Morning News | The draft amendment to the People's Bank of China Law aims to clarify the legal status of digital renminbi; South Korea will transfer about 40 u…
According to ChainCatcher, Caixin reported that the "Draft Amendment to the People's Bank of China Law" was submitted for its first review at the 23rd meeting of the 14th National People's Congress Standing Committee on June 23, 2026. Among the new proposals is the "clarification of the legal status of digital yuan." The 2020 draft only mentioned that "the yuan includes both physical and digital forms." Previous drafts also stipulated that no unit or individual may produce or sell token tickets and digital tokens to replace the yuan in circulation, and the People's Bank of China should order the cessation of illegal activities, destroy illegally produced and sold token tickets and digital tokens, confiscate illegal gains, and impose fines of up to five times the illegal amount. According to ChainCatcher, BNB treasury company CEA Industries announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with YZi Labs, and both parties will jointly promote adjustments to the BNC governance structure. According to the agreement, Ella Zhang, Alex Odagiu, and Matthew Roszak have been appointed as company directors, and both parties will jointly select an independent director with experience in digital assets, capital markets, and governance of listed companies. At the same time, the board will establish a CEO selection committee, with YZi Labs partner Alex Odagiu serving as interim president until a new CEO is appointed. As part of the agreement, YZi Labs will terminate its previous consent solicitation and withdraw related requests. CEA Industries stated that this move will help strengthen corporate governance and enhance its ability to execute long-term strategies around the BNB ecosystem. According to ChainCatcher, Castle Labs released an RWA industry report stating that the on-chain tokenized real-world assets (RWA) market has reached $28.2 billion, growing approximately 500% since early 2025, with a peak of $31.8 billion. Currently, tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds and money market funds remain the largest category, with a scale of about $17 billion, accounting for nearly 60% of the entire RWA market, among which BlackRock BUIDL and Hashnote USYC have both surpassed $3 billion in scale. The report also pointed out that tokenized stocks have become one of the fastest-growing RWA sub-sectors, growing over 170% this year, significantly higher than the approximately 60% growth rate of tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds. Castle Labs believes that the expansion of stablecoins, the entry of institutional funds, and the advancement of regulatory frameworks such as CLARITY and MiCA are driving traditional financial assets to continue to go on-chain. However, the current industry's biggest bottleneck has shifted from asset issuance to redemption mechanisms and DeFi composability. Currently, of the approximately $28.2 billion in on-chain RWA, only about $3 billion has entered DeFi, with a penetration rate of about 10%. According to ChainCatcher, the Chicago Options Exchange (Cboe Global Markets) announced the launch of a new prediction market platform "Cboe Predicts," along with the first batch of prediction products. These products include binary options contracts based on the mini S&P 500 index (XSP), with codes XSPBW and XSPBX. The contract size is one-tenth of the standard S&P 500 index options (SPX). Currently, the contract has been launched on Interactive Brokers and plans to be pushed to more retail brokerage platforms such as Charles Schwab in the coming months. Additionally, as securities options, these products will be centrally cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and will follow the same regulatory and monitoring framework as U.S. listed options. According to ChainCatcher, citing two Meta employees, The New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg has instructed an internal small team to develop an independent prediction market application code-named "Arena," which will operate separately from existing products like Facebook and Instagram. The initial design uses a game-like points system rather than real money betting, but the possibility of introducing real money models in the future has not been ruled out. After the news was released, Robinhood and DraftKings stocks fell in early trading this week. Meta's applications have 3.56 billion daily active users, far exceeding the total distribution scale of all existing prediction market platforms, and if officially entered, it will directly impact crypto-native platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. Prediction markets are currently in a rapid growth phase, with Polymarket's trading volume surpassing $10 billion for the first time in March this year. On the regulatory front, the CFTC is currently in litigation regarding federal jurisdiction over prediction markets and state-level betting laws. Meta's points system design temporarily bypasses this issue, but its scale means that any shift to real money betting will immediately become a significant regulatory event. According to ChainCatcher, Sonic Labs released the latest progress update, announcing that the Fantom Opera network will continue to operate until at least the end of 2026 and will continue to provide funding support for cross-chain bridges during this period. The team stated that this move was based on community feedback, as there were previous plans to cease operations of Fantom Opera by the end of this month. Meanwhile, Sonic Labs announced a new management structure, appointing Matt Visser as CEO and Kosta Kourkoumelis as COO, and stated that it will publicly disclose team member responsibilities information in the future, gradually eliminating the unified "Contributor" label. Additionally, the project party stated that it will begin to lift some restrictions on community accounts, allowing normal expression of critical opinions, while establishing dedicated communication channels for disclosure, support, feedback, and developer collaboration, and plans to launch a more comprehensive ticket support system and community engagement activities. The team stated that it will regularly disclose operational