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On February 19, 2026, the SEC Division of Trading and Markets issued a staff FAQ under Exchange Act Rule 15c3-1 that sets a uniform 2 percent net capital haircut for qualifying payment stablecoins held as proprietary long and short positions, replacing a prior de facto full deduction practice. The 2 percent level aligns with haircuts applied to money-market instruments backed by short-term Treasuries and cash. The treatment applies only to proprietary positions included in net capital, does not change customer protection or custody rules, and does not apply to customer assets. Eligibility requires compliance with GENIUS Act criteria, permitted issuer licensing, full fiat reserves, monthly AICPA reserve attestations, recognized auditors, and bankruptcy-remote custody and tested redemption mechanics. Firms must update trading and risk systems to identify eligible tokens and apply the 2 percent haircut, collect and retain issuer documentation and attestations, implement diverse price sources and automated depeg thresholds, and establish escalation and collateral-substitution playbooks; firms may apply higher internal haircuts and concentration checks or stress testing if liquidity or peg conditions deteriorate. The change reduces capital charges for eligible holdings (for example, $100 million of eligible tokens now triggers a $2 million charge rather than a full deduction) and permits broker-dealers, clearing brokers, and prime brokers to consider using eligible stablecoins for settlement, collateral, intraday funding, market making, and treasury operations. The SEC invited feedback on whether to amend Rule 15c3-1 to codify definitions and eligibility conditions, and cross-agency coordination and final rulemaking by other regulators will affect which issuers can rely on this treatment; the NCUA proposed GENIUS Act rules on February 12, 2026, including licensing, reserve and liquidity standards, and a proposed one percent investment limit for credit unions. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/sec-stablecoin-capital-relief/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russian authorities will treat cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as tradable assets, file a draft bill to the State Duma in March 2026, and target adoption during the spring session with the law set to take effect on July 1, 2026 and full liabilities and penalties phased in on July 1, 2027. The regime will require exchanges, brokers, banks, and custodians to obtain local licenses and meet requirements including qualified custody, order and trade reporting, KYC and suitability checks, segregation of client assets, and capital requirements, while limiting retail activity through eligibility and suitability rules and allowing supervised intermediaries as the only compliant onramps for Russian users. Authorities will require foreign platforms to operate through Russian subsidiaries, enforce data localization, and enable corporate and technical controls including targeted domain and app restrictions to reduce offshore fee outflows estimated at about $648 million per day and roughly $15 billion per year. Enforcement will proceed in stages, prioritize shutdowns of fraud and unauthorized intermediaries, provide transition windows for legitimate platforms to apply for licenses, and deploy Roskomnadzor AI-assisted blocking tools and escalation pathways from summer 2026 alongside prosecutorial and central bank actions that impose administrative penalties for users and criminal-style liability for firms operating outside the licensing regime. Exchanges and service providers will incur compliance and operational costs from custody standards, local servers, capital buffers, and reporting systems; foreign platforms will choose between establishing Russian subsidiaries and local infrastructure or risking loss of market access; domestic licensed intermediaries will capture onshore volume and will be subject to supervision under the licensing regime. Entrepreneurs and firms with Russian exposure should map user flows, audit custody and self-custody exposure, prepare KYC and onboarding systems, plan for data localization, evaluate custody partners that meet the custody and reporting requirements, budget for operational costs tied to capital and reporting obligations, and develop contingency plans for traffic and liquidity fragmentation; investors and builders should prepare for licensing gates, custody requirements, enhanced reporting, consider partnerships with licensed or rapidly compliant local intermediaries, define fallback plans for liquidity and market-making, and align operational timelines and capital allocation with the March–July 2026 window and the July 1, 2027 liability deadline. Key milestones to watch include the March 2026 bill filing, the spring State Duma vote, the July 1, 2026 effective date, potential first regulated domestic transactions in late 2026, and the July 1, 2027 enforcement date; signals to track include how many major foreign platforms apply for Russian subsidiaries, how quickly domestic players scale custody and compliance, and whether Roskomnadzor begins technical restrictions on offshore access in summer 2026; risks include VPN circumvention, fragmented liquidity across domestic and offshore order books, and licensing or onboarding backlogs that could sustain a grey market. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/russia-2026-crypto-framework/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded about $3.8 billion in net redemptions across five consecutive weeks, the longest streak since February 2025, bringing year-to-date outflows to about $4.5 billion and printing roughly $316 million in net redemptions in the most recent week. BlackRock’s IBIT registered roughly $2.10–$2.13 billion of withdrawals over the five-week span, including about $303.5 million last week, and Fidelity’s FBTC accounted for about $954 million of outflows; Ether ETFs experienced weekly redemptions near $123 million, while cumulative spot Bitcoin ETF inflows since the 2024 launches remain in the $53–$54 billion range. Bitcoin traded near $64,300, down about 25 percent year-to-date in 2026 and about 47 percent from the $126,000 peak, with near-term supports around $65,000, a tighter band at $64,200–$64,400, and a broader liquidity pocket near $60,000 after a concentrated sell-off erased roughly $100 billion of crypto market value within 24 hours. Drivers included tariff uncertainty tied to Section 122 timelines, geopolitical tensions, and rotation into store-of-value assets; on-chain and institutional signals showed increased exchange deposits averaging about 1.58 BTC per depositing address and a roughly $760 million transfer to Binance, and hedge funds and large allocators trimmed positions with a reported 28 percent deallocation in late 2025. Sustained ETF outflows increased realized volatility, widened spreads, and pressured futures basis and borrow rates, which complicated hedging for corporate treasuries, raised financing costs for miners and other capital-intensive operators, increased mark-to-market sensitivity for companies with Bitcoin exposure, and prompted greater inventory churn for market makers as primary outflows fed secondary selling. Near-term scenarios hinge on flows and policy clarity: a decisive reclaim above $70,000 would invite marginal risk capital back into ETFs and ease primary market pressure, while a confirmed break below $65,000 would bring $60,000 into focus for a potential liquidity sweep that could flush stops and either produce a rebound or confirm a deeper drawdown; halving-related supply dynamics may provide tailwinds by mid-2026 while tariff headlines and legal uncertainty could keep risk premia elevated. Indicators to watch include weekly primary market flows for IBIT and FBTC, developments in the Section 122 tariff policy timeline and related court actions, cross-asset signals such as gold, the dollar and equity volatility, and derivatives metrics including options skew near $60,000 and futures basis across major venues. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/bitcoin-etf-outflows-five-weeks/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) published two advisories on February 12, 2026 identifying over-the-counter crypto desks and crypto payment processors as channels for laundering and tax evasion. The J5 membership includes the Australian Taxation Office, Canada Revenue Agency, Dutch FIOD, HM Revenue and Customs, and IRS Criminal Investigation. The advisories reported average daily OTC turnover at about $1.44 billion versus about $74.5 million on exchanges, nearly $236 billion in suspicious activity linked to OTC platforms reported to FinCEN, and a roughly 1,000% increase in suspicious activity reports tied to crypto payment processors between 2020 and 2024 reaching around $5 billion. The advisories described mechanisms used to obscure flows, including private settlement windows, custodial addresses, cross-venue flows, routing or conversion by processors that bypass exchange-level KYC and monitoring, and attribution gaps created by unlabeled house wallets, third-party fiat receivers, and nested merchant accounts. The advisories listed red flags for OTC desks such as large block trades settled outside exchange order books, repeated bespoke settlement terms, cross-chain hops or partial cash components, advertising guaranteed quotes or low documentation, failures to file suspicious activity reports, and poor wallet labeling; and red flags for processors such as merchant mismatches between declared business category and transaction patterns, nested accounts funneling flows across settlement rails, rapid splitting and reaggregation of payments, and weak onboarding or sanctions screening tied to IP and device gaps. The J5 cited prior operations including the September 2024 Cyber Challenge that combined chain analytics, SAR data, and investigative mapping to link wallets to fiat endpoints, dealers and shell entities. The advisories recommend adopting common SAR keyword libraries that include named OTC venues and processor typologies, tagging counterparties and house wallets consistently, training investigators to identify described signal patterns, mapping exposure to OTC counterparties and documenting verified identities and sources of funds for large or repeat trades, updating SAR programs with recommended typologies and keyword lists, increasing merchant-level monitoring by tracking velocity, clustering, and merchant-category inconsistencies, and strengthening Travel Rule compliance and analytics labeling by incorporating IP, device, and geolocation context. Agencies signaled oversight expectations that could include registration and licensing for OTC intermediaries, fit-and-proper checks, and enhanced record keeping; processors could face stronger KYC, merchant category monitoring, sanctions screening informed by IP and device data, and stricter Travel Rule enforcement; banks and acquirers may de-risk relationships with insufficient labeling and reporting, and service providers may face exam findings, account terminations, and cross-border referrals. The advisories indicate potential market effects including migration of liquidity from OTC venues toward regulated platforms, wider spreads and increased slippage on large block trades, loss of acquirers for processors that cannot demonstrate merchant controls, continued access to fiat rails for institutions that invest in provenance analytics and accurate labeling, and increased enforcement and termination risk for lagging service providers. The J5 advised that agencies will pursue joint operations, intelligence sharing, and referrals tying on-chain patterns to off-chain fiat endpoints, card programs, and dealers, and urged industry leaders to prioritize controls that make transactions auditable and documented. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/j5-warns-otc-crypto-processors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mirae Asset Consulting agreed to acquire 92.06 percent of Korbit in an all-cash transaction valued at 133.5 billion KRW (about $92–93 million), covering approximately 26.91 million shares. The buyer’s board approved the transaction on February 5, the deal was disclosed on February 13, and closing is expected within seven business days after regulatory and contractual conditions are satisfied. Sellers include NXC and Simple Capital Futures (together about 60.5 percent), SK Square which exited its roughly 31.5 percent holding through SK Planet, and Bitstamp (now under Robinhood) which retains about eight percent. Mirae is using a non-financial affiliate for the acquisition to comply with Korean rules separating securities businesses and crypto exchanges. Korbit is the fourth-largest of five licensed exchanges in Korea, holds about one percent market share, reported 8.7 billion KRW in revenue and 9.8 billion KRW in net profit for the most recent year, and recorded a 30-day trading volume increase of 454 percent to roughly $2.8 billion. The acquisition gives Mirae an owned exchange license and an operational platform to pursue tokenized products and security token offerings, and Mirae Asset Group manages roughly $418 billion in assets. Korean regulators are advancing frameworks for security tokens and on-chain bonds through 2026 and are considering proposals to cap single-owner stakes in exchanges at roughly 15 to 20 percent. By acquiring control now, Mirae secures management authority that could be grandfathered if ownership caps become law. Immediate integration tasks include obtaining approvals, securing banking connectivity and custody arrangements, and integrating risk and compliance controls, and identified risks include regulatory clearance, sponsor bank and counterparty agreement, and migration of systems, data, and controls. The buyer and exchange indicated that day-to-day operations are expected to remain stable during the handover and that potential additions such as fiat connectivity, custody services, and compliant tokenized offerings would be subject to regulatory approvals. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/mirae-asset-buys-korbit-92-stake/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 16, 2026, X announced Smart Cashtags that make $TICKER tags interactive by surfacing real-time quotes, sparklines, and reference information in the timeline and by opening a compact trading panel that routes users to integrated partner brokerages and crypto exchanges for execution. X will provide market data, routing links, and the UX surface while partner brokerages and exchanges remain responsible for execution, KYC, custody, and settlement. X targets a phased rollout of Smart Cashtags in the coming weeks with initial coverage focused on Bitcoin and Ether, plans to expand to liquid equities and other crypto pairs as partner support and liquidity allow, and will initially support spot trading only. X is testing X Money in internal beta with peer-to-peer transfers, in-app wallets, and Visa-enabled instant settlement mechanics, and it targets an external beta in one to two months subject to partner readiness and compliance approvals. X holds money transmitter licenses in seven U.S. states from 2023 and intends broader regional availability to depend on additional licenses and local partnerships. Regulators, compliance, fraud, user protection, data latency, and outages are identified as risk areas that require controls such as disclosures, default limits, funding checks, fraud prevention, and routing audits. X advised exchange, brokerage, and payments partners to prepare APIs and onboarding flows for rapid account openings and identity checks, optimize mobile funding paths, harden anti-abuse controls for feed-driven flows, and design visible safeguards for new traders. Early operational metrics to monitor include weekly active cashtag traders, conversion rates from views to orders, time to first trade after a cashtag interaction, funding success rates, latency and routing reliability, and retention of wallet balances. X and partners will publish public milestones such as partner lists, regional availability, asset coverage, uptime, error rates, and compliance updates; teams are advised to validate exchange readiness, align on API contracts and error handling, and track Visa settlement behavior and interchange economics while expecting phased rollouts and a limited initial asset set. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/x-smart-cashtags-money-launch/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Harvard Management Company reduced its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) position by about 1.48–1.50 million shares, a roughly 21% decline, in Q4 2025 and initiated a position in the iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA). At quarter-end it held approximately 5.35–5.40 million IBIT shares valued at $265–266 million and approximately 3.87–4.00 million ETHA shares valued at $86.8–87 million, for combined ETF positions of about $352.6 million, near 1% of Harvard’s $56.9 billion endowment. IBIT was the largest disclosed public equity holding by reported market value, ahead of Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. Bitcoin moved from a near-record of about $126,000 in October 2025 to a Dec. 31 close of $88,429, and Ethereum finished the year about 28% lower. Harvard used ETF wrappers to adjust exposure without on-chain custody, to access standard settlement through prime brokers, and to integrate crypto exposure into existing compliance and reporting workflows. Harvard’s Bitcoin ETF exposure had peaked near $442.8 million earlier in 2025, and its total crypto sleeve remained in a satellite allocation of roughly 1% of assets. The same 13F filing showed a new position in Union Pacific and rebalancing across technology and industrial sectors. The filing and commentary identified valuation debates, policy developments and tax rules as factors that could influence future committee decisions, and upcoming 13F filings will show whether Harvard increases its ETHA stake, holds steady, or further pares IBIT. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/harvard-crypto-rebalance-q4-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 11, 2026, Canton, North Carolina voted unanimously to enact a 12-month townwide moratorium on new data centers, server farms, and cryptocurrency mining, explicitly covering the roughly 185-acre former Pactiv Evergreen paper mill site. The moratorium begins before any formal permit applications were submitted and suspends permit intake and processing while staff draft zoning and performance ordinance updates. Town staff were directed to begin drafting ordinance updates immediately and to schedule public workshops and planning board reviews over the coming year. A public hearing that preceded the vote drew roughly fifty attendees who raised concerns about water supply, noise, grid impacts, environmental cleanup, and job quality. During the moratorium, staff and the planning board will evaluate zoning options and operational requirements, including restricting high-density compute to specific industrial zones, requiring conditional permits with case-specific protections, and introducing performance-based standards for water use, noise at the property line, and real-time energy reporting. Officials directed staff to add reporting, monitoring, and enforcement tools to enable tracking of ongoing operations if projects are approved later. Guidance for project teams and applicants includes prioritizing low-water cooling strategies and heat reuse, coordinating early with the local utility on interconnection studies and grid-impact modeling, preparing acoustic modeling and construction logistics plans that specify truck routes and hours, planning on-site water reuse and stormwater controls sized for extreme events, implementing commissioning plans to validate promised metrics, and pairing technical commitments with workforce development measures such as local hiring targets and apprenticeships. Entitlement schedules should include scoping, public workshops, at least one full planning and board hearing cycle, and contingency for outside peer reviews on noise, water, and grid impacts; teams should monitor draft ordinance text, staff reports, public workshop calendars, planning board materials, and the final vote, and the town may extend the moratorium if additional time is needed. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/canton-pauses-data-centers-crypto/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Federal prosecutors indicted 24-year-old Elmin Redzepagic of Wolcott, Connecticut, on 21 counts alleging a cryptocurrency investment scheme that operated from May 2021 through March 2025. The indictment alleges he solicited funds by representing himself as a skilled crypto trader and diverted large portions of investor deposits into an online gambling venue, with investigators and local reporting tracing about $950,000 lost at that gambling site. Charges include wire fraud and identity-related offenses, and the indictment identifies transactions that prosecutors state could support money laundering counts if concealment or layering is proven. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut and IRS Criminal Investigation announced the indictment and named U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan and IRS CI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Demeo in the announcement. Proceedings are pending in federal court in New Haven and the defendant is presumed innocent. Investigators report that funds moved through exchanges, wallets, and payment accounts before arriving at the gambling platform and in personal spending, and the indictment and accompanying announcements reference tracing affidavits, subpoenas to exchanges and payment firms, asset restraints, forfeiture motions, and potential restitution efforts. Separately, an indictment charged two Glastonbury residents with using stolen identities to claim signup bonuses and withdraw roughly $3 million, and prosecutors referenced other recent multi-million dollar wire fraud resolutions in Connecticut as part of related enforcement activity. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/ct-crypto-fraud-indictment-gambling/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Revenues for Europe’s cryptocurrency exchanges are projected to increase from USD 19.38 billion in 2025 to USD 164.30 billion by 2034, implying a 26.8 percent compound annual growth rate between 2025 and 2034. MiCA establishes licensing and passporting across the European Union and sets regulatory expectations for custody, asset segregation, disclosures, and reporting. Regulatory alignment under MiCA is drawing traditional banks and asset managers to regulated exchanges because it aligns with institutional mandates for verifiable controls and standardized reporting. Layer 2 networks now process millions of transactions per day and hold tens of billions in value, providing settlement rails for transfers, collateral movements, and tokenized listings. Improvements in wallet security, account abstraction, hardware custody, richer APIs, smarter order routing, and cross-region infrastructure reduce latency, lower slippage, and support derivatives markets and higher open interest. Germany accounts for about 23 percent of the market; the United Kingdom remains a hub for talent and capital markets integration; certain Russian market segments continue activity under cross-border constraints. Bitcoin represents approximately 38 percent of exchange volumes and serves as core collateral and the principal liquidity anchor for spot and derivatives trading. Operators should obtain MiCA authorizations and national registrations, secure diversified banking relationships for fiat rails, deploy market surveillance and reference data pipelines, integrate with Layer 2 settlement rails, and localize fiat ramps in priority markets. Investors should monitor active verified users, net fiat inflows, derivatives open interest, on-chain settlement share tied to Layer 2s, and logged compliance milestones as indicators of custody quality and revenue diversification. Key risks include price volatility that can widen spreads and stress collateral systems; evolving supervision and disclosure rules; fragmented liquidity across centralized exchanges, regional brokers, and on-chain automated market makers; technical constraints such as fee spikes, bridge risk, and settlement bottlenecks; and limited banking relationships and fiat connectivity in several jurisdictions. Growth is expected to concentrate in derivatives and prime brokerage products, expanded custody and structured exposures, collateral transformation and cross-margin services, and tighter integration of tokenized real-world assets with exchange liquidity. Platforms that support on-chain settlement, direct Layer 2 connectivity, and provide transparent, auditable data will attract institutional usage. Execution discipline in converting regulatory clarity and scaling technology into improved market quality, deeper liquidity, and institutionally acceptable products will determine who captures share toward the 2034 revenue projection. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/europe-crypto-exchanges-2034/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: BlockFills paused client deposits and withdrawals and is returning attempted inbound transfers while coordinating with investors and counterparties to stabilize liquidity. Trading to open or close positions in spot and derivatives remains allowed under tighter limits, heightened risk checks, and faster liquidation triggers. Accounts that fall below required margin can face forced closures and loans with deteriorating collateral may be called or unwound. BlockFills serves about 2,000 institutional clients and reported roughly $60 to $61 billion in trading volume in 2025, and lists Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and CME Group among its backers. There is no public evidence the firm is insolvent and the company framed the suspension as a precaution while it seeks additional support. The action followed an approximately 24 percent fall in Bitcoin from about $78,995 to near $60,000, which tightened collateral haircuts and funding lines across the market and increased margin demands. Market data showed about $395.8 million in liquidations in a 24-hour stretch during the drawdown and sessions recorded volatility and a compressed derivatives basis. Operational implications for counterparties and trading desks include suspended deposits and withdrawals, continued but restricted trading, and the potential for under-margined positions or loans to be closed without prior notice. Monitoring items for institutions include official BlockFills communications and client notices, reopening timelines, evidence of forced position closures or widening OTC spreads, peer behavior on restrictions and haircut changes, and daily modeling of funding and collateral scenarios; institutions should also confirm margin policies with counterparties, diversify execution and lending venues, and prepare operational playbooks for short-notice policy changes. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/blockfills-suspends-withdrawals/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The European Commission has drafted a measure to prohibit transactions with exchanges and crypto asset service providers registered in Russia. The draft shifts from targeted listings to an activity-based approach that bars dealing with Russian-registered crypto venues and service providers. Named targets include Garantex, the A7 payment platform and its A7A5 ruble stablecoin. The package also includes expanded banking blacklists, restrictions on shadow-fleet tankers used for oil and LNG shipments, and limits on exports of metals and chemicals, coordinated with G7 partners. Enforcement would rely on leverage over EU-licensed exchanges, licensed crypto asset service providers, payment processors and banks to implement and monitor the ban. Stablecoin issuers that seek access to EU markets could be required to add blacklists, tighten redemption controls, and implement enhanced screening. The draft contemplates selective secondary measures to restrict non-EU platforms' access to EU markets and banking services if they do not align with the prohibition. Officials and analysts report earlier actions reduced flows into sanctioned entities via centralized exchanges by roughly 30 percent. The proposal calls for firms to map exposure to Russian-registered services, update counterparty due diligence and sanctions clauses, harden wallet screening and geofencing, enhance OTC and P2P monitoring, and reassess stablecoin redemption mechanics and counterparty onboarding. The draft calls for firms to establish internal ownership for enforcement tasks, test kill switches for counterparties and liquidity bridges, prepare customer communications for rapid offboarding, and integrate monitoring tools for tokenized ruble exposure and high-risk liquidity bridges. Next steps include publication of final legal text, national implementation schedules, and any secondary measures to compel compliance by non-EU actors. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/eu-ban-russia-linked-crypto/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hong Kong will begin issuing its first stablecoin issuer licenses in March 2026 under the Stablecoins Ordinance that took effect in August 2025. The licensing perimeter covers fiat-referenced coins issued in Hong Kong and HKD-referenced tokens issued outside Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has received dozens of submissions and plans to approve a small pilot cohort at launch. The rollout is phased and supervisory, with initial approvals intended to validate redemption reliability, reserve integrity, and operational resilience under live conditions and with ongoing supervisory engagement before and after licensing. Issuers must hold 100 percent of liabilities in high-quality liquid assets segregated at authorized institutions or equivalent custodians, perform daily reconciliations, and provide independent verification of custody and asset quality. Redemption must be executable at par with clear settlement timeframes and tested playbooks for stress events and large redemption days. Capital, governance, independent risk and audit functions, incident response and business continuity plans are required, and boards must assume direct accountability for risk appetite. Supervisory requirements include AML and sanctions controls, customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, wallet and counterparty screening, cybersecurity standards, vendor risk oversight, recovery testing, ongoing reporting to the HKMA, and external audits covering financial statements, reserves, and technology controls. Issuers must disclose redemption terms, fees, reserve composition, and the role of custodians or subcustodians. The regime applies extraterritorially to HKD-referenced tokens targeting Hong Kong users. Hong Kong reports more than HK$14 billion in digital assets under custody and reported year-over-year custody growth around 180 percent in some local figures. New dealer and custodian regimes are expected by summer 2026 to complete the infrastructure stack for issuance, trading, and safekeeping. Mainland China continues to prohibit crypto trading and exchange operations, creating a regulatory split with Hong Kong. The HKMA has encouraged pre-filing contact, and the regulator has urged applicants to design reserve architectures that meet the 100 percent HQLA standard, implement daily reconciliation and independent custody verification, build capital and governance structures, embed AML and cybersecurity controls, and plan for ongoing reporting and external audits. Notable applicants include major regional firms, and the first cohort is expected to start with limited issuance and reserve mixes designed to demonstrate redemption discipline. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/hong-kong-stablecoin-licenses-2026/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Department of Justice files released under a 2025 transparency initiative record a roughly $3 million purchase of a Coinbase stake in 2014 at an implied valuation near $400 million and a negotiated sale of roughly half that position in early 2018 for about $15 million to Blockchain Capital, with correspondence naming intermediaries who sourced the allocation and identifying Brock Pierce as a broker involved in secondary transfers. The files include emails, memos, investor updates, and broker notes and create a dated sequence that can be tested against internal records rather than providing a single definitive ledger for every downstream transfer. Coinbase completed a direct listing in 2021 at a market capitalization near $49 billion, and simple carry-forward math based on the files indicates the remaining half of the 2014 stake could have been worth roughly $30 million at the time of the listing, subject to dilution and interim trades. The records map capital flows through Silicon Valley networks, reference Epstein-adjacent contacts tied to venture funds, founders, and broker-dealers, and describe a pattern of sourcing through intermediaries, entering via secondaries when primary allocations were limited, and exiting into later-stage buyers when liquidity opened. The release and accompanying analysis recommend that funds, exchanges, and startups reconstruct cap tables with attention to beneficial ownership, feeder funds, SPVs, and side letters; tighten secondary-market diligence with KYC and beneficial-ownership checks comparable to primary commitments; formalize and document investor acceptance policies, approvals, exceptions, and remediation steps; and prepare disclosure-ready summaries for auditors and regulators. The files identify additional unredacted records, potential estate disclosures about realized or retained crypto equity, public statements from Coinbase and relevant venture firms, and potential regulatory guidance on investor provenance for private rounds and secondary markets as developments to watch. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/epstein-files-coinbase-investment/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Senate Bill 310, filed January 12, 2026 and carried by Senator Craig Bowser, would permit cryptocurrency contributions to Kansas state and local campaigns while leaving acceptance optional for individual campaigns and excluding federal races. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Federal and State Affairs on January 13 and has a public hearing scheduled for January 22 in Room 144 S at 10:30 a.m. The bill requires donations to be routed through a United States-based payment processor registered with FinCEN that takes custody, values contributions at fair market value when possession is assumed, and converts funds into U.S. dollars within three business days. Once converted, campaigns must treat and report proceeds under existing Kansas campaign finance rules, and the processor must transmit donor name, address, and occupation to the campaign or committee within 24 hours. The bill sets a per-election donor cap of $200 and requires refunds of any excess; campaigns that choose to accept crypto may use a dedicated wallet and a QR code that routes contributions through a compliant processor. The Division of the Budget fiscal note indicates no material state budget impact. The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission recommended in 2022 that lawmakers address cryptocurrency donations. Implementation and oversight questions include handling failed conversions and partial refunds, processor intake and reporting workflow changes, treasurer procedures for booking converted proceeds and refunds, the exact format for transmitted contributor records, enforcement at the processor layer, and the readiness and onboarding of processors, vendors, and local or down-ballot campaigns. If the committee advances the bill, the next legislative steps include committee markup and potential amendments. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/kansas-crypto-campaigns-sb310/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

U.S. crypto policy shifted from enforcement-driven litigation to statutory frameworks, joint agency playbooks, and supervisory alignment. Congress enacted the GENIUS Act to create a nationwide stablecoin regime that classifies permitted payment stablecoins as a distinct class, places primary federal oversight in an OCC-centered framework, assigns roles to the FDIC, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and state regulators, separates payment stablecoins from securities, commodities, and deposits for compliance, requires reserve and attestation practices, restricts nonfinancial public companies from issuing payment stablecoins without a banking license or narrow approval, and sets implementation timelines that are shaping issuer and banking partner program design. Lawmakers introduced the CLARITY Act to allocate spot market authority between the SEC and the CFTC, grant the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital commodity spot markets while the SEC retains authority over digital securities and related intermediaries, and create an SEC gate to evaluate network decentralization that can place an asset under CFTC oversight. The SEC closed enforcement cases, including the action against Coinbase, established a Crypto Task Force focused on interpretations, targeted no-action relief, and an innovation exemption for controlled sandbox pilots, and initiated staff work on a consolidated registration approach for platforms that combine brokerage, ATS, custody, and advisory functions to create a single supervisory perimeter. The SEC and CFTC launched a harmonization track to coordinate surveillance and exemptions and to develop consistent rules on order handling, market data, conflicts, termination and liquidation mechanics for centralized and decentralized venues while addressing oracle reliability, code disclosure, validator conflicts, and measurable decentralization metrics. The Federal Reserve, OCC, and FDIC rescinded prior blanket cautions, issued activity-based examination expectations tied to governance, controls, and resolvability, and permitted supervised institutions to support custody, stablecoin reserve services, and tokenized deposit rails that align with documented risk-management standards. Market participants are aligning reserve management, attestation cadence, wallet controls, registration and surveillance models, and infrastructure spending to conform with the new statutory and supervisory frameworks, and execution and compliance readiness are determining which firms can scale as litigation risk declines as a headline driver. Near-term priorities for 2026 include SEC issuance of a tokenized securities framework, interagency rulemakings to implement GENIUS Act requirements and operational standards for permitted payment stablecoins, and a Congressional market structure bill to unify registration and conduct standards across brokers, dealers, exchanges, and custodians handling digital assets and to harmonize custody segregation, market access, clearing and margin models, and disclosure norms for on-chain distributions and protocol upgrades. Advisory actions being taken by firms include choosing registration paths early based on token classification and activities, designing stablecoin programs to meet OCC supervision expectations including reserve governance and attestation schedules, mapping products to CLARITY channels and preparing for dual compliance where activities cross commodity and securities lines, engaging regulators through comment letters, no-action requests, and sandbox pilots with clear metrics, and aligning vendor contracts and operational design to GENIUS implementation timelines and interagency exam priorities. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/coordinated-us-crypto-regulation/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 6, eight Chinese agencies led by the People’s Bank of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a joint notice banning the issuance, distribution, marketing, and servicing of unapproved RMB‑pegged stablecoins inside the mainland and by offshore entities that target mainland users and classifying unauthorized tokenized claims on property, bonds, commodities, securities, and receivables as illegal securities or unauthorized futures. The notice states four enforcement priorities: protecting monetary sovereignty and the integrity of the RMB, avoiding competition with the e‑CNY rollout, enforcing anti‑money‑laundering and know‑your‑customer standards, and preserving capital controls. The measures apply onshore by default and extend extraterritorially to offshore firms and branches that solicit mainland residents via apps, over‑the‑counter channels, or corporate affiliates, and they raise geofencing and outbound marketing requirements. Any token that conveys ownership, income rights, or other financial claims must secure prior approval from the relevant financial regulator before issuance or secondary trading, and compliant tokenization will be treated as a licensed financial business subject to domestic technical and security standards. Supervisors will build filing and approval regimes, publish negative lists that bar high‑risk asset classes and problematic controllers, and enforce penalties for disguising fundraising as utility token sales, with enforcement emphasis on corporate facilitation such as routing, payment links, marketing, and technical integration and on RMB‑linked instruments that could function as unofficial settlement channels. Existing bans on exchanges, token issuance, mining, advertising, and speculative services remain in force, and offshore relief is available only where an issuer holds a recognized local license, maintains full customer identification, and rigorously ring‑fences access from the mainland; approvals in Hong Kong do not grant access to mainland users. Market implications include pauses or wind‑downs of RMB stablecoin pilots with China exposure, increased geofencing and KYC requirements for offshore issuers and service providers, limited direct impact on global liquidity for major tokens given constrained onshore participation, and higher friction and longer onboarding for cross‑border settlement routes involving RMB. Recommended operational responses for builders and investors include shifting tokenization and stablecoin development to jurisdictions with clear licensing and disclosure rules, pursuing permissioned chain designs with identity capture, engaging qualified custodians, integrating oracles and audit‑ready recordkeeping, revising corporate names and business descriptions to remove prohibited terms, and updating legal and compliance structures to avoid exposing affiliates or users in the mainland while budgeting for regulator sign‑off where tokenized claims are involved. Regulators will publish implementing rules and technical standards that define ledger, custody, identity, and traceability thresholds, will clarify negative lists and eligible asset classes for supervised tokenization and secondary trading, and are expected to target offshore services that solicit or unknowingly serve mainland users with administrative and criminal penalties, a regulatory trajectory that will create a clear operational divide between mainland controls and regulated pilots in other jurisdictions. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/china-extends-ban-stablecoins-rwa/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 31 at about 10:45 a.m., two California teenagers approached a residence on Windrose Drive in Scottsdale posing as delivery workers and forced entry. Inside, they restrained two adults with duct tape, assaulted at least one victim, and a third person hid and called 911. Police arrived during the attack; the suspects fled through the backyard and a short vehicle pursuit ended at a nearby strip mall dead end where both suspects were taken into custody without further incident. Court filings identify the suspects as 16-year-old Jackson Sullivan and 17-year-old Skylar Lapaille and state investigators recovered delivery-style disguises, restraining materials, and an unloaded 3D-printed handgun. Prosecutors allege the house was targeted because occupants were believed to control roughly $66 million in cryptocurrency and that the suspects intended to coerce an immediate transfer; filings say the teens traveled from California after receiving $1,000 to buy disguises and restraints and named two handlers only as Red and 8. Charging documents list counts including kidnapping, second-degree burglary, three counts of aggravated assault, criminal impersonation, disorderly conduct, and felony fleeing; investigators continue to trace any interstate coordinators and examine the role of the 3D-printed firearm. Law enforcement described the incident as isolated in the immediate neighborhood and said the investigation remains active. The report recommends measures for founders, funds, and holders with public exposure, including minimizing public signals that link identity to addresses, using custody architectures that resist immediate transfers such as multisignature setups, time-locks, and threshold schemes, and strengthening household security with verified delivery protocols, controlled drop points, layered alarm systems, monitored cameras with license plate capture, silent panic features or duress codes, safe rooms, drills, and documented emergency asset procedures. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/scottsdale-66m-crypto-plot/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

