The warning comes from All-Russia People’s Front, a coalition of leading political groups that was launched by and remains loyal to President Vladimir Putin. The coalition said all crypto fundraising drives made in its name were “fake” and originated from scammers.

“The All-Russia People’s Front does not use cryptocurrencies in its fundraising,” said Sergey Gorbunov, Deputy Head of the coalition’s executive committee, in a statement published on its official website.

The warning comes as Russian security agencies continue to crack down on citizens who use crypto to send funds to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russian militias fighting on Kyiv’s side, and unnamed “terrorist” groups.

On the other side of the political scale, pro-Russian neo-Nazis have also enjoyed the support of crypto donors in the past.

Everything for Victory

DL News has seen documents circulating on Russian-language Telegram chatrooms that make use of the coalition’s logo and office addresses.

One of the documents featured Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP wallet addresses and called on supporters to send crypto donations.

Its authors claimed the donations would be used to buy electrical generators, thermal bedding, clothing, portable gas heaters, and educational resources for children.

The documents’ authors claim the fundraising campaign is part of the coalition’s Everything for Victory drive.

In its statement, the coalition said that the Everything for Victory campaign only raises funds for Russian soldiers fighting the war in Ukraine.

“Any other information published about the campaign is false,” the coalition said.

Gorbunov said the campaign only accepts donations made using bank transfers via the drive’s dedicated website.

An $8 billion ecosystem

Iran’s crypto ecosystem was worth almost $8 billion in 2025, the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said in January.

The firm said addresses linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moved coins worth more than $3 billion last year.

“This is not civilian speculation,” Jake Percy, a Bitcoin analyst, told Indian media outlet NDTV last week. “This is state military financial infrastructure.”

The corps has sent roughly the same amount of crypto to regional militia groups, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, Chainalysis added last week.

Percy claimed Iranian Bitcoin mining drives are helping Tehran raise funds for its missile strikes on targets across the Middle East.

“Iran can mine a single Bitcoin for roughly $1,300,” he said.

Bitcoin is currently trading at just under $70,000.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Kennis told DL News that three key forces are converging to turn privacy from a speculative corner of crypto into a durable institutional theme: political tension, regulatory tightening, and the maturation of zero-knowledge technology.

Crypto privacy tools have evolved from “experimental to deployable” because ZK technology has significantly matured, as institutions like venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz have described it as crypto’s “most important moat,” Kennis said.

Kennis’s call comes as the US Treasury Department acknowledged in a new March report that crypto privacy tools such as token mixers that mask transactions and identities can serve “legitimate financial privacy purposes.”

“Lawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to enable financial privacy when transacting through public blockchains,” the report told Congress.

The language marks a notable recalibration in tone and is the latest signal of the Trump administration’s relaxing attitude toward the industry.

In August, the Department of Justice said it would stop aggressively pursuing future charges against developers building privacy-focused crypto tools.

Privacy performance

Privacy-focused crypto tokens had a stellar run in 2025 before sinking alongside crypto’s $2 trillion wipeout.

Zcash soared nearly 2,000% from August to September. Then the core development team quit, and the price crashed by over 65%. Monero had a similar meteoric rise and fall, reaching a new all-time high of nearly $800 in January before plunging back under $300.

Still, Kennis said there are plenty of privacy-focused crypto projects in investors’ crosshairs.

“Capital is flowing to projects like Railgun, Nocturne, Zama, Aleo, and Nillion, targeting compliant privacy for tokenization, payments, trade finance, and custody rather than just the most liquid privacy coins,” he said.

“There is a large playing field here for this sector and a path to grow.”

Risks

The Treasury does not gloss over the risks associated with private crypto transactions.

Its report discloses that billions in digital assets stolen by North Korean actors between early 2024 and late 2025 flowed through complex laundering chains that often included transaction mixing services, which shield users.

Since mid-2020, more than $1.6 billion in deposits from mixers has moved into crypto bridges, with a substantial concentration tied to a single bridge that was scrutinised for failing to intervene in swaps linked to sanctioned actors, the report said.

Treasury also highlights the interactions among mixers, stablecoins, and cross-chain infrastructure. While direct deposits of stablecoins into mixers for illicit purposes appear low, the Treasury notes that criminal actors frequently route other tokens through mixers before converting into stablecoins to break tracing links prior to fiat off-ramps.

Adding to the pressure on privacy, lawmakers in the European Union have approved legislation that will prohibit crypto exchanges from listing privacy-focused tokens such as Zcash and Monero, citing concerns about anti-money-laundering. The measure is scheduled to take effect in 2027.

At the same time, regulators across the US and Europe have intensified enforcement actions against developers of privacy-focused tools.

In the Netherlands, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was convicted of money laundering in 2024 after prosecutors argued his software enabled criminals to obscure stolen cryptocurrency.

Authorities in the US have pursued similar cases.

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez received the maximum five-year prison sentence on comparable charges.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? lance@dlnews.com.

Guidelines issued by the Financial Services Commission to the domestic crypto industry currently forbid exchanges from opening corporate wallets for South Korean firms. The FSC is ready to reform these guidelines this year, following a lengthy wait.

But firms hoping to launch USDT treasuries or use US dollar-pegged coins to conduct cross-border trade are likely to be thwarted by the regulators’ new rules, South Korean newspaper Herald Kyungjae reported.

“I understand that the corporate guidelines taskforce has concluded its deliberations on this matter. The decision is final,” an unnamed source close to the taskforce told the newspaper.

The development will come as a major blow for South Korean companies, who have been waiting years for the chance to make crypto investments.

Many complain the FSC has allowed Japanese and US-based firms to steal a march on them, building several multi-billion dollar Bitcoin treasuries.

Trade firms frustrated

The decision comes as a major blow for several unnamed stock exchange-listed companies active in the cross-border trade sector, the newspaper wrote.

These firms have reportedly asked regulators to let them make corporate investments in USDT and USD Coin so they can conduct deals using real-time exchange rates.

This kind of trading, they say, would let them reduce risk when doing business overseas.

Their lobbying efforts bore fruit in October, when lawmakers drafted a bill that, if passed, would allow companies to use stablecoins as a means of payment.

However, this draft law remains under review at the committee stage in the National Assembly. And while lawmakers deliberate, the FSC is choosing instead to act.

Sources told the newspaper the FSC wants to channel trade deals through foreign exchange banks, rather than letting companies deal directly with overseas partners.

The regulator also reportedly wants to prevent firms from making “indiscriminate investments” in “the early stages of the market.”

The FSC’s tentatively named Corporate Cryptocurrency Trading Guidelines are set to roll out in the weeks ahead, sources said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin prices have fallen to $67,304, dropping just under 1% over the past 24 hours.
• Ethereum prices are down at $1,944, falling over 2% over the same period.

What we’re reading

• Farage aide ‘Posh George’ loses $655,000 betting on Iran invasion on Polymarket — DL News
• How crypto is becoming a massive divorce problem — DL News
• The $30 trillion gold mine sitting in your driveway— Milk Road
• Bitcoin: Boom or bust—CNBC
• Binance slams $1.7bn Iran probe from US Senators, calls reports ‘defamatory’— DL News

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

President Trump released the “National Cyber Strategy” on Friday, telling Americans he would make sure the US remains “unrivaled in cyberspace.”

“Every American should take practical steps to protect themselves and their families in cyberspace, but America’s citizens do not stand alone,” the document from the White House reads.

President Trump is combating cybercrime & fraud by unleashing every tool to stop foreign-backed networks exploiting Americans through cyber-enabled fraud & extortion. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/B2MuZEmTeP

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026

“President Trump has demonstrated time and again that he is determined to make Americans secure and prosperous by harnessing all of our comparative advantages.”

The strategy comes as the biggest players in the crypto industry argue about whether major protocols like Bitcoin should prepare for a time when quantum computers can crack their security.

Post-quantum world soon?

The White House document says that the Trump Administration will “build secure technologies and supply chains that protect user privacy from design to deployment, including supporting the security of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.”

“We will promote the adoption of post-quantum cryptography and secure quantum computing,” it adds.

Quantum researchers have warned that a time will come when Bitcoin’s software — which underpins the biggest and strongest computer network in the world — will need to be upgraded to deal with quantum computing.

Quantum computers may still be theoretical, but some have argued that their development could arrive unexpectedly — just like advances with artificial intelligence.

Some in the crypto industry, like Bitcoin treasury Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor, have said that while developers should prepare, the warnings as overblown.

But the community behind Ethereum, the protocol behind the second biggest cryptocurrency by market value, is already pushing ahead: the project’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, in February proposed a “quantum roadmap” to protect the blockchain from encryption-cracking computers.

Pro-crypto executive orders

The strategy came just as Trump signed an executive order Friday to combat cybercrime.

Trump, who campaigned on a ticket to help the digital asset industry, has signed a number of executive orders with the crypto space in mind.

Last year, the president signed an executive order to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

The US government is not buying more Bitcoin — at least for now — and the reserve contains crypto confiscated mostly from crimes.

And in one of the first actions since taking office, Trump signed an order demanding a sweeping major overhaul of crypto policy — including the banning of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 314 at a State Senate vote Friday. The bill demands stablecoin issuers in Florida be licensed by the Office of Financial Regulation.

“[The bill] aims to integrate state oversight with federal standards, specifically the federal Genius Act to ensure consumer protection and financial stability,” Republican Senator Colleen Burton said Friday.

DeSantis’ pro-crypto agenda

The bill will now head to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for signing.

If approved, Florida would become the first state to have its own regulation for managing the tokens.

DeSantis is a pro-crypto politician: the Republican in the past has said he would protect Bitcoin when running for president, and made Florida the first state to ban central bank digital currencies — or CBDCs — after claiming they were “woke” and would “crowd out and eliminate other types of digital assets, like cryptocurrency.”

Wider stablecoin regulation

Stablecoins have been a hot topic since President Trump signed the Genius Act last year to regulate the tokens.

The bill allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins if they back the tokens with assets like US Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves.

Still, banking chiefs and crypto executives are at odds with how to move forward with the regulation of the assets in another piece of legislation: The Clarity Act.

Companies like Coinbase want the legislation to allow firms in the space to pay customers rewards on their stablecoin holdings; banks have said such a practice should be banned or they could lose their deposits as their customers move to crypto.

President Trump this week sided with the digital asset industry, saying that banks shouldn’t be allowed to undermine the government’s pro-crypto agenda.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Last month, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs urged Binance to provide key records regarding alleged connections between the exchange and terrorist organisations working on behalf of Iran.

The Committee’s probe came after Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, cited anonymous sources and internal documents in reports claiming Binance ignored internal warnings that sanctioned entities used the platform to launder nearly $2 billion.

We’ve voluntarily responded to Senator Blumenthal’s inquiry which raises false and defamatory allegations reported by the WSJ. While we take such matters seriously, it’s important for us to highlight our industry-leading compliance which we've worked hard to build and protect our… pic.twitter.com/qOZ7h1y5nu

— Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng) March 6, 2026

“The recent reporting on which your inquiry relies, however, is demonstrably false, unsupported by credible evidence, and defamatory in several material respects,” Binance’s legal team said in a Friday statement addressed to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal of the Democratic Party, who’s helping lead the probe.

DL News reached out to both Binance and the law firm representing the company for comment.

The letter

In February, over a dozen US senators signed a letter written by Senator Blumenthal that said Binance “appears to have ignored warnings and recommendations to prevent Iranian money laundering schemes.”

The letter cited newspaper reports alleging Binance ignored internal warnings that sanctioned entities used the platform to launder nearly $2 billion in funds.

The news reports also alleged that company partners Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust operated as intermediaries on behalf of Iranian government entities.

Binance’s legal team said that “a rigorous compliance program” and “strict Know Your Customer” procedures prohibit users residing or located in Iran on the platform. It also said that Binance has reduced exposure to Iranian exchanges by over 97%.

Previous failures

Binance has been in hot water over Iran before.

Back in 2023, the exchange admitted it had failed to prevent criminals, sanctioned entities, and other bad actors from laundering billions of dollars in dirty money, according to court filings.

Iran was among the sanctioned entities, Department of Justice investigators said.

The DOJ fined the company $4.3 billion and ordered a three-year third-party monitor to oversee its operations.

Binance’s CEO at the time, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to violating US laws against money laundering charges and served four months in prison in 2024.

US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in 2025.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

But after amateur operations flooded the country, stole electricity and in turn attracted negative press, the nation clamped down on crypto cowboys.

Now, the South American country’s government has a new idea: Use machines confiscated from dodgy operations to kickstart a state-run crypto mining operation.

Morphware is proud to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with ANDE, the National Electricity Administration of Paraguay.

This agreement establishes a formal framework for cooperation and technical coordination between Morphware and ANDE, focused on the… pic.twitter.com/5RKNhtPuid

— Morphware (@MorphwareAI) March 3, 2026

“By redeploying Bitcoin miners on regulated, utility controlled sites, we can transform unused electricity into productive compute that serves both the Bitcoin network and the global AI economy,” Kenso Trabing, founder and CEO of Morphware, the company working with the government on the initiative, said in a post on X.

The plan, according to Morphware and Paraguay’s state-controlled electricity firm, ANDE, is to use the country’s famously cheap and abundant leftover energy to mine with the machines. The two have signed a memorandum of understanding for the project.

Neither ANDE nor Morphware responded to questions from DL News.

Will it actually work?

But engineer and energy expert Nelson Cristaldo told DL News that the project for now would be an analysis for future mining operations.

“The confiscated machines are very old — two generations behind,” he said. “It would be very hard to make a profit with these machines.”

He added: “But it’s very good news that the government is doing this. The government has a very unique vision.”

Fernando Arriola, chief financial officer of Bitcoin miner BC Mining, told DL News that the initiative was a step in the right direction for the country.

“Illegal miners arriving in Paraguay gave our industry a very bad reputation,” he said.

“It’s a very good opportunity for the government to have a Bitcoin reserve, too.”

It is unclear whether Paraguay’s government plans to create a national Bitcoin reserve.

Hotspot for mining?

Paraguay was previously seen as being well-disposed to Bitcoin: A combination of business-friendly laws, cheap energy and an enthusiastic president attracted scores of miners post-2021.

Big players in the mining space, like HIVE Digital, Marathon, and Bitfarms, all set up shop there over the years.

But not all of the miners were legit, and after widespread electricity theft, the country’s authorities clamped down. Some top operators — such as Bitfarms — have since exited the country.

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña has in the past said he wants the country to be a tech hub.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Russia, and North Korea all helped push illicit onchain finance to stratospheric heights, reported the crypto analytics firm Chainalysis.

The firm added that industry-scale scam networks in Southeast Asia also contributed to a record $154 billion in total illicit transaction volume in 2025.

The depth of integration alongside wider adoption among legitimate users is also making enforcement difficult for authorities.

“This convergence can complicate enforcement,” analysts wrote on Thursday.

“The focus is no longer solely on isolating bad actors, but also on identifying when large-scale use of crypto crosses into sanctions violations or national security risk.”

Sanctioned entities

Pig-butchering scams, terrorist financing, escort services and child abuse material all contribute to the $154 billion figure, but it’s the use of crypto by sanctioned entities that dominates Chainalysis’ reporting.

The value received by sanctioned entities rose by more than 690% last year compared to 2024. There are four key entities behind that surge.

First, the IRGC and their proxy networks are turning to crypto to evade heavy sanctions levelled by the US and the European Union, which have designated the group a terrorist organisation.

Indeed, more than half of all value received by Iranian services has been linked to the IRGC, according to Chainalysis.

The organisation sent at least $3 billion to support regional militia, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, in 2025

Those funds were also used to purchase dual-use goods with both commercial and civilian purposes, as well as to facilitate illicit oil sales.

Second, the hermit kingdom of North Korea saw its most fruitful year for crypto exploits in 2025. The DPRK stole roughly $2 billion through various hacks and cyberattacks, but its sprawling IT workforce also continues to generate revenue for the country.

The Pyongyang government has deployed thousands of people to try to secure employment at tech firms in Western countries.

Once hired, they attempt to siphon off funds internally or steal trade secrets.

Finally, Russia provides one of the most prominent examples of how crypto is being used to evade sanctions.

Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country has faced one of the most severe sanctions programmes in the world. In an attempt to sidestep the blockade, a ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin emerged to support cross-border trade.

Equally, Meer and Grinex, two exchanges, have also emerged to facilitate trade in this stablecoin and allow sanctioned Russian businesses access to markets.

The stablecoin has facilitated a whopping $93.3 billion in volume, according to Chainalysis.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The 32-year-old political aide to Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK right-wing Reform Party, appears to have lost approximately $655,000 incorrectly betting on when the US would strike Iran.

The aide, nicknamed “Posh George” due to his aristocratic background, traded under the username GCottrell93 and placed a series of bets in this market — and did manage to win $107,000 by betting that the US would not strike on February 27.

Crypto investigator ZachXBT has previously linked the account to Cottrell.

However, his biggest loss, worth $550,000, was betting “no” on whether the US would attack on February 28, according to Polymarket data and first reported by The Telegraph. He lost another $165,000 across three other wagers, inaccurately betting on other dates, too.

Prediction markets such as Polymarket let users wager money on the outcomes of political, sporting, or financial events.

In this case, Polymarket launched a market that enabled users to speculate on when the US military would attack Iran.

Users could bet on “yes” or “no” for a variety of dates.

After it was clear that the US bombed Iran on February 28, the market closed and paid out those who accurately bet on the day’s violent strikes.

All eyes on prediction markets

The multi-million-dollar war markets on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two largest prediction markets, have drawn fresh scrutiny from lawmakers.

Polymarkets wager on the ouster of Iranian leaders saw more than $529 million in volume.

Six specific users, however, stood out.

Just hours before the strike, analytics firm Bubblemaps showed six brand-new accounts emerge and rake in $1.2 million accurately betting on the strikes on February 28.

“It’s insane this is legal,” Democrat Senator Chris Murphy said on Sunday. “People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.”

A White House spokesperson denied that anyone close to US President Donald Trump was behind the trades, according to NPR.

GCottrell93

Betting on Polymarket hasn’t been a complete loss for Cottrell.

Indeed, the author of the book “How to Launder Money” has bagged $3.4 million in profits — after accounting for losses — across 23 predictions.

His biggest win came from betting on the presidential election winner in 2024, where he bagged $4.4 million wagering on Trump.

After inaccurately betting on the Iran strikes, his next biggest loss was betting that the sitting UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, would be ousted on February 28, 2026.

He lost nearly $125,000 on the wager.

The Reform Party didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The USMS are responsible for holding cryptocurrencies seized during legal operations by the US government as part of the administration’s US Bitcoin Reserve.

Patel congratulated French authorities for apprehending John Daghita on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean.

“Last night, John Daghita — a US government contractor who allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from the US Marshals Service — was arrested on the island of Saint Martin by the French Gendarmerie’s premier elite tactical unit in a joint operation with the FBI,” Patel wrote.

Ties to US government

ZachXBT, a pseudonymous investigator, said Daghita was able to steal cryptocurrencies by leveraging his father’s IT company, Command Services and Support.

CMDSS, a Virginia-based firm, won a $4 million contract with the US Marshals Service in 2024.

ZachXBT first alerted authorities to the alleged theft in January. The investigator revealed through a series of videos and screenshots how Daghita seemingly controlled several different crypto addresses, including those on Ethereum and Tron.

By tracing the addresses in the video recordings, ZachXBT identified ties to those funds and to funds from government seizures.

Patrick Witt, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, responded at that time that he would look into the allegations.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin and altcoin holdings, along with stock options, are the “most difficult assets to divide during divorce proceedings,” Anastasia Madi, a family law attorney at the legal firm Kislov Law, told Russian media outlet RBC Pro.

And the number of crypto-related divorce disputes will increase as the popularity of crypto continues to grow in Russia, legal experts told Russian newspaper Izvestia.

As courts can only denominate the monetary worth of tangible and intangible items in fiat currencies, lawyers require specialists to “determine the value of cryptocurrencies,” the experts said.

Divorce rates in Russia are among the highest in the world, and have peaked at almost five per 1,000 people in recent years. And with crypto ownership also on the rise in Russia, civil law courts in the country could be about to get very busy indeed.

Calculation problems

Russian law was amended in 2020 to recognise crypto as a form of intangible property. This means Bitcoin and other tokens are classified as “marital property” in the eyes of the law, Madi said.

However, she said that “in practice,” proving exactly who owns crypto and calculating the assets’ exact value in rubles is less straightforward.

The fact that crypto is stored in password- and private key-protected wallets adds another layer of complexity to the matter, the lawyer said.

If one of the partners “conceals their private keys or passwords,” civil court lawyers have few resources to help them force the partner to hand over this information.

If a partner transfers their crypto to another wallet during the course of proceedings, even “proving the existence” of the crypto can become extremely difficult, Madi said.

In such situations, courts may simply refuse to divide crypto holdings “due to a lack of evidence,” she added.

A civil law court in Krasnodar last year turned down a woman’s request for the division of what she claimed were shared crypto holdings because she could not prove the existence of these coins to the judge, Izvestia wrote.

Lawmaker’s solution

Other legal experts agree that crypto presents family lawyers with a unique challenge.

“The anonymity of cryptocurrency is both its advantage and disadvantage: confidentiality protects the owners, but it makes division almost impossible,” Olga Dovgilova, managing partner of the Dovgilova & Partners Law Firm, told Russian media outlet Gazeta Ru last year. “What’s more, international crypto exchanges and blockchain platforms are not obliged to provide any information to Russian courts.”

Lawmakers are already aware of the problem. And one has drafted legislation that may help lawyers and courts out of the quagmire.

In October, Igor Antropenko, a member of the State Duma Committee on Industry and Trade, presented parliament with a bill proposing that crypto bought by either partner during a marriage be considered “joint property.”

Antropenko’s proposal also stipulates that any crypto acquired before marriage or received as a gift should “remain the sole property of the owner.”

The lawmaker also submitted the bill to the central bank, which has yet to comment on the matter.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Ministry of Finance officials say that they’re mulling the introduction of a new stablecoin bill.

The ministry said it wants to launch a separate stablecoin bill, rather than bundle fiat-pegged assets with the new rules of a forthcoming crypto exchange law.

“Stablecoins “hold enormous — even colossal — potential,” said Alexey Yakovlev, the director of the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Financial Policy, Russian media outlet RBC reported.

Moscow has already earmarked stablecoins as a potential sanctions-busting tool, as the Kremlin races to legalise a sector that remains largely in the grey zone.

Talks of the new bill come a year after the US greenlit the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill. Issued stablecoins have surged over 51% since the start of 2025 to reach a value of $311 billion, according to DefiLlama data.

‘Colossal potential’

Yakovlev said Moscow wants to tackle stablecoin regulation as soon as the State Duma has approved a law that will ban citizens from trading crypto on platforms that do not have operating permits.

This bill, which lawmakers will present to the State Duma in the spring session, will likely come into force as early as July, RBC reported.

“Once we launch the main [crypto] regulations, we will be able to [tackle stablecoin regulation] so we can regulate them separately and in a segregated manner,” Yakovlev said.

Currently, stablecoins have no legal status under Russian law. The ministry said it wants to redress this as soon as possible.

“For now, the consensus is that stablecoins are not unlike a form of digital currency,” the ministry official said. “But we intend to continue this discussion with the central bank and market players.”

Yakovlev said the government wants to ensure stablecoins “serve economic interests, primarily our domestic ones” before making a final decision on how to regulate stablecoin issuance.

The central bank has waded into the stablecoin debate before. It has created a category of approved “foreign digital rights,” which it said could “include certain cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins.”

Provided they meet central bank approval, this means the government could approve certain stablecoins as acceptable forms of payment in cross-border transactions.

The first stablecoin to be granted “foreign digital rights” status was the ruble-pegged A7A5 stablecoin, which the central bank approved for use in overseas trade in October.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The CEO of Ripple, the creators of the XRP token, took to social media on Tuesday to praise US President Donald Trump’s “pointed message” urging lawmakers to pass the Clarity Act.

Trump sided with the crypto industry in a Tuesday post, after traditional banks criticised stablecoin legislation language that would allow crypto firms to pass interest on stablecoin holdings to their customers.

That row may even derail the Clarity Act.

“An extremely pointed message from POTUS to those who are dragging their feet on Clarity,” wrote Garlinghouse. “This is, and always has been, about what’s in the best interest of the American people.”

Stablecoin loophole

Though the Genius Act, which passed last summer, banned passing on interest to stablecoin holders, crypto companies found a convenient workaround.

Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, for instance, pays interest to stablecoin holders as “rewards.” The company has also put this rewards programme behind a subscription product called Coinbase One, framing any financial incentives as a loyalty benefit for users.

Banking lobby groups are eager to close this loophole by adding new language to the upcoming Clarity Act.

The crypto lobby has opposed those changes, hence the clash.

Until those those differences can be settled, the act — a key piece of legislation according to many industry insiders — is on hold.

“The banks should not be trying under the Genius Act, or hold the Clarity Act hostage,” Trump said. “They need to make a good deal with the crypto industry because that’s what’s in the best interest of the American people.”

The Trump family owns and operates the fifth-largest stablecoin on the market, called USD1, according to DefiLlama.

It is issued by the company World Liberty Financial, of which the president is a co-founder Emeritus.

What is the Clarity Act?

Though landmark stablecoin legislation passed swiftly in the US, legislation that will delegate oversight of the crypto industry to regulatory agencies has hit a major roadblock.

The Clarity Act will define different cryptocurrencies as either commodities or securities.

Cryptocurrencies will meet these definitions based on what lawmakers are calling sufficient decentralisation. This refers to the extent of control that developers or companies may have over any of the blockchain network’s critical infrastructure or token issuance.

A cryptocurrency that achieves sufficient decentralisation would qualify as a commodity and fall under the purview of the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission.

The securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has emerged as a very lenient partner for the crypto industry during Trump’s second term; it’s widely held that the CFTC would be even more lenient.

The stakes are high to get the bill passed.

US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent attributed Bitcoin’s volatility in February to the gridlock between lawmakers and a group of crypto firms over the Clarity Act.

Likewise, Garlinghouse forecast Bitcoin would hit new highs in 2026 if the bill were passed.

The heat of the debate hinges on this one key stablecoin clause, however.

Battle of the banks

Large banks are concerned that without interest restrictions on stablecoins, clients will withdraw their funds en masse to convert them to stablecoins and hold them on a crypto exchange.

Standard Chartered said that this deposit flight could see up to $500 billion exit the traditional banking system by 2028 if the Clarity Act is passed.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, said on Monday that if crypto firms want to pay customers stablecoin rewards, they need to be properly regulated and become banks so they can compete fairly with traditional lenders.

On Wednesday, the banking lobby hit back against the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s decision to grant Kraken, a major crypto exchange, the rights to use the same payment rails as banks and credit unions.

“We are deeply concerned,” Paige Pidano Paridon, co-head of regulatory affairs at the Bank Policy Institute, said in a statement.

For now, the Clarity Act is stuck in the Senate Banking Committee after an agreement between the banking community and crypto firms fell apart last week.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The leader of the UK Reform Party pulled ahead of both Labour and the Conservative Party in terms of donations, thanks to a £3 million contribution from Christopher Harborne, a crypto investor and an aviation entrepreneur, according to Electoral Commission data.

The November donation marks Harborne’s second donation to the far-right party. He donated £9 million to the Reform Party in August.

The latest crypto donation brought the Reform Party’s donations to £5.5 million in the fourth quarter, ahead of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, which received £2.3 million and £1.7 million during the same period, the Financial Times reported

The Reform Party did not immediately return a request for comment.

The donations came after the Reform Party became the first British political party to accept donations in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in May. It is the only party that accepts crypto donations.

Since then, several members of parliament have called for a ban on crypto donations, arguing that they raise the risk of foreign interference.

Concern over foreign interference in UK politics has grown, not least with the conviction of Nathan Gill, the former Reform UK leader in Wales, who was jailed for more than 10 years after admitting to taking bribes for pro-Russia interviews and speeches.

Bring crypto ‘in from the cold’

The latest donation also highlights how Farage’s ambitions to replicate US President Donald Trump’s successful strategy of aligning himself with the crypto industry’s interests.

Farage, a member of parliament, has spoken at international Bitcoin conferences and made pro-crypto overtures for years. In 2025, he ramped up his pro-crypto campaign.

He said he would make the UK the crypto capital of the world “when I’m in Number 10,” referring to Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence.

“I want to bring in digital assets and crypto from the cold in London, to have that regulatory framework under which everybody can operate,” Farage said at the Zebu Live conference in London in October.

Last year, Farage not only signed off on the party accepting crypto donations, but also fired off a barrage of pro-industry volleys.

