Polymath is Going Public via Reverse Acquisition

Canadian tokenisation technology company Polymath is going public via a reverse acquisition with TruGolf Holdings. Focused on token issuance, compliance and lifecycle management of digital assets, Polymath recently acquired the Polymesh Layer-1 blockchain. Polymesh is built specifically for regulated assets, embedding compliance, identity verification and governance into the base layer.

Trugolf is a sports simulation business, which will continue its original focus within the combined Nasdaq-listed company. In exchange for acquiring Polymath, it will provide common and preferred stock to Polymath shareholders.

Polymath is involved in tokenisation across many asset classes, including real estate, private equity, debt, intellectual property and art. The company reported $4.2 million in revenue for 2025 and assets totaling $21 million. Polymath CFO Natalie Hirsch will serve as CFO and COO of the combined company after the closing.

Spotex and BitGo Partner to offer Regulated Custody and Prime Brokerage for Institutional Digital Asset Trading

Institutional trading venue Spotex has integrated with infrastructure provider BitGo to provide regulated custody to its digital asset customers via the latter’s GO Network. As a result, Spotex customers allocate assets held in regulated BitGo custody wallets for trading on Spotex while the underlying assets remain with BitGo throughout the trading lifecycle.

Spotex operates solely as the execution venue and does not act as principal to transactions executed through its ECN. This approach is designed to reduce the need to pre-fund the trading venue, improving capital efficiency, and minimising counterparty risk. BitGo’s applicable entities provide the customer’s custody, prime services, and settlement arrangements under the relevant agreements, including acting as a clearing and settlement broker and facilitating post-trade settlement.

For Spotex, the integration expands connectivity to BitGo’s institutional ecosystem and strengthens its offering to brokers, hedge funds, and asset managers seeking institutional-grade execution alongside regulated custody. And for BitGo, the integration adds another source of liquidity to its growing net

Joe Tuccio, who recently joined Spotex as Head of Digital Assets, says: “Having BitGo, one of the world’s largest specialist institutional custodians, as our first live digital asset custodian brings huge credibility to Spotex as we build out our digital asset offering and strengthen asset protection for our clients. By combining BitGo’s digital prime brokerage, custody and settlement capabilities with Spotex’s institutional liquidity and execution infrastructure, we believe we can provide clients with a more secure and capital-efficient way to trade digital assets.”

BSO Rolls Out Crypto Connect Plus for Latency-Sensitive Trading

Infrastructure and connectivity provider BSO has launched Crypto Connect Plus, which allows trading firms to spin up optimised cloud infrastructure in 10 minutes instead of requiring much longer lead times for manual provisioning.

Crypto Connect plus is aimed at market makers, HFT firms, crypto prop trading desks, digital assets platforms and liquidity providers. As well as the rapid self-service deployment, it features predictable ultra-low latency connectivity, a 99.95% SLA, dual AWS EC3 instances for resiliency and a real-time monitoring portal. Major exchanges connected include Binance, Kraken, OKX and Bybit.

Broadridge and Payward Add Shareholder Communications and Proxy Voting to xStocks

Broadridge Financial Solutions is adding shareholder communications and proxy voting to its unified governance platform to support eligible holders of xStocks, a leading tokenised equities framework developed by Payward Services.

“As tokenised securities continue to reshape global capital markets, investors should not have to choose between blockchain innovation and shareholder rights,” says Doug DeSchutter, President of Broadridge’s Investor Communication Solutions business. “By extending our governance platform to support xStocks, we are enabling eligible token holders to have a voice in corporate governance and extending our leadership in digital asset governance.”

Payward Services currently offers more than 500 tokenised assets across equities, ETFs and pre-IPO offerings, and with tokenised equities from several international markets slated to follow soon. 

Eligible holders will securely authenticate via ProxyVote.com using Web3 authentication, review proxy materials for the underlying securities, and submit their proxy voting preferences. The functionality brings established trusted governance capabilities that investors expect from traditional capital markets into on-chain ecosystems while preserving the accessibility and efficiency of tokenised assets.

Designed for interoperability across blockchains and platforms, xStocks move seamlessly between centralised exchanges, self-custodied wallets, and on-chain applications, unlocking new utility across trading, collateralisation, and decentralised finance (DeFi).

ANNA Integrates Digital Token Identifiers into its ANNA Service Bureau

The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) is now integrating Digital Token Identifiers (DTIs) into its ANNA Service Bureau (ASB). This expansion allows ASB subscribers to access both XT ISINs for cryptoassets and DTIs for digital assets where they have been assigned. Developed in partnership with the Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTIF) – an ANNA member that serves as the registration authority for the DTI standard – the integration reflects the growing maturation and normalisation of digital assets within the broader capital markets ecosystem.

Operating since 2001, the ASB serves as a central hub for standardised global financial identifier data, consolidating reference information from more than 120 national numbering agencies across more than 200 jurisdictions. The platform offers members free, single-point access to directly sourced International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs).

ISINs are alphanumeric codes that uniquely identify financial instruments, such as stocks, bonds, options and derivatives. Financial institutions rely on ISINs to efficiently perform straight-through processing, data analytics, risk tracking and regulatory compliance reporting.

Kraken-parent Payward Acquires Magic Labs’ Embedded Wallet Business

Payward, the parent company of digital asset exchange Kraken, has acquired Magic Labs’ embedded wallet business and its 60 million non-custodial wallets.

