Good morning Asia. This is what is making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top news during US time and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
China Renaissance’s reported plan to raise $600 million for a BNB-focused investment vehicle, with investment from Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs, may seem like an easy bet on the Binance ecosystem. But Singapore-based market maker Enflux argues it goes deeper: a sign that Asian institutions are building a different kind of exposure to cryptocurrencies than their Western counterparts.
“Regional capital allocators are seeking exposure to infrastructure tokens that drive transaction flow, not just store-of-value assets,” Enflux said in a note to CoinDesk, framing the China Renaissance move as part of a broader divergence between East and West.
BNB is a great example of this. Binance, of course, is not a publicly traded company, but BNB is something very much like a stock. Its value is an indicator of market sentiment and confidence in Binance.
While the US and European markets have shifted towards treasuries, funds and tokenized real-world assets, Asia’s capital markets are increasingly building crypto-native liquidity networks focused on exchange, staking and trading infrastructures.
“This ties into the broader shift where Asian capital markets are building their own layer of crypto-native liquidity networks, while Western markets tokenize TradFi,” Enflux continued.
The logic is simple. Value must be accumulated by activity, not by scarcity. Tron’s decision to create a publicly traded company to give listed investors exposure to activity on the TRX network, which is widely used to send USDT to Latin America, follows the same line of thinking.
If Enflux’s thesis is correct, the China Renaissance fund could be an early model for Asia’s next wave of institutional products: permanent capital vehicles that support the pipelines of the crypto economy, not just its gold.
Market movement:
BTC: BTC is trading above $114,500, relatively stable as the market stabilizes after last weekend’s volatility.
ETH: ETH rose 1.5% to $4,230 as network activity recovered, even as US-listed Ethereum ETFs recorded outflows of $118 million.
Gold: Gold rose 2% to a record $4,103 an ounce as renewed trade tensions between the United States and China and expectations of further Fed rate cuts drove investors toward safe-haven assets.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed on Tuesday as Trump’s conciliatory comments on China failed to offset renewed trade tensions, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 1.34%.
Elsewhere in Crypto:
- Crypto Market Structure Bill May Have to Wait Until After Midterm Elections, Says TD Cowen (The Block)
- Tom Lee’s Bitmine Bought the Dip and Added Over 200,000 ETH to Ethereum Treasury (CoinDesk)
- Ripple Offers $200,000 to ‘Attack’ Ledger Lending Protocol XRP (Decrypt)