That included attacking the Bank of England for its proposed cap on stablecoin ownership, championing a pro-industry bill, urging the central bank to create a Bitcoin reserve, and pledging to turn the UK into a crypto powerhouse.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

In a report this week, BIS authors Andrea Minto, Anneke Kosse, Takeshi Shirakami and Peter Wierts wrote that each variant of central bank digital currency — or CBDC — needs regulation appropriate to its specific risk profile.

“Offline digital euro payments could, all else being equal, pose greater anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism risks compared with online digital euro payments or payments made using commercial bank deposits or hosted cryptoasset wallets,” the report read.

The comments come as European lawmakers push further towards a CBDC. European Parliament members last month backed a digital euro that would have both online and offline functionality.

More efficient than cash?

European citizens have expressed a preference for a CBDC with offline functionality for privacy reasons and for the ability to pay without an internet connection.

Offline functionality would allow users to transact without being connected to the internet, using features like near-field communication or bluetooth.

While the EU will soon limit cash payments to €10,000, lawmakers have yet to decide whether to apply a similar cap to a euro CBDC. The limit on cash transactions, set to take effect in 2027, is intended to combat money laundering.

Illicit actors could prefer using offline digital euro for illegal transfers due to the “cumbersome and less portable” nature of cash, the BIS paper noted.

“When issued for general use, retail CBDCs need to be incorporated into AML/CFT frameworks,” the report added. “The probability of detecting illicit use of retail CBDCs will likely differ for online and offline CBDC payments.”

Digital euro incoming — but no digital dollar

Lawmakers have been talking about a digital euro for years, but last month the European Parliament for the first time backed the project.

A digital euro — which will be the product of the European Central Bank — is necessary to compete with private and non-EU actors racing to digitise payments, lawmakers said.

EU lawmakers have been especially concerned by the growth of stablecoins pegged to the US dollar. A digital euro would be different to stablecoins as the European Central Bank would be the issuer. Stablecoins, meanwhile, are typically issued by private companies that have assets like US treasury bills backing the tokens in reserves.

While the EU races ahead with a CBDC, the US is unlikely to build its own — at least for now.

President Donald Trump campaigned against a CBDC, and last year signed an executive order prohibiting the establishment of a CBDC within the US.

American lawmakers this week introduced bipartisan legislation that proposes banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC until 2030.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The win gives the crypto exchange access to the same payments rail as thousands of banks and credit unions.

“We are deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has approved an account request for a ‘limited purpose’ master account — which appears to be a ‘skinny’ account — before the Federal Reserve Board has finalised its policy framework for those accounts,” Paige Pidano Paridon, co-head of regulatory affairs at the Bank Policy Institute, said in a statement.

The advocacy group also decried the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s decision for ignoring public comments, failing to provide transparency and said it “violates the board’s own policy on seeking public comment when it intends to make significant changes to the payments system.”

For Cynthia Lummis, a long-time crypto supporter and Republican senator of Wyoming, the decision marks “a watershed moment.”

Indeed, it comes at a time when the crypto industry and US banks are on a collision course as the former is increasingly getting legal and regulatory recognition, which has enabled it to encroach on what has traditionally been the $23 trillion US lending industry’s turf.

Kraken didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

A ‘milestone’

Kraken celebrated the master account approval on Wednesday, which will enable the crypto exchange to handle transactions faster and more seamlessly for big clients. Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken, told DL News in September that the company’s aim is that institutional investors will make up a third of the firm’s revenue.

Even though the firm won’t get access to the full range of services that banks enjoy with the central bank — such as payments of interest on reserves held with the Federal Reserve — it still marks a major win for an industry that has long been treated as the financial industry’s unwanted step-child.

“This milestone marks the convergence of crypto infrastructure and sovereign financial rails,” Sethi said in a statement. “With a Federal Reserve master account, we can operate not as a peripheral participant in the US banking system, but as a directly connected financial institution.”

US President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies have legitimised the industry. In his first year back in the Oval Office, the 79-year-old has fired off a barrage of crypto-friendly executive orders, appointed industry allies to key government roles, supported looser policing of the sector, and signed the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill, into law.

The Genius Act did, however, provide a loophole that could enable crypto exchanges to pay customers interest on stablecoin holdings, which the banks have rejected out of fear that it would drive customers away from them.

This week, Trump sided with the crypto industry in its monthslong dispute with banks over stablecoin yield, a row that has threatened to derail negotiations over the Clarity Act, a landmark regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the US.

Banks have lobbied lawmakers to include language in the Clarity Act that would close the supposed stablecoin interest loophole. Crypto companies, in turn, have slammed banks for attempting to relitigate components of a bill more than six months after it was signed into law.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Omsk’s Leninsky District Court sentenced the three, all aged between 21 and 23, to prison on March 3.

“The defendants broke into the [unnamed] victim’s apartment, threatened him with a knife, beat him, and demanded that he hand over cryptocurrencies and cash,” prosecutors told the court, the Omsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reported on its Telegram channel.

Crypto holders have recently become a key target for criminals in Russia and in other countries.

Last year was the worst year on record for so-called wrench attacks, with criminals torturing victims and cutting off their fingers. Experts warn of an escalation in brutality in 2026, with nearly a dozen violent attacks or kidnappings of crypto entrepreneurs, investors, and their loved ones reported in January and February.

Yet, the courts are catching up.

In November, a court in western Russia jailed two knife-wielding attackers who stole crypto worth $171,000 from a blogger.

And a court in Kazan has begun the trial of seven people suspected of beating and forcing a man to send them crypto worth $42,000.

Violent attack

The Omsk incident took place on April 10, 2024, the court heard, after the trio’s accomplice, a courier who had previously delivered a package to the address, identified the victim as a crypto owner.

Police showed the court closed-circuit television footage of the three defendants, wearing masks and hoods, approaching the apartment complex at night.

The trio tricked the victim into answering the door before forcing their way in and torturing him at knifepoint.

However, the attack was cut short after a neighbour grew suspicious about the noises coming from the apartment and came to investigate.

This caused the criminals to panic and flee the scene of the crime before they could get their hands on any crypto, prosecutors explained.

The three defendants denied involvement in the crime, but the court found them guilty of all charges and ordered them to serve their terms in maximum-security penal colonies.

The court also ordered them to pay the victim over $5,000 in damages.

The trio’s courier acquaintance is being tried separately.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The coin was launched by NoBorder, a video production team and decentralised autonomous organisation run by the Japanese businessman and YouTuber Yuji Mizoguchi, in late February. It currently has a market cap of almost $8 million, per Dextools data. The token’s price has surged several times since its launch, with prices fluctuating rapidly at the time of writing.

But anonymous sources at the Financial Services Agency say Mizoguchi’s NoBorder team did not have a crypto exchange operating permit as of the end of January, with “no subsequent applications lodged,” Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported.”

The FSA has already begun “voluntary interviews with the companies involved,” sources told Kyodo.

Politician-themed memecoins have previously drawn criticism in the US. Investors accused former New York Mayor Eric Adams of orchestrating a “rug pull” following the issuance of the NYC Token, while President Donald Trump’s memecoin has plummeted in value by 94% since hitting an all-time high on April 19, 2025.

PM issues warning

Controversy erupted in early March when Sanae Token’s value rocketed 260% on decentralised exchanges, reaching a market cap of almost $28 million.

This prompted Takaichi to make a public statement on X on March 2.

“I have absolutely no knowledge of [this token], and my office has not been informed about the nature of this token,” she said. “The government has not given its approval to this project.”

On its website, NoBorder claims Sanae Token is “a participation token, not a speculative cryptocurrency.”

NoBorder says that it is a political movement that supports Takaichi’s policies, and that its token allows DAO members to voice their opinions, which will then be “delivered” to Takaichi and her government.

“We have not received a single yen in revenue from this [project],” Takaichi wrote on X on March 3.

However, the FSA has identified potential legal violations. Sanae Token is currently tradable on decentralised Solana exchanges like Raydium, Japanese media outlet New Economy reported.

The fact that the coin can be exchanged on Raydium for other cryptocurrencies and transferred between unspecified parties means it could be considered a cryptocurrency under the terms of the Payment Services Act.

If the FSA can establish that NoBorder has allowed Japanese residents to buy, sell, or exchange cryptocurrencies, the DAO could be found to have violated the country’s crypto exchange laws, New Economy wrote.

The FSA also says it has never given its approval for Sanae Token trading on Japanese exchanges. Japanese law stipulates that the FSA has a veto over token listings, and stipulates that a self-governing panel of exchanges must approve coins before they can be offered for sale in Japan.

Takaichi won a landslide victory in snap elections she called earlier this year. She has pledged to carry out sweeping economic reforms to reverse decades of economic stagnation.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

That row has threatened to derail negotiations over the Clarity Act, a bill that would create a long-sought regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the US.

“Americans should earn more money on their money,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful crypto agenda that will end up going to China, and other countries if we don’t get the Clarity Act taken care of.”

In a bid to boost stablecoin adoption or win market share, some issuers have paid customers yield on their digital dollars.

Last year’s stablecoin legislation, the Genius Act, banned the practice, in part because banks feared customers would abandon traditional checking and savings accounts for stablecoins, which often pay substantially higher interest rates.

But it was unclear whether the law banned third-party crypto companies, such as exchanges, from paying interest on customers’ stablecoin holdings.

Banks have lobbied lawmakers to include language in the Clarity Act that would close this supposed loophole. Crypto companies, in turn, have slammed banks for attempting to relitigate components of a bill more than six months after it was signed into law.

The sides appeared to reach a compromise in January. A revised draft of the Clarity Act banned companies from paying passive yield on stablecoins — but it allowed them to offer rewards or incentives on activities such as transactions, payments, transfers, remittances, and providing liquidity in DeFi protocols.

But Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong torpedoed the bill on the eve of a scheduled vote when he pulled his support, citing the ban on passive yield, among other things.

Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina and the head of the Senate’s Banking Committee, delayed the vote indefinitely. Despite regular meetings at the White House, representatives from the crypto and the banking industries have made little progress since.

Armstrong’s power play even led to a report the White House had soured on Coinbase, though Armstrong denied the claim in a post on X.

Still, the deadlock over the Clarity Act has jeopardized Trump’s plan to make the US the “Crypto Capital of the World,” as he put it on Tuesday.

“The Genius Act is being threatened and undermined by the banks, and that is unacceptable,” he wrote. “The US needs to get market structure done, ASAP.”

Trump family company DT Marks DEFI LLC holds a 38% stake in World Liberty Financial, which issues a stablecoin called USD1.

Eric Trump — the president’s son and a co-founder of World Liberty — also weighed in on the dispute on Tuesday.

“The ‘Big Banks’ — the very institutions that have held a monopoly and screwed their customers for years, offering near-zero yields on retail Money Market Accounts while crushing low-balance accounts with exorbitant fees — are now doing everything they can to block the Crypto industry from offering real benefits, perks, and rewards on their platforms.," he wrote on X.

“They are the greatest hypocrites and are in mass panic given they know they are losing the digital finance race!” he added, before tagging World Liberty.

Democrats have accused the 79-year-old president of self-dealing, foreign influence, and obstruction of justice stemming from his family’s involvement in crypto and his attempts to push pro-crypto legislation.

“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, the deputy press secretary, told DL News in January.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The banking executive said on Monday that if crypto firms want to pay customers stablecoin rewards, they need to be properly regulated and become banks so they can compete fairly with traditional lenders.

If crypto companies, such as Coinbase, don’t play by the same rules as banks, the “public will pay,” Dimon warned in a Monday interview with CNBC.

“It can’t be: you have these people doing one thing without any regulation like that, and these people doing another,” he said.

Dimon’s comments come as the banking lobby and crypto executives thrash out a market structure bill that would give digital asset firms greater access to traditional markets.

Coinbase in January pulled support for the bill, with the exchange’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, slamming the proposal to ban stablecoin rewards.

Level playing field

Many crypto firms are keen to keep paying customers stablecoin rewards while also managing and holding client assets and handling trade settlement within a federally regulated structure.

But banking chiefs have warned that it would create an unfair playing field — and people would flock to companies like crypto exchanges instead of traditional banks to hold their cash.

“Banks feel strongly that [stablecoin] rewards are the same as interest,” Dimon said. “If you are going to be holding balances and paying interest, that’s a bank and you should be regulated as a bank.”

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted conditional approval for national trust bank charters to a number of top firms in the digital asset space, including Crypto.com, BitGo, and Ripple.

The banking lobby in December urged the OCC to reject Coinbase’s application for a national trust bank charter on the grounds that the exchange has “demonstrably flawed risk and control functions” and operates under governance that “prevents independent oversight.”

We love blockchain

Dimon, who has long been a Bitcoin sceptic, reiterated that JPMorgan still uses the cryptocurrency’s underlying technology.

“We’re actually one of the biggest users of blockchain,” he said, mentioning the bank’s JPM Coin, a deposit token which runs on Coinbase’s layer 2 network, Base.

But that doesn’t mean rules don’t apply.

“We’re moving a lot of data now using blockchain, so we’re in favour of competition, but it’s got to be a fair and balanced level playing field.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Court victories come hard and fast for Uniswap right now.

Last month, a judge dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit brought against Uniswap by Bancor, a competing decentralised exchange.

Now, another federal judge has dismissed the final element of a class action lawsuit that targeted Uniswap’s creators.

Unlike the patent infringement case, this one is a win for decentralised finance writ large.

Here’s why.

The lawsuit was brought in 2022 by traders who lost money on “scam tokens” they found on Uniswap. But those scammy tokens weren’t created by Uniswap. In fact, their issuers have never been identified.

Here’s the judge’s take, summed up in a single sentence: “Plaintiffs cannot hold defendants liable for the misconduct of the unidentified third-party issuers.”

This is a recurring theme in crypto litigation. Victims of a purported crime looking for someone to blame often turn to the platform where the crime occurred, rather than the anonymous perpetrators of said crime.

The reason is obvious. True DeFi protocols are permissionless and immutable. That first term means that anybody can use the protocol, no questions asked. The second means that nobody, not even the protocols’ creators, can change the protocols to, say, limit access to “good guys.”

This freedom is a double-edged sword, allowing all kinds of malfeasance in the world of DeFi.

Take, for example, the criminal trial of Roman Storm. The software engineer was charged with conspiracy to launder money and evade sanctions after he released Tornado Cash, a protocol that helps users obfuscate their onchain crypto movements.

One of those users was North Korea, which used the crypto mixer to launder some $500 million in stolen crypto.

Jurors were deadlocked on the money laundering and sanctions evasion charges. But they convicted him of a lesser ofense, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He faces up to five years in prison.

In Uniswap’s case, traders from North Carolina, Idaho, New York, and Australia alleged they used a website built by Uniswap Labs to access the Uniswap protocol. There, they found and purchased 38 tokens that turned out to be rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes.

The traders sued Uniswap, alleging it was functionally an unregistered broker-dealer and that it had aided and abetted fraud.

In 2023, a federal court dismissed the claims, arguing their concerns were “better addressed to Congress than to this Court,” as Judge Katherine Polk Failla put it in her Monday ruling, which included a brief history of the case.

“After all, no plaintiff would sue the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ for tweeting that its exchange was a safe place to trade after that plaintiff had lost money due to an issuer’s fraudulent schemes,” the judge’s 2022 ruling read.

Last year, an appellate court dismissed the traders’ appeal. But it asked the lower court to reconsider the allegations made under state law. The traders filed an amended complaint that added fresh state-level charges.

On Monday, Failla said the complaint suffers the same flaw as its predecessors.

“Despite three chances to get it right, Plaintiffs remain unable to allege plausible claims,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs’ theories of liability are still predicated on Defendants having ‘facilitated’ the scam trades ‘by providing a marketplace and facilities for bringing together buyers and sellers of Tokens[.]’”

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams took a victory lap on social media.

“If you write open source smart contract code, and the code is used by scammers, the scammers are liable, not the open source devs,” he wrote. “Good, sensible outcome.”

Top DeFi stories of the week

This week in DeFi governance

VOTE: Aave DAO votes to deploy on Monad

VOTE: Lido DAO votes to establish auto-renewing delegate incentive program

VOTE: Arbitrum DAO votes to use new quorum model

Post of the week

As my colleague Liam Kelly just reported, Aave DAO service provider and delegate Aave Chain Initiative is rage-quitting. It’s a profound development in a long-running civil war over the fate of the largest DeFi protocol, so I’m giving you three standout posts this week.

https://t.co/74E9xB7jj8 pic.twitter.com/lRrv4AkVG7

— Marc ”七十 Billy” Zeller (@Marczeller) March 3, 2026

GG, one of the few remaining functioning DAOs is folding back under founder control - similar happened to Maker / SKY

FWIW I think its safe to conclude DAOs in this form are dysfunctional and not competitive with traditional org structures, they only work to a point

I hope… https://t.co/wl908Mnotu

— daddy fiskantes ⭐️🩸 (@Fiskantes) March 3, 2026

Most DAOs were never about distributing power. They've just been LARPing to pass the "Howey Test" and avoid security laws.

Under current administration you no longer have to pretend. Not worth it to participate when you realize it's just a plutocracy with extra steps.. https://t.co/dbwIKVEvaZ

— Wesley— oss/acc (@wslyvh) March 3, 2026

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The country’s permit-holding crypto trading platforms must begin submitting daily reports proving they have sufficient funds to cover the cost of hacks or other leaks, the central bank announced in a resolution on February 27.

The new rules also stipulate that exchanges must adopt the same data protection and confidentiality criteria that apply to Brazilian commercial banks.

“Investors will enjoy more security thanks to these regulations,” Denis Medina, a professor at the Faculty of Commerce of São Paulo, told Brazilian media outlet Conexão Record News. “But it will also benefit the entire system by preventing various crypto-powered financial crimes, such as money laundering and tax evasion.”

Brazil’s move comes as regulators around the world order crypto exchanges to beef up their security and liability credentials to the level of the banking industry. Financial chiefs in Japan made similar demands in November. South Korean regulators followed suit in December after the $30 million hack of the Upbit exchange.

Crypto accounting rules

Many of Brazil’s new regulations will come into effect on January 1, 2027, the central bank said. One of the new rules comprised an accounting manual for crypto exchanges and crypto pay firms.

This manual allows crypto companies to log crypto on their balance sheets, rather than having to convert the worth of their coins into fiat currencies.

The bank has also ordered crypto exchanges to keep their fiat currency and crypto holdings in separate accounts and wallets from those of their clients.

Medina said the rules will also impose limits and checks on transactions, particularly those made to overseas exchanges.

The academic said the rules effectively put an end to the “uncontrolled transfer of crypto to other countries.”

The new protocols will ensure the flow of crypto becomes more traceable in Brazil, Medina said.

The central bank says its new rules will make it harder for criminals to conduct illicit activities with crypto, such as drug trafficking and the financing of terrorist groups.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Police in South Korea say they’re investigating a string of arrests committed by individuals who say they were paid in crypto to vandalise residential properties and defame or threaten their owners.

“I will not leave you alone,” was the message reportedly written in bold on a leaflet stuffed into a letterbox by a suspect who told police in Gyeonggi Province he was paid between $300 and $600 to deliver the threat.

The suspect, officers say, has no idea who paid him to commit the crime — although police have vowed to find out.

The attacks come amid an increase in crypto-related crime in South Korea. Last month, prosecutors in Seoul indicted a man accused of poisoning his business partner’s coffee after embezzling company money to make a secret six-figure crypto investment.

Masterminds at large

The recent attacks follow a similar pattern, South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh reported.

The most recent of these was reported on March 1, when a branch of the Suwon District Court ordered the arrest of a man surnamed Lim, aged in his 20s, on property damage charges.

Police say Lim broke into an apartment complex in the city of Hwaseong at night on February 22. Officers say Lim graffitied the front door of the victim’s house with red paint, scattered food waste on the entrance, and smeared human faeces on a nearby stairwell.

Lim is also accused of scattering dozens of defamatory leaflets about the victim around the building.

Prosecutors in Anyang last month reported an attack in the city of Gunpo that also involved graffitiing a front door and the distribution of similarly worded leaflets.

A third case of this nature was reported in December, when police arrested three men in Pyeongtaek for “spraying contaminants” on a citizen’s front door and “distributing defamatory leaflets.”

All three suspects told police that they received payments in crypto from an unknown person who’d contacted them via Telegram.

‘Private revenge organisation’

Police believe a self-styled “private revenge organisation” is now active on Korean-language Telegram channels.

Crypto-powered revenge attacks are not a uniquely South Korean phenomenon.

In late 2024, the Russian newspaper Izvestia published evidence that networks of middlemen use the anonymity provided by crypto and Telegram to preside over an empire of customised revenge attacks.

The newspaper explained middlemen charge prospective customers $1,500 for arson attacks that target vehicles and non-residential properties. One of the middlemen said he advertised his services on Telegram open chat rooms and darkweb portals.

He explained that he paid teenagers $750 to carry out the attacks. All transactions are allegedly carried out exclusively in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The National Tax Service began targeting crypto holders who fail to pay their taxes and traffic fines in recent years, seizing coins from people who default on their bills. They have also started publishing details of these crypto confiscations as evidence of their campaigns’ success.

But their latest promotional drive has backfired, as a photograph accompanying the February 26 press release displayed hand-written, uncensored seed phrases.

Seed phrases are combinations of 12 to 24 words used to back up and restore crypto wallets.

“The tax authorities have displayed a basic lack of understanding of how cryptocurrencies work,” Cho Jae-woo, director of the Hansung University’s Blockchain Research Institute, told South Korean newspaper Maeil Kyungjae.

The year has got off to a bad start for South Korean officials, with police losing $1.4 million worth of Bitcoin just days after prosecutors lost, then tracked down Bitcoin worth $20 million.

The stolen cryptocurrency in question was Pre-Retogeum, a small-cap altcoin with a market value of $13 million.

Hunt continues

A hacker immediately took advantage of the NTS’ blunder, the newspaper wrote, using the seed phrases to access and drain the wallets. Cho speculated the coins may have been drained by a “white hat hacker” — an individual who wanted their actions to expose security flaws before returning the crypto.

But in a statement released on March 1, the NTS said it was working with the police and “making every effort to recover the leaked cryptoassets,” although it believed the hacker “only stole the coins out of curiosity.”

It denied that the coins in question were worth $5 million, saying that the missing Pre-Retogeum haul was worth “far less than the reported figure.”

The NTS press release claimed the body had seized assets, including cash and crypto wallets, from 124 habitual tax evaders.

Officers explained special task force agents had performed on-site searches to hunt for crypto and other concealed assets.

In a statement on March 1, the NTS said it offered its “deepest apologies for causing concern to the public,” South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The tax body said it had behaved “carelessly” in “providing the original photo to the press without recognising that it contained sensitive information.”

“The government and [financial regulators] will inspect the status and management of digital assets held and managed by government and public institutions through confiscations from non-compliant taxpayers,” said the South Korean Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance Koo Yoon-chul.

Koo said Seoul would “quickly establish and implement measures to prevent a recurrence.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Traders who accurately bet on when Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, would exit office were met with a confusing answer to that question by Kalshi.

When reports of Khamenei’s death began rolling in on Saturday, those who bet on his ouster by February 28 assumed their money was as good as earned.

Kalshi, however, highlighted the fine print in that specific event contract.

Instead of the market settling on $1 and closing, Kalshi settled the market based on the last traded price before the death was officially confirmed. This means that any gains from positions established before his death came to little.

Early Sunday morning, Kalshi’s CEO apologised to users.

He reminded that Khamenei’s ouster could only be concluded if it was by means other than his death, according to the event contract’s rules.

“I know some of you disagree and prefer that we list these markets without a death carveout because it keeps the rules simple and because many traditional markets, like oil futures, can be proxy markets for war and death,” he wrote on Sunday morning.

“We believe that’s different from having a market directly settling on someone’s death, which is not allowed for US-regulated entities.”

He said that Kalshi never changed any of its rules, but admitted that how this market was presented to users should be updated, along with other markets that have a “death carveout.”

Mansour went ahead and announced that all fees will be reimbursed, and that if traders bought up shares in Khamenei’s ouster after his death, those traders will be reimbursed as well.

Prediction market spotlight

The joint attack on Iran by US and Israeli military forces has cast a unique spotlight on the fast-growing and controversial betting niche.

Volumes on popular prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, soared as bombs fell on Iran.

But so, too, has scrutiny of these platforms.

While Kalshi attempted to assuage and enlighten traders that the platform didn’t double as an assassination market, six brand-new users on Polymarket closed $1.2 million in trades betting on Khamenei leaving office.

Unlike Kalshi, Polymarket’s international site is not regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Polymarket doesn’t require customers to verify their identity upon signup, making it difficult to police the market for insider trading. Kalshi users, on the other hand, must undergo a know-your-customer onboarding process.

When Khameini was assassinated, the relevant market, which hosted more than $529 million in volume, closed as many users likely assumed.

These six users specifically wagered on the ouster of Iranian leaders on February 28 and placed bets just hours before the strike, according to analytics firm Bubblemaps.

“It’s insane this is legal,” Democrat Senator Chris Murphy said on Sunday.

“People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.”

A White House spokesperson denied that anyone close to US President Donald Trump was behind the trades, according to NPR.

Naturally, preventing government insiders from trading on national security intelligence is critical — it ensures that decisions are made with an eye toward public welfare, rather than officials’ bank accounts.

But there’s also a clear business case, according to Daniel Lo, the chief legal officer of market marketing firm Acheron Trading.

Without clear know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering standards for prediction markets, institutional buy-in will be limited.

“It’s one of the blockers,” Lo told DL News.

“They will only normalise when there are markets that place sufficient emphasis on proper KYC and AML. Otherwise, they’re not mandated to join in.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency said last week it would support private businesses’ efforts to conduct crypto AML-related pilots over the next three months.

“Globally, there is a consistent pattern emerging where the private sector increasingly executes AML operationally because it owns the data, technology, and transaction layers,” Aleksander Gora, the head of identity and digital trust at the security provider Teranode Group, told DL News.

“Governments will continue to define the regulatory framework, while execution shifts toward those closest to the transactions themselves.”

Japanese firms are gearing up for a major crypto pivot in Tokyo, which has indicated it wants to fully integrate crypto into the financial sector mainstream by 2028.

Heavy-hitters join pilots

The FSA says several leading domestic crypto exchanges, including GMO Coin and Bitbank, will take part in the pilots, along with the Japanese branch of blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Other heavyweight firms from the world of Japanese finance are also taking part, including the crypto arms of the retail giant Rakuten and the securities provider Nomura. The conglomerate Hitachi has also expressed an interest in the project.

Several other firms are also working on the pilots, but have asked the regulator to keep their identities a secret.

“These pilots will test the effectiveness and legal compliance credentials of a new framework for private businesses,” said the FSA. “[This will allow firms] to collaborate and share information regarding crypto-related anti-money laundering.”

The companies will work alongside the regulator’s own affiliates to explore AML compliance measures for transactions, including stablecoins and non-fungible tokens.

“Rather than building a massive state-run setup, governments can just set standards and require private entities to implement them,” Shiv Shankar, CEO of the decentralised blockchain marketplace Boundless and the former head of compliance at Coinbase Japan, told DL News.

“In places like Japan, where regulators are a bit more cautious but technologically forward-looking, this model fits quite well.”

Information sharing

One of the participants explained the FSA wants “multiple cryptocurrency exchanges and stablecoin businesses to verify the sophistication and efficiency of AML measures” by sharing information on “wallet addresses suspected of fraud across industries.”

This would allow crypto exchanges to share information with banks about suspicious transactions, and vice versa.

Inter-sector collaboration will become particularly important as Japan looks to deregulate crypto and blur the boundaries between it and the traditional financial sector.

Japanese banks and securities firms have stepped up efforts to launch yen-pegged stablecoins and offer their clients a range of crypto-related financial services in the year ahead.

Nomura is reportedly seeking a Japanese operating permit for its Europe-based crypto exchange this year, with banking rivals Daiwa Securities Group and SMBC Nikko Securities also reportedly mulling similar moves.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The central bank says it identified 7,087 financial pyramids, pseudo-brokers, and other fraudulent schemes last year. The bank says 80% of these pyramids operated online, with the majority using crypto and money mules.

“Most of the illegal projects [...] had no offices and interacted with potential clients via social media and chat apps, or by phone. They most often used cryptocurrency to raise funds,” bank officials wrote.

Crypto adoption is on the rise in Russia, as is crypto-related crime. The finance ministry says Russians spend $648 million on crypto every day, and is fast-tracking regulations that could soon see overseas exchanges blocked.

Blocking orders

Nearly 1,500 firms offered would-be clients bogus crypto investments last year, said the bank. And 84% of scammers used crypto to raise funds last year, up from 77% in 2024.

The bank said it had ordered the blocking of 21,500 web pages and social media posts associated with crypto scammers and other financial fraud operators.

