including US$2.8 billion through its blockchain-based Figure Connect platform.
Appold View: Figure is one of the clearer public-market tests of whether blockchain can improve private-credit infrastructure at scale. The real proof is not headline volume, but whether the technology delivers faster execution and lower cost, generating stronger margins than conventional infrastructure.
🔷 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed its highly anticipated proposal to regulate cryptocurrencies, known as Reg Crypto and set no replacement date, prolonging uncertainty over US crypto regulation.
Appold View: This appears to be a timing setback rather than a policy reversal. But an open-ended delay is arguably more disruptive to planning than an unfavourable proposal would have been, as market participants can position around known rules, but not around an undefined timeline.
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