Good morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the market:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing. We bring you a daily summary of the top news US time, as well as an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US market, see below. American.
Hashed said the crypto market is finally moving from storytelling to structure, and 2026 will be the year digital assets begin to behave more like an economy than a speculative category, as stablecoins become global payment rails, AI agents emerge as autonomous economic participants, and reshape where real investment value lies.
In its Protocol Economy 2026 report, which is this year’s investment theme, the South Korea-based VC firm argues that this shift is visible in Asia, with regulated stablecoin pilots, early AI agent deployments, and the expansion of RWA and financial workflows forming the first on-chain enterprise systems.
Hashed said the investable frontier is now anchored in these structural layers, and payments, credit and payments will ride on programmable rails and applications will evolve into an adaptive economic system driven by stable liquidity and verifiable demand. The company is focusing its funding on teams with real users and compounding on-chain activities rather than momentum-bound projects.
Hashed sees the change as a correction for the past two years, when excessive liquidity and speculative flows obscured which parts of the stack were actually generating usage.
The company says its data clearly points to stablecoins, on-chain credit, and automated infrastructure as categories where activity will compound rather than proliferate. This trend is particularly evident in Asia, where regulators in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are building frameworks that allow stablecoin payments, tokenized deposits, and RWA issuance to be integrated into existing financial systems.
Hashed argues that AI will accelerate this transition, as agents can route payments, manage liquidity, and execute transactions programmatically, thereby creating demand for transparent rails.
This next phase of growth will favor builders working at the intersection of real liquidity and automation, where digital assets act as an economic system rather than a speculative vehicle. And Hashed will be investing there.
market movements
Bitcoin: After failing to sustain an overnight move toward $94,000, Bitcoin is hovering around $92,000, reinforcing some analysts’ view that it will settle into a low-liquidity range between $85,000 and $95,000.
Ethereum: Ether remained above $3,100 on the day, declining less than 1% while the overall market remained flat.
gold: Gold remains in a tight consolidation around $4,200, with support from a weaker US dollar, rising US Treasury yields and solid risk appetite limiting follow-through, with gold trending higher but still range-bound against major US benchmarks.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets opened lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei stock average down 1.36% and TOPIX down 1.12% after trading on Wall Street subsided.
Elsewhere for cryptocurrencies
- IMF warns that adoption of stablecoins may impede central bank control (decrypted)
- Canton Network Creator lands strategic investment from Wall Street giant (CoinDesk)
- Solana ETF records record outflow as 21Shares TSOL loses $42 million (decrypted)
