The European Central Bank, European Commission and European Securities and Markets Authority have launched a joint initiative to create common standards for tokenized securities, inviting financial institutions and blockchain firms to apply by November 27, 2026. The new European Tokenisation Standards Group will start work in January 2027, with the first standards expected by early 2028. The three authorities will act as observers while industry representatives lead the discussions.
The group will focus on holding and settlement of tokenized securities across distributed ledger platforms and between blockchain networks and traditional financial infrastructure. The initiative is part of the Eurosystem's Appia project and builds on the Pontes settlement service, which already connects blockchain platforms to TARGET services. Deutsche Bank, Santander and Clearstream participated in the initial Pontes rollout. The work is also linked to proposed amendments to the EU's DLT Pilot Regime, under which Securitize received approval to operate a tokenized trading and settlement system using Avalanche.
In digital asset markets this week, Bitcoin faced heavy ETF outflows. CoinMarketCap head of research Alice Liu noted US spot Bitcoin ETFs gave back $643 million in a single session on Thursday, erasing four sessions of inflows. Bitcoin perpetual funding averaged 0.93 basis points a day, the 100th percentile of the past 90 days, while the Fear and Greed Index fell to 37 from 67 a month ago. Ethereum saw stablecoin supply fall 3.2 percent over thirty days to about $141 billion, and decentralized-exchange volume ran 49 percent below the 30-day baseline after a burst of activity two days earlier.
On security, Immunefi experts commented after Binance's signing system was reportedly compromised to send malicious withdrawals. They emphasized that attackers increasingly target the operational layer, people and software around private keys, rather than the keys themselves. The on-chain sweeper contract was about 130 lines, showing that privileged access made simple code devastating, and the same pattern was seen in the Bybit breach last year and Bitget in September.
The weekly commentary also covered AI agentic finance, with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Project Sage drawing support from executives at Espresso Systems, t54 Labs and Quote.Trade. Goldman Sachs reportedly pulled Claude Code from most traders and bankers, while Paraguay's central bank took over digital lender ueno after a crisis that briefly left nearly half the country without access to funds.
