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Jordan’s central bank admitted its first virtual asset company to the kingdom’s regulatory sandbox on February 17, the same week the US Federal Reserve published a working paper proposing to classify cryptocurrencies as an independent asset class for derivatives margin. Together the two moves capture a global regulatory moment: governments are no longer debating whether to engage with digital assets — they are debating how tightly to hold them.
Jordan’s Sandbox Gets Its First Crypto Resident
UAE-regulated infrastructure provider Fuze became the first virtual asset company admitted to JoRegBox — the Central Bank of Jordan’s Regulatory Sandbox for Financial Technology and Innovation — according to a Zawya press release dated February 17. The announcement was made at an official ceremony hosted by CBJ Governor Dr. Adel Al-Sharkas, alongside Deputy Governors Ziad Asa’ad Ghanma and Dr. Khaldoun Abdullah Al-Wshah, and Jordan Securities Commission Chairman Emad Abu Haltam. That level of institutional choreography signals this was not a routine licensing event.
Fuze, which operates as a Digital-Assets-as-a-Service platform enabling banks and fintechs to embed regulated crypto products in a B2B2C model, will test digital financial products with real customers under direct CBJ supervision. The company also runs an over-the-counter desk serving institutions, funds, and high-net-worth individuals, per its corporate disclosures. Fuze’s subsidiary — Morpheus Software Technology FZE, licensed by Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) as a broker-dealer — received the CBJ approval in coordination with the Jordan Securities Commission, according to the company’s regulatory disclaimer.
The move aligns with Jordan’s Economic Modernisation Vision 2033 and the central bank’s Financial Technology and Innovation Vision, both of which prioritise digital transformation as a driver of economic growth, as noted by UNLOCK Blockchain’s analysis. For Fuze, Jordan is the latest in a compliance-first expansion strategy across the Middle East and Africa, targeting jurisdictions with defined regulatory frameworks. The sandbox model — testing innovation under supervision rather than banning it outright — reflects a broader regional pattern. Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia have all built similar controlled environments, but Jordan’s admission of its first virtual asset firm marks a concrete step from policy ambition to operational reality.
The Fed Wants Crypto in Its Own Box Too
On a parallel track, the US Federal Reserve published a staff working paper on February 12 titled “Initial Margin for Crypto Currencies Risks in Uncleared Markets,” authored by researchers Anna Amirdjanova, David Lynch, and Anni Zheng, as reported by Cointelegraph and crypto.news. The paper argues that cryptocurrencies do not fit into the existing risk categories — interest rates, equities, foreign exchange, and commodities — used by the Standardized Initial Margin Model (SIMM), the industry-standard framework maintained by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association for calculating margin requirements on uncleared over-the-counter derivatives.
The core proposal: create a dedicated crypto risk class within the SIMM framework, splitting digital assets into two tiers. The first tier covers “pegged” cryptocurrencies — stablecoins designed to mirror traditional currencies. The second covers “floating” assets like Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Cardano, Dogecoin, and BNB, whose prices are determined entirely by supply and demand, per the paper’s classification. The authors propose a benchmark index split equally between six floating cryptocurrencies and six pegged stablecoins, which would serve as a proxy for overall crypto market volatility and feed into calibrated risk weights for margin calculations.
The practical implication, as Cryptopolitan’s analysis noted, is higher collateral requirements for crypto derivatives traders — particularly on contracts linked to volatile floating assets. The Fed researchers argue this would reduce the risk of under-collateralisation, where trading losses exceed posted margin and can cascade through the financial system during stress events. The paper is explicitly not a regulation: it represents staff research, not an official rule or policy decision. But its timing is notable — it arrived weeks after the Fed reversed its 2023 guidance that had restricted banks from engaging in crypto-related activities, signalling a broader shift from prohibition to structured accommodation.
The Market Divergence That Explains Everything
While regulators build frameworks, markets are already voting with capital — and the votes are split. Tokenized real-world assets expanded 13.5 percent in value over the 30 days to February 16, according to RWA.xyz data cited by Cointelegraph, even as the broader cryptocurrency market shed roughly $1 trillion in total capitalisation over the same period. Ethereum led the RWA growth with approximately $1.7 billion in net additions, followed by Arbitrum at $880 million and Solana at $530 million.
The divergence is not random. Institutional money is flowing toward yield-generating, asset-backed digital securities — tokenized US Treasuries, money market funds, private credit — while pulling back from speculative tokens. BlackRock brought its BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund to Uniswap in the same week, as Cointelegraph reported, while the broader RWA market now stands at roughly $24 billion in on-chain value supported by $365 billion in underlying assets, per CoinPedia’s figures. Ripple and BCG forecast the tokenized RWA market expanding from approximately $0.6 trillion in 2025 to $18.9 trillion by 2033. That trajectory helps explain why both a Jordanian central bank and a Fed research team are treating crypto infrastructure not as a curiosity but as a feature of the financial system that needs proper plumbing — whether the plumbing takes the form of a sandbox in Amman or a margin model in Washington.