Fraudsters “choose cryptocurrencies because tokens allow them to maintain anonymity and avoid punishment,” the central bank wrote.

The bank has previously vowed to bolster its monitoring of the crypto market and step up its public fight against crypto-powered fraud.

Officials said they would continue efforts to identify increasingly sophisticated financial pyramids and online schemes.

The central bank warned the public that only permit-holding firms have the right to publicly offer investments to Russian retail investors.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 3.8% over the past 24 hours, and is trading for $66,566.
• Ethereum is up by over 6% over the same period, trading at $1,990.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin, Ethereum ‘pumping hard’ after Iran strikes, but states brace for financial fallout— DL News
• Bitcoin price shows ‘absurd strength’ as ETF investors continue to hold the asset, analysts say — DL News
• Morgan Stanley files for bank charter to custody crypto — DL News
• Ethereum 3.0 — coming in 2029 — Milk Road
• You may not care about crypto, but you could be voting for it – USA Today

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

A filing submitted to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week shows that the New York-based bank filed for an entity called the Morgan Stanley Digital Trust. Bloomberg first reported the news.

The filing comes as a number of crypto-native companies file to get banking licences. Morgan Stanley, a titan in the world of traditional finance, has delved deeper into the crypto world in recent years.

Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to questions from DL News.

Morgan Stanley’s moves

Morgan Stanley has been making big crypto moves for years now. It started in 2021 offering wealthy clients exposure to Bitcoin via funds such as those by Galaxy Digital.

The bank’s CEO and Chairman Ted Pick said last year that the bank was working with regulators to see how they could offer crypto safely.

Wow, they really going all the way. Don't forget they also have spot btc and eth ETFs in registration too. Esp notable IMO given they have 16k advisors that manage $7T for 18 million people. It's like a massive network of Boomer money. https://t.co/BwNgFObkVk

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) February 27, 2026

Morgan Stanley also started working with stablecoin infrastructure firm Zerohash in 2025 to allow clients on its online brokerage platform to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.

And last month, the bank filed to debut its own Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

Top Wall Street firms have been pushing further into the world of crypto since Donald Trump, who received support and financial banking from digital asset entrepreneurs, became president.

What’s with the banking licence?

Top crypto firms like Coinbase and Trump-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial have also applied to the OCC for a banking licence.

The regulator has also given conditional approval to the likes of Crypto.com, Ripple, Circle, BitGo and others.

Such a licence would allow crypto firms like exchanges to custody assets and move money for customers in the way a traditional bank would.

Morgan Stanley’s move shows that Wall Street giants are also keen on being able to custody digital assets.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Police discovered the missing Bitcoin earlier this year after another, unrelated case saw prosecutors in Gwangju temporarily lose control of 320 Bitcoin, currently worth over $20 million.

The National Police Agency followed up with an audit, asking all police stations in the country to check on the status of confiscated crypto.

That’s when Gangnam Police Station, one of the most affluent parts of the South Korean capital, discovered 22 Bitcoin, seized in 2022, were missing.

The problem, per a report from South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo, was that the police were never really in control of the Bitcoin in the first place.

Voluntary surrender

Quoting anonymous police sources and other people familiar with the matter, the newspaper explained the incident has its roots in a police probe into the suspected hack of an unnamed crypto exchange in November 2021.

While examining the exchange’s transaction records, Gangnam Police Station officers reportedly discovered that a single account holder had sold a large quantity of unnamed altcoins for Bitcoin, and then attempted to move the tokens to an overseas exchange.

The hacked exchange moved to block these transactions. Its efforts were at least partially successful, leaving 22 Bitcoin in the account.

The account’s owner reportedly told the police they had nothing to do with these transactions, and that the Bitcoin “was not theirs.”

This individual then “voluntarily surrendered” the coins to the police, Dong-A Ilbo reported.

The was then supposed to store the Bitcoin in a police-controlled cold wallet, an offline hard drive designed to store crypto. That’s what the then-recently issued National Police Agency guidelines said they should do.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, officers reportedly agreed to keep the Bitcoin in a cold wallet owned by a company that had requested to investigate the hacking incident.

The newspaper’s sources said the officers never even learned the wallet’s seed phrases, the combinations of 12 to 24 words that can back up and restore crypto wallets.

An employee of the aforementioned company reportedly told the newspaper the company handed the seed phrases over to a hacker surnamed Jeong in May 2022 after experiencing financial difficulties.

Soon after, the 22 Bitcoin disappeared from the cold wallet, which was still being held in a sealed vault at Gangnam Police Station.

Missing pieces

How exactly Jeong or their associates were supposedly able to access a police vault remains unclear.

However, police have arrested two men, aged in their 40s, in connection with the incident.

Dong-a Ilbo noted that a former Gangnam Police Station investigator, who was in charge of the crypto exchange hacking investigation at the time, was jailed in August for 18 months for bribery.

A court in Seoul heard that a company connected with the probe had offered money to the investigation “in exchange for ensuring the investigation proceeded in their favour.”

Police have refused to publicly confirm or deny the veracity of the report.

“The specific circumstances of this incident, including the manner by which the Bitcoin was leaked externally, are currently under investigation,” a police official told South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The Supreme People’s Court, the country’s highest judicial body, said it wants to fight insider trading and market manipulation.

“We must conduct research and strengthen our responses to new types of financial crime, in sectors such as supply chain finance, internet finance, and cryptocurrencies,” said Wang Chuang, director of the court’s Second Civil Division.

The Supreme Court’s comments come just weeks after the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported Chinese-language money laundering networks are responsible for processing 20% of illicit crypto funds over the past five years.

Chinese-speaking money launderers processed over $16 billion in 2025, or around $44 million per day, the firm said.

Courts’ new powers

The Chinese judiciary wants to create a series of comprehensive laws to help prosecutors and courts issue stricter punishments for crypto and financial crimes, Ma Hongwei, a senior partner at Beijing Dacheng Law Firm, told Chinese media outlet Shanghai Securities News.

This will mean judges will no longer have to rely chiefly on legal precedent in crypto- and price manipulation-related cases, Ma said.

Chinese courts handled more than 2.7 million financial cases last year, including many crypto-related cases, Wang said. That represents a rise of 2% from 2024.

Wang said the judiciary must move fast to formulate “a response to new financial cases such as those involving cryptocurrencies.”

The Supreme Court said it was aware of the rise of crypto-related crime and is “aiming to unify judicial standards” on the matter.

The court called crypto “a new financial field that needs to be studied” as it formulates new regulatory and judicial responses.

“The financial sector is the backbone of the national economy and a key component of China’s core competitiveness,” said Wang. “We must support the development of a sound financial system.”

Beijing has reiterated its zero-tolerance stance on crypto in recent months. In December, the central People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, said it was stepping up efforts to combat crypto “speculation and trading.”

The bank said it would continue to uphold bans on crypto trading and “crack down on illegal financial activities related to virtual currencies, and protect the safety of the public.”

Earlier this month, the bank and China’s securities regulators banned most forms of yuan-pegged stablecoins and real-world asset-related projects.

Crypto scams rising

Meanwhile, reports of crypto-related crime continue to appear in the Chinese press with increasing frequency.

Police in Macau say a woman in the special administrative region fell victim to a sophisticated crypto scam that saw her lose $163,000.

Officers said an online acquaintance recommended she download a crypto trading app that offered users a range of bonuses, including monthly cash payouts.

At first, she thought the app was helping her make money, and successfully withdrew over $70 from the platform, reported Macau-based media outlet TDM.

However, when she attempted to withdraw more funds from the platform, she received a message instructing her to pay a hefty tax bill before she could make further withdrawals.

She filed a report with the police, who identified the platform as fraudulent.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The sandbox, an ongoing project for the regulator since last year, will focus on key uses under real-world conditions, including crypto trading and payments.

Alongside Revolut, Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, and VVTX will participate.

Monee is a digital lending platform also involved in the Bank of England’s digital securities sandbox. ReStabilise is a white-label stablecoin service designed to help more traditional outfits issue their own stablecoins. VVTX is a layer-1 blockchain underpinning the UK’s largest sterling stablecoin, tGBP.

“We are supporting UK stablecoin issuers to ensure they can be trusted for payments, settlement and trading,” Matthew Long, the FCA’s director of payments and digital assets, said in a statement.

“It will benefit consumers and financial transactions and help to deliver the FCA’s strategy and the Government’s National Payments Vision.”

UK leans in

The collective value of sterling-based stablecoins is worth just under $5 million, according to DefiLlama data.

By comparison, stablecoins denominated in the US dollar are worth over $307 billion.

The British government, however, is keen to close that gap.

In December, the FCA announced that stablecoins used for payments would be a key priority for the new year.

The move is part of a wider push for growth from the left-leaning Labour government.

“We will continue to embrace a bolder risk appetite to support growth, while maintaining our commitment to protect consumers and ensure market integrity,” Nikhil Rathi, the FCA’s chief executive, wrote in a note to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England is finalising rules for its supervisory regime for stablecoins.

Alpha Bank said that cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies could offer more efficient payment solutions than traditional payment rails.

Avoiding pitfalls

Despite the vast lead that dollar-backed stablecoins, such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, have over their British counterparts, some have argued that the tactical approach to stablecoins means avoiding the pitfalls that have slowed US policymakers.

Though landmark stablecoin legislation in the US passed quickly last summer, regulators, officials, and legislators are still hammering out several key details.

The biggest sticking point is whether the yield generated by the assets backing stablecoins should be passed on to holders.

With sterling stablecoins still embryonic, industry insiders hope this gridlock can be avoided.

“Stablecoins there have scaled quickly, but under fragmented oversight and unclear accountability,” Javed Khattak, co-founder and CEO of London-based digital identity provider Cheqd, told DL News.

“UK regulators and industry are likely keen to avoid repeating that pattern by setting clear expectations early, while the market is still small enough to shape responsibly.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The law, approved by the Dutch House of Representatives on February 12, would require Dutch nationals to pay a 36% tax on crypto value increases, even if they haven’t sold any.

“I don’t think the law can pass as it is,” Heinen told Dutch television news service RTL Nieuws. “Something simply went wrong here, and the current law needs to be amended.”

The policy, dubbed the Actual Return in Box 3 Act, has been widely criticised from both the crypto industry and more broadly.

The biggest issue is that under the new law, if an asset’s value rises one year but crashes the next, taxpayers could owe hefty tax bills even if they lost money on their investments.

‘The dumbest thing’

The legislative volte-face comes as governments across the world grapple with crypto regulation as the asset class gains mainstream recognition.

Most countries have implemented laws that tax cryptocurrency gains similarly to other investments, barring a few so-called crypto tax havens, such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the Cayman Islands, among others.

Taxing unrealised gains on investments is rare, and unprecedented at the scale proposed by Dutch lawmakers. Critics say doing so would punish wealth-building, disrupt investors’ ability to compound their returns, and risk driving away entrepreneurs and capital.

“This is the dumbest thing any government on planet Earth is pursuing right now. And that’s saying something,” Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke said in a February 13 X post.

The law still needs to pass through the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate, and won’t take effect until January 1, 2028, giving Heinen plenty of time to make amendments.

It’s not clear if the law needs to be completely reworked or only amended in parts, however.

The finance minister said he has already spoken with his state secretary about it.

“We also said together: let’s go back to the drawing board, start a discussion with the House of Representatives and the Senate, and see how we can amend the law,” he said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Binance, which recorded more than $9.9 billion in volume today, is at the centre of a new investigation by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Chaired by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee is urging the company to provide key records regarding alleged connections between the exchange and terrorist organisations working on behalf of Iran.

“I therefore demand that you provide the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations records and information related to Binance’s role in Iranian money laundering and its repeated failure to prevent illicit use by sanctioned entities, terrorist organisations, and other criminal actors,” Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a member of the Democratic Party, wrote on Tuesday.

Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust

The probe comes hot on the heels of explosive reports that allege Binance ignored internal warnings that sanctioned entities used the platform to launder nearly $2 billion in funds.

Specifically, the probe highlights company partners, Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust, which allegedly operated as intermediaries on behalf of Iranian government entities.

‘While we cannot comment on specific users or disclose details that could compromise ongoing inquiries, we can clarify the process followed and correct clear inaccuracies.‘

Binance spokesperson.

Chairman Paul’s inquiry relies on reporting from Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, which cite anonymous sources and internal documents.

These reports paint a picture of a company that continues to struggle to fend off sanctioned entities on its platform, despite having been punished for similar offences in the past.

In 2023, Binance and its then-CEO, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing safeguards on the exchange.

The company paid a record $4.3 billion fine in 2023 and agreed to oversight from two independent monitors to review its compliance practices. Zhao agreed to step down as CEO and spent four months in prison in 2024.

But from March 2024 to August 2025, Binance’s compliance team revealed that $1.7 billion had flowed through the crypto exchange to fund Iran-backed groups, such as Yemen’s Houthi militants, according to reports.

After revealing these flows, the compliance team was reportedly fired.

“Binance is a repeat offender,” Blumenthal wrote. “It has long been aware that the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies use its cryptocurrency platform as a convenient and reliable means to bypass international sanctions, anti-money laundering controls, and other banking restrictions.”

The probe also serves as another attack line for the Democrats, who have used Donald Trump’s crypto links to attack the president.

Trump pardoned Zhao in October. Blumenthal and others have linked the pardon with Binance’s business dealings with the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial, using it to “evade accountability and influence the White House.”

Binance and Zhao have denied that the pardon was linked to the firm’s partnership with the Trump family’s venture.

Zhao appeared at the Trump family’s World Liberty Forum in February.

Binance bounces back

Binance has staunchly denied claims of misconduct.

“Recent reporting on Binance’s sanctions compliance relies on incomplete and mischaracterised accounts that do not reflect all of the facts and the full investigative record,” the company said on February 22.

“While we cannot comment on specific users or disclose details that could compromise ongoing inquiries, we can clarify the process followed and correct clear inaccuracies.”

Withers Bergman LLP, a law firm representing Binance, characterised the WSJ’s coverage as “false, seriously misleading to your readers, and defamatory of our client,” on February 24.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The approval comes after the US’ largest banking lobby this month urged the OCC to slow its review of crypto companies’ charter applications.

“ABA encourages OCC to ensure that a national bank charter does not become a vehicle leveraged by entities to avoid, or attempting to avoid, registration with and scrutiny by the SEC, CFTC, or any other federal regulator,” the American Bankers Association said, adding that it wanted the body to “to increase transparency throughout the chartering process.”

It’s the latest sign that banks are increasingly concerned by crypto firms’ attempt to move in on their turf. Coinbase, for example, has not been shy about proclaiming itself as a future “everything app” for Americans’ financial lives.

The banking lobby and crypto executives have locked horns over a market structure bill that would give digital asset firms greater access to traditional markets.

Stablecoins and the rewards they pay customers are a particular sticking point: The banks have urged lawmakers to use the market structure bill as an opportunity to close a loophole in last year’s stablecoin-focused bill, the Genius Act.

Here are the other crypto companies that have received conditional approval from the OCC.

Crypto.com

Crypto.com announced Monday that it had received conditional approval after it applied back in October. The approval will allow the Singapore-based crypto exchange to manage and hold client assets and handle trade settlement within a federally regulated structure.

“This milestone brings us a major step closer to meeting leading institutions’ needs for a one-stop-shop qualified custodian under a gold standard of federal oversight,” Crypto.com’s co-founder and CEO, Kris Marszalek, said in a statement.

We are proud to announce that https://t.co/vCNztATkNg has received conditional approval from @USOCC for its national trust bank charter.

Read more here: https://t.co/gcGdaUG0Li pic.twitter.com/eMq434fapX

— Crypto.com (@cryptocom) February 23, 2026

Crypto.com, unlike other applicants, doesn’t have a stablecoin — but it does have a native token: CRO.

Ripple

Ripple in December received conditional approval for the Ripple National Trust Bank, allowing it to manage and hold assets on behalf of customers but not take cash deposits or make loans.

The firm, whose founders created XRP, applied in July, shortly after the president signed the Genius Act to regulate stablecoins. The fintech company debuted its RLUSD stablecoin in 2024.

Circle

Stablecoin issuer Circle also received approval from the OCC in December. The publicly traded crypto heavyweight is best known for its USDC stablecoin — the fourth most-traded cryptocurrency in the space.

With a charter, the fintech won’t have to rely on a third party to look after the reserves that back its stablecoin and will be better able to serve institutional clients by offering custody and payments infrastructure.

Paxos

The OCC gave Paxos conditional approval in December. The company said approval would allow others to build digital asset products using Paxos’s infrastructure.

New York-based Paxos issues PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin, and has provided blockchain solutions to the likes of Mastercard and Mercado Libre.

BitGo

The OCC gave crypto custodian BitGo conditional approval in December, giving it “bank-level oversight with the security, compliance, and scalability that define BitGo’s infrastructure.”

Last week, BitGo announced with New Frontier Labs that it would issue FYUSD, a stablecoin for institutions in Asia.

Fidelity Digital Assets

The digital assets subsidiary of Wall Street giant Fidelity received approval from the OCC in December.

Fidelity this month debuted its Ethereum-based stablecoin, FIDD, for retail and institutional investors. The firm said that its product would be particularly useful for those wanting to transact within the decentralised finance ecosystem.

Bridge

Stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, owned by Stripe, received the OCC’s conditional approval earlier this month.

The firm said in an announcement that the approval will allow crypto companies to build stablecoin products within a clear federal framework. Bridge does not have a proprietary stablecoin but allows other companies to issue the tokens.

Who could be next?

Two other major crypto firms are hoping to get approval: America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, and Trump-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial.

The banking lobby in December urged the OCC to reject Coinbase’s application for a national trust bank charter on the grounds that the exchange has “demonstrably flawed risk and control functions” and operates under governance that “prevents independent oversight.”

World Liberty Financial, which debuted its USD1 stablecoin in 2025, told DL News that it applied with the hope that both institutions and retail will use its token over others for everyday payments.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Putin signed a new law that will amend the country’s Criminal Code, and recognise cryptocurrencies as a form of intangible property, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

The law codifies existing protocols for seizing digital assets, Deputy Justice Minister Elena Ardabyeva told the newspaper. But instead of relying on legal precedent for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the confiscation of various altcoins, these protocols are now enshrined in Russian law.

The law also provides legal avenues for cooperation with foreign crypto exchanges, Ardabyeva said.

The development comes as Russia tries to bring order to its largely unregulated crypto sector.

Experts say the Kremlin could even begin to block citizens’ access to overseas crypto exchanges this year, amid government claims that citizens spend a collective $650 million a day on crypto trades.

Courts’ new powers

The law stipulates that police or prosecutors’ requests to confiscate crypto must include details on the type and quantity of the token in question, as well as wallet addresses.

The law also allows bailiffs to transfer crypto to government-controlled wallets.

The State Duma is working on a raft of new crypto laws this year. Moscow wants to force traders to use domestic platforms or crypto exchanges that have a physical presence in Russia.

The Kremlin is also set to change the way it taxes and polices Bitcoin miners.

And the Russian legal system is struggling to keep up. Crypto-related crime is “becoming one of the key challenges now facing the judiciary,” Olga Tisen, rector of the V.M. Lebedev Russian State University of Justice, told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on February 24.

“Currently, Russia has virtually no systematic programs to train lawyers to work with digital assets and cryptocurrencies in civil and criminal cases,” Tisen explained.

Tisen said the university has responded by creating the nation’s first master’s program in cryptocurrency law.

Russia, North Korea, and Iran are collectively responsible for conducting $100 billion worth of sanctions-evading trade transactions, the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis claimed in January.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The business partner escaped death, but was in a medically induced coma for three days after collapsing in a busy Seoul cafe, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

The accused, aged 39, will stand trial for attempted murder and violations of the South Korean Pesticide Control Act, prosecutors said.

The incident comes amid a rise in crypto-related crime in South Korea.

In January, prosecutors accused a Seoul-based plastic surgery manager of laundering millions of dollars’ worth of Chinese customers’ Alipay and WeChat Pay payments.

Crypto investment failed

The unnamed duo began working together in 2022, running Bitcoin investment programmes and co-launching a company.

However, the partners’ relationship reportedly deteriorated after the accused made a further secret crypto investment of $810,000.

This investment reportedly failed, and the duo clashed after the business partner discovered that the accused had used company funds to make it.

Despite this clash, the two men reportedly continued to work together. But prosecutors say the accused resented his partner’s rebukes and planned a murder to take sole control of the company and its funds.

Prosecutors, South Korean media outlet Asia Kyungjae reported, say the accused bought a lethal dose of the illegal pesticide methomyl from an online vendor based in China.

Mesomyl is colourless and odourless, but is highly toxic. Doses of between 0.5 and 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight can be lethal for humans. Ingestion of methomyl at even relatively modest doses can cause symptoms such as headache, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, low blood pressure, and breathing problems.

South Korean lawmakers ordered a ban on domestic methomyl manufacturing and sales in 2012. They followed up with a blanket ban on its distribution and use on South Korean territory in 2015.

Poisonous pesticide

Prosecutors said that the accused bought an unspecified amount of the pesticide on October 28 for around $200, with the product illegally smuggled into the country via Incheon International Airport in a cargo delivery from China 10 days later.

Two weeks later, when the duo had arranged to meet at a cafe near a lake in Seoul’s Songpa District, the accused allegedly arrived early and sent a text message to his business partner, asking him what he wanted to drink.

The business partner reportedly asked for an iced latte. After buying the drink, the accused reportedly added the pesticide to the beverage and gave it to his business partner when the latter arrived.

The business partner collapsed shortly after drinking the latte and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Doctors put the business partner into an induced coma, from which he only emerged three days later.

“I was about to get married, and my future wife was in the early stages of her pregnancy,” the accused business partner told Asia Kyungjae. “My family was almost completely destroyed. I have since made a partial recovery, but I still need medical treatment.”

The trial is set to begin on March 10 at a branch of the Seoul Eastern District Court.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

On Tuesday, the administrator overseeing Terraform Labs’ winding down filed a lawsuit against the high-powered, high-frequency trading firm Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and two employees named Michael Huang and Bryce Pratt.

Todd Snyder, the administrator overseeing the disgraced crypto firm’s liquidation, alleged that Jane Street used material nonpublic information to profit from Terraform’s collapse.

The heavily redacted lawsuit claims that the trading firm was able to profit from “trades that would have been impossible without inside information to which it had unique access.”

Jane Street, which earned more than $24 billion in the last quarter of 2025, told the Wall Street Journal the complaint was “desperate” and said it would defend itself “vigorously against these baseless, opportunistic claims.”

Terrform Labs went bankrupt in 2024 after its algorithmic stablecoin, called UST, lost its peg to the dollar and collapsed two years prior.

The depegging event set off a chain reaction that swept up individual investors in the project and culminated in the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, along with other crypto firms with exposure to UST and its native cryptocurrency, LUNA.

In total, Terraform Labs and its cocksure founder, Do Kwon, cost investors some $40 billion in losses.

Kwon now serves a 15-year prison sentence for fraud.

Who is Bryce Pratt?

Pratt sits at the centre of the administrator’s allegation. He worked as an intern for Terraform Labs before joining Jane Street as a full-time employee in September 2021.

Given his work at Terraform, the complaint alleges that Pratt provided backchannel communication between the two firms.

The lawsuit alleges that Jane Street used this backchannel to exploit material non-public information about Terraform.

“Using that insider information, Jane Street sold off its [REDACTED] UST at the opportune moment — on May 7, 2022 — to maximise its own profits and avoid substantial losses,” the suit reads.

The firm’s sale came hours before the stablecoin had depegged and sent the Terraform ecosystem into a “death spiral.”

“This case is about settling accounts,” the lawsuit concludes. “It is about ensuring some measure of accountability in the wake of Terraform’s collapse.“

In December, Snyder also filed a lawsuit against the Chicago-based firm Jump Trading, alleging the company played an outsized role in the collapse of Terra.

He accused Jump, several of its subsidiaries, and two of its executives of market manipulation, defrauding investors, self-dealing and more.

That lawsuit, which seeks $4 billion in damages, is ongoing.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Stablecoins are getting another facelift — or, rather, haircut.

Late last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced that broker-dealers needn’t treat dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies with the same risk profile as before.

Instead, Commissioner Hester Peirce clarified that the SEC would not object if a broker-dealer applied a 2% haircut to stablecoins.

It’s a key regulatory change that will likely make stablecoins far more attractive for traditional financial firms.

“This move will open the floodgates for embedding stablecoins in institutional finance,” JP Richardson, the CEO of the NYSE-listed crypto wallet provider Exodus, said.

What‘s in a haircut?

To make sense of this critical change, let’s define our terms.

Broker-dealers play two roles in financial markets.

They help match investors with purchases and charge a commission for that activity. As dealers, they may hold a large inventory of a specific stock, bond, commodity, or stablecoin and sell it directly to investors. They make money by selling those assets back to investors for more than they purchased them.

When handling financial assets, be it cryptocurrencies, cash or gold, regulators assign risk to each asset. Depending on the level of risk, the SEC encourages broker-dealers to maintain a liquidity cushion commensurate with the level of risk.

This means that the riskier an asset is perceived to be, the larger the liquidity cushion, or haircut, that is required.

Previously, the SEC didn’t provide any guidance on the riskiness of stablecoins, so many conservative broker-dealers simply took a 100% haircut on the asset if they decided to operate in this sector.

In practical terms, a 100% haircut is like saying these assets are going to go to zero, and to keep your customers safe, you’re going to need to assume they are already worth zero.

If a broker-dealer held $100 million in Circle’s USDC stablecoin as part of its inventory to sell or use for other investments, the SEC demanded that the broker-dealer also hold an equivalent $100 million in cash in case USDC lost its peg to the dollar, there was a bank run, or any other kind of super bearish event.

It also means that those broker-dealers needed to hold an equivalent amount of that asset in cash or treasuries, making holding assets with this level of insurance policy hugely expensive for firms.

Now, that’s no longer the case.

“In my view, a 100% haircut would be unnecessarily punitive given the underlying reserve assets that back payment stablecoins,” Peirce said.

“A haircut of 2% aligns with the haircut imposed on registered investment companies that are money market funds, which hold similar instruments as payment stablecoin issuers.”

Pressure is on

That same broker-dealer now only needs to hold 2% of that $100 million in USDC, or $2 million, to meet the SEC’s new standards.

From a balance-sheet-efficiency perspective, this is great news for these kinds of firms.

Suddenly, they have another $98 million on their balance sheet to keep growing their business in other ways.

Exodus’ Richardson wagers that this will also encourage firms to start building stablecoin rails for their businesses.

“This puts pressure on every major broker-dealer to build stablecoin infrastructure or fall behind the ones who do,” he said.

“Because their competitors now can, and there’s no longer a capital penalty that makes it uneconomical.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The industry is bracing for an imminent restructuring at the hands of lawmakers, South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo reported. The new regulations will be strict and mirror those used in the traditional financial sector, unnamed lawmakers and industry officials said.

“The incident has spread the belief that the crypto market should be viewed not simply as an investment platform, but as an integral part of South Korea’s financial infrastructure,” an unnamed industry insider told the newspaper.

The blunder, which made headlines around the world on February 6, was ill-timed for both Bithumb and other domestic crypto exchanges.

Bithumb is hoping to go public in the US this year, becoming the first South Korean exchange to do so. The incident also came weeks after a $36 million hack at Upbit, Bithumb’s closest domestic rival.

Taskforce to act

The ruling Democratic Party’s Digital Asset Taskforce, a crypto policymaking body, will speak to advisory committee members ahead of a meeting on February 24, anonymous sources told Joongang Ilbo.

Regulators have taken a dim view of the gaffe, which saw a Bithumb official mistakenly issue Bitcoin to 249 customers who took part in a lucky draw event.

The official had intended to send a total of around $423 in Korean won to the customers, but accidentally selected Bitcoin as the unit type.

Bithumb has since recovered most of the lost Bitcoin, but the Financial Supervisory Service recently extended its formal investigation into Bithumb until the end of February.

Lawmakers will likely bundle their new regulations for exchanges into a package of bills that will also include stablecoin issuance rules.

The taskforce’s chair Lee Jung-moon said he and the government are preparing separate proposals, which will both be assessed before the end of the month

The Democratic Party has taken a more business-friendly approach to crypto policy, but regulators want tougher measures.

Liability regulations

Regulators say crypto exchanges should be held liable for computer-related faults as part of new liability rules.

They also think that exchange operators should hold more financial assets in reserve to help them pay the costs of hacks or giveaway mistakes.

Other financial institution-level IT control regulations favoured by the FSS include the use of multi-signature transfers and the introduction of cooling-off periods for large transfers.

In banking, multi-signature transfers require multiple authorised parties to sign off on a transaction before it is processed. This helps boost security by ensuring the transaction has no single point of failure.

