The Rundown: Banks battling the future on multiple fronts

ISSUE #8 · August 28, 2026 · By Michael Casey

Welcome to the eighth issue of The Rundown.

This is it: Four days to lift off! The Real-World Asset Summit Brooklyn 2026 begins Tuesday, and we are officially sold out.

Apologies to all who applied to come but didn’t make the list. It was an impressive pool of applicants, making it a very difficult task sorting out who should be there. But keep trying. We will have other events. Through this newsletter — which will continue after the event — and with other content, there are lots of ways to stay engaged with the fast-changing world of tokenization. We hope to see you in person some time soon.

For those who did make the cut, we’re very much looking forward to hosting you. It will be an action-packed – and hopefully fun — two days.

One of those you’ll hear from is Fabian Astic, Moody’s Ratings’ leader on all things digital economy. Below, in A Conversation With, he teases out some of the ideas he’ll put forward on stage about how digitalization – and real-world assets in particular — is redefining how ratings agencies measure credit risk.

The Run-Up

4 days until the Real-World Asset Summit Brooklyn 2026
Mike Cagney joins as headline speaker
New Real-World Asset Summit Meeting App released

The Rundown

One session I’m especially excited for next week is the “Bank of the Future” panel.

The forces at work in financial technology – not just in tokenization, but also in AI, quantum, and other areas — are poised to overhaul a centralized system that dates back 500 years!

Whenever disruption of such scale is in the cards, it unlocks a struggle between the incumbents and the innovators. We at Real-World Asset Summit see ourselves as bridge-builders between these two worlds. We like to say we are where DeFi meets TradFi to become “Fi.”

But as this week’s news flow reminds us, this compromise and collaboration process is inevitably accompanied by friction and tension. In the banking world, it’s also creating fragmentation and competing ideas within and across institutions.

That’s found in accounts of a) a powerful U.S. banking lobby trying to impose identity-compliance burdens on stablecoin issuers, b) a warning from the Dallas Fed that tokenized deposits could make it harder for banks to profitably lend, and c) news that state banking associations are creating their own blockchain for stablecoins.

As you’ll hear in my interview with Moody’s Ratings' Fabian Astic, part of this plays out in interesting questions about the “credit risk” behind different stablecoins.

Fabian Astic is Managing Director, Global Head of Digital Economy at Moody’s Ratings, and Chair of the company’s AI Oversight Working Group. He leads Moody’s work related to many areas of the digitalization of the global economy, beyond tokenization. The remit covers digital finance, AI analytics, cyber credit risk, and quantum computing.

Q: Moody's is a 100-year-old credit ratings business. You run a "digital economy" department inside it. What's the through line here from the Moody’s of old to the Moody’s of the future?

A: Our view is that over time markets will transition to digital platforms. As the benefits of tokenization are realized, more and more assets will sit on those platforms — and as the market evolves, we have to evolve with it. That means two things. First, analytical relevance: if bonds are on blockchain platforms, we need to understand and explain the risks that come from the new DLT wrappers, so our views still mean something in that ecosystem. Second, business preparedness: if our stakeholders are increasingly on digital platforms, and the data they need to share is only available through those platforms, we have to meet them where they need us to be — we need to be able to take data from their environments. And it runs the other way too. As smart contracts and other blockchain features become standard, ratings and the other data we provide have to exist in formats that digital markets can use, so that, for instance, a smart contract can consume them. That's why the department was created — to think about the big picture, from the analytical side through to business readiness. We've since widened its scope to AI, quantum and cyber, because those are risks that cut across everything.

Q: When a bond moves onto digital rails, what actually changes in the credit analysis?