progress in the future. According to ChainCatcher, Newsis reported that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of South Korea has handed over about 40 unregistered virtual asset service providers to law enforcement for processing. The report pointed out that since these unregistered companies are not subject to South Korea's "Virtual Asset User Protection Act" and "Specific Financial Transaction Information Reporting and Use Act," they face risks such as personal data leakage and hacking attacks, and may also be used for money laundering and concealing criminal funds. According to ChainCatcher, Shanghai Securities News reported that several private equity industry insiders revealed that they received notices from cooperating brokerages last night, requiring them to suspend the increase in cross-border TRS (Total Return Swap) scale by managers. According to public information, TRS is a financial derivative that allows private equity to obtain the returns (or losses) of an asset without directly holding foreign assets (the principal does not leave the country) by signing a return swap agreement with a counterparty brokerage. Since the beginning of this year, due to the impressive performance of the global technology sector, many private equity firms have configured overseas assets through cross-border TRS. Since May, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and seven other departments jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Rectification of Illegal Cross-Border Securities and Futures Fund Operations," targeting leading cross-border internet brokerages such as Tiger Brokers, Futu Holdings, and Changqiao Securities. After the space for mainland residents to engage in illegal cross-border stock trading has shrunk, private equity products using cross-border TRS to configure overseas technology targets have increasingly attracted funding attention. According to ChainCatcher, Binance co-CEO He Yi posted on X stating, "Zhu Pan once impersonated others to defraud me unsuccessfully and also impersonated me to defraud Brother Sun." Tron founder Sun Yuchen immediately retweeted in response, stating, "This is absolutely true, and the industry should collectively resist such fraudulent behavior and bring it to justice." At the same time, CoinUp officially released a statement regarding recent market discussions about the platform and CPX, stating that Zhu Pan is not the operator of the CoinUp platform and does not participate in the core operations of the platform; his identity is only that of a project party for a project launched on the CoinUp platform. Regarding the recent significant price fluctuations of CPX/USDT, CoinUp stated that it is mainly due to concentrated selling pressure in the market, and the specific reasons are under investigation and verification. The platform emphasized that after a comprehensive security check, it has not suffered from hacking attacks or system vulnerabilities, and user asset security and account data integrity are intact, with functions such as deposits, withdrawals, and trading operating normally. According to ChainCatcher, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission released the "2025-26 Annual Report," showing that Hong Kong's capital market has achieved significant growth across various asset classes over the past year, including investment funds, digital assets, and the stock market. Among them, the growth of tokenized investment products has accelerated, with the total managed assets of 13 retail products recognized by the Securities and Futures Commission increasing nearly sixfold year-on-year to HKD 10.8 billion as of March 13; at the same time, the total market value of 11 virtual asset spot ETFs reached HKD 4.3 billion, significantly increasing by 90% since their launch in 2024, recognizing Asia's first Solana spot ETF; the transaction volume of 12 licensed virtual asset trading platforms has increased significantly by 125% within a year. According to ChainCatcher, South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix plans to raise up to 45 trillion won (approximately $29 billion) through the issuance of American Depositary Receipts (ADR) in New York, with the related transaction set to start in July. If successful, this financing scale will surpass Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014, becoming one of the largest overseas equity financing projects in South Korean history and approaching global capital market historical records. According to the plan, SK Hynix will first issue shares in South Korea, then deposit the relevant shares into the Korean Securities Depository as ADR underlying securities. South Korean regulators are expected to complete the review by July 3. The raised funds will mainly be used for the construction of the Yongin semiconductor cluster in South Korea and a factory in Indiana, USA, as well as the purchase of EUV extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment to support the expansion of advanced storage capacity related to AI. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America have been selected as lead underwriters. SK Hynix's confidence in this U.S. financing stems from its strong position in the AI industry chain. As a leading company in the global high-bandwidth memory (HBM) field, the company is a core supplier of Nvidia's AI accelerator chips, and driven by AI demand, its stock price has increased by over 300% this year. CEO Kwon Oh-joon stated that the company hopes to leverage the U.S. capital market to enhance its global influence and achieve a valuation level commensurate with other AI hardware companies. According to ChainCatcher, the Korea Economic Daily reported that at least seven companies, including Dunamu, the operator of the South Korean crypto exchange Upbit, have submitted proposals to bid to become the first private custodian of virtual assets seized by the South Korean National Police Agency. Other bidders include major custodians Korea Digital Asset (KODA), Korea Digital Asset Custody (KDAC), BDACS, Hecto Wallet One, Infinite Block, and DSRV. An official from a virtual asset custody institution explained that the selection results may be finalized next month. The official pointed out that in a previous pilot project for the National Tax Service, the winning bidder wa
Source: ChainCatcher