Crypto News
The Qivalis consortium expanded its membership to 37 institutions on Wednesday, adding 25 new banks across 15 European countries as it advances toward a regulated euro stablecoin launch in the second half of 2026. The Amsterdam-based group now counts ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Nordea and Intesa Sanpaolo among its members, broadening the project’s footprint into core European banking. Chairman Howard Davies said the consortium is “ensuring that European principles around data protection, financial stability and regulatory rigour are embedded into the next generation of digital money.” The expansion lands as US dollar-pegged tokens still command roughly 98% of global stablecoin market share.
Spain emerged as the most represented jurisdiction in the latest membership wave, with ABANCA, Banco Sabadell, Bankinter, Cecabank and Kutxabank all joining. The country has separately shown the strongest retail uptake of Circle’s EURC, making it a natural focal point for euro-denominated blockchain payments. Italy added two new members, while France, Sweden, Greece, the Netherlands, Finland and Ireland each contributed two more institutions. The diversified roll-call strengthens the consortium’s ambition to deliver a unified MiCA-regulated rail despite recent comments from ECB President Christine Lagarde arguing that private stablecoins are not the right vehicle for advancing the euro’s global standing.
Prop trading platforms tailored to crypto are gaining traction as more retail participants seek leverage without committing meaningful personal capital. Eightcap Challenges, a broker-owned funded-trader programme, allows traders to access simulated $50,000 accounts after passing an evaluation phase, with successful participants keeping 80% to 90% of profits earned in the funded stage. The platform supports MT4, MT5, TradeLocker and TradingView execution across roughly 150 pairs that include majors such as Bitcoin alongside top liquid tokens. Chief Executive Adam Bock said the model lowers the barrier for disciplined strategies without forcing traders to expose significant own capital to market drawdowns.
The platform’s 2026 roadmap includes the launch of futures trading, a dedicated crypto-only challenge and a new front-end platform aimed at active altcoin traders. Bock highlighted growing demand from users who already trade on centralised venues but want larger position sizing without recapitalising their accounts. The funded-account model has drawn scrutiny over evaluation-fee revenue, yet broker-backed providers argue that real-broker execution and transparent payout structures separate them from earlier speculative challenge programmes. Talks around on-chain payout verification and crypto-native deposits have also accelerated within the segment, signalling tighter convergence between traditional prop trading rails and digital-asset infrastructure.
The Bank of England signalled a deeper pivot toward tokenized finance, with Deputy Governor for Financial Stability Sarah Breeden outlining a strategy that places shared-ledger technology at the centre of the UK’s payment modernisation. Speaking at City Week 2026 in London, Breeden said the future retail system should feature multiple interchangeable forms of money, including tokenized bank deposits, regulated stablecoins and a potential retail central bank digital currency. She added that smart contract automation could materially reduce settlement friction. The remarks position the central bank closer to applied DeFi primitives than at any prior point in its public messaging.
The central bank plans to publish draft rules for systemic stablecoins next month and finalise them before the end of 2026, with temporary issuance caps under consideration to manage early adoption risks. Breeden confirmed that 16 firms — including Euroclear, HSBC and the London Stock Exchange Group — are preparing to go live on the Bank-FCA Digital Securities Sandbox from late 2026. The sandbox, which runs until January 2029, permits live trading venues and settlement systems for tokenized securities, opening a regulated path for institutional DEX-style infrastructure to operate alongside conventional exchanges within the UK perimeter.
The week’s events sketch a clear narrative arc: regulated digital money is moving from theoretical white paper into active institutional build-out. European banks are coalescing around a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, the Bank of England is codifying rails for tokenized deposits, and even the trader-tooling layer is reorienting around crypto-native flows. Each development carries the same signal — incumbents are no longer competing with stablecoins and tokenized assets but absorbing them into traditional financial plumbing. The dominant theme this cycle is structural assimilation, with jurisdictional regulators racing to define the rules before private rails define them first.
Source: https://en.coinotag.com/qivalis-37-banks-bank-of-england-tokenization-stablecoin-rules
