BREAKING
- German fintech 21X has become the first company to receive an EU license to operate a fully regulated, blockchain-based trading and settlement platform. The platform is intended to enable trading in tokenized assets such as equities, bonds and real estate — directly on public blockchains, with greater efficiency and lower costs.
MORE
- Trump appoints former PayPal COO David Sacks as the White House's first AI and crypto czar.
- Paul Atkins, an expert on digital assets, has been nominated by Trump as SEC Chairman. His tenure could bring greater legal certainty on the classification of digital assets and a clear division of responsibilities between the SEC and the CFTC.
- Following US President Donald Trump's announcement of a strategic bitcoin reserve, other nations are showing interest in similar initiatives: in recent weeks, politicians from Brazil, Russia and China, among others, have gone public with comparable considerations.
- Private bank Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe has received its final BaFin license to maintain a crypto securities register, stepping up its commitment to the tokenization of financial instruments. It is now the first bank in Germany able to act as a crypto registrar under the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG).
- Together with Atruvia AG and Börse Stuttgart, Westerwald Bank eG has become the first cooperative bank to open crypto wallets and successfully execute transactions as part of a pilot project. From next year, trading in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin is to be made available to retail clients across the cooperative banking sector.
- Crypto giants Circle and Binance announce a partnership for the global adoption of the stablecoin USDC.
- The ECB publishes a further interim report on the digital euro, outlining the selection of technology partners and the completion of the rulebook in the summer of 2025 as the next tasks, among others.
- The Eurosystem concludes its wholesale CBDC trials: over seven months, 64 participants settled more than 200 transactions worth EUR 1.59 billion in central bank money using distributed ledger technology (DLT), which can be read as strong interest from the market side.
SPEAKERS’ CORNER
- The topic of "digital assets" has definitively reached the mainstream following the impressive rally in digital assets after the US election.
- Our near-weekly webinars, which we host together with our partner Bankhaus Bauer, are attracting strong interest.
- The retail fund we launched jointly, the "Bankhaus Bauer x 21 Oaks AI & Blockchain Innovation Fund," has grown to a net asset value of more than EUR 8 million in a very short time.
- Our Web3 special fund "21 Oaks Blockchain Horizon" is likewise seeing steady inflows and won its first German institutional investor in December with Smart Equity AG.
- We are highly optimistic on digital assets for 2025 and expect increased investment in this asset class, particularly from professional US investors.
Translated from the German original, which is the authoritative version. Read the German version