A: A bond is a bond. Take a bank bond on a digital platform: before it's a DLT bank bond, it's a bank bond. You use the banking methodology and the credit risk drivers described in it, and that gives you most of the credit story. Then you look under the hood, because now it sits on DLT rails, and the question is whether investors could be affected by those rails. Is there a situation where cash flows could be trapped inside the structure — not because of external sources of risk, but because of how the bond is built on that infrastructure? So you add, when relevant, considerations to the primary credit drivers: the technology of the platform itself, the governance of the platform, a number of legal risks — if you invest in a token, are the legal rights, in particular ownership rights, properly transferred to that token? — and questions around the smart contract lifecycle, such as whether the contracts have been tested properly so that the final smart contract actually represents the initial requirements. Then external risks like oracle, cyber and regulatory that could affect cash flows. There's no systematic way to do all of this yet, because there isn't enough harmonization in the digital bond space. But we know these additional risks need to be on the table, and we need to tell the market about them so investors can analyze them properly. That holds for most assets that existed before blockchains — bonds, money market funds, bond funds.

Q: Stablecoins got their own credit rating methodology, which digital bonds didn't. Why were they the exception — and if accounting rules start treating them as cash, does that change anything?

A: Most of those other assets existed before blockchains, so the credit story was already in the corresponding methodology. Fiat-backed stablecoins are different — they appeared because blockchains exist. And we built the methodology because of a question we kept getting from the market: if I settle a digital asset with a fiat-backed stablecoin, am I increasing the risk profile of that transaction? Which really means: is there credit risk attached to a stablecoin? It's not a question you ask when you settle with actual money. A stablecoin isn't money; it's an investment vehicle…It will be used as a settlement asset. That doesn't make it cash.

And that's exactly when the question arises — when a stablecoin sits on the payment leg of a transaction or structure we rate. At that point, it is no longer about market sentiment;I need to know that my dollar is available when I go back to the issuer to redeem my coin, whether the market has it at 1.10 or 90 cents. Stablecoins are going to be used that way, because digital cash is needed to fuel the digital ecosystem, and there aren’t any other candidates available at scale at this point. There will be central bank digital currencies in some countries and regions — in the EU, fairly soon, for instance. There will be tokenized deposits at some point. But as of today, what you have is stablecoins, around $300 billion of market cap.

Q: So, is there credit risk in a stablecoin?

A: Yes, and that's what our credit rating methodology assesses. There is a credit promise here: you give me a dollar, and when you want it back I'm supposed to return it in full, on demand, within a grace period, up to a few days depending on the coin. That's very close to a deposit promise, except it isn't issued by a bank and it isn't a bank deposit at all. Our approach is multi-layered and bottom-up. You start with the reserve assets. To test whether the promise holds, you look at the credit risk of the reserve assets, because an asset that defaults is no longer available to meet the promise; at market risk, because if values fall too far you may look fully covered and still come up short when you sell; and at liquidity risk, because a mismatch between what's coming in from the reserve portfolio and what's due on the coins can cause missed payments.

Then you run all of that under stressed conditions, so the rating goes through the cycle rather than being a point-in-time snapshot — being one-for-one today tells you nothing about tomorrow, and for a settlement asset it's the long term that matters. On top of the assets, you look at the governance of the coin, operational risks including technology, the counterparties in the structure and what happens if one of them doesn't perform or defaults, the legal structure and how cash flows travel from the reserve assets all the way to holders when they're due, and the regulatory environment — whether you're actually operating somewhere it's fine to have a stablecoin. Those considerations and others put together give you the credit picture behind the rating. It is the first credit rating methodology for stablecoins, and it came out as a response to a real market need.

The Digest

US bank lobby wants stablecoin holders to open an account before cashing out

Among the various regulatory bottlenecks that tend to protect banks’ dominance over finance, it’s in their role as de facto agents of the U.S. government enforcing know-your-customer and anti-money laundering rules. Fighting crime plays well in Washington. But while most of the grownups in crypto long ago conceded they can’t get away from KYC, there’s understandable suspicion whenever banks push for more of it. Is this proposal from the American Bankers Association – made in a July comment to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) but only surfacing now — to force KYC on anyone redeeming funds from a stablecoin issuer another one of those turf-protecting measures or security loopholes that should be closed? You decide.

Dallas Fed warns tokenized deposits could strip $700 billion from U.S. banks' lending capacity

Hadn’t thought of this one. Fluidity across tokens may well see consumers playing yield arbitrage across different banks’ tokens, based on competing deposit rates. These researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas think that could make the cost of borrowing much more unpredictable and volatile for banks, which would undermine their ability to make loans. Is the answer to reduce consumers’ tokenized money options or to tap DeFi and onchain credit solutions to widen the lending and borrowing market beyond banks? Again, you decide?

