Good morning, Asia. Here’s what’s happening in the market:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, your daily digest of the top news from the U.S. and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US market, see CoinDesk’s Americas Crypto Diary.
Hashed said that the crypto market has finally moved from storytelling to structure, and that in 2026 digital assets will start to behave like economies rather than speculative categories as stablecoins become global settlement rails and artificial intelligence agents become autonomous economic participants, reshaping where real investment value lies.
In its investment theme for this year, the Protocol Economy 2026 report, the South Korean venture capital firm believes that Asia is where this shift is increasingly evident, with regulated stablecoin pilots, early AI agent deployments, and expanding RWA and financial workflows forming the first on-chain enterprise systems.
The investable frontier is now anchored in these structural layers, with payments, credit and settlement entering programmable orbits and applications evolving into adaptive economic systems driven by stable liquidity and verifiable demand, Harshed said. The company is focusing its funding on teams with real users and compounding on-chain activity rather than projects tied to momentum narratives.
Hash sees this shift as a correction from the past two years, when excess liquidity and speculative flows obscured which parts of the stack were generating real usage.
The company said data now clearly shows that stablecoins, on-chain credit and automated infrastructure are categories where activity is compounding rather than surging. This trend is particularly evident in Asia, where regulators in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are building frameworks to allow stablecoin settlement, tokenized deposits and RWA issuance to be connected to existing financial systems.
Hashed believes that AI will accelerate this shift as agents can route payments, manage liquidity and execute transactions programmatically, creating a need for transparent rails.
The next phase of growth will benefit builders at the intersection of true liquidity and automation, where digital assets operate as economic systems rather than vehicles of speculation – this is where Hashed will invest.
market trend
Bitcoin: Bitcoin is currently hovering around $92,000 after failing to maintain an overnight move toward $94,000, reinforcing the view of some analysts that Bitcoin is falling into a low-liquidity range between $85,000 and $95,000.
Ethereum: Ethereum held above $3,100 on the day, outperforming Bitcoin, and fell less than 1% as the broader market traded sideways.
Gold: Gold prices oscillated around $4,200, consolidating in a narrow range, as a weak U.S. dollar provided support while rising U.S. Treasury yields and firm risk appetite limited subsequent moves. Gold prices were on the higher side but remained range-bound ahead of the release of key U.S. data.
Nikkei 225 Index: Asia-Pacific markets opened lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei down 1.36% and the Topix down 1.12% after quiet trading on Wall Street.
Elsewhere in Cryptocurrency
- International Monetary Fund warns that adoption of stablecoins could stifle central bank control (decrypted)
- Canton Network founder receives strategic investment from Wall Street giants (CoinDesk)
- 21Shares’ TSOL loses $42 million, Solana ETF hits record outflows (decrypted)
