Rising Iran conflict risks are jolting global markets, with HSBC warning oil shocks, currency swings, and equity volatility hinge on whether supply routes and production are disrupted, shaping inflation expectations and investor risk appetite worldwide. HSBC: Long-Running Conflict Would Reshape FX, Rates, and Equity Leadership Escalating geopolitical tensions are reshaping the global market outlook. Global […]

That’s according to a report Sunday (March 1) from Bloomberg News, which says the speculative demand that once centered around crypto has shifted into stocks.

Since late 2024, retail investors have steadily shifted toward equities, a trend that sped up following the crypto crash last October, the report said, citing a new report from market-maker Wintermute which itself drew from JPMorgan Chase data.

Bloomberg characterizes the shift as striking at something key to the crypto’s market structure, which has long relied on investor mood as a key demand driver. If that demand is moving to other trades, it goes against the belief that digital assets can recover without something to draw back retail investors.

“In prior cycles, excess retail risk appetite tended to concentrate in crypto,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute, who added that crypto is now “one of many risky-asset classes with similar volatility profile that retail can use to invest and speculate on.”

More than $19 billion in positions were wiped out in October — $7 billion of them in less than an hour — liquidating more than 1.6 million traders, the report added.

Since then, there’s been “a near-complete pivot into equities that is still ongoing,” the Wintermute said. Bitcoin has fallen from its record high of around $126,000 down to $66,000 amid reports of American and Israeli strikes against Iran, the report added.

In other digital assets news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the significance of Morgan Stanley’s application before the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a charter for a digital asset-focused national trust bank.

As that report said, a trust bank, as opposed to a traditional commercial bank, does not offer loans or deposits, but rather focuses on custody, fiduciary services and asset administration, basically acting as a highly regulated vault/legal steward. This structure, PYMNTS added, could be ideally suited to digital assets.

“The trust bank charter offers a solution,” the report added. “It allows a firm to handle digital assets under the supervision of the OCC while avoiding the capital and liquidity requirements associated with deposit-taking institutions. In regulatory terms, it is a bridge. In strategic terms, it could be an on-ramp for traditional finance to take over functions once dominated by crypto-native firms.”

While studies reveal institutional investors and wealth managers believe tokenized ETFs will drive mainstream market adoption for cryptocurrency, there looms the theft of bad actors that most often go untraceable.

Currency throughout history that became mainstream

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Barriers to the expansion of tokenization are starting to fall as major investment firms consider launching tokenized ETFs, according to new global research by London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel), Europe’s leading digital assets hedge fund manager founded by alumni of Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

Its study with institutional investors (pension funds, insurance asset managers and family offices) and wealth managers at organisations which collectively manage over $14 trillion in assets found almost all (97%) believe the potential launch of tokenized ETFs such as BlackRock’s will be important to the expansion of the sector with nearly one in three (32%) rating the development as very important.

The study also reflected the belief that tokenization will continue to grow, with nearly 70% of respondents believing that fund managers looking to tokenize investment funds and asset classes will increase over the next three years.

Nickel’s research with firms in the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates found growing awareness of the benefits of tokenization. Private markets are seen as offering the greatest potential for tokenization, with almost 70% seeing private equity funds as the asset class with the most opportunity, followed by fixed income (55%) and public equities (42%).

Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, said: “Tokenization is quickly moving from theory to real-world adoption as institutional investors grow more comfortable with its benefits and see major players enter the space. When firms like BlackRock step in, it fundamentally shifts the conversation. This development is timely for our multi-manager vehicle as expanding liquidity depth will allow some of our pods to start trading tokenized assets in the coming months.”

To address potential criminal threat, an advanced detection system to identify and trace blockchain funds connected with criminal activity was presented earlier this week at the Annual CyberASAP Demo Day in London.

The system, called SynapTrack, enables faster and more accurate detection of fraudulent activity using blockchains and cryptocurrencies, where traditional anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems struggle to keep pace.

Although current fraud detection methods pick up unusual activity, they deliver an extremely high rate (40%) of false positive reports. These require manual checking by compliance professionals, resulting in backlogs in identifying and acting on suspicious activity.

The SynapTrack system is designed to deliver a substantially lower rate of false positives. It has already been tested using real-life data from the notorious 2025 Bybit hack, where criminals stole $1.5bn of digital tokens from a cryptocurrency exchange. SynapTrack traced the hacker with 98% accuracy.

The team behind SynapTrack is keen to hear from exchanges, financial regulators or law enforcement agencies who want to test the prototype in real-world conditions.

SynapTrack uses a validated methodology to score the likelihood of transactions being part of a money laundering scheme. It has a self-improving algorithm that continuously adapts to new tactics – dynamically identifying suspicious patterns in blockchain transactions. It has a universal cross-chain capability, and is designed around how compliance teams work, presenting results in a dashboard. No infrastructure changes are needed for installation.

It is relatively easy to obscure fraudulent or criminal activity by moving funds between blockchains, or dispersing them across many blockchains, in what are known as ‘cross-chain’ transactions. It is these transactions that pose the greatest difficulty for existing anti-money laundering systems.

SynapTrack was developed by University of Birmingham computer scientists Dr Pascal Berrang and PhD student Endong Liu, in collaboration with blockchain developer Nimiq. Dr Berrang’s research is in IT security and privacy on blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The subject of Endong Liu’s PhD is transaction tracing. Nimiq is supporting with blockchain-specific insights, knowledge of real-world constraints, and implementation.

The team is currently fundraising to ensure regulatory readiness and complete the team with a CEO and software developers.

Dr Berrang said: “The last few years have seen a near-exponential growth in blockchain transactions. While many of these are legitimate, blockchains are attractive to criminals as funds can be moved very quickly to other jurisdictions. Our work with Nimiq and the creation of SynapTrack is addressing this black spot, and will enable more effective regulation, making the whole ecosystem of blockchain safer and more trustworthy.”

With the financial market and cybersecurity industry converging, cryptocurrency is here to stay.