Regulation

The $289 million transaction consolidates a fragmented Japanese market ahead of a reclassification that would push digital assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act as early as fiscal 2027.

Tuesday's deadline ends the public window on the joint Treasury proposal that would treat permitted payment stablecoin issuers as Bank Secrecy Act institutions. Major banking groups asked regulators to halt the docket until the core GENIUS Act rules are written.

The draft framework that would have let crypto platforms list on-chain versions of US equities under a regulatory sandbox was pulled the week it was due, after pushback from incumbent stock exchanges and concerns over shareholder rights and dividend mechanics.

Bumosarang, the country's seventh-largest prepaid funeral provider, has disclosed a $33 million unrealised loss on a $43 million position in the T-REX 2X Long BMNR Daily Target ETF — held inside the customer prepayment pool.

Bitcoin Depot's voluntary Chapter 11 filing on Monday took North America's largest bitcoin ATM fleet offline overnight. A 49 per cent year-on-year revenue collapse, a $3.7 million April hack, and parallel state attorney general lawsuits finally moved faster than the company's cash position.

BlackRock used the last day of the OCC's GENIUS Act comment window to demand the regulator scrap a proposed limit on how much of a stablecoin's reserves can be held in tokenised form. BUIDL backs more than 90 per cent of two of the largest crypto-native dollar tokens.

A CoinDesk poll of 1,000 registered voters published on May 3 found that 62 per cent do not trust the Trump administration to oversee the crypto sector, and 73 per cent — including 59 per cent of Republicans — oppose senior government officials holding personal business interests in the industry.

Senators Cynthia Lummis and Thom Tillis publicly stood behind the stablecoin yield language in the CLARITY Act on Monday after a coalition of five banking trade groups attacked the compromise as inadequate. The next two weeks will decide whether the deal holds.

Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks finalised the language on stablecoin rewards in the CLARITY Act on Friday, ending the months-long deadlock that had killed the bill's momentum. The compromise bans passive yield but preserves activity-based rewards — and Coinbase keeps the revenue stream that mattered most.

Stablecoin issuer Agora filed for a national trust bank charter with the OCC on April 24, racing for federal oversight while traditional banks pressure Congress to delay the underlying legislation.

Israel's Capital Market Authority approved BILS, a shekel-pegged stablecoin built on Solana by licensed brokerage Bits of Gold, making it the first regulated fiat-backed token in the Middle East.

Ben Zhou told CoinDesk that MiCA covers only spot trading, which doesn't generate enough revenue to sustain an exchange. Derivatives, tokenised assets, and stablecoin services require MiFID II and Electronic Money Institution licences that most crypto firms haven't even started pursuing.

A joint proposed rule from FinCEN and OFAC would require permitted stablecoin issuers to run full AML programmes, screen every transaction against the SDN list, and face strict-liability penalties for failing to freeze sanctioned funds. Comments are due by 9 June.

The National Bank has approved bitcoin, ether, solana and 23 other digital assets for use by crypto banks that will offer deposits, loans, staking and token issuance under direct central bank supervision.

The Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio invests exclusively in cash, short-dated US Treasuries and overnight repos, targeting the 100 per cent reserve requirement that the GENIUS Act imposes on payment stablecoin issuers.

A coalition including Coinbase, Kraken, Circle, and Andreessen Horowitz sent a joint letter to the Senate Banking Committee demanding a markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the bill that would finally draw jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC.

Robinhood added Zcash to its trading platform on Wednesday, making ZEC available in New York — where the BitLicense regime has historically shut out privacy-focused tokens — and sparking a 10 per cent price surge on volume that spiked 50 per cent.

The UK government has prohibited political parties from accepting cryptocurrency donations, a move designed to close what officials described as a foreign interference vulnerability in the country's electoral finance system.

Chairman Paul Atkins debuted 'Material Matters' with commissioners Peirce and Uyeda, who spent 28 minutes dismantling the Biden-era SEC's approach to digital assets and laying out a crypto-friendly regulatory reset.

Faryar Shirzad told Fox Business that the Senate Banking Committee could mark up the bill this month, with a floor vote following in May — a timeline the committee's own chairman has yet to confirm.

Payward's acquisition of Chicago-based Bitnomial gives it a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organisation and a futures commission merchant under one roof — shortcuts that would have taken years to build from scratch.

Japan's cabinet approved a landmark amendment to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act on 10 April, elevating crypto from a payment tool to a regulated investment product. The move introduces insider trading prohibitions, mandatory issuer disclosures, and penalties of up to ten years in prison for unlicensed operators.

CFTC Chairman Mike Selig told the House Agriculture Committee that Microsoft Copilot and new AI surveillance tools are compensating for a 23 per cent staffing reduction at the agency now responsible for overseeing both crypto spot markets and prediction platforms.

The SEC's Division of Trading and Markets has exempted providers of self-custodial crypto wallet interfaces from broker-dealer registration, subject to more than 20 conditions and a five-year expiry that leaves the industry reliant on temporary relief rather than permanent rules.

House Bill 798, signed on 14 April, requires crypto custodians to transfer abandoned digital assets to the state in-kind rather than liquidating them — and bars the treasury from selling for at least a year.

OKX has launched X-Perps, a MiFID-regulated perpetual-style derivatives product offering up to 10x leverage across ten trading pairs, available to retail and institutional traders across the European Economic Area.

The Bank of Russia has proposed mandatory KYC checks for all cryptocurrency transactions on domestic platforms, with a July deadline for legislation that would also require citizens to declare offshore holdings to the Federal Tax Service.

Representatives Horsford and Miller have reintroduced the PARITY Act, a revised crypto tax bill that applies stock-market wash sale rules to digital assets while offering tax deferral on staking and mining rewards.

The US Senate's most ambitious crypto market structure bill is stuck in a four-way deadlock between banking lobbyists, crypto firms, Democrats and Republicans. If it doesn't clear the Banking Committee this month, it may not get another chance before the midterms.

The SEC's Division of Trading and Markets issued a no-action letter giving crypto wallet interfaces and DeFi front-ends a five-year window to operate without broker-dealer registration, subject to strict rules on fees, routing, and disclosure.