Soneium, the Ethereum overlay blockchain linked to 78-year-old Japanese electronics giant Sony, unveiled a new incubator program, Soneium For All, to accelerate consumer and gaming applications within its 7 million-user blockchain ecosystem.

As crypto continues its march into the mainstream, traditional technology companies, the Apple’s and Ubers of this world, are looking to the tech to commercialize their future operations.

Sony Block Solutions Labs (SBSL), the builder of Soneium, used the Optimism OP stack, a fast and cheap layer linked to Ethereum for “bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3 audiences, especially for the creators, fans and community,” SBSL said.

The new accelerator, which plans to open its doors in the third quarter, was created in partnership with Astar Network and Startale Cloud Services, with investment support from Sony Innovation Fund, according to a press release on Monday.

“This initiative reflects our vision to empower creators globally through blockchain technology,” said Ryohei Suzuki, Director of Sony Block Solutions Labs in a statement. “By lowering the barriers to entry for developers and helping them reach users faster, Soneium For All brings us closer to a more open, creator-powered internet.”

Major cryptocurrencies showed little bullish momentum Monday, even as hopes for the U.S.-China trade talks lifted Asian stocks.

Bitcoin BTC, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, traded flat-to-negative near $105,650, having carved out a doji candle, a sign of indecision, on Sunday, according to data source TradingView.

Data from Blockchain.com showed a marked slowdown in network activity, with the seven-day moving average of daily on-chain transactions falling to 315.48K, the lowest in at least a year.

Payments-focused cryptocurrency XRP XRP struggled to gather upside traction despite topping a bearish trendline from the mid-May highs. The cryptocurrency changed hands at $2.24 at press time, down over 1% on the day (UTC). Volatility may increase this week as the XRP Ledger’s APEX 2025 conference kicks off in Singapore.

Meme cryptocurrency dogecoin DOGE traded nearly 2% lower, closing in on 18 cents, having failed to establish a foothold above the 100-day simple moving average (SMA) over the weekend.

Hang Seng tops 24K

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 1.3%, topping the 24,000 mark for the first time since March 24, according to data source TradingView. The move came in response to the optimism about the U.S.-China trade talks this week.

«Optimism is as high as it’s been since Trump’s election as top trade deputies will meet in London starting on Monday. There are indications that talks will go all week and Trump himself is optimistic,» ForexLive’s Chief Currency Analyst Adam Button said in a blog post.

«The meeting should go very well,» President Donald Trump said on Truth Social Friday, announcing the new round of trade talks in London.

Other Asian indices, such as South Korea’s KOSPI and China’s Shanghai Composite, also gained ground despite the deepening consumer and factory gate deflation in China.

China’s deflation worsens

China’s consumer prices fell 0.1% year-over-year in May, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released on Monday. The CPI first turned negative in February.

Meanwhile, the producer price index, or factory gate prices, fell 3.3% year-over-year in May, registering a sharper decline than the 3.2% drop analysts had expected. Factory gate prices have been in deflation since October 2022.

According to Robin Brooks, senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, the U.S. tariffs are generating a deflationary shock for major exporters like China.

«China’s producer price inflation for consumer goods is down to its lowest level since the 2008 crisis. U.S. tariffs will now push China into full-on deflation. All necessary conditions for deflation are there: weak consumption and a debt overhang. U.S. tariffs are now the catalyst…,» Brooks said on X.

The worsening deflation could prompt China to stimulate domestic demand with further liquidity easing.

China’s central bank in May cut the key interest rates by 10 basis points to a historic low while reducing the reserve requirement ratio, releasing liquidity into the market. Last week, the state-run China Securities Journal reported that the People’s Bank of China may lower the reserve requirement ratio further later this year to support growth and restart government bond trading.

More Chinese stimulus could bode well for financial markets, including cryptocurrencies.

Focus on U.S. CPI

The U.S. consumer price index for May due Wednesday will be scrutinized by markets for clues that Trump’s tariffs are adding to price pressures in the economy.

The headline CPI is seen matching April’s pace of 0.2% month-on-month growth, equating to an annualized 2.5% rise versus April’s 2.3% increase, according to FXStreet. Meanwhile, the core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy component, is forecast to have ticked higher to 2.9% in May from 2.8% in April.

Economists at Barclays expect the data to show first signs of tariffs-related price increases across wide range of core goods.

A hotter-than-expected print could dent Fed rate cuts, potentially injecting downside volatility in financial markets.

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 CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.

BlackRock calls Quantum computers, with their ability to outperform classical binary computers and break traditional encryption, a threat to crypto.

So surely BTC would price this in, as the threat of computers soon being able to break the encryption that enables the scarcity of bitcoin is an existential one.

But on a recent CNBC appearance, Strategy’s Michael Saylor downplayed quantum’s threat to BTC, arguing that the Bitcoin protocol would implement a software upgrade – just like any other tech company – when the threat becomes imminent.