Financial institutions use cooling-off periods as temporary windows that allow customers to cancel financial actions, such as loans or credit agreements, without suffering a penalty. Governments often mandate these to safeguard against impulse buying.

The Bithumb incident may force the Democratic Party’s hand. Its policy committee chair Han Jeong-ae has expressed her intention to expedite legislation.

Han said she supports regulators’ call to restructure exchanges to ensure they reach the “same level” as financial companies.

“New legislation should focus on more stringent licensing, improving internal control systems, and substantially strengthening the supervisory role of the financial authorities,” Lee Jeong-su, a professor at Seoul National University’s Law School, told Joongang Ilbo.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

If successful, House Bill 2080 will establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve fund in the Missouri state treasury, authorising the state to accept gifts, donations, and bequests of Bitcoin from Missouri residents or governmental entities, and potentially invest in cryptocurrency using state funds.

Ben Keathley, a Republican representative for Missouri, introduced the bill’s predecessor in February 2025.

Although it received a public hearing in March, it did not secure a committee vote and ultimately died when the session ended in May — a common fate for bills that lack sufficient support, momentum, or priority among committee members.

The new version contains key differences.

This time, the bill has been assigned to the House Commerce Committee instead of a special committee focused on intergovernmental affairs, potentially improving its chances of advancement.

Language in the bill has also been modified to place greater emphasis on voluntary donations being the primary funding mechanism, prohibit transactions with foreign entities or those involved in illegal activities, and define key terms like “Bitcoin,” “cold storage,” and “custody” more comprehensively.

More Bitcoin reserves

Since US President Donald Trump entered office in January last year, there have been several attempts to legitimise Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by establishing them as reserve assets.

In March, Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a US digital asset stockpile composed of crypto already seized by US law enforcement.

Several US states have attempted to follow Trump’s lead and establish their own Bitcoin reserves.

In May, New Hampshire became the first state to do so, authorising its state treasurer to allocate up to 10% of state funds into digital assets or precious metals with a market value of over $500 billion.

Since then, several other states, including Arizona and Texas, have also established similar reserves.

Assets placed in the proposed Missouri Bitcoin reserve would be subject to a mandatory five-year holding period, during which they cannot be sold, transferred, or converted.

The treasurer would be authorised to contract with US-based crypto firms to assist with security and administration of the reserve, and would be required to publish a biennial public report detailing the fund’s holdings and activity.

Whether the bill will fare better this time around compared to last year remains to be seen.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

Officers say 40 cases of organised kidnapping, committed between July 2023 and the end of 2025, have been linked to crypto-related motives, police wrote in a confidential memo, French media outlet Franceinfo reported.

More than half of the cases “specifically targeted cryptocurrency holders or people working in the crypto sector,” officers said.

French crypto-related kidnapping attacks have only accelerated in early 2026. Earlier this month, Binance’s French CEO was the subject of a failed attack in Val-de-Marne. And in January, a gang of young attackers in Isère tortured a 74-year-old man, wrongly assuming that his son was a crypto millionaire.

Intermediaries recruit criminals

The memo was authored by the Organised Crime Information, Intelligence and Strategic Analysis Service of the French Judicial Police, also known as SIRASCO.

People who issue kidnapping orders usually coordinate attacks from outside France, SIRASCO wrote in the memo.

These masterminds work “directly” with France-based intermediaries, who act as “recruiters,” police said.

These intermediaries typically hire people under 30 to carry out the attacks, said SIRASCO.

These individuals tend to have prior criminal records for crimes involving theft, violence, or drug trafficking.

The recruiters task some of these individuals with intimidating potential victims online. And the remainder are told to carry out kidnappings or hold victims captive.

SIRASCO says the victims also share a very similar profile: Most are males aged between 20 and 35 who are actively involved in the crypto world. They are typically investors, entrepreneurs, and social media influencers.

Police profilers say crime masterminds often learn of the victims’ crypto wealth through social media channels.

Many of the victims “freely flaunt” their luxurious lifestyles and crypto-derived wealth on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, SIRASCO said.

Watching videos and reels helps kidnappers learn more about potential victims’ daily habits, as well as those of their loved ones, who are also frequently targeted.

With crypto-related violence rising fast around the world, security experts have told DL News crypto owners should learn to fight and said firms should develop “kidnapping and ransom” policies.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Officials in the city of Gwangju sparked outrage in January when they admitted they had lost control of the 320 confiscated Bitcoin they had been holding in five USB-powered cold wallets in a sealed vault. The furore escalated when police in Seoul admitted losing $2 million worth of Bitcoin in similar circumstances.

“We plan to conduct a thorough investigation to clearly explain the full details of the case,” a Gwangju prosecution official said, South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported.

Crypto-related crime is on the rise in South Korea and elsewhere in the world.

A security expert this month warned crypto owners they should learn how to fight as crypto-hungry criminals become ever more violent in their efforts to steal other people’s tokens.

Lost and found

The Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office said it had first discovered the Bitcoin was missing on January 16.

Officials say prosecution staffers attempted to use an online wallet checking tool during an August 2025 audit. This tool, however, turned out to be a phishing platform that allowed its operators to automatically drain all five wallets of their contents.

Prosecutors said they “quickly identified” the phishing website’s crypto wallet. They then asked all domestic and major international exchanges to block all transactions made using this wallet.

They also launched a probe into the suspected operator of the phishing site and various related companies.

Prosecutors confiscated the cold wallets during a November 2021 investigation into the suspected operator of an illegal online gambling site.

The wallets were found in the possession of the suspect’s daughter, who is also facing criminal charges.

The trials of these two suspects are still ongoing in Gwangju. Following the revelations, prosecution and police offices around the country were ordered to audit cold wallets to ensure no more confiscated crypto had gone missing.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.1% over the past 24 hours, and is trading at $68,168.
• Ethereum is also up 0.1% over the past day, and is currently priced at $1,979.

What we’re reading

• OpenAI KYC provider accused of sharing users’ crypto addresses with federal agencies — DL News
• Bitcoin dev says we’re ‘not prepared’ for quantum future where major players are ‘spooks’ — DL News
• Crypto and fintech firms seek shortcut to banking: buy one — Wall Street Journal
• Russia to begin ‘mass blocking’ of major crypto exchanges in summer, warns expert – DL News
• Elon’s next move: crypto trading — Milk Road

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

When the billionaire Duke brothers are shown discussing an upcoming crop report, they confirm that their operative, Clarence Beeks, is already working to gather the report before its public release, providing audiences with a clear understanding of a specific type of financial fraud.

Insider trading.

So clear that in 2010, the then-Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chief, Gary Gensler, cited the film when appending new regulations for commodities markets.

“The Duke brothers intended to profit from trades in frozen concentrated orange juice futures contracts using an illicitly obtained and not yet public Department of Agriculture orange crop report,” Gensler told Congress.

“To protect our markets, we have recommended what we call the ‘Eddie Murphy‘ rule to ban insider trading using nonpublic information misappropriated from a government source.”

The Duke brothers’ scheme was clear. Betting on the future should be on an even playing field.

Now, the meteoric rise of prediction markets is forcing a messy rethink of what it actually means to have an inside edge.

“The historical excitement about prediction markets is that they’re going to elicit information,” Andrew Verstein, the co-director of the business law program at the University of California, Los Angeles, told DL News. “It can be that a person is a diligent researcher, or they’ve got their own satellite that looks at crops and makes predictions legally.”

“Or it can be that they have a friend at the Agriculture Department who tells them what’s going to happen with frozen orange juice concentrated futures. That’s not something that data is going to help us see the difference between.”

‘Most corrupt corner of Washington’

Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket exploded onto the scene in the run-up to the 2024 US Presidential election.

Since then, volumes on both platforms have nearly quintupled, reaching over $25 billion in volume in January, according to data collated by data dashboards on Dune.

There are wagers for everything. Some $30 million is riding on whether Jesus Christ will return by 2027. Bettors have placed another $11 million on the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s next meeting. The largest category in prediction markets is sporting events.

“The fact that one doesn’t have clarity about the underlying governance is super problematic.”

Yesha Yadav, associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School

At the same time, digital sleuths are highlighting unusual, ultra-lucky traders in specific markets on these platforms.

Just hours before US special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a brand-new Polymarket account bet more than $30,000 on his ouster.

The account’s total payout exceeded $436,000, sparking major concern that they had intimate knowledge of the government’s classified military operation.

“The most corrupt corner of Washington, D.C. may well be the intersection of prediction markets and the federal government — where insider trading and self-dealing are no longer imagined risks but demonstrated dangers,” said New York Representative Ritchie Torres.

Torres and a host of Democrats have all co-sponsored the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026. The bill prohibits elected officials from buying, selling or exchanging prediction market contracts tied to the administration’s policies.

Verstein shares a similar view.

“Government officials have a lot of power,” he said. “They have missiles and police. You don’t want them to be able to deploy that power in order to make their bets pay off.”

While that bill advances, another coalition of prediction market platforms, including Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood, argues that there is already a ban on precisely this kind of trading.

That’s because prediction markets are regulated by the CFTC, which has, thanks to the Murphy Rule, banned insider trading since 2010.

To date, however, there has been no major insider trading arrest in the US involving prediction markets.

Part of that, some academics argue, boils down to one question.

How is insider trading defined exactly, and when can anyone know when it has actually occurred?

Insider information

Trading on insider information involves using wit and expertise to try to predict an outcome.

Insider trading, however, is a legal term for describing fraud by which you use material nonpublic information — such as a secret USDA crop report — for profit.

Yesha Yadav, a professor of law and associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School, says the distinction between legally trading on insider information and illegal insider trading is becoming increasingly blurred.

“The challenge of prediction markets that we’re facing is that we don’t know when trading on insider information actually becomes insider trading,” Yadav told DL News. “The clarity of legal rules, duties, and understanding the scope of how broadly or narrowly the law reaches in this context is really unclear.”

It’s made even more unclear due to the breadth of markets available on prediction markets.

The Bad Bunny problem

Ahead of the Super Bowl in February, users bet roughly $113 million on what the Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny would play as the opening song for this year’s halftime show.

When asked if it would be considered insider trading if one of Bad Bunny’s dancers bet in this market, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour hesitated.

“If that’s the position that people are taking, which is essentially, ‘this is nonmaterial, nonpublic information,’” Mansour said, “and that it’s ok to talk about which song is going to be played, it’s ok to divulge certain information beforehand, then it’s totally fair game.”

In sum, it depends.

There’s also a case for insider trading on these markets — at least to an extent.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggest that insider trading should be encouraged because it can enhance the quality of the information markets provide.

A market with many insiders would, in theory, generate extremely accurate forecasts, they argue.

However, if average users are under the impression that most participants have key insights they don’t, they’re unlikely to be interested in participating.

“The way you make an exchange successful is that you reduce the amount of informed trading so that everyone feels like this is working for them,” Verstein said. “But if you do that, then it becomes less of a future machine. The people who know the future aren’t allowed to trade.”

It’s a delicate balance.

But it’s one that needs clearer attention from authorities, warns Yedev. Especially as these platforms swell in size and scope.

“People are seeing these future probability forecasts being brought into some really important settings,” she said.

“The fact that one doesn’t have clarity about the underlying governance is super problematic.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Roskomnadzor, the country’s internet and media censor, is poised to act, Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at the Russian crypto exchange Bestchange, told Russia media outlet RBC.

“[The industry] expects Roskomnadzor may begin the mass blocking of the websites of crypto exchanges that are not registered in Russia as early as this summer,” Zuborev said.

The warning comes as the Kremlin and lawmakers attempt to police the nation’s crypto exchanges more strictly with new legislation during the State Duma’s forthcoming spring session. Policymakers say the new rules will outlaw transactions made on unregistered trading platforms.

A block on overseas crypto platforms would mark an escalation of the Kremlin’s censorship of foreign platforms. Roskomnadzor recently moved to block chat apps like Telegram and WhatsApp. It is also trying to restrict virtual private networks, which allow Russians to bypass blocks.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Finance said the daily value of Russians’ crypto transactions had risen to $648 million. As crypto exchanges are still unregulated in Russia, all these trades take place either on unregistered domestic platforms or overseas exchanges, the ministry added.

Censor’s AI tools

Censors will likely follow the same technical playbook they’re using to block certain Russian-language YouTube services and “block-circumvention tools,” Zuborev said.

Roskomnadzor’s blocks will focus primarily on exchanges that have previously shown a willingness to comply with US, EU, and UK-led sanctions regimes, said Ignat Likhunov, founder of the legal firm Cartesius.

“It looks like the conditions for unfriendly foreign exchanges will worsen in Russia,” Likhunov said.

Russian citizens will be restricted from accessing many crypto trading platforms, the lawyer Dmitry Machikhin said, but blanket bans will be hard to enforce.

Machikhin noted that even after Binance’s official exit from Russia in 2023, at least a million Russians continue to trade on the platform.

Russia’s data protection laws could prove a stumbling block for overseas exchanges wanting to do business in Russia, the crypto market analyst Viktor Pershikov told the same media outlet.

These laws stipulate that firms that keep personal data on Russian citizens must do so on servers physically located in Russia.

As many larger international exchanges operate servers in Europe and the United States, Pershikov said, Roskomnadzor is likely to act sooner rather than later.

The forecasts come hot on the heels of reports Roskomnadzor will spend $29 million on AI and machine learning tools this year as part of its revamped web censorship drive.

Experts said these tools could disrupt Russian crypto traders’ ability to access overseas exchanges, mining pools, and data services.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The man, the Georgian-Russian national Giorgi Bachiashvili, was jailed for 11 years in absentia after fleeing the country in March.

He was later arrested on the border with Azerbaijan and transferred to prison to serve his sentence, with courts ordering him to serve a further four years for illegal flight, the Russian-language media outlet Vzglad reported.

But after striking a plea deal, Bachiashvili’s sentence was reduced, and he was allowed to walk free.

“Bachiashvili has fully admitted his guilt to all the criminal charges,” prosecutors told Georgian broadcaster Channel 1. “He also fully cooperated with the investigation and has paid compensation for the damages incurred.”

The development comes as the popularity of Bitcoin mining continues to grow in Georgia.

Regulatory data published late last year shows the Bitcoin mining sector’s power consumption tripled in the first 10 months of 2025, reaching 617 million kilowatt-hours. This represents 5% of the nation’s total electricity consumption.

Prosecutors drop charges

Ivanishvili is one of the richest people in Georgia and wields enormous political influence. He serves as the honorary chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

In the early 2010s, Ivanishvili hired Bachiashvili to manage his own and his businesses’ assets.

In 2015, Ivanishvili’s banking firm Cartu loaned Bachiashvili the Bitcoin after the latter said he would use the cryptocurrency to launch a crypto mining firm. Instead of doing so, prosecutors said, Bachiashvili embezzled the coins.

Prosecutors also indicted Bachiashvili’s parents, accusing them of aiding their son’s efforts to launder $3.5 million worth of Cartu’s Bitcoin.

Prosecution officials have also dropped these charges.

Prosecutors said that, under the terms of the plea deal, Bachiashvili’s sentence was reduced to a suspended one-year jail term. Bachiashvili has also agreed to pay a $19,000 fine.

Most of Georgia’s data centres focus their efforts on crypto mining, with the majority of miners based in Tbilisi and Kutaisi’s free industrial zones.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Tom Matthews tells clients instead to focus on simple yet devastating strikes to vulnerable areas if they ever find themselves in physical danger.

It can take years to learn a leg triangle grapple — but anyone can punch someone in the throat.

“Get real gnarly,” the ex-Secret Service member who now serves as head of physical security at crypto firm Asymmetric Security told DL News.

“Aim for the eyes, things that people don’t really prepare for. The throat, the groin.”

It’s part of why he advises simple fighting styles — such as boxing or Krav Maga, the self-defence technique developed for the Israel Defence Forces — to crypto investors who fear violent attacks to steal their digital assets.

Cut-off fingers

It’s a real threat.

Last year was the worst year on record for so-called wrench attacks, with victims being tortured and having fingers cut off.

Now, experts warn it will get even more brutal in 2026.

“My first conference in crypto was an FTX conference in the Bahamas.”

Tom Matthews, head of physical security at Asymmetric Security

There have already been nearly a dozen violent attacks or kidnappings of crypto entrepreneurs, investors and their loved ones since the start of the year.

In January, three teens disguised as delivery drivers entered a man’s house in England and threatened him with knives until he handed over his crypto. Individuals in France attacked a family in order to extort them for their cryptocurrencies last month.

In an ideal world, however, Matthews’s crypto clients are taking steps well in advance to avoid ever encountering dangerous altercations like those.

If crypto investors are ever cornered, Matthews still advises them to just hand over their crypto.

“If someone is armed and they are asking for things, you give up the keys to the castle,” said Matthews.

After years in the Marine Corps and a nearly two-year stint with the US Secret Service, Matthews has found a new home in the private sector following a shoulder injury.

Increasingly, that’s been executives in the digital assets industry.

Katy Perry concert

In 2022, Matthews found himself leading security for Jump Trading’s crypto group, Jump Crypto.

While there, he had a front row seat to the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin in 2022 and worked through the $320 million Wormhole hack in 2023. Jump Trading was a large backer of both ventures.

Other experiences were surreal for different reasons.

“My first conference in crypto was an FTX conference in the Bahamas,” he said. “Katy Perry did a concert for like 50 People.”

As one of FTX exchange’s largest users, Jump Trading lost nearly $300 million when Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange collapsed in November 2022, according to financial journalist Michael Lewis.

While hacks and phishing scams continue to haunt the crypto industry, the startling rise of physical attacks has added a much more sinister dimension to the challenge of staying safe.

It’s why Matthews joined Asymmetric Research in June.

The cybersecurity company had received so much inbound interest for physical protection that the founders tapped Matthews to spin up a new division.

“We realised that the threat surface for our partners extends beyond smart contracts and infrastructure,” Jonathan Claudius, the co-founder and CEO of Asymmetric Research, told DL News. “Adding physical security was a natural move toward a more complete security model for the partners we already support.”

That doesn’t mean Matthews only gives founders and developers fighting lessons.

Mostly, he just wants them to put their phones down.

How to stay safe

Matthews’ biggest tip for staying safe in the industry is simply being present.

“Not being tied to your phone, not being completely locked in your work world,” he said. “You would be shocked by how many wrench attacks we could stop if we just had good situational awareness.”

He also suggests varying routines to make yourself harder to predict. Moreover, avoid posting extravagant pictures on social media flaunting your wealth, where you’re staying or of your family. At crypto conferences, take off the lanyard and try to avoid crypto t-shirts.

Matthews recommends incorporating a “kidnapping and ransom” policy, too.

“You just pick up the phone, and there’s a hostage negotiation team that will pay your ransom or your kidnappers‘ money, so that way you won’t lose any fingers and toes,” he said.

Though Matthews focuses on physical security, there’s plenty you can do to protect yourself online as well.

Pseudonymous security analyst Tanuki42, for instance, advises against using the Ethereum Name Service to link you to a large amount of crypto.

“It serves zero purpose other than painting a big target on your back,” Tanuki42, who also works with the cybersecurity team Seal911, told DL News.

They encourage the use of multi-signature wallets or so-called timelocks that won’t allow anyone to access funds until a specific period has passed. Tanuki42 also encourages the use of privacy-enhancing tools such as Railgun or privacy pools.

Both Matthews and Tanuki42 recommend keeping a small amount of crypto in a hot wallet with you in case the worst happens.

“Enough to make the bad guys happy, and enough that way you won’t get your toes and your fingers cut off,” said Matthews.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Prediction markets have been “hit with an onslaught of state-led litigation,” Selig said in the video shared on X. As such, he continued, the regulator has submitted a so-called amicus brief in a lawsuit filed last year by crypto exchange Crypto.com.

When the Nevada Gaming Control Board ordered Crypto.com to pull its prediction market product from the state, the company sued. But a federal judge denied its request for a preliminary injunction. Crypto.com has stopped offering sports event contracts in Nevada while it appeals the judge’s order.

A copy of the CFTC’s brief wasn’t immediately available online. But Selig said the agency had filed the brief in order to “defend its exclusive jurisdiction over these derivative markets.”

The filing comes just four days after a group of 23 Senators, all Democrats, asked Selig to “abstain from intervening in pending litigation involving contracts tied to sports, war, or other prohibited events.”

“Prediction market platforms are offering contracts that mirror sportsbook wagers and, in some cases, contracts tied to war and armed conflict,” they wrote in a February 13 letter.

“These products evade state and tribal consumer protections, generate no public revenue, and undermine sovereign regulatory regimes.”

LeBron James rebounds

Their concern isn’t stricly partisan.

“Mike, I appreciate you attempting this with a straight face, but I don’t remember the CFTC having authority over the ‘derivative market’ of LeBron James rebounds,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, said on X.

“These prediction markets you are breathlessly defending are gambling — pure and simple. They are destroying the lives of families and countless Americans, especially young men. They have no place in Utah.”

While prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket began by offering bets on economic indicators and world events, they eventually branched into sports betting. But they’ve found themselves in a multi-front legal battle against states that require sports gambling platforms to seek licensure.

The companies have argued that the CFTC has the sole authority to regulate financial derivatives, a category that, they say, includes sports-themed “event contracts.” But states officials have argued those products are no different from traditional sports gambling, which has long been regulated by state gaming authorities.

Selig, a crypto-industry ally nominated last year by President Donald Trump to lead the CFTC, dodged questions about his position on the matter during his confirmation hearing in November.

Selig repeatedly referenced prediction markets’ ongoing legal battles and said he would defer to the courts.

Turf wars

Selig hasn’t exactly broken that promise — an amicus brief is just an opinion offered for a court’s consideration.

Nevertheless, its opinion carries great weight, according to Andrew Verstein, the co-director of the business law program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“In general, the CFTC has a very powerful position, which is that it has a terrifically wide congressional authorization to be the sole regulator of products that it wants to regulate,” he told DL News.

“And this has led to a lot of turf wars in the past, boundaries between states and the CFTC on gambling laws, boundary disputes with the SEC about different derivatives, what’s in, what’s out.”

Selig echoed that sentiment in an X thread accompanying his video.

“Congress gave the CFTC comprehensive authority over any contract based on a commodity, and the legal definition of a commodity is very broad,” he wrote.

And in a Wall Street Journal essay published Tuesday, he said the agency would “no longer sit idly by while overzealous state governments undermine the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction over these markets by seeking to establish statewide prohibitions on these exciting products.”

Crypto executives hailed the news.

“This is the kind of leadership and courage that will make America the crypto and markets capital of the world,” Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini, wrote.

Robinhood and Coinbase both offer a prediction market product in partnership with Kalshi. Trump Media, the conglomerate majority-owned by Trump, partnered with Crypto.com to build its own forthcoming prediction market platform, Truth Predict.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Nomura Holdings, Japan’s biggest securities provider, which manages around $673 billion in clients’ assets, says it will launch its operations via its Swiss crypto subsidiary Laser Digital, Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported.

The other two firms named were Daiwa Securities Group and SMBC Nikko Securities, which Nihon Keizai Shimbun said are strongly considering entry into the crypto exchange market.

The firms say they’re acting in anticipation of crypto investment demand skyrocketing when Tokyo lifts restrictions on crypto exchange-traded funds, the newspaper reported.

Japanese firms are refusing to let slumping Bitcoin prices derail their crypto adoption plans, with scores of digital asset treasuries set to bolster their crypto holdings in 2026.

Deregulation hopes

The securities firms will have to navigate strict permit acquisition rules surrounding exchanges in Japan if their plans are to bear fruit. Thus far, only a handful of tech startups have managed to obtain these permits.

Two other securities giants, SBI Holdings and Monex Group, have already used the merger and acquisitions markets to buy up smaller crypto exchanges and rebrand them as SBI and Monex subsidiaries.

However, the newspaper reported Nomura’s primary focus is the Japanese market, which means it too may have to either apply for an operating permit or consider a takeover bid for a permit-holding exchange.

Nomura will reportedly seek a Japanese business license for Laser Digital in the months ahead, while SMBC Nikko has launched a decentralised finance department as it explores its options.

The firms will primarily target corporate clients, the newspaper reported.

DL News has approached all three firms for comment on the report.

Japanese regulators’ attempts to deregulate the tightly policed Japanese crypto market are sending encouraging signals to traditional finance providers, domestic media outlets report.

The Financial Services Agency’s proposed amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act are accelerating the full-scale entry of traditional financial institutions into the cryptocurrency market, Japanese media outlet CryptoTimes wrote on X.

The regulator wants to reclassify Bitcoin and several high-cap coins as investment products. Currently, Japanese law recognises them as payment instruments.

Late last month, Nomura said its “commitment to digital asset-related businesses remains unchanged,” despite “reducing its positions in cryptocurrencies” after Laser Digital suffered unspecified losses in the third quarter.

And in November, Nomura, Daiwa, and four other financial firms said they were keen to launch crypto funds for domestic investors.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

While the US president is busy steamrolling into his second year in office with a slew of new policies, his family’s crypto venture is drawing a star-studded crowd to an event at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, on February 18.

The lineup of speakers includes the CEOs of Coinbase, BitGo, Franklin Templeton and Goldman Sachs, as well as the president of FIFA, rapper Nicki Minaj, celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, and a slew of elected officials and regulators.

They’ll be joined by a “select group of 300 global leaders,” according to World Liberty Financial.

The goal?

To define “what the next century of American innovation, leadership, and economic influence will look like,” according to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s firstborn and co-founder of the crypto company.

The World Liberty Forum is the Trump family’s latest crypto initiative.

Over the past year, the company has announced plans to launch a foreign exchange and remittance platform, created a digital asset treasury, and applied for a US federal banking license.

The event’s timing is notable.

It comes as the president’s political rivals are ramping up the pressure on the White House regarding his family’s crypto deals.

At the same time, the 79-year-old is seemingly losing support among crypto industry insiders who are disappointed with the results of his first year in office.

What’s World Liberty Financial?

World Liberty Financial was founded in 2024. It is at the centre of the Trump family’s crypto empire. The company positions itself as a decentralised finance platform and stablecoin issuer, serving as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto.

Co-founders include presidential sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Barron Trump, as well as Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of the president’s foreign policy advisor Steve Witkoff.

Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump are both co-founders emeritus, according to the company‘s website.

The venture issues USD1, a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by US Treasuries and cash equivalents.

Since its launch, the USD1 stablecoin has become the fifth-largest stablecoin by circulation, with $5 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama data.

Yet, the project has also drawn ire from investors.

Fans who poured $550 million into buying the WLFI token, issued by World Liberty Financial, have been left disappointed after realising they’re unable to sell the tokens.

And while they’ve been unable to offload the tokens, they’ve seen the price tumble 69% below its peak.

World Liberty Financial has released 20% of the tokens so far and has promised a vote among holders on when the rest will be made available. That vote hasn’t materialised yet.

Political attacks

The Trump family’s crypto dealings have also opened up attack lines for his political opponents.

Over the past year, Democrats have raised concerns about Donald Trump’s crypto dealings.

On Friday, US Democratic Party Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim fired off the latest salvo in their campaign by issuing a formal letter to Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury.

In it, they called for a probe into World Liberty Financial on national security grounds over a reported $500 million equity stake in the firm linked to the United Arab Emirates.

They cited a Wall Street Journal report that say the deal was signed four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration and saw the UAE firm buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial.

The letter sets a March deadline to respond.

It follows from a November attack when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused the president of corruption, saying that his family’s crypto ventures “leveraged his office to make himself a crypto billionaire.”

In November, a 60 Minutes investigation linked a $2 billion investment deal between Binance and Abu Dhabi’s MGX to Trump’s presidential pardon for the exchange’s co-founder Changpeng Zhao.

Critics link the deal, which was conducted with USD1, to the pardon.

In December, Binance launched a programme to promote the use of USD1. It offered up to 20% yield on USD1 holdings of up to $50,000.

Binance custodies an overwhelming 92% of the USD1 supply, according to blockchain intelligence platform Arkham.

Zhao denied allegations of wrongdoing in a recent podcast.

“I didn’t do much,” Zhao replied to questions about what he did to get the pardon. “I didn’t do anything.”

The White House has also consistently dismissed accusations of wrongdoing.

“The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” White House counsel David Warrington told DL News.

When asked, White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly repeated to DL News that “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”

‘Bad for the industry’

World Liberty Financial is far from the Trump family’s only crypto-related project.

Trump-linked projects include everything from non-fungible tokens to Bitcoin treasury plays, with mixed results. The president’s official memecoin and the one associated with First Lady Melania Trump are down 95% and 99% since their all-time highs.

Pundits have criticised the Trump-linked memecoins.

