Weekly Outlook: Tokenization Continues at Full Speed

Japan’s largest banks MUFG, SMBC and Mizuho have launched an initiative called Project Pax through a stablecoin startup company called Progmat, which they founded. This structure, which aims to tokenize international money transfers over SWIFT’s existing infrastructure using Progmat’s stablecoins, is aimed to be commercialized and offered to players in the market in 2025. The SWIFT infrastructure is important for banks to easily adapt and not compromise on regulations such as preventing money laundering. We cannot read this initiative as a classic cryptocurrency development because there is no decentralization. Despite this, the transition to a token economy is the most pleasing part, which will eventually lead to cryptocurrency adaptation.

On the other hand, the Brazilian central bank has also launched the second phase of its own CBDC project. This phase, which has accepted 13 participants, also includes major players such as Visa and Santander. With the start of the third phase in the first quarter of 2025, it is now expected that the smart contract tests of the CBDC will be carried out.

The European Central Bank’s tokenization tests have been ongoing for some time, with data being collected from both individual and joint tokenization trials conducted by different banks in different countries. Most recently, Siemens issued €300 million worth of bonds using tokens on the blockchain as part of these tests.

When we say tokenization, perhaps we naturally think of the tokenization of money or products that are entirely financially focused. However, tokenization also occurs socially and culturally. For example, it may not seem like very important news, but Polymarket’s election-related data is now published on Bloomberg Terminal. So why?

As everyone is used to, polls are conducted regarding elections. These poll samples, which are conducted with a few thousand people, are scaled to the population of the country in order to obtain a meaningful result. The larger the sample, the more accurate it becomes, but since you cannot ask millions of people, the sample cannot be that large and therefore the margin of error must be high.

We can also consider election-related betting sites. However, here too, we cannot see data such as who deposited how much money to whom and how many people participated. As a result, unfortunately, we do not have an open source for surveys.

Polymarket is transparent, so you can see who has invested how much money. Since the claim in question is based on money, there is no need to question the seriousness of the answers given to the surveys. If the money is put on a candidate, we see that the person has clearly answered the question. Since his name etc. is kept secret, he can also vote in this way with confidence. Therefore, we are much more sure of the realism of the answers and the lack of manipulation in Polymarket-style infrastructures compared to other platforms.

If you ask, “Doesn’t Polymarket have its shortcomings?” Of course there are. Since it is not possible to collect and filter data, participants from every country and nation can enter Polymarket. Therefore, it is quite difficult to say that the rates in the presidential race directly represent US citizens. This also represents Polymarket’s margin of error. The valuable gain we have is that it is an open-source and transparent structure. We can perhaps define Polymarket as the closest infrastructure to the frequently used phrase of taking the pulse of the people. This shows that it represents a sociological transformation and is a social tokenization initiative.

SEC has recently sent a “wells notice” to Opensea. In other words, they have announced that they will file a lawsuit, although the date is not clear. The accusation is of course based on unregistered securities trading. OpenSea has not refrained from taking an aggressive stance, joining the recent trend, and has said that it will fight. The OpenSea case may be different compared to similar victims in the recent past. Here, it seems that the artist community will be highlighted rather than the trader community. Therefore, it is quite possible that general arguments and reactions will be deviated from. In fact, OpenSea also signals this in its statement. It accuses the SEC of restricting the creativity and productivity of artists. This argument points to a different base than the user base that we previously saw as “investors”. We may see a different reaction against the SEC from a social perspective.

As if dealing with the SEC wasn’t enough, Uniswap also received a fine from the CFTC. The penalty for leveraged BTC and ETH products on the platform was a fine of 175k USD and the removal of these tokens. Since Bitcoin and Ether are classified as commodities, they fall under the CFTC’s jurisdiction. Uniswap will most likely remove these tokens from the interface as it has done before. Whether this will be enough or not remains to be seen.

Robinhood allowed users to buy cryptocurrency on the platform between 2018 and 2020, but did not allow users to withdraw it. You could sell the cryptocurrency back and withdraw your assets that way. In the lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice regarding this practice, an agreement was reached between the parties for a payment of $ 3.9 million.

Although BitGo’s partnership with Justin Sun caused quite a stir, when looking at the exits from WBTC, it seems that there is a very weak reaction. It would not be wrong to say that the reaction on social media has no financial reality. Despite this, Threshold, who wants to turn the current atmosphere into an opportunity, is trying to grab a big share of the pie with a proposal such as “let’s give control to the DAO and get rid of the reactions” while making a proposal on the merger of tBTC and WBTC.

Last week, 21Shares joined the competition. It has now moved its 21BTC product, previously on the Solana network, to Ethereum. Considering that Coinbase will also be launching its own wrapped Bitcoin product soon, it seems like we are just before an increasingly heated competition process.

Sui, which is the first in the market, has produced a game console similar to Nintendo’s console. This is a console that includes the games on Sui and integrates cryptocurrency. The console called SuiPlay0X1 went on pre-sale for $599. It was announced that it will include the games Xociety and Dark Times on Sui. It can be said that it is one of the most serious product initiatives after Solana’s smartphone initiative.

Yuga Labs has been experiencing a performance decline due to management problems for a while now, which has been reflected in the price of the collections. With the change of CEO, things have calmed down a bit and the company is showing signs of returning to its roots, which made the community a little happier.

Now, the Dookey Dash game, which had previously caused quite a stir, is coming back to the market. This time, the prize is $1 million. Previously, the winner was given an NFT, which could be sold for 1000 ETH. Yuga Labs, who announced the game with another ambitious prize, also increased the price of the NFTs needed to make money from the game. We are witnessing Yuga’s first important test of whether it can satisfy its investors again and take its place at the top again.