«It’s mainly marketing from people that want to sell you the next quantum yo-yo token,» Saylor said on CNBC. «Google and Microsoft aren’t going to sell you a computer that cracks modern cryptography because it would destroy Google and Microsoft – and the U.S. Government and the banking system.»

Already, there are a number of proposals about how to secure Proof of Work against the quantum threat, including from BTQ, a startup building quantum-proof crypto hardware. One Bitcoin developer has put forward a draft Bitcoin Improvement Protocol that proposes a hard fork which would move everyone’s wallets to quantum-secure addresses.

«Bitcoin is a protocol; the software gets upgraded every year,» Saylor concluded, arguing that the bigger security threat for bitcoin is phishing.

Saylor’s view isn’t a universal one, however. A recent report from Presto Research argued that the crypto industry is «unprepared» for the coming quantum threat.

With BTC above $100K and the market getting ready to challenge another all-time high, traders just don’t seem to be concerned.

As CRCL has a Blockbuster IPO, the True Market Size of Stablecoins Remains a Mystery.

Circle recently had a blockbuster initial public offering, and is set to open the U.S. trading week Monday at over $107 – an impressive rally over its opening price of $69.

The number of stablecoins in circulation – the market cap of the asset category – is a well-known fact. Issuance can be seen on-chain after all, and that number comes in at $254 billion, according to CoinGecko data.

But figuring out the volume of stablecoins used in payments is a little trickier.

In a recent thread on X, Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures and the cofounder of blockchain data aggregator Coinmetrics, parsed through the available data and found that there’s a huge discrepancy in the numbers.

Estimating the genuine share of stablecoin transactions driven by payments rather than trading is complicated due to challenges like MEV bot interference, duplicative on-chain transactions, and spam activity designed purely to inflate metrics.

Recent analyses illustrate this uncertainty starkly. A top-down heuristic from Visa and Allium estimates stablecoin transaction volumes at roughly $9 trillion annually as of May 2025. However, this figure broadly encompasses trading, DeFi activity, and settlements—not purely payments.

In contrast, more detailed bottom-up analyses offer narrower but clearer insights. Fireblocks, a major custody provider, reported annual verified stablecoin payments of around $232 billion, compared with a significantly larger $2.12 trillion in trading volumes among its clients, suggesting that genuine payment transactions represent about 10% of their total stablecoin activity.

Similarly, a targeted joint study by Artemis and Dragonfly sampled 20 stablecoin-focused payment providers directly.

It calculated a conservative annualized payment volume of approximately $72.3 billion, acknowledging this as a probable undercount given limited sampling.

In comparison to that $72.3 billion figure at the high end, Carter writes, is $232 billion, underscoring the substantial uncertainty around how extensively stablecoins are genuinely used as a payment mechanism.

As for Circle, the stablecoin issuer doesn’t provide a figure in its IPO filing on how much USDC is used for payments, only pointing to general transaction volume.

News Roundup

Coinbase, BiT Global Settle Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) Delisting Lawsuit

BiT Global and Coinbase have settled their legal dispute over Coinbase’s delisting of wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), CoinDesk previously reported. According to a joint court filing, BiT Global agreed to dismiss its lawsuit with prejudice—meaning the case cannot be refiled—and each company will cover its own legal costs.

BiT Global initially sued Coinbase last year, claiming the delisting unfairly damaged wBTC’s liquidity and reputation, while favoring Coinbase’s competing token, cbBTC. Coinbase cited concerns over crypto billionaire Justin Sun’s involvement with wBTC, labeling it an «unacceptable risk,» though specific settlement terms beyond the dismissal were not disclosed.

Winklevoss Twins’ Crypto Exchange Gemini Files Confidentially With SEC for IPO

Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custody platform founded by billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has confidentially filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public, CoinDesk previously reported. The IPO details, including the size and valuation, remain undisclosed, but Gemini has already engaged Goldman Sachs and Citigroup as financial advisors, positioning itself prominently among crypto-native firms entering traditional markets.

This filing follows the successful IPO of stablecoin issuer Circle, whose shares surged dramatically upon debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. Gemini’s planned IPO represents a significant step for crypto companies seeking broader acceptance in mainstream finance, although the timing of the offering will depend on the SEC’s review and market conditions.

Market Movements:

• BTC: Bitcoin trades flat at $105,600.30 after recovering from an intraday dip, as miners’ recent surge in exchange transfers signals potential volatility ahead.
• ETH: Ethereum held strong above critical $2,500 support amid volatility, closing bullishly near $2,534, as BlackRock’s ETH ETF nears $5 billion on sustained institutional inflows.
• Gold: Gold trades slightly lower at $3,314.92 but heads for weekly gains, supported by weak U.S. jobs data despite easing U.S.-China tensions.
• Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 opens higher at 37,741.61 (+0.50%), extending recent gains after winning sessions in two of the past three trading days