Japan's Finance Minister plans to advance lifting the ban on cryptocurrency ETFs in Japan.

According to CoinDesk, Tokyo-listed firm Metaplanet is forming a joint research team with Japanese yen stablecoin issuer JPYC and regulated security token platform Progmat to explore Bitcoin-backed digital credit products. The initiative will tokenize BTC collateral for use in debt instruments that accrue interest daily and can be traded and settled 24/7. Siiibo Securities, which Metaplanet acquired this year and plans to rebrand as Metaplanet Securities, will also participate in the research, handling product design and sales. Currently, Metaplanet holds around 43,000 BTC, which it intends to use as credit enhancement, a store of value, and compliant collateral assets to address the high financing costs and cumbersome processes faced by medium-sized and growing Japanese enterprises in the traditional bond market.

London-based AI writing startup Marker, co-founded by a former DeepMind creative lead, has exited stealth mode and announced a $13 million seed funding round. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Local Globe. Angel investors include Writely co-founder Steve Newman, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, and Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf.

Ledger researchers have discovered that a laser attack can reset the passcodes on all Tangem hardware wallet cards. The attack requires physical access to the device, roughly $250,000 worth of laboratory equipment, and existing cards already in circulation cannot be patched.

According to an official announcement, Bitget’s staking and borrowing platform has added stock tokens (rTokens) as collateral assets. The first batch includes 26 popular U.S. stocks and ETF tokens, such as rNVDA, rAAPL, rGOOGL, and rQQQ, covering sectors including technology, semiconductors, and index funds. Users holding these stock tokens can now use them as collateral to borrow mainstream assets like USDT and USDC, unlocking capital liquidity without selling their positions. The web-based feature is already live, while the app version will launch next week. For specific collateral parameters and more details, please refer to Bitget’s official platform. It is noted that rTokens, identified by the format of the letter 'r' plus the stock ticker (e.g., rNVDA for Nvidia), are issued by Reality, Bitget’s licensed Real-World Asset (RWA) protocol. Via a partnership with regulated broker Alpaca, they directly connect to global liquidity pools including the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange. Their key features include: 1:1 reserve of underlying assets held by licensed custodians, stock dividends distributed on a 1:1 basis in token form, synchronized mapping of corporate actions (such as stock splits and consolidations), and eligibility as combined margin for unified accounts and U.S. dollar-denominated contracts, enabling users to flexibly manage their funds while holding global stock assets.

According to official announcements, Binance Alpha has launched the second round of the Irys (IRYS) airdrop campaign. Users holding 245 or more Alpha points can claim 2,900 IRYS on a first-come, first-served basis, with 15 Alpha points deducted per claim. If the airdrop pool is not fully distributed, the point threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every 5 minutes. Users must confirm their claim on the Alpha campaign page within 24 hours; unclaimed rewards after this period will be forfeited.

According to official announcements, blockchain security firm SlowMist has launched its AI-powered on-chain intelligence tracking tool TrackAgent, which has been integrated into the company’s free stolen asset assessment service. TrackAgent supports 31 blockchains, enabling continuous tracking of stolen funds, reconstruction of complex fund flows, correlation of attacker addresses, and leveraging on-chain intelligence and security threat intelligence to assist in real-world investigations.