Standard Chartered Expands Crypto Footprint: Launches Institutional-Grade Bitcoin and Ethereum Spot Trading Services in UAE

Sources familiar with the matter said SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf region investors to ramp up its large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) investments. Son has held talks with several senior figures in recent weeks, including contacts from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). SoftBank may use the proceeds to set up a fund to acquire other companies, then leverage AI to revamp their operations.

Justin Sun stated on Allen Shao’s podcast titled “How Can Young People Seize Opportunities in the AI Era?” that AI will drive explosive innovation across all industries, and the five promising tracks for young people right now are: Crypto, academic data, biopharmaceuticals, financial insurance, and AI infrastructure services. In the field of academic data derivation, Justin Sun believes disciplines like astronomy and biology—those relying on massive experimental or observational data—offer significant opportunities. Currently, there is abundant data but a lack of processing methods, making them suitable for AI handling. For biopharmaceuticals and genetic health management, he is highly optimistic about biopharmaceuticals and genetic sequencing analysis. Drug R&D yields high returns, and genetic data now has full sequencing capabilities, which can be combined with AI to predict future health management needs. Regarding algorithmic restructuring in the financial insurance industry, financial sectors closely tied to human life and health like insurance have outdated existing algorithms, waiting for disruptive innovation based on new logic and methods. For Crypto payments and low-precision computing, Justin Sun argues that Crypto, as a global payment system, is naturally suited for AI API calls, supports low-precision calculations smaller than traditional currency units, and enables instant settlement—closely linked to the AI sector. Justin Sun also values AI infrastructure services and data labeling, noting opportunities in LLM data cleaning and labeling. The fact that Scale AI’s founder sold the data labeling company to Facebook for a multi-billion-dollar price tag demonstrates the commercial value of this field. Justin Sun also mentioned that ages 20 to 40 are the most creative prime years, with abundant opportunities in the AI era, and young people should seize them.

Per TradingBeats’ monitoring, the previously tracked smart money address 0xc8b5 liquidated long positions in NVIDIA, SanDisk, and SK Hynix overnight, with total closing trades amounting to approximately $63.7119 million. The address currently holds no open positions, though no withdrawals have been made as of yet. This sell-off occurred amid a pullback in AI hardware-related contracts. Over the same period, 24-hour declines in contracts for NVIDIA, SanDisk, SK Hynix (SKHX), and Micron stood at roughly 1.86%, 3.70%, 3.84%, and 3.16% respectively. On the news front, elevated oil prices and U.S. Treasury yields, along with concerns over financing costs for AI infrastructure, continue to weigh on sentiment in the tech and semiconductor sectors. The liquidation included approximately $31.8144 million in NVIDIA long positions, $19.7988 million in SanDisk long positions, and $12.0987 million in SK Hynix long positions, with all three positions fully exited. The trio of positions had previously posted an unrealized profit of around $2.065 million; today’s final closing trades generated a realized profit of roughly $123,300, with a drawdown of about $1.9417 million, accounting for approximately 94% of the prior unrealized profit.

Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told attendees at the TOKEN2049 Singapore conference that tokenizing Treasuries, stocks, money market funds, and capital flows could enhance collateral liquidity and unlock billions in trapped capital within the global financial system. She noted that institutional interest in tokenization has grown significantly over the past year, in part due to the U.S. GENIUS Act, which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins. If currencies can be tokenized, capital flows can be tokenized as well. Friedman added that institutional interest is converging with retail demand, which has long sought around-the-clock trading capabilities; the retail ecosystem is roughly a decade ahead in this space. She acknowledged that transitioning to a fully 24/7 market is a massive undertaking for the financial industry, with exchange infrastructure being the simplest part of the shift. Traditional financial institutions have historically used closed trading periods for system updates and risk management, but round-the-clock operations require continuous risk and collateral management, with everything needing to be real-time at all times. Friedman also emphasized that AI is critical for 24/7 trading, revealing Nasdaq has launched digital agents on its risk management platform that initially provide recommendations, with banks able to use them to take more direct actions in the future. Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi added that non-U.S. firms have strong interest in tokenization and accessing U.S. capital markets, including a roughly $25 million-revenue company and larger international entities. But Friedman cautioned, “Not all assets are sufficiently liquid to support a 24/7 environment.”

According to a report by the Financial Times, DWF Maas and Falcon Digital—subsidiaries of DWF Labs—have sued crypto custody firm BitGo at London’s High Court, accusing it of breaching over-the-counter (OTC) agreements by selling Falcon Finance (FF) and ESPORTS tokens before the end of the agreed lock-up period, leading to a drop in the tokens’ prices. The lawsuit states that the two parties agreed the tokens would be purchased at a discounted price, subject to a three-month lock-up period and subsequent phased unlocking arrangements. DWF alleges BitGo transferred the tokens to trading platforms roughly two months ahead of the first unlocking, creating market selling pressure and eroding the value of its remaining holdings, thus seeking $141 million in damages.

According to Arkham’s monitoring, addresses linked to Abraxas Capital have recently increased their ETH collateral and lowered borrowing leverage. Late yesterday, the address transferred 20,000 ETH from Aave to Spark, then repaid approximately $55 million USDS; today, it borrowed an additional $10 million USDS, leading to a net reduction of around $45 million. Over the past week, this address has added a net 57,000 ETH in deposits on Spark, with 50,000 ETH moved over from Aave. During the same period, it borrowed a total of 93.38 million USDS and repaid roughly 93 million USDS, keeping its borrowing volume largely flat, while its health factor rose from 1.59 to 2.42. As of press time, the address holds approximately 140,800 WETH in deposits on Spark, with collateral value of about $350 million and total debt of around $124 million, translating to a borrowing leverage of roughly 1.55x. Based on current collateral and debt levels, a liquidation would be triggered if ETH’s price falls to approximately $1,028. Address: 0xed0c6079229e2d407672a117c22b62064f4a4312