Governments outside the US, including Singapore, are increasingly interested in stablecoins not tied to the US dollar, despite their currently limited liquidity, Fireblocks director of policy Dea Markova told Cointelegraph at Token2049.In an exclusive interview, Markova described the competition with dollar-pegged stablecoins as “all about sovereignty.” She compared the situation to earlier tensions between governments and US payment giants like Visa and Mastercard. “Now we’re seeing the same dynamic with stablecoins — on a smaller scale for now — but they’re definitely emerging as a new arena for sovereign concerns,” she said.According to Markova, dollar-pegged stablecoins operating in the European Union are already “having a massive headache,” particularly from central banks. “Even though they’re compliant and regulated, they’re having a fixed push back.”Dea Markova at Token2049. Source: CointelegraphThe European Central Bank is increasing pressure to accelerate the development of a digital euro, citing concerns over the systemic impact of dollar-linked stablecoins within the eurozone. On April 29, the Bank of Italy released a report saying dollar-pegged stablecoins’ reliance on US Treasury bonds could increase systemic risk vulnerabilities.Stablecoins’ market capitalization is dominated by dollar-pegged coins, especially Tether’s USDT (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC). According to DefiLlama, those two coins combine for $210.9 billion (or 87.2%) of the $241.8 billion total market cap for such tokens. In fact, all 10 of the top stablecoins are pegged to the dollar.Top 10 stablecoins by market cap. Source: DefiLlamaFor Markova, the situation is similar to previous conflicts between governments and US payment giants like Visa and Mastercard. “Now we’re seeing the same dynamic with stablecoins — on a smaller scale for now — but they’re definitely emerging as a new arena for sovereign concerns,” she said.UAE ahead on ‘regulatory thinking’Markova added that the United Arab Emirates is “definitely ahead in its regulatory thinking” on stablecoins. She cited Abu Dhabi as an example, noting that the emirate does not require stablecoin issuers to be domiciled or licensed locally, unlike the regulatory approach in Europe.Markova explained that Abu Dhabi’s approach is to conduct its due diligence on global stablecoins and decide whether local exchanges can offer them. “[…] is a far more reasonable approach to give local businesses access to global liquidity and payments.”In December 2024, USDT was approved as a recognized virtual asset in Abu Dhabi, followed by Circle receiving regulatory approval for USDC on April 29. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi institutions are collaborating on the launch of a regulated dirham-pegged stablecoin.Related: ECB exec renews push for digital euro to counter US stablecoin growth

Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, CheqdBrutal honesty has its place, especially when confronting discomfort, so here’s one that can’t be sweetened with honey: 96% of imported honey in the UK is fake! Tests found that 24 of 25 jars were suspicious or didn’t meet regulatory standards. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) can fix this. The UK Food Standards Agency and the European Commission both urge reform to tackle this concern by creating a robust traceability database within supply chain networks to ensure consumer transparency and trust. Data, however, is not the problem. The issue is people tampering with it. This is not the first time products have been revealed to be inauthentic, with the Honey Authenticity Network highlighting that one-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, a fraudulent industry amounting to 3.4 billion euros ($3.65 million) of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.What is EMA, and how does it affect honey?Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) involves intentionally substituting valuable ingredients for less expensive products such as sweeteners or low-quality oil. This practice leads to severe economic and health complications — and, in some cases, disease — due to the poisonous additives from substitute products.The adulteration often involves creating an ultra-diluted blend containing minimal nutritional value, and counterfeiters call it… honey.Fraudsters dilute the product with high fructose corn syrup or increase the thickness with starch or gelatine. These adulterants closely mimic honey’s chemical profile, making it extremely difficult to detect with traditional tests such as isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Fake honey lacks the essential enzymes that give real honey its flavor and nutrients. To make matters worse, honey’s characteristics vary based on nectar sources, the harvest season, geography and more. Some companies filter out pollen content, a key identifier of a honey’s geographical origin, before exporting it to intermediary countries like Vietnam or India to further obfuscate the process. Once this is done, the products are brought to supermarket shelves and labeled with false certifications to command higher prices. This tactic exploits the fact that many regulatory bodies lack the means to verify every shipment.The hidden cost of food fraudThe supply chain is profoundly fractured, as a jar of honey passes six to eight key points in the supply chain before it arrives on the shelves in the UK. Current practices make authenticity verification extremely difficult. Coupled with the inefficient paper-based bureaucracy that makes it hard to track origin obscuration attempts in intermediary countries, we cannot reliably determine the true extent of food fraud.One Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimate suggests that at least 1% of the global food industry, potentially up to $40 billion per year, is affected — and it could be even higher.Recent: What is decentralized identity in blockchain?Fraudulent practices don’t just harm consumers — they destroy beekeepers’ livelihoods, flooding the market and destroying profitability for legitimate traders. Ziya Sahin, a Turkish beekeeper, explained the frustration with food fraud regulation:“Our beekeepers are angry, and they ask why we’re not doing