“This obviously gives a clear green light that any crime and attention-grabbing schema is now legal,” Ivan, a pseudonymous co-founder of GearBox Protocol and admin of DeFi research group Lobster DAO, told DL News in January 2025, days after the memecoins were launched.

At the time, businessman Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s own White House communications director in 2017, was equally doubtful, branding them as “as bad for the industry.”

In the year since, rumblings among the crypto community have grown louder.

‘Upbeat’ for Mar-a-lago

Donald Trump came out in support of the crypto industry during his 2024 campaign. He promised to make the US the crypto capital of the world. In return, the industry drove $18 million into his inauguration in January 2025.

In office, the president has repaid the support by issuing pro-industry executive orders, pardoning influential industry players, backing light-touch regulations, and signing a landmark stablecoin bill into law.

Those initiatives helped drive Bitcoin to a record high of over $126,000 in October, with the rest of the crypto market surging in tandem.

However, uncertainties caused by the president’s foreign policies — including threats to punish trading partners with sky-high tariffs and attempts to take Greenland — have weighed on markets.

Since October, the crypto market has lost about $2 trillion, or half, of its total value.

The fact that the wipeout occurred while other assets — such as tech stocks and gold — surged has rattled crypto traders, who have cashed out in droves, thus draining liquidity from the sector.

That, combined with more crypto-friendly legislation having stalled, has seen some members of the cryptorati turn against the president.

“At the end, he was bad for crypto. Big mistake to have him as president,” crypto influencer Carl Runefelt tweeted.

Whether this backlash will carry over into the midterms this year remains to be seen.

To be sure, other crypto influencers expressed outrage when a top Democratic account appeared to mock the Bitcoin crash earlier in February, Axios reports.

It is against this backdrop that the World Liberty Forum will go ahead.

And, despite the controversies, members of the crypto community seem excited about the event.

“The industry is very upbeat about the potential of such a gathering,” Pranav Agarwal, portfolio advisor and investor at Ajna Capital, told DL News.

The event “signals the coming together of blockchain-based solutions, especially decentralised finance and stablecoins with traditional policy makers and financial powerhouses,” Agarwal said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at lance@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.

Police have arrested a man who allegedly stole $80,000 worth of power from the region’s grid to power his rigs.

The man, a 39-year-old farm owner, used a series of illegal connections to link his devices to the republic’s power grid in an outbuilding on his property, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Komi Republic branch wrote.

In 2024, Komi Republic officials announced plans to build 15 crypto mining data centres. Construction has already begun on two of these, which are set to cost a combined total of over $28 million.

One of the centres is being built in a major industrial park and will have a capacity of 114 MW, Russian media outlet CNews reported in November. Officials say the first of the mining centres will go online by the end of the year.

Komi’s move could see the Russian Bitcoin mining industry shift away from Southern Siberia, its long-standing heartland, and further north, to parts of the country with richer energy resources and underdeveloped industrial sectors.

Illegal connections

Investigators have accused the miner of operating more than 80 ASIC crypto-mining rigs housed in a warehouse designed to store logging equipment and combine harvesters.

He used a complex connection system to bypass his property’s meters, running a power cable directly from a transformer substation, police say.

The man also failed to register his activities with the Federal Tax Service, investigators say. Under Russian law, private citizens may use only 6,000 kWh per month.

This amount, Russian media outlet RBC reported, is only enough to provide power for two or three of the most modern ASIC rigs.

The ministry said it had worked with the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to help identify and arrest the man. Officers raided the property and discovered that the rigs had been operating since August. Bailiffs have confiscated the mining rigs.

The man will face charges of breach of trust and property damage.

However, if lawmakers get their way, illegal miners will soon face stricter punishments, including possible jail time and hefty fines.

The measures will be bundled with the country’s next batch of crypto laws, which are slated for debate in the State Duma’s upcoming spring session.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Crypto transactions tied to alleged human trafficking surged by 85% in 2025, according to a February report by crypto compliance firm Chainalysis.

The firm identified hundreds of millions of dollars in volumes linked to illicit escort services, prostitution networks, and child sexual abuse material vendors.

“The dollar amounts significantly understate the human toll of these crimes, where the true cost is measured in lives impacted rather than money transferred,” the report read.

Chainalysis added that much of the latest growth lies in Southeast Asia’s booming scam economy.

The firm unveiled the critical role that so-called labour placement agents play in these schemes. Labour placement agents are individuals who were offered a fake job before being forced into scam compounds.

These compounds are often monolithic buildings complete with food halls, dorms, and even gyms. They host labour agents who conduct a range of cyber scams.

Estimates suggest that fraudulent activity and scams — ranging from pig butchering to illicit gambling — now make up an enormous chunk of the region’s gross domestic product, or GDP.

More than 30% of Cambodia’s GDP was generated by cyberscam revenue, according to the 2023 annual estimates. Cambodia isn‘t alone either. Countries in East and Southeast Asia have lost an estimated $37 billion to cybercrime, according to an April 2025 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

And with it, very legitimate political concerns for the countries within the scam empire.

When the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia erupted late last year, it appeared to be another example of simmering geopolitical tensions coming to a head.

That was largely true.

Ambiguities over the countries’ shared border, the two nations‘ growing nationalist tendencies, and territorial claims to oil and gas reserves in the region have stoked tensions.

But as crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital pointed out, another key element played a role.

Conflict erupted again shortly after Thai authorities seized over $300 million in December, including cryptocurrencies, from Cambodian elites tied to large scam networks.

Indeed, the seizure has become a defining chapter of the current conflict.

“The Thai-Cambodia border is emerging as the first military flashpoint shaped in real time by the political economy of crypto-fraud, where pressure on illicit revenue streams produces

measurable shifts in state behaviour, including escalation incentives,” Inca Digital wrote in December.

While authorities in many countries are working to crack down on illicit activity, the results have been mixed.

“Every time we think we have found the scam compound we are looking for, emerging out of the darkness is a scam compound that is even bigger than we thought,” Erin West, founder of Operation Shamrock, said on Monday.

“There is no end to the construction in Cambodia right now.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The suspect, from Kaspiysk in Dagestan, allegedly collected about $6,500 worth of unnamed crypto over a year while living in Turkey, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB. State news agency TASS first reported the arrest.

The FSB said it’s charged the man with providing assistance to terrorist organisations and that the investigation remains ongoing.

“While he was living in Turkey between October 2022 and October 2023, the suspect created a group on a social media platform,” the FSB said. “He posted his crypto wallet details in this group and asked followers to send donations.”

The agency did not specify which terror campaign the man is accused of financing.

Crypto adoption is on the rise in Russia, where officials say citizens spend almost $650 million per day on unregistered crypto trading platforms.

Moscow says it uses a proprietary crypto monitoring platform called Transparent Blockchain, developed by its anti-money laundering agency, to hunt crypto-powered crime and terrorism.

Agency’s probe

FSB officials said the man sent the crypto he raised to members of illegal armed groups. These members allegedly used $6,500 in crypto to buy weapons, ammunition, and other equipment.

The officials did not reveal the identity or the political alignment of the terrorist groups.

The FSB says it has remanded the man, whose name was withheld for legal reasons, in custody.

The agency has stepped up its scrutiny of crypto fundraising since 2023, when Transparent Blockchain was launched. The FSB has made multiple arrests on treason charges against individuals who donate crypto to the Ukrainian armed forces or pro-Kyiv Russian militants fighting in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation in Ukraine.”

The FSB said last year that it arrested a total of around 300 people in the North Caucasus region, of which Dagestan is a part, on terrorism-related charges.

Some of the arrestees were charged with attempts to join foreign terrorist groups and “Ukrainian nationalist units.”

Last month, the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, reported a rise in influencers who use social media campaigns to raise crypto for radical terror groups.

The FATF said investigators are using a range of blockchain analytical protocols to help them freeze terrorism-linked crypto wallets.

Investigators say they had evidence that Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan were accepting donations made in crypto.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Cryptocurrency usage in Russia is “only continuing to grow,” Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov told media representatives this week, Russian media outlet RBC reported.

“We’ve repeatedly said that millions of citizens are involved in crypto trading,” Chebeskov said. “That represents trillions of rubles’ worth of [purchases] and savings. The annual transaction volume in Russia is over [$130 billion]. All of that is currently occurring in unregulated spaces. It’s outside the scope of our control.”

Moscow says it wants to fast-track regulations this year, aware that the size of its crypto derivatives and other blockchain-powered financial instruments has grown beyond the $13 billion mark.

Fast track

Vladimir Chistyukhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian central bank, told reporters that he expected lawmakers to approve new regulations for the crypto market during the State Duma’s upcoming spring session.

Both the government and the bank now back regulations, Chistyukhin said.

“[We] will provide a transition period for market participants to obtain the necessary licenses, develop the necessary internal documents to begin operations, and legalise this part of the [financial] markets.”

The law will focus mainly on exchanges and will impose a system of penalties for trading platforms that fail to obtain operating permits.

The ministry said it made its calculations using the anti-money laundering agency Rosfinmonitoring’s Transparent Blockchain platform.

Senior officials from the Moscow Exchange, Russia’s biggest stock market, said they also wanted to “compete for a slice” of the crypto “pie.”

The exchange and several of Russia’s biggest banks said they were ready to provide their customers with a range of crypto-related services once the legislation rolls out.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down by almost 1% over the past 24 hours, currently trading at $68,991.
• Ethereum is down 3% in the past 24 hours, and is priced at $1,999.

What we’re reading

• Aave Labs proposes paying DAO all revenue from Aave-branded products — DL News
• Clarity Act will lift Bitcoin price, says Treasury Secretary Bessent — DL News
• An abduction, a Bitcoin demand and a TV icon - why Nancy Guthrie’s case has gripped the US — BBC
• Is Coinbase dying or evolving? — Milk Road
• Bitcoin to $50,000? Standard Chartered predicts ‘more pain’ for price — DL News

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin’s price has fallen roughly half from its October 2025 record high, and Washington remains deadlocked over how to regulate crypto.

In a Thursday interview with CNBC, Bessent was asked what he thought about the current state of crypto prices.

“Bitcoin has a history of volatile movement,” Bessent said. “But part of the volatility here is self induced: there is a group of Democrats who want to work with Republicans on getting a market structure bill — it’s called the Clarity bill — but there are a group of crypto firms who have been blocking it.”

Crypto executives have been hashing out the Clarity Act with US banking representatives and regulators at the White House the past month.

The bill, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation, has been in a deadlock after the US’ biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill in January.

Since then, crypto bigwigs and banking representatives have continued to meet, with lawyers from Ripple and Coinbase saying that meetings this week were “productive” and that “progress was made.”

‘Comfort to markets’

Bessent went on to say that while crypto investors should know what they’re getting themselves into when buying the volatile asset class, clear legislation would help soothe markets.

Bitcoin’s price has shed nearly 50% of its value since it notched a new all-time high in October. Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market value, has fared worse, now worth $2,048, a 58% drop from its high of $4,946 in August.

Crypto markets tanked in October when the biggest liquidation event in Bitcoin’s history wiped out $19 billion in leveraged bets. Major coins have struggled to recover since.

“So in a time when we are having one of these historically volatile selloffs, I think some clarity on the Clarity bill would give great comfort to the market, and we could move forward from there,” added Bessent. “It’s very important to get this done.”

Meanwhile, regulators and senior banking executives have clashed with the crypto industry over one of the bill’s most contentious elements, the rules governing stablecoins.

Banking executives have warned that unless Congress bans stablecoin rewards, people will park their money on crypto exchanges, rather than banks. That would limit banks’ ability to lend to US businesses, the executives say.

Coinbase and other crypto companies are pushing for their yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue. They counter that stricter limits will curb innovation and tilt the playing field in favour of “TradFi” incumbents.

“There’s a lot of innovation that goes on adjacent to crypto — in the blockchain, in DeFi — so I think it’s important to get this clarity bill done as soon as possible, and on the president’s desk this spring,” said Bessent.

Crypto executives and banking chiefs now have until March 1 to reach an agreement on the market structure bill.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Those critics are calling for the courts to overhaul their procedures to keep bad actors from getting away with their crimes.

The development comes as a fresh blow to the South Korean judiciary, which has recently come under fire from critics complaining of undue “leniency” in sentencing crypto fraudsters.

It also comes as experts warn that AI is enabling cybercriminals to steal even more crypto.

‘Identified with the naked eye’

The latest backlash against the courts comes after a man in his 20s managed to dupe legal professionals with falsified documents he reportedly generated using ChatGPT.

The case began when prosecutors investigated the man, who remains unnamed for legal reasons, on suspicion of running a $223,000 investment fraud scheme, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

Prosecutors asked the court to issue an arrest warrant. The man responded by saying he planned to compensate victims, and produced a range of documents that appeared to prove he was a wealthy and successful individual.

These included “a record of cryptocurrency holdings and transactions,” prosecutors said. The man also presented the court with a certificate showing he had passed the national medical exam and a bank statement showing a balance of around $630,000.

After receiving these documents, the court decided against issuing the warrant. The only problem? All of them turned out to be fake.

“The defendant managed to deceive judges by sending the court AI-generated images that were so sophisticated that their inauthenticity could not be identified with the naked eye,” a prosecution official told Yonhap.

Systematic change needed

Prosecutors in the city of Busan said they only discovered something was amiss with the documents when they later conducted supplementary investigations.

They followed up by checking on his account status at his bank branch, where they discovered he had just $0.016 in his bank account.

Experts said the case has exposed a major loophole in the South Korean legal system and urged the government to respond.

“There is no system in place to screen out forged documents in court,” an anonymous former judiciary member told South Korean broadcaster MBC. “Rather than basing our legal system around the good faith assumption that no one would submit forged documents to a judge, we now need to make fundamental changes to the legal system.”

The man has since been arrested on additional charges of forgery and the use of falsified official records.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Writing on X, Stuart Alderoty said Tuesday that he’d had a “productive session” at the White House, and that now was the time to move ahead.

“Productive session at the White House today — compromise is in the air,” wrote Alderoty.

Productive session at the White House today - compromise is in the air. Clear, bipartisan momentum remains behind sensible crypto market structure legislation. We should move now - while the window is still open - and deliver a real win for consumers and America.

— Stuart Alderoty (@s_alderoty) February 10, 2026

“Clear, bipartisan momentum remains behind sensible crypto market structure legislation. We should move now — while the window is still open — and deliver a real win for consumers and America.”

Crypto executives, US banking representatives, and regulators have been meeting at the White House to work on the Clarity Act, a bill laying out federal rules for digital assets.

A sticking point of the bill — passed by the House of Representatives last year — concerns stablecoins and the yield they will potentially pay customers. Banking representatives have warned they could lose their deposit base and, in turn, their ability to lend to US businesses if companies are allowed to pay rewards on stablecoins.

Deadlocked discussions

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal added that working with Alderoty at the latest meeting was a “pleasure” in a Tuesday post. Coinbase in January pulled support for the bill, with the exchange’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, slamming the draft.

Grewal said in a separate post that “crypto showed up ready to work, and we all made progress.”

But it isn’t clear whether the latest discussions have borne fruit. DL News reached out to both Ripple and Coinbase for comment.

Despite pro-crypto President Donald Trump campaigning on a platform to help the industry and signing digital asset-friendly legislation since taking office, the crypto sector is still pushing for clearer rules in place.

The Clarity Act aims to define the responsibilities of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when it comes to regulating digital assets.

Digital asset entrepreneurs are even torn on the best way to move forward with the legislation: Ripple boss Brad Garlinghouse in January said he was happy with a draft bill released that month, only for Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson to slam Garlinghouse for supporting the legislation.

Lawmakers have given crypto executives and banking chiefs until March 1 to reach an agreement on the market structure bill.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

That evidence includes an affidavit in which a former colleague said he would have testified on Bankman-Fried’s behalf during the latter’s 2023 trial had prosecutors not threatened retaliation.

But Bankman-Fried’s purported innocence continues to rely on a highly dubious claim: that his crypto exchange, FTX, was not insolvent when it collapsed in 2022, but illiquid.

While Bankman-Fried was barred from marking that argument during his trial, he has relied on it in virtually every public appearance after his conviction.

He raised it during his sentencing hearing in 2024 and during an appellate hearing last year in which judges appeared sceptical of the claim the trial was rigged against him.

And it comes as Bankman-Fried continues a social media campaign seemingly geared towards earning the favour of President Donald Trump, who last year pardoned crypto criminals Ross Ulbricht and Changpeng Zhao.

Aggressive prosecutors

FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, when it was unable to honour a stampede of customer withdrawals.

Bankman-Fried has insisted he could have honoured those withdrawals, if only he’d been given enough time. That is, FTX had assets exceeding his liabilities, according to Bankman-Fried, but they were assets that could not immediately be converted to cash, such as company stock.

Daniel Chapsky, the former head of data science at FTX, signed an affidavit on January 1 stating he had been willing to say as much at trial. But he was dissuaded by his attorneys, who cited potential “media attacks” and retaliation from prosecutors.

But critics say that’s beside the point. According to evidence presented at trial, Bankman-Fried illegally used customer money to make risky investments and to purchase luxury property.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, summed up the counterargument when he levied Bankman-Fried’s 25-year prison sentence.

“A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets the stolen money is not entitled to a discount on his sentence,” Kaplan said at the beginning of the hearing.

In his latest filing, Bankman-Fried also cites statements in which Ryan Salame, an FTX executive serving a seven-year prison sentence, said he would have testified for Bankman-Fried’s defence in 2023 if not for prosecutors’ aggressive tactics.

Bankman-Fried also said that Nishad Singh, a former FTX executive who testified for the government, was also strong-armed by prosecutors. Bankman-Fried cited court records that show Singh initially claimed he was unaware of a “hole” in FTX’s balance sheet.

Self-representation

In a curious twist, Bankman-Fried intends on representing himself going forward. The request for a new trial was filed by his mother, Stanford University professor Barbara Fried, only because he is currently imprisoned, she wrote in a cover letter accompanying the documents.

During November’s appellate hearing, he was represented by attorney Alexandra Shapiro. She argued Kaplan had not allowed the former billionaire to mount a full defence at trial.

But she was subjected to frequent and pointed questioning from a three-judge panel. The judges have an informal six-month deadline to issue their ruling, but Bankman-Fried’s odds of success are low — between 2011 and 2015, about 6% of federal criminal appeals succeeded, according to data from the US court system.

Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried has continued posting on social media.

On Tuesday, he alleged FTX attorneys had forged the company’s bankruptcy documents.

“But FTX was never bankrupt. I never filed for it,” he wrote. “The lawyers took over the company and 4 hours later they filed a bogus bankruptcy so they could pilfer it for money.”

Previously, he had claimed he filed for bankruptcy but only did so under immense pressure from company attorneys.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.

That’s the question Kalshi CEO, Tarek Mansour, found himself answering on national television Tuesday afternoon.

The prediction market recorded one of its highest-ever trading days on Sunday during the Super Bowl. Alongside wagers on who would win the NFL championship, Kalshi users could also place bets on other seemingly innocuous markets.

That included a $113 million market for what Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny would play as the opening song for this year’s halftime show.

“It’s a fun philosophical but maybe practical question,” Andrew Sorkin, the host of CNBC’s Squawk Box, asked Mansour.

“Let’s say you’re a dancer for Bad Bunny, and you knew what the situation was when you made a bet. It sounds like that would be considered insider trading, right?”

Whether insider trading, a form of fraudulent activity that is prohibited by law in financial markets, has occurred depends on whether the trader has used material nonpublic information to profit from their investment.

This information would likely affect a company’s stock price and is not yet public.

Material nonpublic information would include details of an upcoming earnings report or a splashy merger that employees of a Fortune 500 company would see.

Making investments or trades using this information would likely be considered insider trading. Executives are usually aware of these scenarios and take measures to prevent employees from profiting from them.

But Bad Bunny isn’t a Fortune 500 executive, and the song lineup at a Super Bowl halftime show certainly isn’t the same event as an earnings report.

Does that mean the manager, dancers, or cameramen can share which song will be played first?

“If that’s the position that people are taking, which is essentially, ‘this is nonmaterial, nonpublic information,’” Mansour said, “and that it’s ok to talk about which song is going to be played, it’s ok to divulge certain information beforehand, then it’s totally fair game.”

Philosophical indeed.

Prediction market ‘supercycle’

As prediction markets continue to grow, it will become ever more important to draw a line in the sand.

Prediction markets, such as Kalshi and its nearest competitor, Polymarket, let users bet on the outcomes of a wide variety of real-world events.

Many are related to financial markets, including wagers on whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next meeting. Other markets are far more obscure. On Polymarket, for instance, there’s roughly $2.2 million being traded on whether Jesus Christ returns before 2027.

Since February 2, these platforms have cumulatively traded more than $6 billion in weekly volume, according to data collected by datadashboards.

However, sports wagering dominates user interest across these platforms.

Sports betting volume makes up 40% of Polymarket’s weekly volume. On Kalshi, that same figure is closer to 78%.

The action has also attracted fintech companies, such as Robinhood, as well as traditional sportsbooks, like DraftKings and FanDuel.

“We’re just at the beginning of a prediction market supercycle that could drive trillions in annual volume over time,“ Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood, said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, state authorities are taking aim at many prediction platforms for operating as unlicensed sports betting platforms.

And questions about what qualifies as insider trading when everything is a market are becoming increasingly difficult to answer.

“What prediction markets will do, however, is push the law to its limits and test whether it bends or breaks,“ wrote Daniel Barabander, a partner and chief legal officer of the venture firm Variant Fund, on February 6.

“By widening the aperture to make almost anything tradable, prediction markets expand the sources of valuable inside information — into contexts where the existence of any relevant promise is far less clear.”

Kalshi steps up surveillance

To be sure, Kalshi is working to prevent insider trading on its platform.

Mansour explained that his company uses the same enforcement mechanism as traditional financial markets, including a surveillance and investigation team to monitor any unusual behaviour on the platform.

On February 5, Kalshi launched an independent audit committee to help protect its markets from insider trading.

“We have an investigation staff that checks who is behind the trade and what they were doing, and if they were doing something wrong, such as insider trading, the punishment goes from fines to referral to the CFTC for criminal prosecution,” he said.

So far, Kalshi has identified at least one case of potential insider trading in Tennessee.

In October, a University of Tennessee student was fired from the college’s in-house broadcast team for placing wagers on NFL, NBA, and college football games using Kalshi.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association prohibits athletics-related employees from gambling on sporting events.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

It was the first time the European Parliament backed a digital euro — which will be the product of the European Central Bank — with lawmakers acknowledging that they would have to step up efforts to compete with other entities racing to digitise payments.

“Members of parliament say the increasing digitalisation of payments, if left exclusively to private and non-EU actors, risks creating new forms of exclusion for both users and merchants, and they want the ECB to intensify its monitoring of crypto-assets,” a summary of the session on the Parliament’s website read.

A digital euro has been years in the making and Tuesday’s vote comes amid brisk growth for US dollar stablecoins. The US government last year approved legislation to regulate stablecoins.

The rise of the stablecoin

A digital euro would be different to dollar-pegged stablecoins as the European Central Bank would be the centralised entity with direct control over the product.

Digital dollars, in the form of stablecoins, are issued by private companies that have assets like US treasury bills backing the tokens in reserves. Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the development of a central bank-issued digital dollar.

ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone last month said that a properly designed digital euro would counter the surge in US stablecoins as EU citizens wouldn’t need to use anything other than the electronic version of their currency.

It isn’t clear what blockchain the digital euro would run on, if at all, but the Financial Times last year reported that the ECB was looking at networks like Ethereum and Solana.

The ECB did not immediately respond to DL News’ request for comment.

Trump last year signed the Genius Act to establish a framework for issuing stablecoins. Now, private companies and American banks are releasing stablecoins or exploring the idea of debuting their own, and the supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins has grown nearly 20%.

Privacy-focused

Concerns around privacy have been raised with a central bank digital currency, but the ECB assured citizens it would be just like using cash.

ECB president, Christine Lagarde, said in a speech on Monday that the digital euro was necessary “to complement physical cash with its digital equivalent” and will, like cash, “guarantee the highest level of privacy.”

Despite the ECB racing ahead with its CBDC, euro stablecoins would still exist alongside it. There are at least 21 in existence today, and 11 European banks last year formed a company to launch a euro-pegged token, expected to be released in 2026.

S&P Global Ratings last week said that the euro-backed stablecoin market is likely to boom from its current value of €650 million to €1.1 billion by 2030 — or $773 million to $1.3 billion.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the election in January, hoping to capitalise on her sky-high pre-election approval ratings. Takaichi promised to resign if her party failed to win a decisive majority.

Her gamble paid off, with the LDP winning a supermajority of two-thirds of the lower house’s seats.

“In terms of her foreign and fiscal policy, the nationalist Prime Minister Takaichi differs very much from her more centrist predecessors Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba,” said a Japanese crypto trader and securities firm employee who spoke to DL News on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t get the impression she is particularly pro- or anti–crypto in any significant way.”

With more Japanese companies flocking to crypto in recent months, industry insiders are quietly confident that Takaichi will continue to reform Japan’s restrictive crypto laws.

Tax reform plans

The Japanese cryptocurrency industry is currently focused on issues like tax reform and the efforts to reclassify Bitcoin and leading altcoins as financial investment products, rather than forms of payment, Japanese media outlet CoinPost reported.

Japan began implementing crypto reforms under the premiership of Kishida, who served as prime minister between 2021 and 2024. Kishida unveiled plans to develop web 3 and blockchain technology industries in May 2022.

Under his leadership, the LDP established web3 policy-forming taskforces. The taskforces recommended tax reform and relaxing the rules governing crypto exchanges.

The tax reform plan, as it stands, will see Tokyo introduce a flat 20% capital gains levy on crypto profits as of 2028. It also proposes allowing investors to carry their losses over to the following financial year.

Currently, crypto profits must be declared on annual tax declarations. This means higher earners can pay up to 55% of their crypto earnings to the government.

Kishida’s successor Ishiba advocated a continuation of the reform policies, and made several pro-blockchain industry statements. It was under his leadership that Japanese companies first began buying Bitcoin with their balance sheets.

Takaichi took power in October.

Despite coming from a more conservative wing of the LDP than her two predecessors, she allowed the taskforces to continue their reform-related work.

Her pre-election cabinet has also spoken about crypto in positive terms. In January, Takaichi’s Minister of Finance Satsuki Katayama said Japan’s cryptocurrency and web 3 industries were “at a turning point.”

Katayama also said the government plans to submit a tax law reform to parliament in spring 2026.

A change of government would have risked derailing these policies, CoinPost wrote, adding that industry sources have actively welcomed news of the LDP’s landslide victory.

The PM’s own comments on crypto demonstrate the likelihood of continuity in Japanese crypto deregulation.

When asked about her stance on crypto tax reform in parliament last year, Takaichi replied that her government would “respond appropriately” based on the LDP’s taskforce’s recommendations.

Japanese financial analysts said Takaichi’s plans to carry out tax cuts and suspend the 8% consumption tax levy on food could lead to higher government bond yields and a weaker yen.

In this case, CoinPost wrote in its analysis, crypto and stocks are likely to benefit from increased domestic risk appetite.

Stock market picture

History shows that when the LDP wins a majority in a lower house election, overseas investors tend to snap up Japanese stocks, Daisuke Uchiyama, a senior strategist at the securities provider Okasan Securities, told Japanese news agency Nikkei.

Other experts told the publication they expect more foreign capital to flow into the Japanese stock market in the election’s wake. That stock market includes several companies with strong connections to crypto.

But while the election has seen share prices surge in the tech sector, the picture for Japanese crypto-related companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is currently decidedly mixed.

SBI Holdings, a securities giant with crypto mining and exchange subsidiaries, saw its share price rise by over 3% in the past five days. Monex Group, another securities player that also operates a crypto exchange, also saw 2.7% gains over the same period.

But Japanese digital asset treasuries, publicly traded companies that have used their balance sheets to buy Bitcoin and altcoins, have suffered losses in the wake of the election. Metaplanet shares are down over 9% in the past five days, with Remixpoint falling 2% in the same period.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin said that failing to return the money could subject investors to criminal proceedings, Chosun Ilbo reported.

“It’s clear that these cases are incidents of unjust enrichment,” Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin told reporters on February 9, South Korean media outlet PennMike reported.

“These claims are subject to restitution.”

Bithumb’s $40 billion blunder

Bithumb paved the way for the turmoil with what seems to be a fat-finger error.

The South Korean crypto exchange intended to send a total of $423 in Korean won to 249 customers who participated in a lucky draw-type giveaway on Friday.

But the team mistakenly selected Bitcoin, rather than the Korean won, as the unit of measure when sending the rewards, resulting in the exchange sending out $40 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Bithumb was able to freeze the wallets of most of the recipients, but some giveaway beneficiaries immediately liquidated their coins or traded them for other cryptocurrencies.

