Ask why institutional tokenization hasn't taken off, and the cash leg is one of the barriers that come up most. You can tokenize the bond, the fund, the commercial paper, but if the money still has to crawl through a bank on the other side, you've digitized half a trade.
The last few days suggest Europe is starting to move on it:
On June 25, Euroclear and Société Générale-FORGE said they'd test settling tokenized dollar commercial paper in SG-FORGE's USD stablecoin.
On Tuesday, French tokenization startup Spiko went live at the fund level: its euro and dollar money market funds now take subscriptions and redemptions directly in EURC and USDC, the first UCITS funds in Europe to do so.
And yesterday, Crédit Agricole launched its own euro stablecoin, EURXT, and used it to settle a subscription into a tokenized Amundi money market fund.
Funnily, all three involve French players, and as it happens, we hosted our Paris Summit yesterday. At the event, onchain treasury built on stablecoins and tokenized money market funds was among the most discussed topics. Now all three news items point toward that same future.
And as far as one of France's largest banking groups goes, Crédit Agricole isn't just minting a stablecoin. As we reveal in today's top story, its custody arm CACEIS is in exclusive talks to buy one of France's best-known crypto platforms. More on that below.
Yes, you can call today’s newsletter the France Briefing.
In today’s Briefing:
UK moves ahead with final crypto and stablecoin rules
Exclusive: CACEIS in talks to acquire crypto investment platform Meria
HIGH SIGNAL NEWS
JPMorgan adds five new currencies to its blockchain deposit account. The five new Asia-Pacific currencies, including the HKD, JPY, and RMB, join the euro, the U.S. dollar, and the British pound. Clients of the service operated by Kinexys can now conduct FX transactions and programmable payments across all of these currencies. 🇺🇸
UK supervisors publish final rules for the regulation of cryptoassets and stablecoins. The UK's crypto regime comes into force in October 2027, with applications opening on 30 September 2026. Meanwhile, the Bank of England is dropping its plan to impose ownership limits of up to £20,000 for individuals and £10 million for businesses, replacing them with a £40 billion issuance limit for issuers. 🇬🇧
Baillie Gifford introduces $BAGEY. The fund by the British investment firm is structured as a UK OEIC, with custody at BNY, and represents an actively managed portfolio of short-dated bonds. Rather than wrapping an existing fund, the instrument is natively issued on Ethereum and Solana, meaning the underlying public blockchain networks serve as the legal register of ownership. 🪙
140 institutions join forces to launch a U.S. dollar stablecoin. Called Open Standard, the consortium brings together companies including Visa, American Express, BlackRock and BBVA to issue OpenUSD. Partners will share the revenues generated by the reserves, while minting and redemptions will be free of charge. The initiative is led by Zach Abrams, founder and CEO of Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe in 2024. 🌐
Standard Chartered obtains its MiCA license. The bank also secures an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from Luxembourg's financial regulator, the CSSF. The country becomes Standard Chartered's European hub for digital assets. 🇱🇺
TOP STORY
Exclusive: CACEIS in Talks to Acquire Crypto Investment Platform Meria
Acquisition talks: According to Blockstories’ information, CACEIS, the custodian bank of Crédit Agricole, is in exclusive negotiations to acquire Meria, a French crypto investment platform with 150,000 users and around €350 million in assets under management.
A French crypto brand: Meria launched as Just Mining in 2017 before rebranding in 2022. The platform was co-founded by Owen Simonin, better known as Hasheur, France’s most popular crypto influencer, whose large following helped scale the business. Today, Meria holds a MiCA-CASP license and serves both retail and corporate clients, offering crypto brokerage alongside yield products built mainly around staking.
Why it matters: The talks are surfacing as major financial institutions increasingly pursue acquisitions to expand their digital asset offerings. Just a few weeks ago, Standard Chartered acquired Zodia Custody to strengthen its custody business, underscoring how buying established platforms can help bring digital asset products to market faster than building the same capabilities in-house.
What CACEIS gets: That build-versus-buy logic points directly to Meria's staking business, which Blockstories understands is of particular interest to CACEIS as it prepares to launch its own crypto offering. The bank became the first French credit institution to obtain a MiCA-CASP license in June 2025. Owen Simonin's brand recognition is also said to be one of the key motivations behind the planned acquisition.
Not the first target: Several sources also told Blockstories that Meria is not the first company CACEIS has sought to acquire. “They have been looking for a long time and have already approached a few other players,” said an executive at one of the companies previously approached.
Expanding the footprint: Beyond what an acquisition would add, CACEIS is already operating in digital assets. Since April 2026, the bank has served as the regulated custodian for the Amundi Bitcoin ETN, the first product of its kind approved by France's financial regulator and listed on Euronext Paris. In November, it also launched tokenized euro money market fund units on Ethereum, followed by two additional tokenized funds for Chinese financial group Ant International.