As financial services shift toward digital assets, wallets have become a primary gateway for retail and institutional products. They serve as the principal touchpoint where human users – and autonomous AI agents – store assets and execute transactions across both legacy banks and decentralised networks. For Payward, this acquisition could unlock a new ecosystem of financial services and enterprise users.

Circle Acquires IBM’s Blockchain Patents to Build the Internet Financial System

Best known for its USDC stablecoin, financial platform operator Circle has acquired IBM’s blockchain patent portfolio, comprising more than 680 patent families and nearly 1,000 issued patents worldwide. The patents relate to foundational blockchain technology, banking, financial services, insurance, enterprise infrastructure, supply chain verification and secure cloud operations.

Circle says the acquisition directly supports Circle’s foundation for building the internet financial system, including USDC, the Circle Payments Network, the Arc blockchain and a growing suite of on-chain products and agentic AI financial tools.

Visa Launches Platform for Stablecoins; Predicts They Will Power Agentic Micro-Commerce

Visa has launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform, an enterprise initiative that will bring stablecoin services to more than 200 million Visa-affiliated merchants. The platform, which is currently available to select beta users, initially supports Circle’s USDC and Paxos’ USDG stablecoins. In the future it will also work with the planned Open USD stablecoin from the Open Standard consortia, of which Visa is a leading founding member.

Separately, in conjunction with analytics firm Artemis, Visa has released a report which predicts that stablecoins will power micro-commerce in the emerging agentic economy. Micro commerce relates to low-value transactions that take place autonomously between AI agents and software applications without any direct human instigation.

US and UK Governments Establish Shared Regulatory Principles for Stablecoins and Tokenised Assets

The US and UK Governments have issued a joint statement establishing shared regulatory principles for stablecoins and tokenized assets, aiming to align frameworks for cross-border access while retaining individual legal requirements.

According to the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future, the guidelines advocate for 1:1 backing of stablecoins with high-quality liquid assets, timely redemption rights, and enhanced protection for holders’ claims on reserves.

The alignment also extends to testing cross-border use cases for tokenised assets and developing common approaches to tokenised securities settlement and collateral usage.

BridgePort Pilots Digital Asset Master Agreement to Streamline Off-Exchange Settlement Onboarding

Institutional digital-asset firms may be able to trade without placing assets directly on an exchange, but establishing the legal relationships behind that model can remain a lengthy process. BridgePort is seeking to reduce that friction with a common contractual framework for off-exchange settlement arrangements involving trading firms, custodians and execution venues.

The company is piloting the Digital Asset Master Agreement (DAMA), a reusable legal template intended to replace some of the bespoke negotiations required whenever counterparties establish a new off-exchange settlement relationship. BridgePort is forming a working group of trading firms, custodians and exchanges to test the framework across live arrangements.

Off-exchange settlement allows a trading firm to retain assets with a custodian while trading across multiple venues. The structure can reduce assets held directly at exchanges and make collateral available across a wider range of trading relationships. Its practical benefits, however, depend on agreements defining how collateral, credit, settlement and default will be handled between the three parties.

Those agreements can take months to negotiate because each relationship may involve different custody structures, regulatory obligations and operational processes. DAMA is designed to provide a common set of definitions and contractual provisions while preserving the ability to configure the terms for individual counterparties.

The framework can, for example, specify whether collateral is held in trust or pledged under a security interest. Participants can also determine whether DAMA operates independently or refers to an existing International Swaps and Derivatives Association agreement.

“The infrastructure for off-exchange settlement is largely in place,” said Nirup Ramalingam, CEO of BridgePort. “The next phase of this market depends on standardizing the legal foundation beneath it, as has happened in every institutional market before. A shared standard lowers the barrier to entry and gives the market room to scale. DAMA will give the industry that foundation.”

The agreement covers four areas that can create legal and operational uncertainty in off-exchange settlement relationships.

Its custody provisions define how collateral is safeguarded and segregated, including whether assets are held in trust or pledged. Settlement terms address how credit is extended against that collateral, how balances are reconciled and how the settlement cycle operates.

The operational provisions establish how parties respond to erroneous transfers, failed settlements and outages affecting the balance information exchanged between custodians and venues. Default and termination clauses cover events such as venue insolvency or failure, together with close-out procedures, termination rights and the return of collateral.

Standardising these provisions could reduce the amount of legal work required for each new connection. The wider effect will depend on whether custodians, venues and trading firms are prepared to adopt the framework rather than continue using their own agreements.

“The long-term value of standardization extends well beyond faster onboarding,” said Steve Bartfield, chief product officer at BridgePort. He added that commonly adopted frameworks could allow market participants, law firms and industry bodies to develop legal analysis, operational expertise and market practices that can be reused across the sector.

DAMA takes inspiration from the role that master agreements play in established financial markets, but it is intended specifically for the tri-party relationships underpinning digital-asset off-exchange settlement. The pilot will test whether a shared foundation can accommodate different regulatory, commercial and custody models without recreating the agreement for every relationship.

BridgePort provides middleware for coordinating credit allocation and post-trade activity between trading firms, exchanges and custodians. DAMA extends that coordination proposition into the legal layer, addressing an onboarding constraint that technology integrations alone cannot resolve.