The Bank of Korea (BOK) suspended its central bank digital currency project, Singaporean financial newspaper Business Times reported on Monday.

The project had reached the stage of developing a pilot program with participating banks.

The central bank told the banks it will pause discussions related to the initiative, according to the report, which cited an unidentified BOK official.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung, who took office June 4, courted the country’s cryptocurrency community during his election campaign. Among his promises was a pledge to support a won-based stablecoin market.

Earlier this month, Lee’s ruling Democratic party submitted a bill that would allow qualifying companies to issue stablecoins.

CBDCs are a form of fiat currency that are meant to act as a digital counterpart to cash. They have been criticized as a concept, particularly among the crypto community, over concerns about privacy, surveillance and state control.

The Bank of Korea did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Franklin Templeton, one of the world’s largest asset management firms, has submitted a proposal to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue a spot Solana ETF (exchange-traded fund). The asset manager joins several other applicants in the race to offer a SOL-based investment product to US investors.

Franklin Templeton To Offer Staking In Spot Solana ETF

On Friday, February 21, Franklin Templeton filed for an exchange-traded product that will track the spot price of the fifth-largest cryptocurrency Solana. Franklin Templeton’s Solana ETF will be listed on the Cboe BZX Exchange, with Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC serving as custodian.

The firm’s registration statement read:

The Franklin Solana Trust (the “Trust”) is organized as a Delaware statutory trust. The Franklin Solana ETF series of the Trust (the “Fund”) issues shares (“Shares”) representing fractional undivided beneficial interests in its net assets. The assets of the Fund consist primarily of Solana held by a custodian on behalf of the Fund. The Fund seeks to reflect generally the performance of the price of Solana. The Fund seeks to reflect such performance before payment of the Fund’s expenses.

In its filing with the SEC, Franklin Templeton revealed that it may occasionally stake a portion of the ETF’s assets through one or more trusted staking providers. According to the firm, the “Fund” would receive Solana tokens as rewards (which would also be treated as “income to the Fund”) for engaging in any staking activity.

Source: Sec.gov

This spot Solana ETF would join the Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds in Franklin Templeton’s growing list of crypto products in the United States. Earlier this week, the asset manager launched its combined ETH and BTC ETF after receiving SEC approval in December 2024.

Franklin Templeton’s proposal to offer the staking option in its spot Solana ETF is not exactly novel, as multiple issuers have considered this in other crypto products. For instance, the New York Stock Exchange filed for staking on Grayscale’s Ethereum ETFs, while Cboe BZX Exchange is looking to offer staking on 21Shares’ Ethereum fund.

With the digital asset regulatory landscape improving in the United States, it is no surprise to see more traditional firms file for new crypto-based financial products. The growing clarity in the US crypto space was spotlighted by the SEC’s decision to drop its case against Coinbase.

Solana Price Overview

The price of SOL barely reacted to the news of Franklin Templeton’s spot Solana ETF filing. As of this writing, the Solana price stands at around $170, reflecting a 2% decline in the past 24 hours.

The price of SOL on the daily timeframe | Source: SOLUSDT chart on TradingView

Featured image from Aivaras Sakurovas | Dreamstime.com, chart from TradingView

Cboe has filed four separate 19b-4 applications with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to introduce spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The filings, submitted on behalf of WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary, mark a critical step in seeking regulatory approval to list and trade these investment products.

These 19b-4 applications follow the issuers’ S-1 filings, moving the proposals closer to regulatory consideration. Once the SEC acknowledges receipt, the agency has a 240-day window to review and decide whether to approve or reject the ETFs.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse responded to the filings with a clock emoji, suggesting the regulator’s decision is on the horizon. Garlinghouse has previously maintained that an XRP ETF is inevitable, reinforcing expectations that such investment products will eventually gain approval.

Ripple pointed out that the wave of ETF applications from so many issuers reflects the growing institutional interest in XRP-related investment products.

ETF filing details

The proposed XRP ETFs will track the price of XRP, the fourth-largest crypto, by market capitalization.

According to Cboe, authorized participants will not engage in direct XRP transactions during the creation or redemption of the ETF. Instead, the structure ensures exposure to XRP’s price movements without requiring fund managers to buy or hold the asset directly.

Additionally, the application compares the approval process of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

Cboe pointed out that while XRP does not have a futures market, the SEC had approved Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs despite the CME futures market for both assets not being considered of “significant size.”

The filing argues that alternative mechanisms exist to mitigate fraud and market manipulation risks, making a surveillance-sharing agreement unnecessary for XRP ETFs.

The filing stated:

“There are sufficient ‘other means’ of preventing fraud and manipulation that warrant dispensing of the surveillance-sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size, as was done with both Spot Bitcoin ETPs and Spot ETH ETPs, and that this proposal should be approved.”

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