Inside Crédit Agricole’s wider push: Integrating Meria would also fit into a broader group strategy spanning stablecoins and tokenization. Yesterday, Crédit Agricole officially launched its euro stablecoin, EURXT, issued on CACEIS' balance sheet, as previously revealed by Blockstories. The group has also joined FARO, a dollar-side banking initiative alongside Citigroup, Bank of America, and UBS.
Outlook: The Meria deal is not done yet. Both parties have yet to sign a definitive agreement, and any transaction remains subject to regulatory approval. Should it close, it would position Crédit Agricole among Europe’s most active banking groups in digital assets, operating across custody, brokerage, stablecoin issuance, and tokenized funds.
Marc Ripault is an auditor at PwC, one of the Big Four global audit firms. Since 2018, he has helped shape France’s accounting framework for crypto-assets.
What crypto-native companies are attractive acquisition targets for institutions pushing into digital assets now?
The most attractive crypto-native targets are those that reduce both regulatory uncertainty and time to market for institutions. In Europe, that starts with firms that already hold a MiCA-CASP license or are close to approval.
Companies with a young retail customer base are also attractive, especially when they have already built a recognizable and trusted brand. For banks, this can provide access to digitally native customers who might otherwise remain outside their broader product suite. Additionally, integrating the acquired firm’s crypto offering can make existing younger clients less likely to move their money to external platforms.
Beyond that, crypto platforms that extend beyond simple brokerage and offer infrastructure or capabilities for tokenized assets are especially valuable. Over the long term, the bigger opportunity is not only offering clients the ability to buy and sell crypto, but also building the capabilities to distribute tokenized funds and eventually regulated digital securities. That makes firms with credible technology and product expertise in these areas more strategic than purely crypto-focused firms.
Claire Balva is Managing Director of Adan, Europe’s largest digital assets industry association. She previously co-founded Blockchain Partner, a digital asset consulting firm launched in 2017 and later acquired by KPMG in 2021.
How is France’s maturing digital asset market reshaping the balance between crypto-native firms and traditional players?
The French ecosystem is about to consolidate. In fact, that process has already been underway for several years. Three or four years ago, Adan had almost 200 members. Today, it has roughly half that number, but its members are larger and more mature. That shift is likely to accelerate as MiCA comes fully into force.
The regulation creates a need for critical size. Smaller CASPs that manage to obtain authorization may still struggle to compete with larger regulated actors, making sales or strategic partnerships more likely. That pressure could benefit banks that are late to the market, giving them an opportunity to acquire licensed firms and add users, products, and operational know-how faster than they could by building everything internally.
But not all banks will enter the market through the same route. Some will start with institutional use cases, stablecoins, or tokenized assets. Others may move first through retail access, brokerage, or staking, depending on which teams inside the bank are most mature.
American Express: Vice President, Onchain Products, London 🇬🇧
Ant International: Enterprise Risk Manager (Digital Assets), Luxembourg 🇱🇺
BNY Mellon: Vice President, Digital Assets Business Officer, Brussels 🇧🇪
Crédit Agricole: Group Product Manager - Digital Currencies (CACEIS), Paris 🇫🇷
Deutsche Börse Group: Product Manager - Digital Assets/Collateral Coin, Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Euronext: Chief Product Officer, Digital Assets, Paris 🇫🇷
Seturion: Director Strategy & Projects, Stuttgart 🇩🇪
Visa: Senior Product Manager, Stablecoin & Agentic Commerce, Frankfurt 🇩🇪
Join us on July 7 for a 60-minute webinar on three of the hottest buzzwords of the past twelve months:
Onchain vaults
Tokenized funds
Hyperliquid
Three category leaders — Steakhouse Financial, Apex Group, and Bitwise — each take one, breaking it down through their own playbook and a real case study. Ten minutes per session, followed by live Q&A. Over 200 professionals have already signed up.
Anchoring Trust in Money: Innovation Beyond Stablecoins (BIS) — This special chapter from the BIS Annual Economic Report 2026 looks at what stablecoins get right and where they fall short, arguing that while they point to a future of faster, programmable payments, that future should be built around trusted forms of public and private money rather than private stablecoins alone.
Digital Wallets: A New Paradigm (World Bank) — The report elaborates on how digital wallets could change the way people prove identity, share data, sign documents, and make payments, and why they could become the central interface for accessing public and private digital services.
How Local Stablecoins Trade (Keyrock & Bitso Business) — The paper follows the journey of local stablecoins from centralized exchanges to onchain markets, showing how non-USD stablecoins are gaining traction across the digital asset ecosystem.
→ Want more? Visit Blockstories Library for a curated selection of 120+ reports on digital assets.
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Disclaimer: The information provided in the Institutional Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.