Russian authorities have approved a finance ministry concept to tokenize real-world assets such as company shares, securities and ownership rights, with an initial pilot focused on property and intellectual property. The move is unfolding alongside a separate regulatory framework under review that would classify cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as currency assets and expand access for different categories of investors by July 1 2026.

The UK Treasury has appointed HSBC's Orion platform to support its Digital Gilt Instrument pilot, which is designed to test blockchain-based sovereign bond issuance. The program will issue a digitally native, short-dated gilt within the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox, with onchain settlement separate from the main debt management framework, and HSBC says such digital gilts could markedly speed up transaction settlement times.

On February 12, 2026 at 6:30 AM UTC, a Web3 hiring roundup highlights roles at Tether, OKX, Ondo Finance, and others, with salaries from $36,000 to $360,000. As Bitcoin tests the $66,000 level, openings span engineering, marketing, and operations, including remote and global opportunities.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said Paxful was ordered to pay a $4 million fine following its December guilty plea to conspiring to promote illegal prostitution, transmit criminal proceeds and breach anti‑money‑laundering rules. Prosecutors added the platform marketed itself as non‑KYC, handled over 26 million trades worth nearly $3 billion from January 2017 to September 2019, and agreed an appropriate penalty of $112.5 million but was assessed as unable to pay more than $4 million.

At xAI's "All Hands" on Wednesday, Elon Musk said X Money will move from a closed company beta to a limited external beta in 1–2 months, ahead of a worldwide rollout on X. He described payments as central to X's everything-app vision and indicated an initial fiat focus, with crypto support to follow per the Blockchain Council.

Bank Negara Malaysia launched an expanded digital asset sandbox to pilot ringgit‑backed stablecoins and tokenized deposits. According to BNM, the trials will examine impacts on monetary and financial stability and may inform CBDC policy, with guidance on ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits targeted by the end of 2026.

On February 12 2026, Chainlink's oracle network went live with real-time price feeds for Ondo Finance's tokenized U.S. stocks on Ethereum, enabling assets such as SPYon, QQQon, and TSLAon to be priced directly on-chain. With these institutional-grade feeds, DeFi protocols like Euler can now accept Ondo's tokenized equities as collateral for stablecoin borrowing, while Ondo maintains alignment with underlying stock values through updates that reflect dividends and corporate actions.

LayerZero Labs has introduced Zero, a new layer-1 blockchain architecture designed to support up to 2 million transactions per second per zone and optimized for institutional-grade workloads, with mainnet launch planned for fall 2026. The network will initially consist of multiple specialized zones, including an EVM-compatible execution environment, a privacy-oriented payments area, and infrastructure tailored to trading and financial use cases, supported by backers such as Citadel Securities, ARK Invest, DTCC, and Google Cloud.