Bithumb said these customers have failed to repay $9 million in Bitcoin.

The gaffe stoked ire among regulators, who have already launched an inquiry at Bithumb’s Seoul headquarters.

It has also fuelled resentment among financial authorities, who have increased their scrutiny of South Korean exchanges in recent weeks.

The intensifying scrutiny includes a price manipulation probe and efforts to limit stakeholders’ ownership of crypto trading platforms.

A precarious position

Lee warned Bithumb customers who have not returned their money that they are “in a catastrophically precarious position.”

However, media outlets say legal precedent from a previous Bitcoin case could hinder Bithumb’s efforts to recoup its lost $9 million.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial in the case of a trader who had been convicted of breach of trust after mistakenly transferring around $1 million in Bitcoin to another crypto wallet.

The court ruled that cryptocurrencies are not subject to breach-of-trust rules because they do not qualify as “property” under South Korean law, South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo reported.

Lawyers agreed that while the legal system lets banks recover mistakenly transferred funds, it does not provide the same level of protection to crypto exchanges.

“Legal precedent dictates cryptocurrency is not property in the sense required to convict the customers of embezzlement,” Han Sang-jun, a lawyer at the legal firm Daegun, told Joongang Ilbo.

“Criminal trials may prove difficult to execute.”

But Han said that as the legal and economic landscape has changed significantly since the 2021 ruling, courts may be willing to “reconsider” the Supreme Court’s stance.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

If violent attacks on crypto investors were a key trend in 2025, the new year suggests more of the same.

Not even two months into 2026, there have already been eleven so-called wrench attacks on investors and their inner circles, according to Jameson Lopp’s GitHub records.

Lopp is the co-founder and chief security officer of the self-custody crypto wallet, CasaHODL.

And the stories are gruesome.

In France, a couple and their two children were beaten and tied up by three individuals in January in order to extort them for their cryptocurrencies. Three teenagers disguised as Amazon couriers entered a man’s house in England and threatened him with knives until he handed over his crypto. A Chinese national in Pasay City, Philippines, was also kidnapped by four men who demanded he send them $1 million in cryptocurrency.

What’s more: All of these attacks occurred in January.

Wrench attacks on the rise

These attacks have haunted the crypto sphere for years, but a string of high-profile violent attacks over the past year has significantly raised the threat level for crypto investors.

Wrench attacks made headlines last year when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France.

Another particularly brutal attack shocked the crypto world after court documents only made public in November detailed a 2024 home invasion where criminals waterboarded a man and his wife in Vancouver, Canada, before sexually assaulting their daughter to steal over $1.5 million in Bitcoin.

So, what’s driving the violence?

In France, where most of the reported attacks this year have occurred, there are several key reasons.

French media reported that in June 2025, an employee with the country’s tax agency had been steadily providing other alleged criminals with the identities of different crypto investors in the country.

In January, it was revealed that Waltio, a service that lets investors calculate and report their crypto capital gains for tax reports, had been hacked. The attackers then gained access to 50,000 Waltio customers’ data, including email addresses and their 2024 tax reports.

Besides sensitive data leaks, crypto is also proving to be a much more convenient target for illicit actors simply because digital assets are becoming more ubiquitous.

“As cryptocurrency adoption grows and more value is held directly by individuals, criminals are increasingly incentivised to bypass technical defenses altogether and target people instead,” TRM Labs’ Global Head of Policy, Ari Redbord, told DL News in January.

Staying safe

Common solutions have cropped up in the wake of the attacks. Bodyguards, round-the-clock surveillance, and, of course, personal weapons.

But there are also technical solutions that are appearing in the crypto community to help protect users — or buy them a little more time for authorities to intervene.

Elliot Friedman, founder of the dev shop Solidity Labs and a member of the cybersecurity group Security Alliance, developed a timelock feature for crypto wallets called Kleidi.

It adds a time buffer for transactions

So, any onchain moves could take up a day or even a month to send, depending on your preferences.

“If someone forces you to move funds, physically, socially, or by any means, you can truthfully say: ’I can’t. My wallet won’t let me,’” he said.

Whether attackers understand you or not is another story, of course.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Real-world assets, or RWAs, are tokenised property rights in tangible or intangible assets — including property, bonds, commodities such as gold, and artworks — issued on blockchain networks.

Implementing China’s new, enhanced regulatory policies “will have a comprehensive impact” on all cryptocurrency-related industries, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told Chinese newspaper Beijing Business Today.

Wang Peng said the move will “directly cut off overseas issuance channels that have links to China.”

Beijing’s policy runs counter to those pursued in regions such as the EU, the UK, Japan, and the US, where industry leaders say stablecoins and tokenisation drives are set to hit financial systems “like a freight train.”

Strict penalties

In an official notice issued last Friday by the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Public Security, and several major financial regulators, Beijing essentially prohibited the domestic circulation of stablecoins and the tokenisation of real-world assets within China.

The document also mentions punishments for firms that provide overseas crypto firms with “intermediary and information technology services.”

Domestic entities and individuals who knowingly or unknowingly work with overseas entities that provide crypto and RWA tokenisation services to firms or individuals based in China will also face sanctions, the document states.

These punishments will be particularly severe if Chinese firms are found to have adversely disrupted the Chinese economy.

, on the one hand, appears to slam the door shut on crypto-related business and, on the other,

Door left ajar

Analysts in China are still unsure what to make of the document, which, on the one hand, appears to slam the door shut on crypto-related business and, on the other, contains a few caveats for possible “government-approved” RWA projects.

But all analysts appear to agree that Beijing will not permit yuan-pegged stablecoins to operate on Chinese soil.

Beijing’s strict approach to crypto regulation suggests mainland tech firms “are unlikely to pursue stablecoin licenses going forward,” Xiao Sa, a senior partner at Beijing Dacheng Law Offices, told Chinese news agency Yicai.

“This is a precise response from regulators to address new market risks. It represents a deepening and implementation of previous regulatory policies,” Wang Pengbo, a senior financial analyst at the financial services provider Broadcom Consulting, told Beijing Business Today.

Beijing’s statement, however, contains key carve-outs for possible future government-endorsed RWA-related activities.

Experts appear divided on whether this means Beijing will allow a small number of RWA firms to operate in a regulatory sandbox in Hong Kong.

“This is the first time Chinese regulators have spoken out about RWAs,” an unnamed senior figure in the blockchain space told Beijing Business Today.

“The guidelines are very detailed. They essentially provide a clear path for pilot and sandbox projects. This is definitely a positive signal.”

Wang Peng agreed that the text of the document “creates a very narrow compliance bridge for high-quality projects with genuine underlying assets, firms that work in line with approved national industrial policies.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The comments came from Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets.

Aksakov was responding to Russian experts who told the Russian Parliamentary Gazette that Bitcoin prices would not rise in the near future, and could drop to $40,000 next year.

“I’ve always had reservations about this sector, since cryptocurrency is not really backed by anything,” Aksakov told the Parliamentary Gazette.

“It’s a type of hype that grew out of people’s fascination with computers and the opportunity to make money by connecting PCs to the power grid. By all the fundamental laws of economics, it’s bound to collapse sooner or later.”

Despite Aksakov’s gloomy predictions, he and the government press ahead with regulation as Russia’s crypto market continues to grow beyond $13 billion.

In the same interview, the lawmaker said he was drafting a new bill to regulate Bitcoin mining firms.

Regulation plans

The lawmaker voiced his personal reservations about the long-term future, despite taking action to further legalise crypto in Russia.

“[Crypto] is a very difficult business because the market is volatile,” Aksakov said.

“If you want to make money, this is not the best market for you. No level of expertise will help, because market fluctuations depend not on objective factors, but on a multitude of subjective issues.”

Aksakov said his committee had drafted a new crypto mining bill that aims to “legalise the industry” for firms that abide by the rules.

These will include regulations for crypto exchanges, with banks set to offer their clients crypto trading services.

The bill will also propose “penalties for illegal mining and the illegal circulation of cryptocurrency,” he said.

At the end of last year, the Russian Ministry of Justice proposed giving courts the power to jail illegal crypto miners who fail to pay tax on their earnings.

Under a 2024 law, Russians are free to mine crypto in most areas, provided they do not exceed 6,000 kWh of electricity per month.

In parts of the country that have suffered energy shortages, however, mining has been banned until 2031.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

But financial regulators are taking a dim view of the so-called fat finger error, and have launched an on-site inspection, South Korean newspaper Kookmin Ilbo reported. Their ire has been stoked by the fact that Bithumb was reportedly on the verge of implementing a system that would have prevented the gaffe — but instead chose to prioritise other matters.

The exchange’s promotions team had intended to send a total of $423 in Korean won to 249 customers who took part in a lucky draw-type giveaway. However, the team erroneously selected Bitcoin as the unit type when sending the rewards to this group of customers. As a result, each of the customers received thousands or millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin instead.

While Bithumb was able to freeze trading shortly after and convince the vast majority of the recipients to return the Bitcoin, a small number of customers liquidated their coins or traded them for other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.

Bithumb told Chosun Ilbo it is yet to receive 125 Bitcoin, worth around $9 million, from a small group of recipients.

The exchange said it was prepared to write off these losses, South Korean media outlet TokenPost reported on February 8.

“The fact that a single error in setting an event reward unit can destabilise an entire crypto exchange soberly demonstrates the current state of our systems and processes,” Hwang Seung-wook, Vice President of Bithumb’s Exchange Business Division, wrote in an email to Bithumb employees. “Rather than blaming a specific individual for their mistakes, we will move to eliminate the lax processes that fail to prevent such errors.”

The error comes at a sensitive time for Bithumb, which is aiming to become the first South Korean crypto exchange to go public in the United States this year. Earlier this month, South Korea’s consumer protection watchdog announced the launch of a probe into Bithumb’s marketing claims.

Compensation plans

The incident sparked a massive Bitcoin price drop at the exchange, and Bithumb said it would compensate all users affected by this, too.

Customers who sold Bitcoin at “an abnormally low price at the time of the incident will receive the full amount of the sale plus an additional 10%,” the exchange said. Bithumb also said it would allow traders to buy and sell coins commission-free for seven days, beginning February 9.

Regulators say Bithumb’s internal system, which allowed employees to pay out loyalty points, Korean won, Bitcoin, and Ethereum without going through formal settlement processes, was to blame for the incident, Kookmin Ilbo reported.

The newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying the incident revealed “structural vulnerabilities” at Bithumb.

The Financial Supervisory Service’s inspection of Bithumb reportedly began on February 7, with investigators asking the company to submit a list of employees who have permission to issue crypto payments.

The exchange reportedly plans to launch its fat finger fail-safe system by the end of March to ensure that future rewards cannot be paid out erroneously.

A separate system, which will detect and automatically block abnormal transactions, is also slated for launch by the end of May.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The El Salvador-based digital asset giant helped Turkish authorities with a money laundering investigation by freezing over half a billion dollars in crypto, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing an interview with the firm’s CEO Paolo Ardoino.

Tether’s latest actions came after Turkish investigators last week announced that they had frozen €460 million ($543 million) in assets belonging to Veysel Sahin, who is accused of running illegal betting platforms.

pic.twitter.com/0NGYNa7QBq

— İstanbul Cumhuriyet Başsavcılığı (@istanbulCBS) January 30, 2026

Tether did respond to questions from DL News. Istanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office was also contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

On the run

Sahin is wanted by authorities for allegedly laundering the profits of his illegal online betting platforms, according to local media and Turkish feds.

He was first nabbed by authorities back in 2017, and has been on the run since fleeing Turkey in early 2024.

Istanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said last week that it reached out to a “global company” to freeze Sahin’s assets but did not mention Tether.

More work with law enforcement

It isn’t the first time Tether, the company behind the most-traded cryptocurrency in the space, USDT, has come to the aid of law enforcement.

Tether’s USDT token is the backbone of the crypto economy, with a 24-hour trading volume of $135.6 billion, according to CoinGecko.

It has also — like many other digital assets — been used by criminals who want to move funds quickly and anonymously.

Tether in recent years has stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement. In 2023, it started freezing wallets connected with sanctioned entities on the Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals List.

And it has also worked with crypto exchanges and law enforcement to freeze stolen tokens tied to pig butchering scams.

Tether says on its website that it works with over 310 law enforcement agencies in 62 countries and has assisted more than 1,800 cases.

The company can freeze assets by activating a function on the token’s smart contract to prevent specific wallet addresses from transferring or receiving tokens.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The Fair Trade Commission sent two investigators to Bithumb’s headquarters in the Gangnam District of Seoul to conduct a probe on February 4, the South Korean news agency Yonhap’s EInfoMax service reported.

The commission is reportedly investigating claims made in Bithumb’s marketing materials in March and April 2025 that Bithumb has “the highest level of liquidity in the domestic crypto exchange sector.”

Competition among South Korea’s biggest crypto exchanges is becoming increasingly intense as Bithumb and its closest rival Upbit prepare for a big year ahead.

Bithumb is aiming to become the first South Korean exchange to go public in New York this year, while Upbit is looking to complete a merger with the domestic tech giant Naver.

Race for dominance

Given the current market picture, the commission considers Bithumb’s liquidity claims to be potentially exaggerated and misleading, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo wrote.

Data from CoinGecko shows that last year, Upbit dominated the Korean won trading market, cornering 68% of the market, South Korean broadcaster KBS reported. Bithumb’s share was 28%.

The commission has the power to charge firms with violating the Fair Labelling and Advertising Act if it discovers evidence of “false or exaggerated labeling or advertising.”

The law states that firms that “mislead consumers about a product or service” can be punished with fines and other disciplinary measures.

Sources at the aforementioned media outlets said the Fair Trade Commission is also considering launching an investigation into allegations that Bithumb unfairly wooed customers with a cash giveaway in 2025.

Failed cash handouts

Late last year, Bithumb ran a promotion offering new customers around $70 if they started using its application programming interface, or API.

An API is a type of software interface. In Bithumb’s case, this allows web users to access the exchange’s platform without using its app or website.

The commission reportedly suspects Bithumb of changing the offer’s conditions midway through the promotional event.

After more than 50,000 participants signed up for the event, Bithumb reportedly changed the eligibility rules.

As a result, approximately 30,000 participants reportedly failed to receive cash handouts.

DL News has requested comment from Bithumb regarding these reports.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

In a fiery exchange, Bessent was asked by crypto skeptic and Democratic senator Brad Sherman if he could “instruct the banks of this country” to “bail out Bitcoin” or use taxpayers’ money to invest in “Bitcoin or Trumpcoin”.

“I am Secretary of the Treasury, I do not have the authority to do that, and as chair of [Financial Stability Oversight Council], I do not have that authority,” responded a confused Bessent after asking for clarification.

Sherman continued to press Bessent on whether the government would spend taxpayer money on crypto, leading the Treasury Secretary to defend the administration’s strategic crypto stockpile.

“I’m now asking about the money of our taxpayers — which you manage as Secretary of the Treasury — is it going to be deployed into crypto assets?” Sherman asked.

Bessent confirmed during the hearing that the seized Bitcoin had gone up in value. “Of that $1 billion in Bitcoin that was seized, $500 million was retained, and that $500 million has become over $15 billion,” he said.

Trump’s business ventures

Sherman, like other Democrats have done in the past, was highlighting President Trump’s controversial crypto ventures.

US President Donald Trump has attracted ire from Democrats after last year signing a number of crypto-friendly executive orders — including the establishment of a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

But the US government is not buying more Bitcoin — at least for now — and the strategic reserve contains crypto confiscated mostly from crimes. Some pro-crypto US lawmakers want the government to buy Bitcoin.

The president has been involved in a number of digital asset business moves, including debuting a meme coin, TRUMP, the day before his inauguration and backing a decentralised finance project, World Liberty Financial.

Lawmakers have criticised the business ventures, alleging the president’s crypto dealings are corrupt. “Donald Trump has turned the Oval Office into the world’s most corrupt crypto startup operation, minting staggering personal fortunes for him and his family in less than a year,” Democratic Representative for Maryland Jamie Raskin alleged in a report last year.

Later on Wednesday, Democrat Gregory Meeks of New York grilled Bessent on a Abu Dhabi royal’s investment in World Liberty Financial, as reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. Bessent and Meeks then proceeded to shout over each other.

“Stop covering for the president — stop being his flunky,” Meeks shouted.

The WSJ said in its reporting that the Trump Administration agreed to give the UAE access to American-made AI chips.

World Liberty Financial has attracted more negative press lately following complaints from investors over millions of dollars in tokens they are unable to trade.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

ZKsync was trading around $0.023 on Sunday morning, South Korean time, ahead of scheduled system maintenance on the Upbit crypto exchange.

At 11:30 am, just before maintenance began, the price rose to $0.24, only to drop back to around $0.023 by 6:30 pm the same day, when the maintenance period ended.

“We are aware that ZKsync experienced a rapid price fluctuation in a short period of time,” a spokesperson for the Financial Security Service’s Virtual Asset Investigation Bureau told South Korean newspaper Hanguk Kyungjae.

“We are looking into the matter and may quickly transition to a formal investigation after determining the severity of the case.”

ZKSync traders formed a “buy wall” ahead of the maintenance as part of a coordinated effort to artificially spike demand for the coin, and force its price up, legal experts told the newspaper.

Upbit data shows trading volumes in ZKsync ballooned by over 4,000% on February 1. By contrast, they rose by a more modest 150% on the same day on the US-based exchange Coinbase, where prices increased by just under 40%.

Nevertheless, the effect on the coin’s price chart was very noticeable.

Almost 40% of ZKsync trades have now been conducted on Upbit, according to CoinGecko. The coin is not often traded in large volumes in South Korea. It accounted for less than 2% of Upbit’s 24-hour trading volume at the time of writing on February 4.

ZKsync is a layer-2 network for Ethereum that uses zero-knowledge proofs to compress large batches of data to make transactions cheaper.

If created artificially, as regulators allege, the price surge may constitute a violation of the 2023 Act on the Protection of Virtual Asset Users, Jin Hyeon-su, a managing partner at the legal firm Decent Law, told Hanguk Kyungjae. The act stipulates that offenders can be jailed for over a year.

It also grants courts the power to fine anyone found guilty of price manipulation an amount equal to five times higher than the profits they made from their illicit activities.

Courts can also impose additional fines if they judge that other traders have suffered financial losses as a result of price manipulation.

“A large number of buy orders were concentrated in a short period of time on February 1, followed quickly by a release of volume afterwards,” said Jin.

“This likely constitutes price manipulation, collusive trading, and unfair trading.”

Regulators in the country have launched a sweeping crackdown on altcoin price manipulation.

A court in Seoul jailed the CEO of a crypto management firm for three years on February 4 after finding him guilty of manipulating the price of an unnamed coin on the Bithumb exchange in 2024.

Earlier this month, the FSS announced plans to use AI-powered tools to detect efforts to manipulate crypto markets.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

S&P Global Ratings said in a Tuesday note that top European banks are likely to issue euro-pegged digital tokens this year, with the market to surge from €650 million to €1.1 billion by 2030. That’s $768 million to $1.2 billion.

It won’t be payments that push the growth of the digital assets, but rather tokenisation of real world assets, the researchers added.

“Stablecoins’ emergence and growth presents established banks with both potential revenue opportunities and a threat to their traditional roles as intermediaries — which could be supplanted by non-bank platforms,” the report read.

Large banks have realised that stablecoins are growing so are fast embracing the tech to keep up. Major lenders, companies and even governments now want to issue the digital tokens since new regulations came into force last year.

Stablecoins are a $305.2 billion market, according to DefiLlama data, with Tether’s USDT token the biggest player in the sphere. But since regulation became more clearcut, mainstream firms like PayPal, BlackRock, and Fidelity have released stablecoin products.

Tokenisation first, payments second

Stablecoins are a lucrative venture. Banks will earn fees via their institutional clients dealing in blockchain-based assets and stablecoins will increasingly be used to settle transactions, the report said.

The US is already ahead of the game when it comes to tokenisation. Wall Street titan BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has frequently spoken about the tokenisation of assets as the future of finance.

“The tokenisation of asset classes offers the prospect of driving efficiencies in capital markets, shortening value chains, and improving cost and access for investors,” he said in 2023.

And earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange said it was developing a platform for tokenised versions of stocks and exchange-traded funds to allow instant settlement, 24/7 trading — with stablecoin-based funding.

But the Eurozone will catch up “from a fast-follower advantage”, the report noted, underpinned by the clear regulation provided by European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, or MiCA, and “momentum in stablecoin adoption.”

Still, payments will play a part in the growth of euro-pegged stablecoins as banks see the benefits of using the blockchain-based tokens to speed up transactions.

Overcoming regulatory hurdles

11 European banks have already joined forces to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin — expected to be released this year.

Comprehensive regulation of the tokens via MiCA — described as “one of the world’s most comprehensive stablecoin regulations” by S&P Global — is what got banks interested in the tokens, said S&P Global.

Now, with clear-cut rules in place, growth should accelerate as institutions move towards the world of tokenisation, S&P Global added.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The deal was overseen by the banking heavyweight VTB Bank and saw Mosinzhproekt, the Moscow government’s engineering arm, pay an unspecified amount to several unnamed building contractors.

A CBDC is a digital version of a country’s official fiat currency. It is typically issued and backed by its central bank.

While few countries have officially rolled out their CBDCs, many, including China, have begun advanced pilots, some with their international counterparts.

Late last year, the Russian capital announced plans to build 13 new metro stations and add 27 kilometres worth of lines by 2028.

And the city wants to use the digital ruble, Russia’s CBDC, to help it complete its project.

“The introduction of the digital ruble into the financial and economic activities of Moscow city bodies will continue," said Maria Bagreeva, the Deputy Mayor of Moscow, per an official release. ”We expect an increase in the number of payments.”

The digital ruble is currently in pilot testing ahead of a nationwide rollout on September 1, as the global race to establish CBDC dominance intensifies.

Russian officials say they want to use the CBDC’s smart contract functions in government contracts and welfare payments to prevent fraud and corruption.

Metro CBDC testbed

“The deal was unique in that four contractors simultaneously received transfers, instantly from our digital ruble wallets,” a senior Moscow official said.

The city said it will use the digital ruble to pay for more infrastructure projects in the capital. Mosinzhproekt is planning to start using the CBDC to pay for equipment rentals.

It is also considering using the coin to pay its staff’s wages and cover expenses.

“[Using the digital ruble] allows for greater convenience, speed, and transparency,” said Maxim Gaman, CEO of Mosinzhproekt.

The Moscow government says using the digital ruble will “ultimately lead to a more efficient use of the city’s budget.”

The Russian central bank unveiled details of its digital ruble project in 2021, followed by real-world pilots in 11 cities in August 2023.

The Moscow Metro has become an informal testbed for the CBDC.

The metro system announced a pilot in 2023 that allowed a small number of Moscow residents to use their digital ruble holdings to top up the balances on Troika smart transport cards.

Tim Alper is a news correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Hey all, Liam here.

For many, US President Donald Trump has been hugely beneficial to the crypto industry.

He’s issued several crypto-friendly executive orders, stacked the Securities and Exchange Commission with a handful of pro-business commissioners, and signed landmark stablecoin legislation into law.

Equally, these developments have inspired large banks and fintech companies to expand into the space, like never before.

Still, suggests Friederike Ernst, a co-founder of Gnosis, the regulatory wins and merging with traditional financial institutions belie the technology’s true potential.

Gnosis built and designed the Ethereum-based sidechain, Gnosis Chain; developed the multi-signature crypto wallet, Safe; and deployed a crypto payments network, Gnosis Pay.

“Why a lot of us got into [crypto] in the first place was not a back-end upgrade for existing industries,” she told DL News.

“It was a paradigm shift of how platforms, money and technology can work with the people, not against the people, how things that you do on a daily basis don’t leave you open to extraction from the powers that be.”

After several years under an aggressive — even hostile — SEC, complaining about the current administration’s approach to crypto is almost heretical.

Ernst is also of the camp that many in American politics, notably the Democratic Party, went too far in vilifying the industry.

“I don’t think anyone is above that or should be above the law,” she said. “But the extent to which crypto was vilified was pretty insulting. It’s difficult not to take that personally.”

But Ernst suggests that in this new era, the industry faces a very different kind of risk.

When she, Martin Köppelmann, and Stefan George founded Gnosis in 2015, the crypto industry was still very “weird.”

“Until recently, we were the weirdest from a societal point of view,” she said. “We were the magic internet money people who asked, ‘What is money?’ and ‘What makes money, money?’”

Most importantly, these questions also reconsidered the power structure ingrained in much of our financial system and advocated for new systems that promoted sovereignty, shared ownership, and individual agency, Ernst said.

In the last ten years, however, that’s all changed.

Robinhood will soon launch blockchain-based stocks, and Bank of America is now hiring a stablecoin engineer.

David Sachs, Trump’s crypto and artificial intelligence czar, declared at Davos this year that the banking industry and crypto industry will become “one digital assets industry.”

It is, in many ways, what many have been hoping for.

Not Ernst.

“I got into this for the agency and the ownership,” she said.

“If you now look at Robinhood and Bank of America, are these values there? I would argue that they’re not.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The private firm, based out of the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador, posted a $13 billion profit for 2024.

Tether did not explain why its profits for last year were down but did say it had made a “shift toward highly liquid, low-risk assets” and that total reserves hit a high of $193 billion.

Tether Delivers $10B+ Profits in 2025, $6.3B in Excess Reserves, and Record $141 billion Exposure in U.S. Treasury Holdings
Learn more: https://t.co/XG3vgSoVeV

— Tether (@tether) January 30, 2026

“USDT expanded because global demand for dollars is increasingly moving outside traditional banking rails, particularly in regions where financial systems are slow, fragmented, or inaccessible,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.

DL News did not immediately receive a response from Tether.

Buying assets

Tether in 2025 kept stockpiling assets: The company said it had more exposure to US treasuries than ever before with direct US Treasury holdings exceeded $122 billion.

Tether’s main product, the USDT token, is backed by reserves so it can function as a digital dollar.

And it’s continuing into 2026: Ardoino this week said the company would allocate 10-15% of its portfolio to gold in a Reuters interview.

The firm said it added around 27 metric tons of gold to its fund exposure in the last quarter of 2025.

Tether holds gold not only to back USDT but also XAUT, a token designed to give holders ownership of gold.

A new stablecoin

Tether this week entered the US market, debuting a USAT, a regulated digital token designed to operate under the Genius Act.

For years, the crypto giant was locked out of the US market but now regulations are clear cut for stablecoins — the most-traded digital assets — after US President Donald Trump last year signed the Genius Act to regulate them.

Major banks and companies are now releasing their own versions of the tokens, which are backed by dollar reserves so payments can be made quickly and efficiently via blockchain technology.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com

Trump’s pick is likely to fulfill the president’s wishes: the former Federal Reserve governor last year said he wanted to lower the cost of borrowing.

“I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Kevin Warsh to be the chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve,” Trump wrote Friday on his social media platform Truth Social.

“On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down,” the president added.

Warsh’s nomination comes as pro-crypto Trump takes on the Federal Reserve — long expected to be independent from politics — after its current chair Jerome Powell did not lower interest rates as quickly as the top Republican wanted.

Is Warsh pro-crypto?

It would appear that Warsh, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, is pro-crypto. Last year, Warsh, who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, spoke highly of the leading cryptocurrency.

“Bitcoin does not make me nervous…Bitcoin doesn’t trouble me, I think of it as an important asset that can help inform policymakers when they are doing things right and wrong,” he said in an interview.

Warsh showed interest in the big orange coin in a 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“Its price volatility significantly diminishes its usefulness as a reliable unit of account or an effective means of payment,” he wrote.

“Bitcoin might, however, serve as a sustainable store of value, like gold. Even if you’re not buying cryptoassets, Bitcoin’s boom-and-bust cycle is worth watching.”

The crypto community seems happy with the nomination too. Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor, who co-founded Bitcoin treasury Strategy, posted a video on X Friday of Warsh talking Bitcoin.

“Soon, Kevin Warsh will be the first pro-Bitcoin chairman of the Federal Reserve,” wrote Saylor.

Soon, Kevin Warsh will be the first pro-Bitcoin Chairman of the Federal Reserve.pic.twitter.com/afEBrBFeWX

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) January 30, 2026

Cody Carbone, CEO of blockchain trade association, The Digital Chamber, posted: “The Federal Reserve is a cornerstone institution, and recognition at the highest levels that Bitcoin is an important asset class for US leadership is a significant moment.”

Warsh has also floated the idea of a digital dollar. In 2022, writing in the WSJ, Warsh said that a “new digital dollar would strengthen the currency for a new era, and bolster America as leader of the global economic system” as a way to compete with China’s central bank digital currency.