India’s finance ministry and tax authorities have moved to active engagement with onshore and offshore crypto exchanges to map trading behavior and align platform data pipelines; authorities are holding structured conversations about order routing, derivatives, staking, and wallet flows to identify reporting gaps. Project Insight links exchange statements and wallet activity to income tax returns to flag mismatches and possible non-filers, and authorities are running targeted outreach that can escalate to e-verification, reassessment, surveys, and searches for persistent noncompliance. New penalties effective April 1, 2026 require reporting entities that fail to furnish mandated crypto statements under Section 509 to pay 200 rupees per day and impose a flat 50,000 rupees penalty under Section 446 for furnishing inaccurate information or failing to rectify errors within the allowed window; these penalties sit alongside the existing tax regime that levies a 30 percent tax on gains under Section 115BBH with no deductions or set-offs and a 1 percent TDS at source under Section 194S on each transaction’s consideration. Authorities are pressing for technical standardization, including event-level data on trades and transfers, standardized timestamps, persistent reference identifiers, and onboarding signals that tag residents despite VPNs or foreign KYC, to make statements reconcilable across platforms. Operational priorities for platforms include building standardized schemas and audit trails with versioning for corrections, enabling remediation workflows for timely flagging and re-filing, and coordinating legal, tax, and engineering teams to embed Section 509 and Section 446 requirements into product and support workflows. India will join the OECD Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) for automatic cross-border data exchange beginning April 1, 2027, and CARF will require standardized datasets on crypto transactions, accounts, and transfers from exchanges, brokers, and custodial platforms that serve residents of participating jurisdictions. Platforms are asked to map fields to CARF technical specifications, build secure reporting pipelines, rehearse submissions with test data, validate TDS withholding, reconcile internal and user-facing reports with income tax records, and prepare user communications; firms are also required to maintain data privacy controls, encryption, access controls, and incident escalation paths because affiliate errors can trigger group remediation and penalties. Identified execution risks include integration complexity across legacy stacks, differing jurisdictional calendars, and evolving domestic rulemaking that could change file formats or rectification windows, and anticipated operational effects include tighter KYC, more frequent source-of-funds checks, potential liquidity rebalancing between onshore and offshore venues, and closer scrutiny of cash flows. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/india-crypto-tax-monitoring-carf/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

U.S. regulators intensified scrutiny after Reuters reported a rise in cryptocurrency activity tied to Iran. Blockchain analytics firms flagged increased on-chain flows and peer-to-peer trading linked to Iranian counterparties, including greater use of stablecoins, decentralized venues, and informal over-the-counter desks. U.S. Treasury and sanctions officials signaled that these flows could be used to evade sanctions and warned of increased enforcement of intermediaries that enable conversion between crypto and fiat. Regulators targeted payment processors, on-ramps and off-ramps, OTC operators, and custodial services as potential compliance gaps where sanctions risk can arise. The report recommended that firms providing liquidity, custody, or fiat ramps reassess sanctions and anti-money-laundering programs, combine KYC with blockchain analytics, and document risk-based decision making. The report advised teams to integrate on-chain analytics into transaction monitoring, reevaluate counterparty due diligence for OTC desks and payment partners, update onboarding and geofencing policies, train customer support and operations teams to escalate suspicious patterns, maintain incident response plans that include legal counsel and communication protocols, and engage regulators and banking partners proactively. Analysts identified potential market effects including reduced liquidity in certain corridors, volatility in peer-to-peer pricing, and intermediaries restricting flows from regions considered high risk, and advised startups to design adaptable payment flows, diversify fiat relationships, and prepare for higher onboarding friction. U.S. agencies and international partners were expected to coordinate further and issue additional guidance for crypto firms on sanctions obligations, and executives were advised to increase compliance investment, monitor regulatory updates, and report sanctions and geopolitical exposure at board level. Companies operating in cross-border crypto and payments faced a choice between investing in compliance to retain market access or accepting constrained access that would affect product roadmaps, fundraising, and partnership strategies. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tian Ruixiang unveiled a USD 1.5 billion, multi-year initiative to back Web3 infrastructure, developer tools, and early-stage ventures through direct investments, incubation programs, and strategic partnerships. The plan allocates capital across seed and Series A investments, incubator support for core protocol and middleware development, and reserved funds for strategic infrastructure including node operations, tooling, and integrations that bridge legacy systems with decentralized networks. The initiative includes partnership building with technology firms and research groups to accelerate developer adoption and interoperability, and it incorporates governance and compliance mechanisms including advisory support and staged, milestone-tied funding. Guidance offered to founders recommended prioritizing clear metrics on product-market fit, developer adoption signals, practical token or revenue models, transparent legal and compliance documentation, and a concise roadmap for milestone-based funding. Guidance offered to CEOs recommended assessing dilution impact, governance arrangements, milestone definitions, strategic alignment with the funder’s network, operational uses of capital versus alternatives, and protections for intellectual property and commercial agreements. Guidance offered to investors recommended due diligence on the execution team, the investment decision framework, exit expectations, legal jurisdictional risks, and token economics. The release identified potential market effects including acceleration of talent and startups toward infrastructure and interoperability work, heightened competition for early-stage deals, validation of niche sectors, attraction of additional limited partners and strategic partners, and prompting incumbents to refresh blockchain and AI-integration strategies, while identifying execution risk, macro market cycles, regulatory uncertainty, and concentration risk as counterbalancing factors. Recommended next steps for stakeholders included reviewing the full announcement, aligning pitch materials with the initiative’s priorities, documenting compliance readiness, negotiating staged commitments tied to milestones, requesting detailed governance and deployment plans, and monitoring the program’s initial investments and follow-up disclosures to clarify fund structure, timelines, and the first cohort of supported projects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) plans to grant the first stablecoin issuer licenses in March 2026 under the Stablecoins Ordinance, which came into force on August 1, 2025. HKMA will approve an initial tranche of issuers drawn from 36 applications that have completed initial reviews and it has requested supplementary materials on reserve composition, distribution controls, and operational readiness. The public register currently shows no licensed issuers and will be updated after decisions are finalized. HKMA evaluation will assess end-to-end risk management, AML and sanctions controls, governance, the liquidity and valuation methodology of backing assets, settlement, redemption and wallet operations under stress scenarios, and cross-border compliance with potential mutual recognition subject to peer alignment. A 2024 sandbox included banks such as Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong and technology firms testing issuance, custody and distribution processes. Licensed stablecoins can provide a regulated rail for tokenized settlement and be used for tokenized securities settlement, intraday liquidity for trading venues, programmable treasury settlement, and controlled client on and off ramps. Applicants must present audited reserve compositions and valuation methods, demonstrate governance and board-level oversight, integrate AML and sanctions screening into on and off ramp flows, document incident response and reporting, and provide attestations and independent reserve audits via the licensing channel outlined in the Explanatory Note. Regulators will observe issuer performance during the first six months after March to assess responses to demand spikes, redemption pressure and operational incidents, and that period will set norms for disclosures, reserve quality and attestation frequency. Key near-term items to watch are the identities of initial licensees, the final reserve disclosure framework and attestation frequency, mandated distribution and wallet controls, and any mutual recognition or cross-border supervisory cooperation signals. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/hong-kong-stablecoin-licenses-march/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A UAE-backed consortium acquired 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million. Deal documents show the transaction routed approximately $187 million to Trump family accounts and about $31 million to entities linked to Steve Witkoff, and Eric Trump signed the agreement four days before the presidential inauguration. After closing, two officials affiliated with the UAE National Security Force joined the company's board and investors were granted board seats and information rights. Two months after the inauguration Sheikh Tahnoon met with senior U.S. figures and family business contacts to discuss access to 500,000 U.S.-made AI accelerator chips per year for a planned UAE buildout while U.S. export policy on advanced AI accelerators was being negotiated. The White House and World Liberty Financial stated the investment was a private commercial matter and that existing ethics controls and trust structures limit conflicts, and opponents raised concerns about the transaction's secrecy and timing and requested oversight. Senate Democrats called for hearings and document production, and investigators and lawmakers requested term sheets, wiring instructions, correspondence involving government officials, ownership records, governance terms, and communications linking the investment to policy outcomes. Legal scholars and national security officials highlighted enforcement challenges for large-scale semiconductor shipments, including monitoring end use, cloud or third-party access, and diversion risks. Advisors recommended enhanced due diligence on beneficial owners, documented governance firewalls and non-interference covenants, limits on board access for state-linked representatives, export control compliance planning, and transparent disclosures for partners and regulators. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/uae-crypto-stake-trump-venture/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Federal authorities arrested Tejas Patel and Navya Umeshkumar Bhatt on January 31, 2026, and charged each with three counts of federal money laundering tied to a coordinated social engineering and fraud pipeline spanning Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Investigators allege callers impersonated trusted brands and regulators, told victims their accounts were compromised, and instructed victims to move funds outside the banking system by making large cash withdrawals, purchasing gold bars from dealers, and buying small-denomination bitcoin at kiosks. Couriers allegedly picked up gold and cash at parking lots and private residences while handlers directed and fragmented crypto flows to obscure provenance. Court filings show both defendants waived preliminary hearings and appeared in federal court, a detention hearing for Tejas Patel is scheduled for February 6, and Navya Bhatt is subject to an immigration detainer. Prosecutors may pursue asset forfeiture for gold, cash, and digital wallets, and investigators continue to map phone records, travel patterns, wallets, and courier networks with potential additional charges or defendants expected. Reported losses tied to the ring reached into the hundreds of thousands and disproportionately affected elderly victims. Law enforcement and industry analyses identified retail gold sellers, standalone crypto kiosks, and uncoordinated bank branches as conversion points used by the ring, and the case record lists operational actions including flagging clusters of first-time or low-tenure accounts that suddenly move large amounts; building typologies for elder-fraud language and escalating those alerts to enhanced SAR processes; correlating kiosk transactions with courier-linked addresses and device fingerprints; requiring stronger verification when customers claim regulator instructions or emergency security incidents; deploying on-screen warnings at points of sale; and increasing information sharing with banks and local law enforcement. Money laundering statutes provide for prison terms, fines, and forfeiture when prosecutors prove knowledge and intent to conceal proceeds, federal offices have coordinated with overseas partners on call-center style financial crimes, and next investigative steps are expected to include grand jury activity, additional search and seizure related to gold and digital wallets, and continued mapping of cross-channel money flows. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/us-gold-crypto-laundering-arrests/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chainalysis analysis found Chinese-language laundering networks moved $16.1 billion in 2025, about $44 million per day, across roughly 1,799 active wallets and representing nearly one fifth of an estimated $82 billion in global crypto laundering flows. Operators fragmented large inflows, routed funds through stablecoins and multi-hop wallets using peel chains and consolidation addresses, and used OTC brokers to aggregate and output larger tranches that converted to cash, bank transfers, or goods via cross-border couriers and off-chain payment corridors. Messaging platforms, particularly Telegram and Chinese-language chat channels, served as onramps for customer acquisition and vendor discovery, and guarantee-style marketplaces provided escrow-like matching and dispute resolution without custody; those marketplaces were not included in the $16.1 billion figure. Networks frequently touched major U.S. exchanges via intermediate wallets designed to obscure linkages, and operators shifted from direct exchange cash-outs toward multi-hop routing, stablecoin rails, OTC aggregation, and physical cash-out channels as AML measures increased seizure risk. Enforcement actions produced seizures and convictions, including a November 2025 UK case that led to seizure of approximately 61,000 Bitcoin, and analytics providers and law enforcement reported tens of billions in illicit funds frozen or recovered globally. Industry responses included tightening controls, refining stablecoin risk scoring and pause mechanisms, and expanding detection beyond exchange account monitoring to service-level typologies, messaging-layer monitoring, stablecoin corridor analytics, and cross-chain attribution. Operational priorities for product and compliance teams included instrumenting detection for fragmentation and consolidation typologies across chains and rails, increasing stablecoin corridor analytics and cross-chain tracing, building formal rapid-information-sharing channels with regulators and analytics partners, stress-testing off-ramps and counterparty onboarding to detect OTC-linked activity, and targeting coordinator nodes, OTC hubs, and cash distribution infrastructure in addition to visible vendors. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/china-cmln-crypto-laundering-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alabama regulators found that residents deposited about $12.5 million into cryptocurrency kiosks in 2024 and lost about $6.5 million to scams. Investigators contacted more than 1,000 users and surveyed about 600, of whom 64% reported victimization and more than half were age 60 or older. Scams typically began with unsolicited calls, texts or online contact that led victims to kiosks for irreversible transfers, and losses clustered in central Alabama; investigators documented a case of an older resident who made nearly 200 visits to a single machine and lost over $250,000. House Bill 303, introduced by Representative Russell Bedsole on January 21, 2026, would require standardized fraud warnings before every transaction, visible in-person notices, a US-based customer support line, itemized fee, dollar and crypto amount and exact exchange rate displays, and digital receipts sent to customers and the Alabama Securities Commission. The bill would cap kiosk activity at $1,000 per user per day and $10,000 per user per month, bar kiosk placement inside banks and credit unions, prohibit privacy coins at kiosks, and block transactions involving uninsured deposit institutions. HB 303 would grant consumers a right to a full refund including fees for fraud-induced transfers when operators are notified within 60 days and law enforcement receives a report. Operators would be required to deploy blockchain analytics to detect and block transfers to addresses tied to known scams, maintain current threat lists, cooperate with the Alabama Securities Commission, establish a communication channel with law enforcement, and face penalties for noncompliance. The bill is pending before the House State Government Committee. The Alabama Securities Commission and AARP Alabama support the bill; kiosk operators expressed support for balanced rules and warned that rigid limits or poorly calibrated requirements could push users to unregulated channels; compliance advisors identified integration work including analytics, staff training, refund and law enforcement workflows, and regulator data feeds. Guidance for Web3 teams and operators includes integrating blockchain analytics and reporting pipelines, enforcing caps and asset restrictions at point of sale, producing itemized digital receipts, aligning legal and policy teams with the Alabama Securities Commission on data formats and timelines, updating customer messaging about scam scripts and refund processes, and documenting and testing red-flag and refund workflows. If enacted, neighboring states could adopt similar controls, which would increase upfront costs for analytics and product changes while improving attribution for cross-border scam rings and clarifying accountability for kiosk operators and hosts. Measurable outcomes cited to track after implementation include reduced kiosk loss rates, higher interception of risky transfers, and faster cooperation with law enforcement. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/alabama-crypto-kiosk-fraud-bill/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Six Democratic senators — Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Mazie Hirono, Sheldon Whitehouse, Christopher Coons, and Richard Blumenthal — sent a January 28 letter requesting ethics clearances, communications, and divestment records from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche by February 11, 2026, alleging a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208(a) tied to Blanche's reported crypto holdings at the time of an April 2025 memo. Reporting indicated Blanche disclosed at least $159,000 in crypto-related assets when the memo was issued, with other estimates up to $470,000. The April 2025 memo disbanded the Department of Justice's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), moved cryptocurrency work to general units, and directed prosecutors to avoid framing criminal matters as regulatory activity while pausing or halting broad crypto probes. The senators requested written determinations that the actions were lawful, any ethics clearances or waivers, records of internal discussions, and records of contacts between DOJ officials and industry or lobbyists preceding the memo. DOJ told lawmakers the changes were cleared in advance but has not identified who approved those clearances or released underlying ethics opinions. Public reporting and industry analyses cited TRM Labs data estimating illicit crypto flows at roughly $158 billion in 2025, a 162 percent increase from 2024. The Office of Inspector General has been notified and lists Blanche as a subject in a complaint. Potential near-term outcomes include DOJ producing the requested documents and ethics analyses and an OIG review that could lead to administrative actions, recusal orders, or a broader inquiry. Analysts and stakeholders identified key documents and signals to watch, including written ethics determinations, waiver letters, the full April 2025 memo, communications records between DOJ officials and industry actors, any updated guidance to U.S. attorneys on crypto matters, and any new coordinating office or lead for crypto investigations. The senators set a February 11 deadline for DOJ to produce the records, and DOJ's response together with any OIG findings will determine whether the department adjusts its enforcement posture, reinstates centralized resources, or implements internal discipline, with downstream implications for firms' screening, sanctions compliance, monitoring, and cooperation with investigators through 2026. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/senators-probe-doj-crypto-conflict/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wave Digital Assets filed a request with the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on January 27 asking investigators to review how the U.S. Marshals Service handled seized cryptocurrency and submitted related materials to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims challenging procurement and oversight decisions. The filing focuses on custody management, technical safeguards, and the integrity of audit logs for assets the Marshals classify as Class 2 through 4 tokens. Wave alleges more than $40 million moved unlawfully from government-controlled wallets and cites public blockchain traces showing a $24.9 million movement in March 2024 linked to addresses associated with John Daghita (alias Lick) and an October 2024 drain of roughly $20 million, most of which was later recovered with about $700,000 unrecovered. Wave cites leaked clips, chat logs, and on-chain flows that it says indicate coordinated wallet access and attempts to route funds through mixers. The company asks the OIG to trace audit trails for government-controlled wallets, document who had access, explain what policies governed transfers, and clarify why red flags were not escalated, and it contends that existing controls failed to prevent large unauthorized outflows and did not preserve evidence in a manner suitable for court. Wave links its complaint to a 2022 DOJ OIG audit that identified gaps in the Marshals’ policy, asset tracking, and technical controls and to the Marshals’ 2024 award of a custody contract to a vendor known as CMDSS, which Wave contends lacked required licenses or registrations at the time of award and whose selection did not fully account for operational custody requirements. Agency records cited by Wave show the Marshals found Wave noncompliant with parts of the Performance Work Statement because Wave did not demonstrate custody of every asset in the same form until disposal, which reduced Wave’s bid weight. The U.S. Marshals Service has confirmed an active investigation into the alleged thefts, and at the time of Wave’s filing there were no reported arrests and no public update on investigatory findings. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/wave-doj-oig-usms-crypto-probe/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The White House will host banking and crypto leaders on February 2 to attempt to reset negotiations on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act after a Senate markup collapsed in early January. The bill cleared the House in July 2025, and the Senate negotiations stalled over treatment of interest and issuer-paid rewards on dollar-pegged stablecoins, the scope of DeFi oversight for front-end interfaces and analytics providers, and the boundary between securities and commodities and agency roles among the SEC, CFTC, the Federal Reserve, and banking supervisors. Participants will include national bank associations, stablecoin issuers, exchanges, custodians, payments networks, and staff from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with SEC and CFTC officials likely to be consulted. The White House instructed attendees to surface red lines, agree targeted fixes, and provide statutory language that staff can use to produce a revised draft for Senate Banking Committee markup. The administration set three outcomes as measures of success: clarified statutory language addressing stablecoin yield treatment and promotional and risk-pooling practices, a locked-in Senate Banking Committee markup date with a path to a floor vote, and an agreed delineation of supervisory roles to reduce jurisdictional conflict and duplicative supervision. Market participants will watch for post-meeting redlines or a revised draft that clarifies reward treatment, issuer obligations, and an interagency jurisdiction map, and for updates to the Senate Banking Committee calendar and whip counts. The process could produce a narrow deal focused on stablecoin rules, a phased approach that stages complex market-structure and DeFi issues with agency coordination, or continued stalemate that pushes action to the next legislative window and leaves agencies to act through guidance and enforcement. Firms and teams have a two-week planning window to model revenue exposure to potential changes in interest and rewards definitions, review token classification risks, prepare for higher compliance costs on attestations and reserve accounting, and engage in trade associations and technical working groups. If negotiators deliver statutory language and a firm markup date, market participants will receive clearer direction on compliant yield products, bank integration, and token classification; if talks fail, firms may narrow product offerings, move activity offshore, or rely on regulatory guidance and enforcement in lieu of statute. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/white-house-crypto-bill-summit/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UBS will pilot spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for a subset of private banking clients in Switzerland using custody and execution partners outside the bank to limit balance sheet and operational exposure. The launch timing and execution depend on Swiss regulatory approvals, internal legal, compliance and risk approvals, and vendor readiness. UBS will open access only to clients who meet suitability and onboarding standards and is evaluating custody and execution providers for a partner-led model while retaining governance, compliance, and oversight. The bank will modularize custody, execution, and connectivity to integrate specialist providers that meet institutional custody standards and will retain controls, transaction monitoring, reconciliation, and reporting to provide consolidated statements, pricing disclosure, and audit-ready records. UBS will segregate client assets under custody arrangements, implement monitoring systems for market abuse and venue compliance, and provide fee schedules and audited controls. The initiative builds on prior offerings that included crypto-linked ETFs in Hong Kong and will add real-time execution and custody alongside ETFs and structured products. The pilot follows industry moves from exploratory pilots toward active service launches amid updated regulatory guidance and growth in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. Items to watch include custody and execution partner selections, Swiss regulatory sign-offs, pilot adoption metrics, custody protocol disclosures, onboarding throughput, and any expansion to Asia Pacific or the United States pending compliance outcomes and demonstrated client demand. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/ubs-swiss-crypto-trading-launch/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HesabPay issues a fiat-backed AFN stablecoin and settles transactions on the Algorand blockchain, moving about $60 million per month to approximately 650,000 active wallets. The company holds reserves in custody, supports feature-phone and low-bandwidth wallets, and operates an agent network for cash-out. Since February 2025 UNHCR distributed nearly $25 million to more than 80,000 returning families using HesabPay wallets, and NGOs including Mercy Corps reported shorter wait times at distribution points, lower transaction costs compared with cash programs, and cleaner reconciliation via on-chain records and real-time dashboards. On-chain analytics map fund origins, recipient wallets, and spend patterns, automated systems flag unusual behaviors, and licensed fiat custody supports audits and regulator checks. HesabPay operates in Afghanistan, is active in Syria, and plans deployments in Sudan and Haiti, with each deployment requiring local agent networks, bank partners, and sanctions screening. Operational risks include local currency volatility, stablecoin-to-cash conversion timing, agent cash float, telecom outages, uneven SIM coverage, variable identity verification processes, and policy or sanctions changes that can stall deployments, and programs that combine liquidity strategies, offline workflows, and compliance analytics have more predictable scaling outcomes. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/hesabpay-afghanistan-blockchain-aid/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 On January 23, 2026, BitGo priced its IPO at $18 per share and sold 11.8 million shares, producing gross proceeds of about $212.4 million and implying a fully diluted valuation of roughly $2.08–$2.10 billion on approximately 115.56 million shares outstanding. The offering was led by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and the new ticker is BTGO. The initial public float was small relative to the fully diluted share count; BTGO reached an intraday high near $24.50 and closed at $18.25, up about 2.7% from the IPO price. BitGo provides custody, qualified institutional wallets, blockchain validation, and trading services and operates as a federally chartered digital asset trust bank. Management projected revenue growth in 2025 versus 2024 and expected to report net income in 2025 after a small net loss in 2024. During the debut, Bitcoin was down about 7% for the week and trading near $89,000 (about 29% below October levels), while Ethereum and Solana declined in the low double digits; market participants cited tariff concerns and a stalled Clarity Act as sources of policy uncertainty. The underwriting and investor allocations favored long-term fundamental funds that value compliance and cash generation. Market participants identified token volatility, regulatory developments, post-IPO supply dynamics (including lockup expirations and secondary selling), and execution on client onboarding, assets under custody, and client retention as key items to monitor. The listing was the first crypto-related IPO of 2026. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/bitgo-ipo-above-range-bitcoin-slide/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The SEC brought 13 crypto-related enforcement actions in 2025, down 60 percent from 33 in 2024 and the lowest annual total since 2017. Monetary penalties tied to those matters totaled about $142 million. Five of the 13 actions were carryovers from prior leadership, and eight actions initiated under Chair Paul Atkins were framed as fraud cases. The SEC resolved 29 crypto-related matters and dismissed seven during 2025. The agency created a Crypto Task Force in January led by Commissioner Hester Peirce and reorganized enforcement teams into a Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit. The task force set goals to clarify token classification, produce disclosure templates for token projects, and define registration pathways where law requires them. The SEC trimmed dedicated crypto headcount, reorganized staff across divisions, and adjusted the Wells process to encourage earlier engagement by setting a four-week response baseline. Several platform matters involving exchanges and custodians were dismissed or deprioritized for policy reasons. Total SEC monetary settlements across categories fell about 45 percent to roughly $808 million in 2025. Enforcement filings in 2025 prioritized cases alleging investor harm, including misrepresentations about yields, misuse of customer assets, and market manipulation. The task force and the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit planned rule proposals and public comment cycles to address classification and disclosure questions. Operational items identified for market participants included maintaining asset classification files, developing disclosure templates that cover token economics, governance, custody, and conflicts, documenting custody and fund flows, and maintaining governance and change logs tied to protocol upgrades. State regulators and private plaintiffs were identified as potential sources of additional enforcement activity. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/sec-crypto-enforcement-drops-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wyoming launched the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) on January 7 as a state-issued stablecoin reserved by U.S. dollars and short-duration U.S. Treasury securities. Franklin Templeton manages the reserves and Fiduciary Trust Company International provides custody. The Wyoming Stable Token Commission established the program, received about $5.8 million in state appropriations for technology, legal, compliance, and vendor selection, and oversees issuance, vendor contracts, audits, and public reporting. FRNT is listed on Kraken and deployed on Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, and Solana, and Kraken Financial’s Wyoming bank charter provides a direct on/off ramp and supports wallet and API workflows. Sales through January 13 totaled about $1.5 million. The program allows payers to avoid card interchange and gateway fees and allows payees to receive near-instant onchain settlement, which reduces cash float, lowers reconciliation overhead, and removes chargeback exposure for qualifying transactions. Agencies and merchants can accept FRNT directly on supported chains or via Kraken-linked workflows, and implementation steps include defining conversion rules and settlement windows, integrating token receipts into treasury policies, and setting KYC, accounting, and reconciliation controls; pilots will likely focus on narrow, high-volume, low-risk payment categories. Interest earned on the reserve mix is structured to cover operating costs first and then flow to designated public priorities such as education, creating a recurring non-tax revenue stream contingent on prevailing yields and disciplined duration management. Identified risks include yield variability, chain outages, bridge and cross-chain transfer complexity, custody or banking delays, and vendor concentration; the commission requires monthly attestations, regular audits, and stress testing and would preserve daily liquidity and high credit quality if it broadened reserve investments. Governance is statutory with public disclosures and a defined audit cadence to align with government accounting and treasury expectations. Key execution indicators include merchant and county onboarding, conversion volumes routed through Kraken, chain-level transaction activity, deeper liquidity, additional market makers, integrations with regional banks and payment processors, and public reporting on circulation, reserves, and operating metrics. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/wyoming-state-stablecoin-frnt/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman published a 161‑page Republican draft on January 21 after bipartisan negotiations stalled. The draft assigns cash and spot trading of non‑security tokens to Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight and preserves Securities and Exchange Commission jurisdiction over securities and investment contracts. The bill requires platform registration with the CFTC, sets qualified custody standards and asset segregation rules, clarifies treatment of customer property in bankruptcy, and establishes unified trading, listing and surveillance expectations for venues. The text directs an 18‑month window for CFTC rulemaking after enactment and grants the agency fee authority and hiring flexibility. The draft includes federal preemption for market structure and trading requirements while leaving state fraud and consumer protection enforcement intact. The bill calls for joint SEC‑CFTC rulemaking to address hybrid or layered products and includes dispute‑resolution timelines for that process. Unresolved items in the draft include the scope and treatment of decentralized finance interfaces, alignment with anti‑money‑laundering and sanctions controls for self‑hosted wallets, bridges and privacy tools, and the statutory boundary between SEC and CFTC for hybrid products, with the latter deferred to joint rulemaking. The Agriculture Committee markup is scheduled for January 27 at 3 p.m. Eastern, and if the bill advances its market structure text will be reconciled with parallel Banking Committee work before any Senate floor consideration. The GOP‑only release narrows the margin for cloture on the floor and increases the likelihood of amendment votes on DeFi scope, AML integration for non‑custodial flows, and the SEC‑CFTC boundary. Banking Committee activity could slip into late February or March given competing calendars. The draft and related analysis list industry planning actions including mapping tokens and services to CFTC and SEC jurisdiction, establishing registration and custody playbooks, building data pipelines for listing and surveillance, preparing comment letters, securing board approvals for compliance budgets, and conducting vendor diligence given the statute’s 18‑month clock for CFTC rulemaking. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/boozman-gop-crypto-market-bill/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More than 11.6 million crypto tokens were classified as dead in 2025, representing 86.3% of all token failures recorded since 2021, with Q4 accounting for roughly 7.7 million of those failures and more than half of tokens launched since 2021 no longer trading in active markets. A dead token was defined as an asset with inactive or effectively abandoned markets, evidenced by delistings, empty order books, pools that cannot absorb small trades, or spreads and slippage that prevent reliable execution and price discovery. Three structural dynamics drove the wave: issuance barriers fell to near zero because of launchpads and contract templates, attention shifted rapidly across launches and fragmented capital and community focus, and liquidity proved brittle as marginal buyers, liquidity providers, and market makers withdrew when prices corrected. Selection pressure removed tokens without demonstrable demand or repeatable usage rather than primarily exposing fraud, and surviving tokens exhibited verifiable activity, consistent liquidity across venues, and token economics that aligned users, liquidity providers, and holders. Recommended operational actions for teams and protocol operators include treating liquidity as a product, maintaining depth across multiple venues, designing token economics to encourage recurring on-chain activity, managing emissions and unlock schedules, publishing roadmaps and runway projections, and deploying defensive measures such as diversified pools, market-maker agreements with committed inventory, and transparent treasury policies to support liquidity during stress events. Recommended investor and allocator due diligence actions include prioritizing liquidity quality over superficial metrics, mapping two-sided market depth across venues, verifying spread behavior in quiet markets, confirming who provides liquidity and under what terms, modeling the impact of unlocks and concentration risks around single liquidity providers, pools, or exchanges, and favoring assets with demonstrable repeat usage measured by retention curves and cohort behavior. Key metrics to track include consistency of DEX and CEX volume and spreads (including off-hour behavior and cross-venue execution), active addresses and repeat usage tied to concrete use cases measured by cohorts and retention, and liquidity-provider concentration, unlock schedules, and treasury runway with stress scenarios. Market participants expect continued attrition among thin microcaps and consolidation of capital into assets with demonstrable use cases and more stable market structures. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/token-mass-extinction-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Congress enacted the GENIUS Act in July 2025 to create a federal framework for payment stablecoins issued by insured banks and a new class of qualified nonbanks. The law set a deadline for agency rulemaking and placed issuance under prudential supervision. Federal agencies are defining specific, risk-based rules that determine who may operate and under what terms. Interagency rules will specify capital, liquidity, permissible reserve assets, governance, and examination programs for stablecoin issuers under a statutory timetable. FinCEN is preparing AML guidance that maps customer due diligence, monitoring, sanctions screening, and the Travel Rule across wallets and intermediaries. The FDIC outlined application procedures for bank issuance subsidiaries requiring business plans, technology architectures, third-party risk assessments, and recovery and resolution planning. The OCC clarified permitted digital-asset activities for national banks, confirmed limited principal activity for blockchain fees and testing, and continued to issue national trust charters for custody and settlement services under federal supervision. Examiners will focus on program design, controls, capital and liquidity sizing, and operational resilience and will scale requirements to activity complexity and size. Reserve rules will require cash and short-term instruments to support par redemption and timely settlement and will require daily reconciliation, valuation standards, segregation, and independent attestation. Governance expectations will call for board oversight, senior management responsibility, and independent risk functions that oversee issuance, reserves, and redemption mechanics. FinCEN's AML guidance will require programs that combine transaction surveillance with on-chain analytics to detect mixing, obfuscation, and evasion across custodial and noncustodial models, and Travel Rule compliance will extend to cross-chain transfers through message standards and interoperable solutions. The FDIC's application track will require end-to-end redemption mechanics, vendor contracts, cybersecurity controls, and contingency plans for wallet outages or reserve shortfalls, and interagency coordination will limit duplicative requests and establish a post-approval examination cadence. OCC trust charters will preempt state-by-state fragmentation for custody and settlement and create a single federal supervisory channel for multistate firms. Interagency stablecoin rules are due by July 18, 2026, with phased compliance dates through January 2027, and many institutions are running pilots to collect exam evidence and harden operations ahead of final rules. Banks should finalize product governance, attestation workflows, third-party risk programs, and recovery plans; fintechs should evaluate trust charter pathways and deepen bank partnerships; product and compliance teams should align vendor onboarding, testing, and documentation timelines; and firms should monitor reserve eligibility definitions, redemption mechanics, and the scope of examinations that will validate controls and reporting. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/crypto-banking-federal-integration/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An executive order in January 2025 created the President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, chaired by Special Advisor David Sacks, and directed Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the CFTC, the OCC, the FDIC, the Commerce Department, the Justice Department, and the National Economic Council to coordinate federal crypto policy, harmonize supervision, propose rules, and shape international engagement. The administration prioritized dollar-backed stablecoins for payments, prohibited federal agencies from developing a U.S. central bank digital currency, and directed regulators to enable private stablecoin issuance under federal rules. Congress enacted the GENIUS Act in 2025 requiring payment stablecoin issuers to hold reserves in short-dated U.S. Treasuries and U.S. dollars, maintain daily liquidity and par redemption, meet audit and governance standards, and implement technical controls to seize, freeze, or burn tokens under court orders or sanctions. An executive action in March 2025 established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile as non-trading, long-term holdings subject to custody, key-management, multi-site storage, and independent audit requirements, and authorized acquisitions that could absorb market float and influence liquidity. Policy changes will increase demand for short-term Treasury paper, channel liquidity toward bank settlement rails, make dollar-backed tokens the compliant route for cross-border payments and settlement, and create legal enforcement friction for noncustodial and on-chain designs that cannot enforce orders across bridges or smart contracts. Agencies have begun withdrawing or revising prior guidance limiting onshore issuance, bank partnerships, or listings, and the working group is drafting a rule calendar with draft rules and staff guidance expected to enter the Federal Register in phased sequences over the next two quarters with staged compliance windows for attestations, redemption standards, and updated AML and sanctions controls. Reported industry contributions tied to political campaigns and family business exposures have prompted scrutiny, led to calls for recusal standards and ethics screens, and prompted expectations of congressional oversight, watchdog reviews, and potential litigation. Market participants and service providers should prepare for reserve attestations, bank-grade custodial segregation, sanctions and OFAC screening integrated into token flows, and auditable controls; noncustodial protocols should assess compatibility with legal orders and compliance tooling; and financial executives and investors should monitor Treasury bill demand, settlement mechanics, and acquisition and custody plans for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Key near-term items to watch include working-group draft rules on reserve composition and disclosure, bank and custodian guidance on segregation and capital treatment, issuer compliance timelines and attestations, operational mechanics of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and congressional or legal challenges to the CBDC ban and token-control mandates. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/trump-crypto-policy-pivot-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 20, 2026 Bitcoin fell 2.8% to 92,519.6 after U.S. tariff threats targeting European imports of up to 25%. Tariffs increase import costs, transmit to consumer and producer prices and inflation expectations, and prompt central banks to keep policy tighter or raise rates; higher real yields raise discount rates on long-duration assets and compress valuations for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Levered traders cut exposure, spot liquidity thinned, and spreads widened, increasing price impact for given trade sizes. Tariff-driven trade frictions slowed supply chains, reduced export orders, weakened corporate confidence, and lowered growth expectations, which raised equity risk premia and tightened crypto risk budgets, increasing correlations between crypto and equities. Cross-border funding frictions and settlement delays reduced market makers' balance sheet capacity and thinned order books. Elevated policy uncertainty increased short-term correlations and volatility while safe-haven demand moved toward gold as crypto sold alongside equities. Options dealers with negative gamma hedged by selling into weakness and buying into strength, amplifying headline-driven moves; liquidity providers stepped back, quotes widened, perpetual funding turned negative on several pairs, basis compressed, front-month implied volatility rose, skew steepened, realized volatility spiked, and liquidation risk increased for levered positions. Practical indicators to monitor include headline scope and timing, implied versus realized volatility and skew, futures basis and perpetual funding rates, stablecoin flows and on-ramps, and cross-asset correlations with equities, gold, and the dollar. Persistent trade frictions can reshape allocations over months: interest in Bitcoin as an alternative store of value may rise, mining capex and component costs may increase, cross-border settlement networks may gain relevance, and digital services taxes or levies can tighten financial conditions and spill into crypto budgets. Scenario planning should consider a broad import tax above prior baselines that keeps real yields high and growth expectations muted and elevates volatility, targeted tariffs that tighten funding and increase FX and trade-credit stress, and improved policy clarity that normalizes liquidity and reveals clearer trends for major crypto assets. Recommended operational actions include hardening liquidity plans, reducing leverage around policy event risk, keeping option hedges flexible, scenario-testing mining and settlement cost assumptions, and allocating with a barbell that prioritizes liquid majors and utility projects while preserving dry powder. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/tariffs-crypto-market-2026/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 17, 2026, WOW Exchange announced a Hong Kong prelaunch for a crypto trading platform that emphasizes transparency, layered security, and integrated AI analytics. The platform will include a matching engine designed for high throughput, low-latency execution, and scalable order acceptance to preserve fill quality during volume spikes. The company stated it will implement multi-layer security composed of encryption, continuous telemetry for anomaly detection, proactive risk detection, and resilience features to preserve core functions if subsystems degrade. The platform will embed AI analytics to surface real-time patterns, liquidity signals, and trend indicators directly on the trading interface. WOW outlined community and ecosystem engagement plans that include open feedback loops for early users, partnerships with blockchain projects for listings and liquidity programs, and staged updates via official channels including Telegram at t.me/WOW_LLC. The announcement identified order acceptance rates, queue times, and fill quality during headline-driven volume as key performance metrics and listed independent security audits, documented incident response playbooks with timestamps, public performance dashboards, custody and monitoring controls, AI data governance, demonstrated throughput and latency under production stress, and jurisdictional regulatory licensing as open questions and validation items for the prelaunch period. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/wow-exchange-prelaunch-hong-kong/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chainalysis data show Iran's crypto economy processed about $7.78 billion in 2025. Bitcoin flows clustered around political unrest, cyber incidents, and a nationwide internet blackout. Inflation near 40–50 percent and a roughly 90 percent decline in the rial's value since 2018 drove civilian demand for Bitcoin for emergency savings, cross-border transfers, and flight capital. IRGC-linked wallets accounted for about half of the crypto value moving into Iran-linked clusters by Q4 2025 and moved more than $3 billion on-chain during 2025. On-chain flows and daily Bitcoin transactions spiked during protests and outages, and exchange outflows surged between December 28, 2025 and January 8, 2026 as users withdrew funds into personal wallets. Large retail withdrawals under $10,000 rose about 236 percent in value and 262 percent in transfers versus the late-fall baseline; average withdrawals under $1,000 rose about 228 percent in value and 123 percent in transactions; institutional-sized withdrawals under $100,000 rose about 32 percent in volume and 55 percent in transfers; small withdrawals under $100 rose about 111 percent in value and 78 percent in transfers. Addresses consolidated into self-custody and transfers prioritized spendable balances accessible during intermittent connectivity. Recommended actions for builders and exchanges include strengthening on-chain attribution and sanctions screening; implementing dynamic controls with clear appeal and remediation paths for crisis periods; building wallet features for offline signing, watch-only access, seed phrase safety, and modular custody that degrades under intermittent networks; formalizing incident playbooks and legal criteria for freezing or restricting flows; and pairing cross-border transfer features with sanctions-aware routing and enhanced KYC. Expect continued elevated flows concentrated around Bitcoin, increased regulator and investigator scrutiny, and pressure on global exchanges to refine controls while preserving access for users who rely on crypto to preserve value and access basic financial services. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/iran-bitcoin-adoption-unrest-2025/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 15, 2026, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance informed MegPrime Holding LLC and Megatel Homes LLC that staff will not recommend enforcement if the MP Token is offered and sold without registration under Section 5 of the Securities Act and without registration under Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act, provided the project follows the factual representations submitted to staff. MegPrime described MP as a universal payments token that powers a wallet and a payment card, enables users to fund wallets, spend at merchants, and earn token rebates redeemable inside the MegPrime ecosystem, and offers mortgage rate discounts up to two percentage points below market averages, rent rebates, and a $25,000 home purchase credit that vests on closing and program compliance. The no‑action relief relied on token design and use that tie supply and distribution to consumption and rewards activity, structure redemptions to resemble loyalty points and discounts rather than claims on corporate profits, and limit governance and revenue‑sharing features, with token holders receiving no voting rights, no board participation, and no profit distributions. MegPrime presented marketing, distribution, custody, wallet onboarding, and merchant payouts as closed‑loop payments and rewards mechanics, and outside counsel documented factual predicates and an ongoing compliance plan that staff relied upon. The letter identifies compliance actions for teams seeking similar relief: map real‑world payment flows, define redemption mechanics as discounts or credits, limit secondary‑market promotion, and document custody, AML/KYC, and anti‑fraud controls. The decision sets a targeted precedent for utility tokens that combine card rails, merchant‑funded offers, and longer‑horizon incentives while making relief contingent on adherence to the specific facts presented to staff. Execution risks include delivering measurable savings to users, securing merchant acceptance to ensure reward liquidity, avoiding marketing that creates profit expectations or implies tradability, disclosing thresholds and waiting periods for housing benefits, and integrating with banks, card networks, and compliant wallet infrastructure. Milestones to watch include the wallet and card rollout, initial merchant integrations, redemption volumes for mortgage discounts, rent rebates and the home purchase incentive, and any further SEC staff guidance or no‑action letters for comparable projects. Founders and compliance teams are advised to document token function and user benefits before regulatory engagement, design supply and redemption mechanics to mirror existing loyalty and payments programs, limit governance, revenue‑sharing and secondary trading features, and prepare operational controls for custody, AML/KYC, merchant settlement and disclosures. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/sec-no-action-megprime-token/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Adams served as visible promoter during a January 12–13 Times Square event that introduced NYC Token, which launched on Solana with a capped supply of one billion tokens and a decentralized exchange listing. Messaging tied the project to anti-hate initiatives, scholarships, and crypto education. Within minutes of trading, retail buying and thin initial liquidity drove a fully diluted market capitalization into the $580–600 million range. On-chain data showed an early withdrawal of approximately $2.43–2.5 million USDC from the token liquidity pool, a later return of roughly $1.5 million USDC, and about $1 million unaccounted for relative to the initial base, which concentrated control of the pool and altered the token-to-stablecoin ratio. Reduced stablecoin liquidity produced outsized slippage that amplified sell-side price impact, and market cap measures fell to about $110 million by the end of the day. Analysts and multiple media outlets characterized the sequence as consistent with a rug pull and reported connections between the launch and individuals identified as Frank Carone and Yosef Sefi Zvieli, with Adams as the public face. Public disclosures at launch did not include a clear governance model, vesting schedule for team allocations, or transparent custody arrangements, and the project did not demonstrably provide verifiable LP locks, multisig custody, or renounced mint permissions at the time trading began. Regulators have potential consumer protection, fraud, and securities avenues to examine representations about proceeds and funds handling, and open questions remain about the final destination of the missing funds, statements from named parties, and potential state or federal investigations. Observers recommended that issuers publish full tokenomics and governance documents before trading, use audited multisig wallets and verifiable LP locks, provide third-party audits and clear mint permissions, and that traders verify LP locks, inspect wallet histories, and confirm vesting and custody arrangements before allocating capital. