BitMart's official Chinese-language X account publicly demanded that founder Sheldon Xia account for user funds and produce a repayment plan, setting a deadline of Aug. 19. The account said some users were unable to withdraw funds and that certain employees had not received final salaries or compensation. It threatened to submit evidence to regulators, law enforcement, lawyers and the media if Xia did not provide a verifiable asset disclosure before the deadline.
Xia rejected the allegations in direct terms. "We have collected full evidence of the content on X, all of which is fabricated rumors. During daytime U.S. time, we will file a police report and send a lawyer's letter to X, demanding technical and data forensics," he said. The exchange's closure has been anticipated, and the public dispute between the company's own account and its founder marks a sharp deterioration in what had already been an orderly wind-down process.
The conflict broke into the open at a time when the broader Asia crypto exchange landscape is under close regulatory scrutiny. BitMart has not publicly released a timeline for user fund repayment or a formal asset disclosure—the specific item the ultimatum demands.
On the tokenized equities side, Binance's bStocks product reached approximately $624 million in value as of Aug. 3, crossing above xStocks, which stood at roughly $579 million on the same date. The move places bStocks as the second-largest tokenized stock issuer by value, a position it reached less than two months after launch. Ondo Finance holds first place at about $927 million, according to Token Terminal data.
The speed of bStocks' climb is most visible when measured against where xStocks stood a year earlier. In mid-2025, xStocks led the tokenized stock market with $40.7 million in value. Robinhood sat in second at $37.2 million. Ondo Finance, now the category leader, held roughly $65,000 at that point. The entire tokenized stock market tracked by Token Terminal expanded from roughly $80 million a year ago to about $2.7 billion now.
Binance structured bStocks as a direct competitor in a category that was, until recently, a niche product measured in tens of millions of dollars. The growth to $2.7 billion across the market in under a year reflects institutional and retail demand for equity exposure inside crypto-native infrastructure, without routing through traditional brokerage rails.
Israel's Bank Leumi is separately entering the space, partnering with Galaxy Digital to offer Bitcoin, Ether and Solana trading to retail customers through its Leumi Trade app starting in early 2027. Customers of both Leumi and its mobile arm Pepper will access the three assets through a dedicated section of the app. Leumi becomes the first local Israeli bank to offer direct crypto trading through this arrangement.
Metaplanet, the Japanese Bitcoin treasury company, addressed a separate wave of concern after transferring 5,014 BTC—worth roughly $322 million—over a 24-hour span last week. CEO Simon Gerovich said the move was operational, not a sell. "This was a routine custody operation. No Bitcoin was sold, and our holdings remain 43,000 BTC," Gerovich said. On-chain data from Arkham shows the company is carrying an unrealized loss of approximately $1.4 billion on its position. Metaplanet ranks as the third-largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company globally and the largest in Asia.
Four companies within the MUFG group plan to bring Japanese government bond repo transactions on-chain using the Canton Network, executing a new proof of concept. Repo transactions—short-term borrowing arrangements where one party sells bonds and agrees to buy them back at a set price—are a foundational instrument in institutional fixed-income markets. Moving them on-chain through Canton would allow settlement finality and programmable collateral management within a permissioned network.
Suspected North Korean IT workers also surfaced in the week's Asia news cycle, documented pitching for venture capital from a fictitious crypto startup while their activity was tracked in real time. The operation, which ran on the ANY.RUN sandbox environment, produced actionable intelligence on DPRK tactics for infiltrating Web3 hiring pipelines under cover of legitimate employment. The episode adds to a growing record of state-linked actors using crypto startup culture as an entry point for intelligence collection and fund access.
Xia has promised legal action against the X account's posts but has not addressed the substance of the asset disclosure demand. Users seeking withdrawals and former employees seeking unpaid wages are watching to see whether that legal posture translates into any concrete repayment commitment.