Warsh did mention the dangers of CBDCs, though, and how China’s digital yuan was “at odds with the American ethos of privacy from government intrusion.”

What’s the Fed got to do with crypto?

Trump has pushed for low-interest rates since taking office last year. Controversially, the 79-year-old has called Powell “stupid” and even threatened to fire him.

While it’s debatable whether or not Trump can fire the central bank leader, the White House has been seen to have found ways to put pressure on the Fed chair.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department opened an investigation into testimony Powell gave to a Senate committee about renovations to Federal Reserve buildings. Powell says the investigation is politically motivated.

Crypto market observers have said that a Federal Reserve chair that does what Trump says — lower interest rates — will help crypto markets. Bitcoin and major digital coins and tokens have typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

That decision could have violated federal conflict-of-interest laws and be punishable by up to five years in prison, the senators said in a letter addressed to the official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The January 28 letter was authored by six senators who have often clashed with the crypto industry, including Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Last April, Blanche issued a memo stating the Department of Justice would disband the four-year-old National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which spearheaded investigations and coordinated casework.

The memo also said that prosecutors would not pursue crypto exchanges, mixers, and “offline wallets” for “the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

At the time, it was viewed as a nudge to prosecutors in New York, who had charged crypto mixer developer Roman Storm, angering some of Trump’s allies in the crypto industry.

But the senators, many of whom are sceptical of decentralised financial protocols like crypto tumbler Tornado Cash, suggested Blanche’s decision was made to benefit Trump’s crypto businesses.

Now, they think Blanche may have done it for himself.

Recent reporting from ProPublica found that Blanche held as much as $480,000 in crypto at the time he issued his memo. Despite an earlier promise to divest his crypto holdings “as soon as practicable,” he didn’t begin selling them until late May.

“The fact that you held substantial amounts of cryptocurrency at the time you made this decision calls into question your own motivations,” the senators wrote.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan public interest group, filed a complaint against Blanche last week. In the complaint, the organisation asked the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General — an internal watchdog — to investigate whether Blanche’s memo “benefitted the digital asset industry” and, in turn, his own crypto investments.

In a statement to ProPublica, a spokesperson for Blanche said he “upholds the highest levels of transparency and ethical standards. As such, this was appropriately flagged, addressed, and cleared in advance.”

This week, senators demanded that Blanche explain the statement, whether he followed the requisite conflict-of-interest procedures before issuing the memo, and why he took so long to begin offloading his crypto.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Republicans voted to advance the bill, which details rules for the trading of so-called digital commodities and includes protections for developers of decentralised financial protocols.

“In order to protect American consumers, onshore innovation, and allow US businesses to continue to grow and prosper, we must grant the CFTC regulatory authority over the spot market trading of digital commodities,” Committee Chair John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas, said ahead of the vote.

“Advancing this bill is the first step, and there are many steps to come in achieving those goals.”

Familiar fault lines emerged during the vote, with Democrats saying they couldn’t support a bill that allowed President Donald Trump to enrich himself with crypto as he pushes for a bill that has the potential to bring the asset class into the mainstream.

Democrats also said they wouldn’t support a bill that failed to guarantee Democratic representation on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of two key financial regulators in the US.

The body is currently led single-handedly by Trump appointee Michael Selig. Historically, the CFTC and other regulatory commissions have had a mix of both Democrats and Republicans.

One senator even suggested decentralised finance remains a sticking point.

“We keep talking about this thing called DeFi. Go and have a town hall and talk to your constituents about DeFi and see how many of them are going to be able to talk about it with clarity,” Senator Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, said.

“There are loopholes that terrorists and cartels are using today that the United States knows about,” he later said, adding that the details weren’t widely known because such reports had been classified.

The road ahead

Even as Republicans advanced the bill, its wider prospects remain in doubt. A companion bill in the Senate Banking Committee, which details which digital assets should fall under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was scheduled for a similar vote earlier this month.

But that vote was cancelled at the last minute after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he could not support the bill, citing its ban on stablecoin yield and its stringent anti-money laundering provisions, among other things.

Both bills will have to be combined before they can go to the full senate for a vote. And Senate rules mean any bill will need to secure bipartisan support.

Should a combined bill earn the chamber’s support, it will have to be reconciled with a version that passed the House of Representatives last summer.

Those obstacles will be difficult to scale in an election year.

The Trump conundrum

The Trump family’s foray into crypto remains a key issue for Senate Democrats.

“The White House has made this infinitely harder,” New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, the bill’s lead Democrat negotiator, said on Thursday.

“I have had private conversations with republican colleagues and staffers that agree with me. … The fact that Donald Trump is grifting on crypto himself, it’s like me creating a Cory coin,” he added, calling it “ridiculous.”

Other Senators complained about the lack of Democrats on the CFTC.

“We can’t give the CFTC this broad new authority when it only has one Republican member,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said.

Republicans rejected a series of proposed Democrat amendments, including ones that would limit federal officials’ ability to profit off crypto and that would bar crypto companies from receiving taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Boozman said the amendments were either beyond the scope of the bill or best handled by the Senate Banking committee.

Still, Booker said he was hopeful a crypto market structure bill could earn bipartisan support.

“What divides us here isn’t some fundamental disagreement on both sides,” he said. “We’ve got this short distance with a clear path forward.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

National Investment Corporation, or NIC, the central bank’s investment subsidiary, said the bank will use “crypto seized by law enforcement agencies,” along with foreign currency and gold reserves, to beef up the fund, the Russian-language media outlet QAMS QazTrading reported.

The bank has already earmarked $350 million worth of overseas currency and gold for the fund, the corporation’s head, Timur Suleimenov, told media representatives on January 28.

The move comes as Kazakhstan seeks to revamp its efforts to become a Central Asian crypto hub in the wake of the 2022 turmoil.

At the time, crypto miners were blamed for massive power outages that left multiple areas with no electricity, sparking civil unrest and a crackdown on the country’s once-strong Bitcoin mining industry.

A $5m windfall?

The NIC says it has already opened a dedicated account for its crypto-related investments at the country’s Central Depository.

Initially, the NIC said it does not plan to buy or hold any crypto directly, but will instead look to make its purchases through hedge funds.

The body said it has created a shortlist of five hedge funds that handle crypto purchases, but did not reveal their identity.

The NIC will also broaden its scope by investing in crypto-specific venture capital funds, Suleimenov said.

The central bank may already have up to $5 million worth of crypto at its disposal, per a recent speech from Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Police in the country have so far shut down 130 illegal crypto exchanges with combined revenues of around $124 million, the President told the nation’s Financial Monitoring Agency.

As part of their investigations, officers have seized assets worth over $5 million, he said, although he did not disclose the exact nature of these assets.

“Money laundering and the illegal withdrawal of money through underground cryptocurrency operations have become a serious problem,” Tokayev said.

The President said the advertising for cash-for-crypto exchanges “continues on social media,” despite the crackdown.

“It appears the problem has not been resolved,” Tokayev said, “There are virtually no convictions for such crimes. Illegal capital outflow is a direct threat to economic security.”

Tokayev ordered the agency, Kazakhstan’s top anti-money laundering body, to “make specific proposals” on ways to fight crypto-powered crime.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

The Financial Services Commission, or FSC, South Korea’s top regulator, has proposed a 15% to 20% cap on share ownership to avoid conflicts of interest.

“As [crypto] exchanges are now officially recognised as part of the financial system, we must create a governance structure that befits their status,” said the FSC chair Lee Eok-won, according to South Korean newspaper Seoul Kyungjae. “We are currently discussing measures to diversify [owners’] stakes in crypto exchanges, including regulations on the distribution of shares.”

As crypto adoption gathers pace in South Korea, deep divisions are forming as regulators, big tech firms, and lawmakers vie for dominance over the sector.

The result, per experts, is a potential impasse.

Government opposes plan

The FSC has asserted that crypto exchanges have become a form of “public infrastructure,” meaning they should be subject to restrictive ownership regulations.

The regulator says the cap should apply not only to single individuals, but also to companies they own.

This is a direct clash with the policies of the ruling Democratic Party, Seoul Kyungjae reported. The party has refused to include such provisions in the Basic Digital Asset Act draft.

The draft bill will mainly focus on the rules surrounding the issuance of won-denominated stablecoins. But the government also wants to include a range of new crypto regulations.

A clash with the government on this matter is now inevitable, the newspaper said, quoting sources familiar with the matter.

“Regulators are very firm in their position on this matter,” an unnamed financial industry insider told the newspaper. “There will be continued friction on this point with industry and political groups, who oppose this measure.”

Compliance challenges

At present, most of South Korea’s biggest crypto exchanges are controlled by a single individual or company — usually their founders. None currently adheres to the FSC’s proposed rules.

Song Chi-hyung, co-founder of Dunamu, the operator of the market-leading Upbit exchange, owns around 26% of Dunamu’s shares. This could soon change if the internet giant Naver gains regulatory approval to complete a share-swap deal that would see it take control of 100% of Dunamu’s shares.

The picture is similar elsewhere, with the gaming giant Nexon owning over 60% of Korbit’s shares, and Binance controlling over 67% of GOPAX’s shares.

Coinone founder Cha Myung-hoon, meanwhile, owns some 53% of his exchange. Subsidiaries of Com2uS Holdings, a South Korean gaming firm; holding a combined total of almost 39% of Coione’s shares.

Bithumb’s ownership, the only other domestic exchange with a full operating permit, remains a source of contention.

Officially, Bithumb is majority-owned by Bithumb Holdings, but the firms DAA, Vidente, and BTHMB each hold sizeable stakes of up to 31%.

South Korean media outlets and prosecutors have alleged that a controversial businessman named Kang Jong-hyun, the owner of Vidente, is Bithumb’s “de facto” owner.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

That’s when City Minister and Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby says a sweeping crypto bill will come into force in the United Kingdom, “subject to the will of Parliament.”

The Financial Services and Markets Act is making its way through Whitehall, she said in a speech at the TOK26: The London Tokenisation Summit in London on Thursday.

Like traditional institutions, crypto-asset firms will be required to be registered and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s financial regulator, under the new law.

“This is a major milestone for the UK, and it’s giving [companies] the certainty that they need to grow and to invest here,” Rigby said.

“Our approach is going to deliver open and competitive markets that promote the UK as a destination of choice for digital asset businesses,” she added.

The timeline confirmation signals that Westminster is moving ahead with plans to regulate digital assets.

Other initiatives include digital asset sandboxes and consultations from both the Bank of England and the FCA.

Still, while the industry welcomes any legislative momentum, insiders urge lawmakers to step on the gas or risk falling behind countries such as the United States and the European Union, which have already approved their own laws.

“We still have time to catch up, but the clock is ticking,” Edward Vaizey, a Conservative Party member of the House of Lords, told DL News last summer.

Under pressure

Rigby’s comments come as political rivals, the crypto industry, and other jurisdictions’ legislative efforts put pressure on the Labour government to ramp up its regulatory efforts.

Britain was on the cusp of finalising crypto legislation in 2024 before former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for a snap election.

After Sunak’s Conservative Party lost the election, the industry had the impression that the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had downgraded digital asset policies, as it made few comments about the industry.

Reform Party leader Nigel Farage used that perceived silence to position himself as a staunch supporter of digital assets, echoing US President Donald Trump’s campaign in the run-up to the 2024 elections.

In Westminster, members of parliament reformed a bipartisan group to support digital assets, co-chaired by Vaizey and further ramping up pressure.

The industry didn’t stay silent. In 2025, industry reps bombarded Westminster with opinion columns and adverts, saying that the government needed to get crypto rules back on track or risk falling behind other jurisdictions.

‘If UK wants to be the forefront of the fintech, financial services ecosystem future, we have to move now.’

Simon Keefe, managing director and head of digital solutions at Calastone

Government action

Over the past year, the government has shepherded several crypto initiatives. In September, it launched a transatlantic task force with the US to promote financial markets, including digital assets.

The Bank of England is also consulting with industry on proposed rules for regulating stablecoins. It aims to finalise those rules by the end of the year.

The central bank and the FCA have also opened the Digital Securities Sandbox to give firms an opportunity to explore how digital assets will operate in financial markets.

Still, industry leaders encourage the UK government to do even more.

“If we want the UK to be a leader — and I think the minister made some terrific comments earlier, — then I think we can’t just kind of push this innovation into small sandboxes,” Tom Duff Gordon, vice president of international policy at Coinbase, said during a panel at the London event on Thursday.

“We’ve got to see what the US is doing.”

Trump signed the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill, into law in July. The US Senate is currently debating the Clarity Act, a sweeping markets bill.

Elsewhere, the EU is enforcing its Markets in Crypto-Asset Regulation, which has provided greater clarity for the industry.

“If UK wants to be the forefront of the fintech, financial services ecosystem future, we have to move now,” Simon Keefe, managing director and head of digital solutions at Calastone, said at the Thursday event. “We can’t be in sandboxes for the next two to five years.”

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

Tokenisation is the process of converting ownership rights in assets such as real estate, stocks, or bonds into digital tokens on a blockchain.

Proponents argue that doing so will speed up finance, reduce costs, and provide greater accountability.

Despite assets such as tokenised versions of publicly traded stocks operating on different technology from their traditional counterparts, registration, reporting, disclosure, and anti-fraud rules still apply.

“The format in which a security is issued or the methods by which holders are recorded (e.g., onchain vs. offchain) does not affect application of the federal securities laws,” the SEC said in a statement.

In essence, tokenised securities are regulated as securities first, technology second.

The clarity should reassure securities issuers and asset managers, and could encourage more of them to experiment and issue tokenised versions of securities.

Tokenisation is becoming increasingly popular among the world’s largest financiers.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this month, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said tokenising the financial system was “necessary,” and would reduce corruption and democratise finance.

Tokenised stocks

The SEC’s statement also sheds light on the structures that can be used to tokenise securities, which is critical information for investors.

The SEC classifies tokenised securities into two types: those sponsored by the issuer and those sponsored and issued by a third party.

Even if a token sponsored by a third-party isn’t tied directly to the underlying security and doesn’t give the holder any equity, voting, information, or other rights, it must still abide by the SEC’s securities rules.

The guidance, however, does not address regulatory uncertainty surrounding the secondary market trading of tokenised securities.

Some issuers have already launched tokenised securities — namely, tokenised versions of publicly traded stocks — outside the US.

Trading platform Robinhood has already launched tokens representing more than 2,000 US-listed stocks in Europe under the bloc’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, called MiCA.

Vlad Tenev, the firm’s CEO, has championed the tokenisation of stocks, arguing in a Wednesday X post that they could have prevented the trading halts his company was forced into during the January 2021 GameStop stock short squeeze.

Adoption hurdles

Yet in the US, adoption hurdles still remain.

First and foremost is the Clarity Act, a broad crypto-market-structure bill currently passing through the US Senate that should further reduce uncertainty surrounding tokenised assets.

The bill was previously expected to become law before the end of 2025. It faced more delays earlier this month after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his exchange would not support it.

Armstrong argued that certain provisions would enable a “de facto ban on tokenised equities” and would give the government unlimited access to crypto users’ financial records.

“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Armstrong said in a social media post on January 14.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

And the token’s use in dodging sanctions is likely playing a part, according to a Wednesday report from blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs.

“Sanctions-related activity in 2025 was overwhelmingly driven by Russia-linked flows, largely due to the rapid growth of the ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5, which processed more than $72 billion in total volume,” the company said in its 2026 Crypto Crime Report.

A7A5 is issued by a Kyrgyzstani company called Old Vector.

“The token is regulated under the country’s comprehensive digital asset framework, operates under state supervision, and meets all requirements for fiat backing, regular independent audits, and investor protection,” its website says.

With a market value of over $500 million, according to DefiLlama data, A7A5 is the 21st biggest stablecoin. Most of the token’s activity happens on the Tron blockchain, and unlike other stablecoins, it is barely traded on well-known exchanges.

Sanction dodging up

Crypto crime in 2025 surged, according to TRM Labs, with the biggest increase in illicit activity coming from sanctions-related activity — which shot up 400% from 2024.

And the vast majority of volume associated with inflows to sanctioned entities and jurisdictions in 2025 was associated with A7A5: a total of $72 billion out of $93 billion.

But not all A7A5 activity is related to avoiding sanctions, the report said, “but rather sanctioned activity more broadly, including state-aligned economic flows.”

TRM Labs also said that new designations of large entities such as crypto exchange Garantex and Russian cross-border payment platform A7 — both sanctioned in 2025 — led to the increase from 2024.

A7A5’s developers did not immediately respond to DL News’ questions.

Talking crypto

The US, Canada, the European Union, and others heavily sanctioned Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Its access to the dollar and euro markets has since been limited, and lawmakers in the country have been talking about using crypto to get around sanctions for some time.

Back in 2022, Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseyev spoke about using stablecoin rails in order to trade with friendly countries. He floated the idea of digital tokens pegged to gold.

And President Vladimir Putin himself has praised the power of permissionless crypto.

“For example, Bitcoin, who can ban it? Nobody,” the Russian leader said in 2024.

“And who can prohibit the use of other electronic payment instruments? Nobody, because these are new technologies.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

A comprehensive legislative framework will be ready for State Duma lawmakers to vote on at the end of June, Anatoly Aksakov, the head of the State Duma’s Committee on the Financial Markets, told Russia’s Parliamentary Gazette.

The law will include regulations for crypto exchanges, which currently operate in a quasi-legal grey zone, Aksakov said. Under the law, unregistered crypto exchange operators could face fines or jail time, mirroring Russian laws on illegal banking activities.

Assuming lawmakers approve the bill, it will come into force on July 1, 2027, Aksakov said.

Crypto is playing an increasingly important role in Russia, a fact that has forced the crypto-skeptic central bank into a U-turn.

Major banks envisage a future whereby crypto provides citizens with more investment options, while Russian traders want to use crypto to make dollar-free cross-border transactions.

Regulation roll-out

Russian crypto regulation has been stuck in the pipeline for years, lagging behind much of the rest of the world due to a long-standing impasse between the central bank and the finance ministry.

The ministry advocated regulating and taxing crypto trading, while the bank called for a China-style ban. The bank plans to unveil the digital ruble, its central bank digital currency, nationwide in September this year.

But the evolution of digital finance and the realities of US, EU, and UK-led sanctions regimes have left Russia frozen out of dollar-denominated trade. Crypto has let companies side-step these sanctions, leading the central bank to abandon its anti-crypto stance.

Commercial banks also say their clients want access to “real crypto,” rather than the derivative products they currently offer.

Aksakov said retail investors will need to pass an eligibility test before they can trade crypto. Lawmakers have also discussed placing an annual $4,000 cap on retail investors’ crypto purchases.

Experts say the new law will restrict the types of crypto retail investors can buy.

“The central bank will most likely compile a list of the top five or 10 highest-cap cryptocurrencies on major crypto exchanges,” Alexandra Fedotova, a lawyer at the law firm White Stone Consulting, told Parliamentary Gazette.

“That list will definitely include Bitcoin and Ethereum. It might also include Solana and Toncoin, given their popularity in Russia.”

Only “qualified investors” will be able to buy or sell coins that do not appear on the central bank’s list, Fedotova said.

The lawyer also said she expected policymakers to “single out stablecoins as a tool for foreign economic activity.”

She said the Tether-issued coin USDT, which is pegged 1:1 with the US dollar, will “become a digital dollar for companies, with purchases only permitted via licensed brokerages.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tdalper@dlnews.com.

One year after its implementation, and with over 100 firms already authorised as crypto asset service providers, the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, or MiCA, has proven itself as the world’s first comprehensive crypto rulebook and a much-needed part of Europe’s regulatory landscape.

Competing jurisdictions are already implementing lessons learned from MiCA, including the UK Government’s crypto roadmap, stablecoin reserve requirements within the US’ Genius Act, and Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Bill.

Yet it’s far from perfect.

Uncertainty around MiCA’s future supervisory oversight, along with unclear guidelines and burdensome requirements, risks stifling innovation.

For MiCA to become one of the world’s most robust regulatory frameworks, policymakers must fix the current regime’s drawbacks, incorporate industry feedback and offer clarity, whilst considering how supervision is structured within a “MiCA 2.0.”

Supervisory structure

The European Securities and Markets Authority, or ESMA, recently signalled its intent to take over centralised supervision of all CASPs, prompting contrasting reactions across the EU.

Regardless of which authority oversees MiCA, it’s vital that we’re regulated by someone with sufficient expertise, resources, and understanding of fast-evolving crypto business models.

EU member states have already built much of this regulatory experience, so any move towards centralisation should preserve this.

Furthermore, firms regulated under Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID, and Payment Services Directive, or PSD, will remain supervised at the national level.

Centralised supervision would therefore create problems for those holding several licenses, as they would be subjected to multiple reporting lines.

This is an avoidable burden when streamlined.

Indeed, cross-border rules are essential for European firms to maintain competitiveness.

Clarifying MiCA’s Jurisdiction

ESMA must incorporate industry feedback to ensure that regulation is effectively guided.

Greater clarity is essential regarding MiCA’s scope, as existing rules don’t adequately cover emerging use cases such as tokenised real-world assets, staking, and yield-bearing products.

MiCA 2.0 should include rules defining the boundary between MiCA and frameworks for payments and investment services, such as PSD and MiFID.

Further guidance is also required on market-structure issues, including shared order books and hybrid execution models, to allow companies to design compliant business models.

Stablecoins: A key battle

Stablecoins will play a central role in the future payments infrastructure, and it’s crucial that MiCA establishes clarity on their use and issuance.

At present, stablecoins are marred by regulatory ambiguity, adversely affecting users, issuers and CASPs — with many issuers receiving fines for rule violation.

While the January 2025 ban on non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins was intended to protect customers, it triggered frantic liquidations, leading to fragmented liquidity.

Additionally, greater definition is needed on multi-issuance models, redemption responsibilities, and reserve standards to ensure the EU’s stablecoin framework addresses risks, while Euro-denominated stablecoin use grows.

Maintaining global competitiveness

If Europe intends to preserve its regulatory leadership, MiCA 2.0 must deliver clear, proportionate regulations that are consistently applicable across all member states.

Allowing time for successful solutions to MiCA’s issues, not just supervisory adjustments, can secure Europe’s competitive advantage.

Nuno Marques, the vice president of the court-supervised electoral committee, is set to finalise a comprehensive review of election rules, including the long-standing crypto ban, ahead of the October general election, Brazilian media outlet Livecoins reported.

“What is changing now in Brazil and beyond is a growing recognition that blanket prohibitions are difficult to sustain as digital assets become more mainstream,” Jennifer Ouarrag, the head of legal at the staking provider Twinstake, told DL News.

As the popularity of crypto continues to grow in Brazil, more politicians are embracing adoption ahead of this year’s election — where digital assets are poised to become a deciding factor for some voters.

Renan Santos, a prospective presidential candidate, recently pledged to create a national Bitcoin reserve if elected. Crypto community leaders say they would back his bid if he develops crypto-friendly policies.

Last year, the volume of crypto transactions rose by 43% in Brazil, the crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin wrote in a report last month, with the average Brazilian trader spending more than $1,000 on crypto.

Room for change

While Marques has not spoken directly about crypto funding in elections, he has suggested there may be room for reform.

As things stand, Article 62 of the Brazilian electoral code explicitly forbids the use of crypto as a donations tool.

In comments about “campaign financing,” Marques said candidates and parties were welcome to challenge the present rules if they “present justifications for the change,” Brazilian media outlet Ultimo Segundo reported.

The court says it will listen to public proposals from citizens, companies, and political parties until the end of the month. It will then follow up with public hearings in early February before finalising rules in March.

The reasons why Brazilian authorities banned crypto in 2019 are largely technical, Ouarrag said.

“In Brazil, [electoral rules] emphasise donor identification, contribution limits, source-of-funds controls, and transparent valuation at the time of donation,” she said. “Crypto challenged that framework not because it is inherently opaque, but because it did not fit neatly into reporting and oversight systems designed around bank transfers and fiat currencies.”

All this helps explain why Brazil “initially opted for an outright prohibition rather than incremental accommodation,” Ouarrag explained.

Regulations changing worldwide

Brazil could soon follow in the footsteps of the US, where crypto is beginning to play an increasingly large role in politics.

The Federal Election Commission approved Bitcoin donations in 2014. Last year, Bloomberg reported that crypto firms have raised $263 million from industry players to back pro-crypto candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.

Ouarrag said similar “reassessments” about the use of crypto donations are underway in parts of Europe and Asia, where regulators are “being forced to engage more directly with crypto’s inherent volatility, “rather than trying to fit it into frameworks designed exclusively for cash or bank transfers.”

She said electoral commissions are likely to “adapt, rather than abandon” existing safeguards to ensure electoral funds remain traceable and transparent in the digital age.

Brazil’s Supreme Court last reviewed election rules in February 2024, when it decided to uphold the ban.

At the time, it said the decision was made “to ensure transparency and the proper tracking of donations made to political campaigns.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

It’s the new year, and the UK’s financial regulator has declared stablecoins pegged to the national currency a key priority in 2026.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England has led its own consultations in parallel to better understand how private sector money issuance could affect the British economy.

But what does that mean exactly?

For some, it means avoiding the pitfalls that have slowed US policy makers.

“Stablecoins there have scaled quickly, but under fragmented oversight and unclear accountability,” Javed Khattak, co-founder and CEO of London-based digital identity provider Cheqd, told DL News.

“UK regulators and industry are likely keen to avoid repeating that pattern by setting clear expectations early, while the market is still small enough to shape responsibly.”

The Genius Act, the American landmark stablecoin legislation that codifies stablecoin issuance in US law, still has a ways to go before it is formally implemented.

That hasn’t stopped key industry players, such as Tether and Circle, from growing their respective stablecoins.

Tether’s UST is worth $186 billion, while Circle’s USDC boasts more than $72 billion, which makes up a combined 83% of the total $308 billion stablecoin market, according to DefiLlama.

As for the UK’s stablecoin market, it’s worth just over $5 million across three different products. Small indeed.

But for Khattak and others, it’s an opportunity to bake safety and competitiveness into these products from the very beginning.

“The UK has an opportunity to set clear, upfront rules that allow innovation while embedding safeguards early, rather than retrofitting regulation after adoption,” Benoit Marzouk, CEO and founder of the British stablecoin provider tGBP, told DL News.

“The expectation is that once the infrastructure layer is clearly regulated, usage by merchants, fintechs, and institutions can grow organically,” he said.

And between the FCA and the Bank of England, five key pillars are emerging regarding stablecoin rules in the UK.

Five key pillars

The first, put forward by the central bank, is to keep at least 40% of a stablecoin’s backing assets with the Bank of England and the remainder in higher-yielding gilts.

The second is that customers should be able to redeem one stablecoin for £1 in fiat by the end of a business day.

Third, the Bank of England has proposed a strict, controversial rule to cap the amount of stablecoins an individual can hold between £10,000 and £20,000. As for businesses, they would be capped at holding £10 million.

Fourth, stablecoin providers must operate using a legal trust so that if the company goes bankrupt, the money belongs to the owners of the stablecoins rather than the company’s creditors.

And finally, regulators in the UK are mimicking those in the US by prohibiting — at least for now — stablecoin issuers from dishing out yield to their holders.

The FCA declared that stablecoins used for payments, not investment, would be a top priority this year.

Dollar competition?

These rules would likely help avoid many of the pitfalls that have hit the dollar stablecoin market, including the collapse of Terra’s UST in 2022 and the digital bank run on Circle’s USDC when its reserves holder, Silicon Valley Bank, went bankrupt.

Still, trying to catch its digital dollar cousin is a tall order.

But for Khattak, that’s never been the objective.

“This is not about competing with the dollar, rather, ensuring the UK remains relevant as a leading global fintech and financial services hub as payments become increasingly digital,” he said.

With clear laws in place, however, institutions will certainly feel a lot more comfortable doing business.

Regulatory clarity that allows banks, payment service providers, and large merchants to participate without reputational or compliance risk,” Marzouk said.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The group, which lobbies the government on behalf of UK crypto companies, surveyed the UK’s ten largest crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Gemini.

80% of respondents said an increasing number of their customers reported having bank transfers blocked or limited, while 70% said the UK banking environment is becoming more hostile.

“Blanket restrictions from the bank are designed to constrain the growth of the crypto industry,” an unnamed crypto exchange said in the report.

“No consideration of our regulatory status, actual fraud levels or genuine risks have been taken into account.”

For years, the UK has lagged behind other countries in regulating the fast-moving crypto industry.

But there are signs that this is beginning to change.

Last month, Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, revealed the Treasury was busy devising clear rules of the road for the digital assets industry.

At the same time, the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s regulatory watchdog, announced that a set of rules for stablecoins pegged to the value of the British pound will be a major priority moving forward.

£1 billion declined

According to the Business Council’s report, one exchange observed close to £1 billion in declined transactions attributable to bank-side rejections in the UK over the past year.