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/nyc-token-collapse-analysis/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia finalized a draft bill to recast crypto as an investment asset effective July 1, 2026 with full operational rollout through 2027. The draft imposes a 300,000 ruble annual purchase cap for non‑qualified retail investors and requires new retail entrants to pass a mandatory risk awareness test covering volatility, possible total loss, custody exposures, and drawdown scenarios. Trading and custody for retail and institutional flows will be limited to licensed Russian platforms and approved intermediaries, and foreign trading venues will be allowed only under reporting rules that require disclosure of holdings and income and carry escalating penalties for evasion. The draft maintains the ban on domestic crypto payments and explicitly prohibits privacy‑focused coins such as Monero and Zcash. The proposal criminalizes large‑scale or organized unlicensed mining from 2027. The bill establishes a two‑tier investor model that limits asset lists for non‑qualified retail users and subjects professional and institutional participants to suitability checks, ongoing reporting, independent audits, and capital‑market style controls. The draft assigns domestic exchanges to anchor price discovery and liquidity, assigns banks to handle onboarding, KYC, and custody, and identifies national custodians such as Sberbank as potential custody providers. Regulators and lawmakers frame the proposal as a way to pull trading and custody onshore, limit household exposure, open controlled channels for cross‑border settlements, reduce fraud, increase tax capture, and give supervisors data and tools to limit systemic risk. Estimates cited in the draft put crypto transactions involving Russian participants at about $376 billion between mid‑2024 and mid‑2025. The central bank plans to calibrate limits based on early metrics such as cap utilization, test pass rates, and venue liquidity, and enforcement mechanisms in the draft include fines, reporting requirements, and criminal referrals for large violations. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/russia-crypto-everyday-2026/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wyoming opened public purchases of FRNT on January 7, 2026. The Wyoming Stable Token Commission issued FRNT under the Wyoming Stable Token Act and set redemption at one-to-one for U.S. dollars. Wyoming described FRNT as a U.S. public-entity stablecoin. The reserves backing FRNT consist of cash and short-dated U.S. Treasuries, with Franklin Templeton managing the reserves and Fiduciary Trust Company International providing custody, and net interest after program costs directed to Wyoming school programs under statute. FRNT launched natively on Solana and enabled cross-chain interoperability via LayerZero messaging and Stargate bridges to Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, and Avalanche, with Rain supporting Visa-linked flows on Avalanche. Kraken provides initial regulated on-ramps and distribution under a Wyoming SPDI charter, and Fireblocks supports institutional minting, redemption, and treasury workflows. Transactions on Solana settle in seconds and appear on-chain, while issuance and redemption remain governed by the Commission’s rules and the Stable Token Act. Targeted uses include retail payments, B2B settlement, exchange collateral, and treasury operations. The program requires full reserve backing, defined redemption rights, periodic reporting and attestations, KYC and AML policies, and reserve sufficiency testing as specified by statute. Phase one priorities include growing liquidity across exchanges and DeFi venues, expanding custodial and wallet support, deepening payment integrations, and regularizing reserve disclosures. Key risks include liquidity depth on Solana and connected EVM venues, cross-chain security for messaging and bridges such as LayerZero and Stargate, the frequency, scope, and independence of reserve reporting and audits, and the clarity of redemption mechanics and stress playbooks. Market participants should monitor exchange and DeFi listings, track reserve reporting and audit claims, test cross-chain rails in controlled environments, evaluate redemption processes and fee structures, plan Solana-native and EVM-compatible integration paths, and align custodial and KYC/AML arrangements with Commission policies. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/wyoming-frontier-stable-token-frnt/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CoinGecko is exploring a potential sale that could value the company near $500 million, with Moelis & Company advising an early-stage, two-track outreach to strategic and financial buyers that began in late 2025; no terms or buyer have been announced and the company remains under existing leadership. CoinGecko aggregates price feeds, exchange coverage, token metadata, exchange trust scores and a programmatic API used by wallets, trading platforms, DeFi front ends and institutional workflows. Sources describe buyer underwriting focused on durability of API revenue, defensibility of data ingestion and normalization pipelines, and stickiness of downstream integrations. Market context includes Binance's 2020 acquisition of CoinMarketCap for about $400 million and 2025 crypto M&A activity totaling 133 announced deals and roughly $8.6 billion, with buyers concentrating on exchanges, derivatives platforms, custody and data layers. Potential ownership changes could concentrate control over pricing, rate limits and access, create conflicts around venue scoring, token inclusion and data openness, or prompt private equity moves toward enterprise packaging, predictable revenue and margin expansion while requiring protections for developer trust. Practical steps for business leaders include mapping contingency plans for critical feeds, identifying alternate data sources, running redundancy tests, assessing contracts and SLAs for rate limits and latency guarantees, budgeting for potential pricing changes, considering multi-source aggregation and monitoring filings for governance commitments and product-roadmap signals. Deal-watch items include bidder identities, governance or neutrality commitments, transaction structure (full sale, minority growth capital or partnerships), possible regulatory scrutiny and buyer commitments to customer retention, transparent change logs and provenance controls. Founders and operators face valuation frameworks that emphasize embedded distribution, stable programmatic revenue and technical defensibility, and investors are modeling value from investments in schema design, provenance tracking, deduplication, low-latency delivery and demonstrable usage metrics and deep integrations that affect multiples. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/coingecko-500m-sale-moelis/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

France’s markets regulator, the AMF, reported that about 90 firms registered under the national PSAN regime do not hold EU MiCA authorization. Of those firms, approximately 30% have submitted MiCA applications, roughly 40% have notified the AMF they will not apply and plan to cease operations, and roughly 30% have not responded to repeated contact since late 2025. The MiCA transition period ends June 30, 2026, and from July 1, 2026 any crypto service provider without MiCA authorization must halt services in France and across the EU. The AMF has instructed unresponsive firms to either complete MiCA applications or present credible wind-down plans that protect customers and preserve orderly exits. ESMA has directed national supervisors to ensure unauthorized entities prepare and execute orderly exit strategies ahead of the cutoff. MiCA establishes a single EU regulatory rulebook that imposes consumer safeguards, governance, prudential requirements and transparency obligations across trading, custody, issuance and stablecoin activities. Firms seeking authorization must demonstrate client asset protection, conflict-of-interest management, risk disclosure, capital sufficiency and operational resilience, and stablecoin issuers must maintain reserve and governance frameworks. Authorized firms can passport services across the EU once they secure MiCA authorization. France is advocating for increased supervisory powers at ESMA to reduce enforcement divergence and limit jurisdiction shopping. A number of firms are pursuing EU authorizations or passports in other member states and some preliminary approvals for payment or stablecoin activity have emerged. The report recommended that investors, counterparties and vendors audit exposures, confirm which providers will remain operational after June 30, 2026, and update contingency plans for key vendors in the unresponsive group. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/amf-warns-crypto-firms-mica-2026/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Illicit cryptocurrency addresses received an estimated $154 to $158 billion in 2025, a near 162% year-over-year increase, with stablecoins accounting for about 84% of that volume. Sanctions-related flows rose and nation-state-aligned actors, notably DPRK-linked groups, stole roughly $2 billion including a single exploit that cost an exchange about $1.5 billion. Criminal operations combined credential theft and compromised infrastructure with transaction signing and withdrawal authorization, then used mixers, cross-chain swaps, OTC desks, money brokers, and weak-control jurisdictions to launder proceeds while repeatedly reusing the same liquidity hubs, stablecoin pairs, and counterparties. Physical coercion and in-person intimidation of traders and executives increased and incidents were sometimes timed to price movements. Investigators and analytics providers pooled signals, improved attribution and tracing, and law enforcement reported record seizures in 2025 through faster tracing and legal actions to freeze assets. Entity risk scores became dynamic as addresses flipped to high risk when new attribution data appeared. Guidance for exchanges and custodians includes hardening key and withdrawal controls with multi-party signing, staged approvals, velocity limits, emergency rotation plans, continuous monitoring of stablecoin corridors, stress testing of hot wallet scenarios, and rehearsed playbooks with prearranged law enforcement contacts. Guidance for funds and enterprise treasuries includes segmenting wallets by function and risk, using hardware-backed signing, granting just-in-time access, screening counterparties and flows against sanctions lists with real-time alerts, prearranging emergency contacts, and practicing on-chain incident response playbooks. Guidance for individuals and developers includes training for phishing and social engineering, preferring hardware wallets and multisig, minimizing hot wallet balances, using allow lists, spend limits, time locks, session isolation, and independent verification of transfer requests. Entity-aware analytics, graph enrichment, dynamic watchlists, fast preplanned holds, legal orders, and participation in shared intelligence programs were associated with improved recovery and seizure outcomes. Three measurable signals to track through 2026 are the velocity of sanction-related flows across stablecoin corridors, the operational tempo of DPRK-linked intrusion campaigns, and the ratio of value recovered through seizures versus value stolen. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/secure-digital-assets-crypto-crime/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tether froze about 182 million USDT across five TRC-20 addresses on the Tron network on January 11, 2026, using contract-level blacklist admin calls that took effect upon on-chain confirmation. Analytics services and block monitors flagged the addresses and immobilized balances within minutes, and exchanges and Tron infrastructure continued processing blocks and trades without visible disruption. Each affected wallet held between about 12 million and 50 million USDT, and the blacklist entries are visible in Tron event logs and indexers that parse contract events. Tether reported having frozen about 3.3 billion USDT across more than 7,200 wallets since 2023 and cooperating with more than 310 agencies across 62 countries; Tron currently hosts roughly 82.5 billion USDT and USDT's market capitalization remained near 187 billion. The freeze produced no peg stress, liquidity remained stable across major venues, there was no observed spillover into large DeFi pools on Tron or Ethereum, settlement and exchange connectivity operated normally, and Tron gas costs did not spike. The public record does not cite a specific trigger for the action and there is no confirmed attribution for the five addresses; historically, similar issuer-led freezes have followed risk alerts tied to sanctions, fraud investigations, or suspected laundering. Recommended operational measures included integrating blacklist detection at deposit, withdrawal, and liquidation points, aligning KYC/AML/sanctions screening with issuer processes, maintaining failover settlement paths and alternative assets, instrumenting real-time address risk scoring, and adding routing checks to flag counterparties linked to newly frozen clusters. The event demonstrated that large issuer-led freezes can occur without immediate market disruption while creating operational requirements for builders, operators, and institutional users to handle sudden immobility at the contract layer. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/tether-freezes-182m-tron-wallets/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Anti-Defamation League analyzed 15 extremist actors and identified roughly $142,000 moving across 22 services from 2023 into 2024, with Kraken-linked flows accounting for nearly $80,000 and Counter-Currents processing more than $61,800 in 2023; Chainalysis reports that overall extremist donations have dipped in some regions while white nationalist fundraising remained active in North America and Europe. Operators pivot to on-chain addresses and QR codes when banks and payment processors cut off accounts, post public donation addresses on websites and messaging channels, and rely on many small, dispersed transfers to multiple wallets; clustered addresses and intermediaries provide liquidity and occasional cash-out routes that sometimes touch mainstream exchanges, and use of privacy coins and obfuscation tools complicates attribution. Risk teams observe that these flows can appear as low-value retail-like transfers on the surface while underlying clusters, shared intermediaries, and occasional custodial accounts enable coordinated fundraising and liquidation. Recommended operational measures include shifting from address-only alerts to cluster and graph-based scoring, monitoring hops into privacy coins and back into liquid pairs, enriching on-chain alerts with civil-society datasets and open-source reporting, adding extremism-specific red flags to screening rules and case workflows, tightening onboarding and re-verification for high-risk entities, continuously monitoring publicized addresses, maintaining partnerships with analytics firms and NGOs for curated watchlists, and escalating to law enforcement and documenting the rationale for suspicious activity reports when graph analysis indicates coordinated fundraising or legal defense for violent actors. Regulators are expected to increase pressure around address intelligence, standardized reporting, and cross-platform coordination, and known challenges for detection include noisy low-value transfers, limited visibility into privacy coins and decentralized services, and sparse typologies for extremist financing that require sustained investment in tooling and partnerships. Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/neo-nazi-crypto-funding/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.