Good Morning, Asia. Here's what's making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see RialCenter's Crypto Daybook Americas.
The maturing digital assets market featuring sophisticated market making, capital markets, and decentralized finance still lacks a key market infrastructure to compete with traditional finance: an institutional-grade credit agency.
Architect aims to change this by launching crypto's first institutional-grade credit ratings service, similar to traditional finance's Moody's – as most TradFi ratings agencies are reluctant to engage with crypto.
While Moody's has dipped its toes into digital assets, a full-blown credit agency operating solely in crypto is still absent.
This gap exists partly because crypto lacks a trusted intermediary to objectively assess creditworthiness, according to Ruben Amenyogbo, Architect's Managing Partner.
The anonymous actors, unconventional data, and opaque risk profiles in the industry make traditional underwriters uneasy, resulting in a reluctance from potential lenders to provide debt financing, Amenyogbo noted.
Additionally, there’s an ongoing rise of publicly traded companies, including miners and crypto treasury firms, all aiming to offer equity investors exposure to crypto through stocks.
However, that market is now saturated and overvalued.
“Crypto equity is extremely overvalued. Way too much money has been raised chasing equity opportunities in crypto,” Amenyogbo remarked.
This combination of absent credit agencies and an exhausted equity market creates a perfect storm for new opportunities in Web3.
“There's a huge opportunity in credit, but no one's provided the missing market structure needed to assess risk properly,” he stated.
Architect plans to utilize its proprietary blockchain-based data to systematically evaluate credit risk and unlock new pools of institutional capital.
Amenyogbo believes the crypto market is now mature enough to support institutional-grade credit analysis.
“With equity, you look forward, you assess future growth,” he noted. “With credit, you must look backwards and ask, ‘Have these people reliably performed?’ Crypto was too young and unproven for that until recently, but there’s enough history now for meaningful credit analysis.”
Who stands to benefit from such a service? Primarily Bitcoin miners and Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), according to Architect.
With access to fiat credit, miners could reduce forced selling, allowing them to stake more assets, drive greater on-chain activity, and transition from reactive outflows to productive economic contributions, creating a “double knock-on effect” that converts liquidity pressure into real value.
Additionally, Architect sees DePIN as a particularly attractive and underfunded niche for credit. Amenyogbo explained that DePIN provides real economic outputs rather than merely speculating on digital asset price appreciation.
“If I want to speculate on bitcoin, I would buy bitcoin. But as a credit lender, I can underwrite a bitcoin miner and make a bet on that mining operation and its cash flows outcompeting the market,” he said.
Ultimately, Architect’s ambition isn’t just to lend; it’s to rebuild crypto’s capital stack from the ground up.
By positioning itself as the first credible risk assessor for decentralized infrastructure and applying TradFi-grade underwriting standards, the firm aims to unlock a new wave of institutional capital.
“Raising a $100 million fund is cool, but it’s just a drop in the ocean,” Amenyogbo stated. “What we’re really doing is laying the groundwork for crypto credit to scale the way traditional debt does, bundled, rated, insured, and syndicated into the largest pools of capital in the world.”
Market Movers
BTC: BTC is trading above $114K. “Until BTC and ETH reclaim strength with volume, the path of least resistance could remain sideways to down. Opportunistic traders may continue to find short-term setups in memecoins and alt-beta, but the broader picture hasn’t flipped,” market maker Enflux mentioned in a note to RialCenter.
ETH: ETH is trading at $3500, down 2.8% as ETF outflows ramp up.
Gold: Gold prices dipped during the U.S. trading day, as a stronger U.S. dollar and falling oil prices weighed on sentiment. Silver saw modest gains, and mixed global economic signals, including robust Chinese services data and growing Fed rate cut odds, added complexity to market direction.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Tuesday after Wall Street losses, as investors digested weak U.S. economic data and new technology tariff remarks from President Trump, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipping 0.12%.
S&P 500: The S&P 500 fell 0.49% Tuesday as weak economic data and fresh Trump tariff remarks fueled concern, although analysts expect the bull market to continue despite near-term volatility.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- SEC Says Liquid Staking Doesn't Run Afoul of Securities Laws (RialCenter)
- Why Ethereum Retail Investors Remain 'Sidelined'—Even as Institutions Buy Billions (RialCenter)
- Solana Mobile begins shipping second-gen Seeker smartphones to customers in over 50 countries (RialCenter)
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