something to stop it. But we have no authority to inspect,” he said. “I’m not even allowed to ask street sellers whether their honey is real.”While there’s a growing appetite for more reliable testing and stricter enforcement, solutions are lagging. The EU’s latest attempt to fix this? Digital product passports are designed to track honey’s origins and composition, but they are already being criticized as ineffective and easy to manipulate, ultimately leaving the door open for fraud to continue.EU passports are an ineffective solution The European Union’s Digital Product Passport aims to tackle this by enhancing traceability and transparency in its supply chains. By 2030, all goods in the EU must have a digital product passport containing detailed information on the product’s lifecycle, origins and environmental effects. While the idea sounds promising, it fails to recognize the extent to which fraudsters can forge certificates and obscure origins by passing products through intermediary countries alongside officials who turn a blind eye.At the core of this issue is trust. Despite history showing that these rules can and will be bent, we rely on governments to implement laws and regulations. Technology, on the other hand, is agnostic and doesn’t care about money or incentives.This is the fundamental flaw of the EU’s approach — a system built on human oversight that is vulnerable to the corruption these supply chains are already known for. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) for productsMany people are already aware of the scalability trilemma, but the trust triangle is a key concept in SSI that defines how trust is established between issuers, holders and verifiers. It makes fraud much more challenging because every product must be backed by a verifiable credential from a trusted source to prove it’s real.Issuers, like manufacturers or certification bodies, create and sign verifiable credentials that attest to a product’s authenticity. The holder, typically the product owner, stores and presents these credentials when required. Verifiers — such as retailers, customs officials or consumers — can check the credentials’ validity without relying on a central authority. Verifiable credentials are protected by cryptography. If someone tries to sell fake products, their missing or invalid credentials will immediately reveal the fraud.Government reforms must extend beyond current regulatory oversight and explore the approach outlined in the trust trilemma to safeguard supply chains from widespread adulteration and fraud.SSI provides the underlying infrastructure necessary to reliably track the identity of products across multiple bodies, standards and regions. By enabling tamper-proof, end-to-end traceability in every single product — whether a jar of honey or a designer handbag — SSI ensures sufficient validators confirm the data is correct to tackle fraud and obfuscation attempts.SSI also empowers consumers to independently verify products without relying on third-party databases. Buyers can scan the product to authenticate its origin and history directly via the cryptographic certifications confirmed by the validators to further reduce the risk of misinformation even if it reaches the shelves. This would also help reduce corruption and inefficiencies, as many checks are made on paper, which can be easily altered and is a slow process.As honey fraud methods continue to expand, so do these products’ harm to consumers and local businesses. Steps taken to tackle these methods must thus also broaden. The EU’s Digital Product Passports aim to improve traceability; but unfortunately, they fall short of fraudsters’ sophistication. Implementation of SSI is a necessary step to effectively address the extent fraudsters take to ensure their product arrives on shelves.Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, Cheqd. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Mantra has called for industry-wide cooperation to reduce investor risks in the aftermath of its OM token crash.On April 30, Mantra published its latest update since the sudden collapse of its OM token, claiming that the incident was “bigger than Mantra.”“Liquidation cascades could happen to any project in the crypto industry,” Mantra CEO John Mullin warned in the post, pointing to the role of “aggressive leverage positions” on exchanges as a broader threat to investor safety.Mantra’s industry-wide call to action is the biggest section in the latest OM crash update. Source: Mantra“We’re cooperating with major exchanges to improve market stability, and we’re calling on the rest of our industry to provide input on how exchange policies can minimize — or continue to permit — policies that create risk to investors,” the update states.Progress includes governance improvementsAside from calling global centralized exchanges to review their leverage policies, Mantra listed a few key solutions following the OM crash.The first point concerned governance improvements to the Mantra chain with a focus on decentralization. Mantra has pledged to accelerate its validator diversification efforts by winding down internal validators and adding more support partners.Related: Mantra unveils $108M fund to back real-world asset tokenization, DeFi“By the end of Q2 2025, we’ll have reduced internal validators by half and onboarded 50 total external partner validators,” the update states.Additionally, the update mentioned that Mantra has burned 150 million staked OM tokens, permanently removing them from the total supply.To enhance transparency, Mantra has introduced a real-time dashboard featuring tokenomics data. It has also begun alpha testing a new Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible testnet called Omstead, aimed at improving technical resilience.The post highlighted that the Mantra chain continued operating without interruption during the price drop, even with transaction volumes at all-time highs.Cointelegraph contacted Mantra and exchanges, including Binance and OKX, for comment regarding Mantra’s industry-wide call to action, but did not receive a response by publication.This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.Magazine: Ethereum is destroying the competition in the $16.1T TradFi tokenization race