Hello, Asia. Here’s what’s making news on the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of the top news stories during U.S. business hours and insight into market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of US markets, see Crypto Daybook Americas from CoinDesk.
Hashed claims that the crypto market is finally moving from narrative to structure and that 2026 will be the year when digital assets begin to behave like an economy rather than a speculative category, as stablecoins become global settlement rails and AI agents emerge as autonomous economic actors, reshaping where the true investment value lies.
In its Protocol Economy 2026 report, which serves as its investment thesis for the year, the Korea-based venture capital firm says that it is in Asia that this transition is becoming visible, with regulated stablecoin pilots, early deployments of AI agents and the expansion of RWA and treasury workflows forming the first on-chain enterprise systems.
Hashed says the investment frontier is now anchored in these structural layers, where payments, credit and settlements move on programmable rails, and where applications evolve into adaptive economic systems driven by stable liquidity and verifiable demand. The company focuses its capital on teams with real users and escalating on-chain activity rather than projects tied to dynamic narratives.
Hashed views this change as a correction from the past two years, when excess liquidity and speculative flows obscured the parts of the stack that were generating real usage.
The company says the data now clearly indicates that stablecoins, on-chain credit and automation infrastructure are the categories where activity is growing rather than growing. This trend is particularly evident in Asia, where regulators in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are developing frameworks that enable stablecoin settlements, tokenized deposits and RWA issuance to connect with existing financial systems.
Hashed says AI will accelerate this transition because agents can route payments, manage liquidity, and execute transactions programmatically, creating demand for seamless rails.
This next phase of growth will favor builders working at the intersection of real liquidity and automation, where digital assets operate as economic systems rather than speculative instruments – and this is where Hashed will invest.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin is drifting around $92,000 after failing to sustain an overnight move toward $94,000, reinforcing some analysts’ views that it is settling into a low-liquidity range between $85,000 and $95,000.
ETFs: Ether holds above $3,100 and outperforms Bitcoin on the day, falling less than 1% as the broader market moves sideways.
Gold: Gold is hovering around $4,200 in a tight consolidation as a weaker U.S. dollar offers support while higher Treasury yields and firm risk appetite limit follow-through, leaving the metal biased higher but still stuck in a range ahead of key U.S. data.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets opened lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei down 1.36% and the Topix down 1.12% after a quiet session on Wall Street.
Elsewhere in crypto
- Stablecoin Adoption Could Stifle Central Bank Control, IMF Warns (Decrypt)
- The creator of the Canton network lands a strategic investment from Wall Street giants (CoinDesk)
- Solana ETFs See Record Outflow as 21Shares TSOL Bleeds $42 Million (Decrypt)