Based on the findings, the council estimates that 40% of all transactions to crypto exchanges are either blocked or delayed by banks.

It’s not just crypto exchange customers who are potentially losing out.

A majority of the exchanges that responded to the survey said that the increasingly hostile environment towards crypto in the UK is reducing their appetite to invest, scale, and hire in the country.

“We need support. If we are registered with the FCA it should not be this challenging for UK businesses,” another unnamed crypto exchange said.

The report also offers several policy recommendations to address the debanking drama.

They include having the FCA require banks to recognise the differences between exchanges and take a case-by-case approach to restrictions, creating a forum for engagement that brings together policymakers, platforms and banks to address fraud, and requiring banks to remove unnecessary frictions for FCA-registered exchanges.

Implementation of the recommendations would reduce the risk of innovation being offshored and ensure the UK can fully capitalise on the forthcoming regulatory framework, the report said.

“The window for action is now.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The top financial markets agency says the timeline is necessary to ensure its crypto ETF ban lifts in tandem with new digital asset tax reforms that are due to go live in 2028, Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported.

But at least one of these securities players says Tokyo is failing to act fast enough to keep up with global trends.

“Lifting the ban in 2028 is too late,” Tomoya Asakura, CEO of SBI Global Asset Management, wrote on X. “We strongly urge the government to lift the ban sooner rather than later.”

The delays also mean Japan risks lagging behind the US, Middle Eastern, and Asian rivals in crypto adoption, Asakura argued.

The growing tension between the Financial Services Agency and companies championing cryptocurrencies comes as Japan’s biggest traditional financial players press for wider crypto adoption.

Lagging behind rivals

Tokyo is giving its crypto tax regime an overhaul. It plans to ditch the current system, which taxes crypto profits as a form of income, in favour of capital gains taxation. For higher earners, that would mean a reduction from up to 55% taxation to a flat 20% levy.

The government also wants to let crypto traders defer their losses across tax years.

Satsuki Katayama, the Japanese finance minister, has confirmed that the reforms won’t take effect until 2028, which is now also holding back the launch of Bitcoin ETFs.

Overseas observers have welcomed the Financial Services Agency’s decision, saying it points to wider crypto adoption.

“This marks a significant milestone in the mainstream adoption of digital assets,” Didier Lavallée, founder and CEO of the financial services provider Tetra Digital Group, told DL News. “It allows broader retail investor access through regulated investment vehicles and demonstrates growing institutional acceptance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies within one of the world’s leading financial markets.”

Katayama conceded that Tokyo is aware of “strong demand from the industry” for tax reform, which would put crypto taxation on an even footing with stock and foreign exchange trading.

She said around 13 million Japanese people currently trade crypto and said there was now cross-party support for the reforms.

“We hope that parliament will pass this bill quickly,” the minister said.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

In a Friday filing, the SEC cited the exchange returning customer assets as reason for the dismissal. The Wall Street watchdog in 2023 sued Gemini, alleging the exchange offered unregistered securities via its Earn program.

Gemini, founded by billionaire twins Tyler and ​Cameron Winklevoss, settled with the SEC in 2025. Gemini Earn customers received their assets via a bankruptcy process.

Gemini did not immediately respond to DL News’ request for comment.

The dismissal comes as the SEC and other regulators scrap a number of lawsuits against top crypto companies like Coinbase, Binance, and Ripple since President Trump took power.

Frozen funds

Gemini froze Earn customer withdrawals in 2022, following the collapse of crypto behemoth FTX. The Earn product paid clients interest on their crypto holdings via lending partner, Genesis.

Genesis had “locked funds” with crypto exchange FTX, which hurt top crypto firms that had exposure to the company following its bankruptcy.

But Genesis was able to return around $2 billion in crypto customer funds including Gemini Earn funds via a bankruptcy process.

Gemini Earn customers did well in the process as the price of the crypto they got back had gone up substantially in value since the restructuring process.

Exchange Gemini — now called Gemini Space Station — went public last year and is now listed on the Nasdaq. Shares of the exchange (NASDAQ: GEMI) on Friday closed more than 3% lower.

Friendlier approach

Gemini is one of many companies that have faced the SEC’s change in course with regards to crypto regulation.

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space and received backing from entrepreneurs in the industry.

Since taking office, he has introduced a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, appointed crypto-friendly regulators, and signed crypto-friendly legislation like the Genius Act, which establishes a framework for regulating stablecoins.

The SEC under new chairman Paul Atkins created a Crypto Task Force to develop new regulatory frameworks aimed at helping the industry.

DL News reached out to the SEC for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The EU’s Crypto-Assets Regulation, or MiCA, provides a framework for almost all aspects of centralised crypto asset trading. And it allows crypto companies that set up shop in one EU member state to market their services to consumers throughout the 27-nation bloc.

“We have submitted our MiCA application and are actively engaging with the Hellenic Capital Market Commission,” a Binance spokesperson told DL News, referring to the Greek financial regulator.

“We see MiCA as a positive and important milestone for the industry - one that brings greater regulatory clarity, stronger user protections, and a clear framework for responsible innovation.”

Binance currently holds at least five licenses in EU member states, according to its website: France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Sweden. It had previously sought a German license but withdrew that application amid reports the country was expected to reject it.

If Binance were to acquire a MiCA licence, it would operate under those rules in EU member states, rather than the mix of regulations it currently faces.

“We continue to operate in accordance with applicable local requirements under relevant regulations until these are superseded by the MiCA license,” the spokesperson said.

Last year, Binance announced its global business had received approval to operate in Abu Dhabi, though the company still rejected the term “headquarters,” calling the concept “symbolic” and “old-fashioned.”

While Greece might not serve as Binance’s European HQ — the company already has a large presence in France, for example — the mediterranean nation is still an interesting place for Binance to establish its pan-European foothold. The country isn’t known as a crypto hub.

“Greece is an important contributor to the EU’s economic framework, with an economy growing above the EU average and a strong regulatory environment that promotes financial stability, transparency, and investor protection,” the spokesperson said.

In 2023, Coinbase, one of Binance’s top rivals, chose Ireland as its EU access point.

Binance’s MiCA application was first reported by Greek publication D News.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Waltio, a platform that lets customers calculate and report their digital asset capital gains, said Friday that the hackers did not obtain passwords or other sensitive customer data.

“On January 21, 2026, we were the recipient of an attempted extortion,” the company wrote. “This appears to follow a particularly sophisticated attack, which allowed access to certain company data.”

Ce vendredi matin, nous avons déposé plainte pour tentative d'extorsion et atteinte à un système de traitement automatisé de données.

Le 21 janvier 2026, nous avons été destinataire d’une tentative d’extorsion. Celle-ci semble faire suite à une attaque particulièrement…

— Waltio (@Get_Waltio) January 23, 2026

Waltio CEO Pierre Morizot told DL News that the hackers demanded a specific amount of money but Waltio chose not to answer. The firm did not answer additional questions from DL News.

Risk of phishing

French daily Le Parisien reported that data from 50,000 Waltio customers had been stolen.

Morizot said in a public statement that hackers got user emails and gains and losses from the 2024 tax reports.

He said the biggest risk would be cybercriminals reaching out to clients through social engineering scams.

“Some attackers may use contextual elements (e.g. the existence of a tax report or aggregated information) to appear credible,” Morizot warned.

Social engineering attacks can take many forms, such as sending victims malicious links via email or calling them and pretending to be someone else.

The objective, however, is the same: Getting additional information, such as key phrases to a crypto wallet, that would let them steal users’ funds.

The cybercrime arm of France’s public prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident.

DL News reached out with questions, but did not immediately receive a response.

Attacks in France

Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp flagged the incident on X Friday, describing it as “more terrible news for French cryptocurrency users.”

A number of high-profile crypto crimes have happened in the European nation over the past year.

Most notably in 2025, crooks kidnapped hardware manufacturer Ledger’s co-founder, David Balland, holding him and his wife for 24 hours before being released.

Update, January 24: This story has been updated to add comment from Waltio.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

That software, a crypto bridge called Nomad, was hacked for nearly $200 million in 2022. While its developers were able to recover millions in stolen crypto, Nomad has failed to gain any traction since it was relaunched in December that year.

Though the project is seemingly defunct, parent company Illusory Systems agreed last year to settle a complaint filed by the FTC.

The agency alleged Illusory Systems had failed to take reasonable steps to secure its software. But its definition of “reasonable and appropriate” has alarmed the crypto industry.

“The company failed to incorporate ‘circuit breakers’ or a ‘kill switch’ that could immediately cease the functioning of the Nomad Token Bridge in the presence of suspicious transactions,” the FTC wrote in the complaint, which it published alongside the proposed settlement in December.

But that technology is far from industry standard and, in some cases, could even make software more vulnerable to hackers, four crypto trade associations wrote in a letter to the agency this week.

Moreover, the presence of a kill switch implies unilateral control — an unacceptable requirement for developers attempting to build decentralised protocols, according to the letter.

The tiff is the latest example of the myriad ways in which regulators charged with protecting consumers can impose requirements limiting developers’ ability to build such software.

The Nomad hack

Crypto bridges allow users to move their crypto between otherwise incompatible blockchains. But they have proven a lucrative target for hackers.

In April 2022, Nomad said it had raised $22 million at a $225 million valuation to build “security-first interoperability.”

Despite Nomad’s assurances, just four months later some 300 hackers exploited a bug in the bridge and made off with $186 million in crypto, something the FTC attributed to “inadequately tested code.”

Last year, crypto forensics firm TRM Labs called it “one of the most remarkable and chaotic hacks in decentralised finance history.”

The company was able to recover roughly $37 million thanks to ethical hackers who joined the plunder in order to prevent thieves from running off with every last dollar. But a relaunched bridge failed to gain any traction — as of Friday, it held just $1 million in user deposits, according to DefiLlama data.

Nomad’s final post on X was more than two years ago.

The FTC has alleged that Nomad employed “unfair security practices” — such as the lack of a kill switch — that harmed its users. As such, it misled those users when it touted its “security first” approach.

The company has agreed to settle the complaint. If the complaint and settlement are finalised, Nomad will have to implement a new information security programme and return any remaining crypto it recovered after the hack, among other things.

Impossible mandate?

But industry groups say the complaint needs to be revised, as it implies a company operates unlawfully by releasing software without certain security features, including the kill switch.

That’s a problematic requirement, as it would “require privileged control or some other centralised authority to execute,” the letter reads.

“Many of these technologies — including technologies that utilise decentralised governance and control of operations — would be stifled if not outright deemed impossible under the expectations in the Proposed Complaint.”

Even MetaMask developer Consensys weighed in.

“Circuit breakers are not industry standard today, and they were not standard at the time of the Nomad incident,” Bill Hughes, senior counsel at Consensys, wrote in a letter to the agency.

Last year, police in Israel arrested dual Russian-Israeli citizen Alexander Gurevich when he attempted to travel to Russia using documents bearing a different name, according to a report from the Jerusalem Post. Gurevich was extradited to the US on suspicion of participating in the Nomad hack.

DL News could not immediately determine Thursday whether Gurevich had ultimately been charged in connection with the hack.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The $5 billion lawsuit alleges the lender stopped offering President Trump and his businesses banking services for political reasons, according to a report from Bloomberg that cited court documents.

The US president over the weekend wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he would sue the bank after it “debanked” him.

The lawsuit comes as the Trump family pushes further into crypto. The president’s sons have claimed they had no choice but to use digital assets because of blacklisting by major lenders.

JPMorgan Chase said in a statement that the lawsuit has no merit and that the banking giant does not close client accounts for political or religious reasons. Trump’s lawyer did not immediately return DL News’ request for comment.

Trump family ventures

The Trump family — particularly sons Eric and Donald Jr. — have said that unfair banking practices pushed them into crypto.

“We got into crypto because we were debanked,” Donald Jr. said in a Fox News interview last year, adding that crypto was “absolutely the future of banking.”

The Trump family-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial claims it will “unlock financial access for all by replacing the limits of traditional banking.”

World Liberty Financial applied for a banking licence earlier this month in a bid to get its stablecoin used by institutions and retail investors.

Crypto proponents have long claimed that limited access to traditional financial services and banks will fuel the success of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. And many US-based digital asset firms claim to have struggled to maintain or open bank accounts in recent years.

President Trump’s campaign promises included an end to the Biden Administration’s crackdown on the crypto industry, which earned him backing from prominent digital asset entrepreneurs.

Since the Republican took office, he has introduced a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, appointed crypto-friendly regulators, and signed crypto-friendly legislation such as the Genius Act, which establishes a framework for regulating stablecoins.

Ahead of his inauguration, President Trump even debuted a memecoin, TRUMP, which has fallen 93% after briefly touching $73 per token.

The Trump Organization has already sued Capital One over alleged debanking. Eric had previously described the bank as “woke.”

Update, January 23: This story has been updated to add a statement from JPMorgan Chase.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

For the fifth time in a row, difficulty on the largest and oldest crypto network will drop on Thursday, making it even easier for mining operations to mint new Bitcoin.

Mining difficulty automatically drops to encourage more mining machines to join the network and earn new Bitcoin as a reward.

Thus, a decrease means that less computing power is being directed toward a crypto network, and with less computing power comes less security.

It also becomes easier for miners who stick around to add blocks to the blockchain and earn rewards.

“In my opinion this is quite bullish for miners that are staying online,” Nick Hansen, CEO and co-founder of the Luxor mining pool, told DL News.

The expected drop of around 3.38% comes as it becomes harder to make ends meet in the cutthroat mining industry, with many miners shifting their focus to high-powered computing and artificial intelligence.

Top publicly traded miners in 2025 all signed deals to make the pivot, with Terawulf, IREN, and Cipher Mining all inking multi-year HPC contracts with Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft.

Miners switching off from minting coins means less computing power — understood as hashrate — directed at the industry.

“I would say that a good portion of this hashrate drop is miners taking a different path with the megawatts that they have,” said Hansen.

Is the pivot to AI a bad thing?

Some companies have stopped mining Bitcoin altogether, while others have rebranded to “compute” or “digital infrastructure” companies, switching between minting digital coins and providing compute for AI, depending on which is more profitable.

Still, the two “are not in a zero-sum competition for power,” Canaan’s Head of Capital Markets Leo Wang told DL News.

He added that the two industries can work in harmony, with miners having flexible energy requirements — Bitcoin miners can quickly power up or down depending on an energy grid’s needs — while HPC operations need constant, reliable power.

American miners shutting off or directing their power to other industries means that operations from other countries can step in.

American miners currently control the highest share of hashrate on the network, at roughly 38%, according to the Hashrate Index.

When China’s government clamped down on Bitcoin mining in 2021, when the country led the industry, miners simply shut off and set up shop in the US.

“Today, Nasdaq-listed companies are expanding their footprints far beyond the United States, utilizing global diversification to offset regional risks and capitalize on more competitive power and labor costs,” Canaan’s Head of Capital Markets Leo Wang told DL News.

What should investors think?

A lower hashrate means the crypto network is less secure and vulnerable to attack, but investors shouldn’t be worried, Hansen said.

“Bitcoin’s still very secure — there are tens of millions of mining machines securing the network to this day,” he said. “There’s really no 51% attack risk or anything like that.”

Wang added that if miners do power off, “new energy sources, including previously stranded energy,” are harnessed elsewhere.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

On Tuesday, the Ripple CEO said he expects crypto markets to hit a new all-time high over the next 12 months, thanks to new US legislation to regulate digital assets.

“I’m very bullish, and yes, I’ll go on record as saying, I think we’ll see an all-time high,” he told CNBC.

He suggested that many still underestimate the importance of the US, the world’s largest economy, transitioning from its “war on crypto” to embracing the industry.

Under US President Donald Trump, the crypto industry enjoyed a heady year in 2025.

It involved the Securities and Exchange Commission halting or slowing its legal pursuit of high-profile crypto firms, including Coinbase, Binance and Ripple.

The most important win for the industry, however, was signing landmark stablecoin legislation into law via the Genius Act.

The law defined which businesses, financial or otherwise, could issue dollar-pegged stablecoins and under what conditions.

It sparked fintech firms and Wall Street stalwarts to take a second look at launching their own stablecoin, including Robinhood and Bank of America.

Ripple launched its own stablecoin, RLUSD, in 2024. It’s now worth $1.4 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Garlinghouse told CNBC that Wall Street paying attention to crypto is a “massive sea change.”

“I don’t think that’s priced into the crypto market as much as I would have expected right now,” he said.

Still, the industry is waiting on another key piece of legislation: The Clarity Act.

When Clarity?

After crypto exchange Coinbase pulled its backing from a draft version of the latest Clarity Act on January 14, political momentum to get the bill across the line has entered limbo.

The Clarity Act defines which regulatory agency would oversee the crypto industry.

The current draft would define all cryptocurrencies as securities — subject to SEC oversight — unless projects can prove they are sufficiently decentralised. At that point, they fall under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“We appreciate all the hard work by members of the Senate to reach a bi-partisan outcome, but this version would be materially worse than the current status quo,” Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote on X.

“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill.”

Garlinghouse, as well as many other industry members, didn’t share the same view.

The Ripple CEO celebrated the “long-overdue” move by Senator Tim Scott and the Senate Banking Committee to advance the legislation.

“Ripple (and I) know first hand that clarity beats chaos, and this bill’s success is crypto’s success,” he said on January 14.

“I remain optimistic that issues can be resolved through the markup process.”

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

The Constitutional Court ruled that crypto is subject to property laws, which will have far-reaching consequences for crypto owners and courts, according to a legal expert.

Ignat Likhunov, a lawyer and the head of the law firm Cartesius, told Russian media outlet RBC that the decision will echo through future civil disputes and criminal cases involving stolen digital assets.

“It sets a precedent for future [police and court] investigations,” Likhunov said.

The ruling not only clarifies rules about ownership of digital assets, it also highlights the growing popularity of cryptocurrency in Russia, as Moscow prepares to make sweeping changes to crypto regulation later this year.

While federal lawmakers are still working on the new rules, courts must provide protection for crypto holders, provided that they have obtained the assets legally, Likhunov said.

Civil lawsuit

The high-profile case revolves around a civil lawsuit filed by Moscow resident Dmitry Timchenko. In 2023, Timchenko provided a loan of 1,000 USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin developed by Tether, to an unidentified borrower under pre-arranged terms.

However, the borrower allegedly failed to return the funds. Timchenko responded by filing a civil claim with the Savelovsky District Court. The court dismissed the case, ruling that Russia’s legislation on digital financial assets, Moscow’s take on tokenised assets, does not cover stablecoins.

Timchenko challenged this decision at both a regional appellate court and the Supreme Court, but both upheld the original ruling.

Undeterred, Timchenko’s legal team brought the matter before the Constitutional Court, asserting that the prior judgments violated his property rights as enshrined in the constitution. His lawyers argued that “no other form of property in Russia is subject to such limitations.”

Legislation incoming

In earlier criminal proceedings, Russian courts have recognised that laws on intangible property rights can be extended to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“The [lower] courts rejected Timchenko’s claim because he failed to inform the tax authorities that he owned USDT tokens. [...] This entails a denial of judicial protection,” the Constitutional Court said in a statement.

The court noted that the obligation to report crypto holdings to tax bodies only applies to miners.

The ruling shows that failure to report coins does not negate a crypto owner’s property rights, said Likhunov — provided these tokens were not obtained through illegal means.

Tim Alper is a news correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Speaking for over one hour on a number of topics, the president told a largely silent audience that new crypto legislation would unlock “new pathways to reach new financial freedom.”

“To unleash innovation and savings and financing, I’m also working to ensure America remains the crypto capital of the world,” President Trump said, mentioning the signing of the Genius Act last year.

“Now congress is working very hard on crypto market structure legislation — Bitcoin, all of them,” he added.

“More importantly, China wanted that [crypto] market too, just like they wanted the AI,” he continued.

China banned crypto trading in the country in 2013. It is betting more on the digital yuan, its central bank digital currency.

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space and received financial banking from major players in the industry.

Since taking office, the Republican has signed crypto-friendly legislation such as the Genius Act, which establishes a framework for regulating stablecoins.

He has also fired off a barrage of sweeping executive orders to introduce a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and create a working group. The White House has also appointed several industry supporters into key government roles.

Regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission have also dropped a number of lawsuits against digital asset companies and taken a far friendlier approach to watchdogging the fast-moving sphere.

President Trump’s comments come as the US leader’s first family pushes further into the crypto world, with the leader and his sons bemoaning top banks denying them services, leaving them no choice but to manage finances via digital assets.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email atmdisalvo@dlnews.com.

A ban could take effect as early as Friday. If it does, it would be the first such ban in the US, according to Daniel Wallach, a professor at the University of New Hampshire and an expert on the law of sports gambling.

“The Court has made clear that any company that wants to be in the sports gaming business in Massachusetts must play by our rules – no exceptions,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a statement.

“Today’s victory marks a major step toward fortifying Massachusetts’ gambling laws and mitigating the significant public health consequences that come with unregulated gambling.”

Kalshi did not return DL News’ request for comment.

While prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket originally offered bets on economic indicators and world events, they eventually branched into sports betting.

Kalshi first offered sports betting in January 2025. By May of that year, sports accounted for 70% of the company’s revenue, according to court documents.

That move has helped fuel Kalshi’s rapid growth, which saw the company strike partnerships with retail trading platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase. But Kalshi has found itself in a multi-front legal battle against states that require sports gambling platforms to seek licensure.

Campbell sued Kalshi in September, alleging the prediction market was offering unlicensed sports wagering in Massachusetts. Sports wagering revenue in the state is subject to a 20% tax if it comes from mobile bets.

Kalshi fought the lawsuit, arguing prediction markets were regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As such, Massachusetts didn’t have the authority to prevent the company from offering sports wagers, it argued.

Massachusetts Judge Christopher Barry-Smith said the argument was “not compelling.”

If federal law prevented states from regulating companies such as Kalshi, Congress would have made that clear, Barry-Smith wrote in his order.

The judge also dismissed Kalshi’s argument that a Massachusetts ban could be ruinous.

Kalshi chose to expand to states with licensing requirements “even after the CFTC warned it to be cautious in light of ongoing state enforcement efforts,” the judge noted. “Kalshi chose to take that risk head-on.”

Barry-Smith gave Massachusetts a Wednesday deadline to submit a proposed ban that does not attempt to unwind preexisting event contracts. Kalshi has until Friday to dispute the proposal, the judge said.

Kalshi raised a $300 million Series D round at a $5 billion valuation in October.

Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz led the prediction market’s raise, with participation from other investors, including CapitalG, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, and Spark Capital.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Their comments came after Roskomnadzor, the Russian media censor, leaked details of a $29 million plan to use machine learning to crack down on virtual private network usage and sites that use mirrors to avoid censorship.

Russian crypto users should expect “increased instability” when accessing overseas crypto platforms, such as exchanges, analytical platforms, API services, and remote management channels, particularly if they rely on commercial VPNs to access them, Anton Gontarev, the commercial director of the crypto mining firm Intelion, told Russian media outlet RBC.

Many major international crypto exchanges block or severely restrict users with Russian IP addresses.

Roskomnadzor’s web censorship drive may not be explicitly aimed directly at Russian crypto users for now, but the crackdown is expanding fast. And with VPNs in Moscow’s sights, experts say crypto users may be caught in the crossfire.

Caught in crossfire

Moscow stepped up its war on VPNs last year, banning ads for the services and barring the use of VPNs that explicitly circumvent Roskomnadzor’s access blocks.

“Artificial intelligence speeds up the search for VPNs and mirror sites, automating tasks that were previously carried out manually,” Igor Biryukov, the CEO of the security provider InfEra Security, told the Russian media outlet BFM.

These new tools will change the way Russian web traffic flows, Gontarev said.

“That means [censors] are reducing the general public’s access to foreign crypto infrastructure,” he added.

At least 260 VPN services were blocked in Russia last year, in addition to 1.2 million web pages.

Access to web resources important to Russian crypto traders and miners could well be actively blocked in the near future, Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at the crypto exchange Bestchange, told RBC.

Zuborev said if Moscow moves ahead with plans to regulate Russian crypto exchanges, it could use Roskomnadzor’s new AI tools to block overseas platforms that have not received regulatory approval.

Foreign crypto exchanges popular with Russian users may be allowed to remain in the market subject to obtaining a license, the Russian crypto market analyst Viktor Pershikov told the same media outlet.

But obtaining the necessary operating permits could be tricky for some operators, Pershikov explained. He said Moscow could decide to block access to overseas crypto exchanges for “failing to comply with data protection laws.”

Russian law states that services that hold Russian citizens’ personal data cannot do so on servers that are located in Europe or the United States.

Last month, censors in Belarus, one of Russia’s closest political allies, blocked citizens’ access to the crypto exchanges Bybit, Bitget, and OKX.

Tim Alper is a news correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tdalper@dlnews.com.

Garlinghouse commended the US Senate Banking Committee’s version of the Clarity Act on January 14.

“Ripple and I know firsthand that clarity beats chaos, and this bill’s success is crypto’s success,” the Ripple executive said.

“I remain optimistic that issues can be resolved through the mark-up process.”

The Clarity Act would determine which financial regulator will oversee the crypto industry. It’s a crucial piece of legislation for furthering ties between the crypto industry and wider financial markets.

While long-overdue, this move by @SenatorTimScott and @BankingGOP on market structure is a massive step forward in providing workable frameworks for crypto, while continuing to protect consumers. Ripple (and I) know firsthand that clarity beats chaos, and this bill’s success is… https://t.co/EWcml1NpBE

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 14, 2026

For some, such as Hoskinson, the bill doesn’t meet the mark.

“It hands the entire keys to the crypto kingdom to the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the Cardano founder said during a nearly 30-minute video posted on Sunday. “You have to go beg and plead to make them not a security.”

“And you still got people like Brad, saying, ‘Well, it’s not perfect, but we just got to get something. It’s better than no clarity,’” he said.

“Sorry Brad, it’s not better than chaos. Take the chaos and fight for what’s right!”

‘A bad bill’

Infighting among the crypto elite has erupted after several executives and industry groups backed new legislation to regulate the industry.

The current draft states that cryptocurrencies would first fall under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s purview unless the team behind the cryptocurrency can prove the project is sufficiently decentralised.

Once they meet that bar, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would become the regulator.

For some, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, that’s still far too much power for the SEC. He added to his list of complaints, a “de facto ban on tokenised equities” and “draft amendments that would kill rewards on stablecoins.”

“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” the executive wrote. “Hopefully, we can get to a better draft.”

The Senate has since delayed its vote on moving the bill to a markup, a phase in the US legislative process through which politicians can make further adjustments to a bill’s language.

“I’ve spoken with leaders across the crypto industry, the financial sector, and my Democratic and Republican colleagues, and everyone remains at the table working in good faith,” Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott said on January 14, when announcing the delay.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.

Investigators say criminals in Seoul used unnamed cryptocurrencies to launder customer payments for cosmetic surgery procedures made using the Chinese e-pay platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay.

“We plan to carry out stricter on-site inspections at clinics,” a Korea Customs Service official told South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo. “We must prevent instances of illegal currency exchange in the overseas medical tourism sector.”

The South Korean plastic surgery industry is worth around $11 billion, with the so-called “medical tourism” sector set to grow to $3.1 billion by 2033. The flow of plastic surgery clients from China is rising at an average rate of 100% per year.

However, crypto-powered money laundering is rising at a similarly exponential rate in the country, with some unscrupulous operators looking to cash in on the cosmetic surgery boom.

Nip-tucking the books

Seoul Customs say the network’s mastermind was the Chinese-Korean head of consultations at a “large” plastic surgery clinic.

This individual, unnamed for legal reasons, allegedly funneled customers’ WeChat Pay and Alipay payments into dedicated bank accounts.

Then, working with a Chinese national, they withdrew these funds and used the money to buy cryptocurrencies in multiple overseas jurisdictions.

They transferred these coins to wallets on South Korean crypto exchanges, officials said. Next, they reportedly sold these coins for South Korean won, and withdrew the funds in cash at ATMs after sending them through numerous South Korean bank accounts.

In 2024, the duo allegedly decided to broaden the scope of their operation, branching out from the plastic surgery industry to other sectors popular among Chinese tourists.

They reportedly convinced the South Korean owner of a mobile phone store to help them launder payments made in small-scale export trade deals, as well as duty-free purchases and tuition fees for language courses.

Customs officials said all three individuals have been charged, with their cases handed over to prosecutors.

The connection between plastic surgery and crypto is growing. In 2024, a paper in an industry journal advised, “Plastic surgeons should consider investing in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and accepting cryptocurrency as payment for services.”

“Plastic surgeons will likely be at the forefront of assimilating [Bitcoin] into healthcare,” the authors said.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.