Today in crypto, Hong Kong has issued its first stablecoin issuer licenses, approving Anchorpoint Financial and HSBC’s Hong Kong banking arm under its new regime, a researcher has proposed a way to make Bitcoin transactions quantum-safe, but it is an expensive temporary measure, and CoreWeave’s latest financing highlights Wall Street’s shift away from volatile, hardware-backed crypto lending toward cash-flow-driven AI infrastructure.
Hong Kong grants first stablecoin licenses to Anchorpoint and HSBC
Hong Kong has granted its first stablecoin issuer licenses, approving Anchorpoint Financial and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation under a new regulatory framework overseen by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
The HKMA announced the initial batch of licensees on Friday, marking the first approvals under its stablecoin regime.
Anchorpoint Financial is the stablecoin joint venture formed by Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecommunications. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited is HSBC’s Hong Kong-based banking entity and one of the city’s three note-issuing banks.
The first approvals highlight Hong Kong’s cautious approach, with regulators appearing to favor bank-linked and institution-backed issuers in the regime’s opening phase.
The announcement comes after weeks of unconfirmed reports about potential licensees and a missed March timeline, marking a cautious start to Hong Kong’s stablecoin licensing rollout. HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue said in February that a very small number of issuers would be licensed in March, a timetable the HKMA ultimately missed before granting the first approvals.
Bitcoin can be quantum-safe without a protocol upgrade: Researcher
A Bitcoin researcher has come up with a way that could immediately make Bitcoin transactions quantum-safe without the need for a soft fork.
In a proposal published Thursday, StarkWare chief product officer Avihu Levy proposed a Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) transaction scheme that he said would remain secure “even against an adversary with a large-scale quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm.”
He added that the scheme requires no changes to the Bitcoin protocol and operates entirely within the existing legacy script constraints. The downside is that it is costly and likely is not useful for everyday transactions, he said.
The Bitcoin community has been split on how to tackle the quantum problem. QSB presents a temporary solution while a long-term approach is ironed out.
The scheme’s main feature is replacing the proof-of-work signature-size puzzle with a hash-to-sig puzzle.
Instead of relying on elliptic curve math that quantum computers can break, the spender must find an input whose hash output randomly happens to resemble a valid ECDSA (elliptic curve digital signature algorithm) signature, requiring brute-force work that even a quantum computer cannot shortcut.
CoreWeave’s $8.5 billion loan shows how AI is replacing crypto mining finance
CoreWeave’s recent $8.5 billion AI-backed loan highlights a major transition in how Wall Street finances digital infrastructure, marking a shift from “MinerFi” to “ComputeFi,” according to TheEnergyMag.
In its latest Miner Weekly newsletter, TheEnergyMag examined CoreWeave’s multibillion-dollar raise from a group of banks and investors, backed by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms. As Bloomberg reported, the financing underscores how companies are finding new ways to fund data center construction and expand GPU capacity.
Although CoreWeave has pivoted away from the digital asset sector toward AI-focused data center compute, the move offers a broader lesson on the shortcomings of Bitcoin (BTC) mining finance.
Historically, lenders funded Bitcoin mining operations using application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, as collateral. However, these models proved fragile due to crypto price volatility and rapid hardware depreciation. When markets declined, both revenues and collateral values fell sharply.
