Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk, your morning read on the stories moving capital and policy.
JP Morgan has taken its deposit token product, JPM Coin, live on the Ethereum layer one blockchain, a significant step that brings institutional-grade settlement infrastructure into public chain territory. This is less about crypto enthusiasm and more about the plumbing of wholesale payments, and it signals that major banks are done waiting on proprietary rails alone.
Crossing into Europe, the European Payments Council has approved work on a standardisation framework to ensure payment service providers can consistently accept the EU Digital Identity Wallet. That may sound procedural, but harmonised digital identity acceptance across European payments is foundational architecture for the bloc's financial services future, and getting the standards right early matters enormously.
Meanwhile, geopolitical risk is back in the room. Saudi Arabia has cancelled the in-person Future Investment Initiative, the gathering known as Davos in the Desert, after Houthi drone attacks struck Riyadh. The event draws sovereign wealth funds, global CEOs, and major deal flow. Moving it fully online or postponing entirely removes a key venue for capital commitments and signals the Gulf's security calculus remains unsettled.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