39 US banking groups are building their own stablecoin blockchain

The first thing to know about the banking industry is that it is far from monolithic. There is a world of difference between the giant banks that sit on the Financial Stability Board’s list of Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs) and, say, a community bank in Arizona. So, it’s interesting to see how different parts of the banking industry are trying different things as they struggle to figure out where payments go – stablecoins vs tokenized deposits vs central bank digital currency. Here, the vast majority of U.S. state bankers associations have formed a consortium to support, not tokenized deposits among each other, but their own blockchain for stablecoins.

First fully onchain repo transaction completed using a sovereign digital bond

If banks are going to see their ending margins squeezed when tokenized money gives people and companies more options for cash management beyond locking their funds in a single bank, maybe they can make up for those losses in the repo market. The repurchase securities, as it is formally known, does a whopping $12 trillion in trades every day in the U.S. alone. It’s where banks that are short on cash post collateral to borrow short-term money overnight and those long on cash lend against the securities posted by the borrowing institutions. (Sometimes there’s excessive demand to borrow a particular type of bond—often to short sell it—which flips the dynamic to one where demand emanates from the cash-providing institution.) One hot topic at the RWA Summit will be how blockchain-based securities and money transfers could make this market much more scalable, with smart contract-based execution and onchain provenance potentially reducing collateral non-delivery risks, which should widen the types and amount of collateral that can be offered. By extension, this should also widen the type and amount of borrowing and lending banks can do with each other.

Dromos Labs CEO makes the case that onchain price gaps for tokenized Nvidia shares are a feature, not a bug

I thought this was interesting. And it would apply to a variety of markets in which tokenized shares, or derivatives of them, trade 24/7 alongside the traditional Wall Street limited-hour trading. However, I don’t think we can easily know how reliable these markets will be as price discrepancy until there is decent liquidity in them. Until then, it will be hard to decide whether it’s a glitch, a function of very thin markets, or the constructive feature that Dromos CEO Alex Cutler is talking about. What will constitute sufficient liquidity? And will the heavy volumes in perps markets rise to this level, or do those no-deliverable contracts need to perform to a higher standard?

Mirae Asset eyes $109 billion crypto empire after acquiring Digital X

Big talk from one of South Korea’s biggest companies. The question is whether Mirae can expand outside of South Korea, or whether it even wants to. I ask because South Korean crypto companies are in a unique position. On the one hand, local cryptocurrency exchanges such as Dunamu’s Upbit and Digital X (formerly Korbit), the company acquired by Digital X, are prohibited by law from growing their business overseas. It is unclear whether that will apply to real-world asset projects such as those outlined in this ambitious plan by Mirae founder Park Hyeon-joo. On the other hand, those same exchanges are protected from outside competition, since foreign providers are barred from servicing Korean locals. That local population houses the most fanatical crypto investors in the world, which is why Upbit is so successful. Is Mirae looking to build on this captive local market situation or does it have global ambitions?

Bybit adds Brazilian credit product to RWA earn through Plume

“Brazil’s most valuable export is its interest rate.” I once heard that line from Aaron Stanley, a former CoinDesk colleague, now transplanted to Brazil, from where he hosts the Bits and Borders podcast, runs events, and keeps close tabs on what’s happening with crypto in Latin America. As Aaron recently wrote in Forbes, Brazil’s embrace of stablecoins has allowed ordinary investors to participate in a strategy that was, until now, exclusively the domain of institutions: a carry trade, a foreign exchange bet that entails taking a long position in a high-yielding currency like the Brazilian real and financing it with a short position in a low-yielding currency like the Japanese yen. Well now, products like this one from Bybit allow people to get exposure to the even juicier yields sitting behind those high official interest rates in instruments such as the credit card receivables of Brazilian citizens. In theory, opening up these opportunities to a wider pool of demand should help Brazil bring down those interest rates. As people bid up the prices of the country’s debt instruments, their yields will come down — and, hopefully, with them, the rates paid by locals.