Show description: On December 30, 2025, Senator Joe Gruters filed SB 1038 and SB 1040 to establish the Florida Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve and the Cryptocurrency Reserve Trust Fund. The bills assign administration authority to the state Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Ingoglia, and require both bills to pass together to take effect. If enacted, the program would begin on July 1, 2026. The reserve may only acquire digital assets with a two-year average market capitalization of at least $500 billion, a threshold that currently limits eligibility in practice to Bitcoin. SB 1038 creates the reserve inside the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, grants the CFO authority to manage investments and operations, and establishes an advisory committee for guidance, oversight, and reporting. SB 1040 creates the Cryptocurrency Reserve Trust Fund to hold appropriations, statutory receipts, and crypto assets, and to pay operating, custody, audit, and technology expenses. Funding sources include legislative appropriations, statutory income, receipts from purchases or exchanges, blockchain forks and airdrops when assets are retained, and profits from non-crypto investments. The bills centralize risk management through the CFO and the advisory committee, require documented procedures for investment decisions, custody, and reporting, and allow transactions under federal banking rules using chartered banks and registered investment vehicles. The program contains a sunset clause that terminates the program on July 1, 2030 unless the legislature renews it and requires liquidation of assets with proceeds transferred to the General Revenue Fund on termination. The bills reference actions by Texas, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Wisconsin and cite Wisconsin’s 2024 pension allocations to spot Bitcoin ETFs as a precedent for using regulated products and custody. Implementation tasks include finalizing custody arrangements, selecting compliant vendors, and producing reporting templates and control checklists prior to any capital deployment, and procurement should expect requirements for SOC reporting, segregation of duties, hardware security modules or multi-signature key management, provable chain of custody, incident response processes, and frequent standardized audits. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/florida-crypto-reserve-bills-2026/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ghana legalized cryptocurrency trading through the Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill 2025, which establishes a supervised licensing regime for exchanges, custodians, broker-dealers, payment gateways, and other virtual asset service providers. The law preserves the Ghanaian cedi as the country's sole legal tender while allowing individuals to buy, sell, and hold virtual assets under a compliance framework. Oversight is split between the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission, supported by designated agencies for financial intelligence, consumer protection, and law enforcement. Regulators will roll out phased licensing and supervisory rules during 2026 that include application windows, fit-and-proper testing for management, operational readiness checks, and technical guidance on custody, disclosures, and conflict management. Authorized VASPs must implement customer due diligence, know-your-customer checks, anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing programs, transaction monitoring, recordkeeping, timely reporting, custody segregation, recovery and resolution plans, and solvency and liquidity buffers aligned to their business model and risk profile. Consumer protection measures require segregation of client assets, daily reconciliation, multi-signature and cold storage standards, insurance where applicable, and independent auditing, and supervisors will have powers to pursue misleading promotions and unlicensed offerings. About 3 million Ghanaians, roughly 17 percent of adults, already interact with digital assets and informal crypto activity is estimated at approximately three billion dollars annually. Existing operators serving Ghanaian users must register and strengthen governance, compliance, travel-rule data exchange, sanctions screening, incident response, vendor management, and documented recovery plans to continue operating. Banks and payment firms must reassess correspondent risk and partner due diligence, and exchanges and fintechs can pursue partnerships to provide regulated custody, merchant services, and remittance services under the new framework. Ghana's approach follows similar moves in neighboring countries and aligns with trends in Nigeria and Kenya toward formal VASP oversight. Enforcement will rely on information sharing, on-site and thematic inspections, robust data collection from domestic entities, and cooperation with foreign regulators to trace funds and obtain records for offshore platforms and decentralized venues. Key dates include phased rulemaking and licensing windows in 2026, consultation papers on custody and disclosures, and technical standards for the travel rule and wallet security, and firms are advised to prepare license applications, board and management structures, AML operations, custody segregation, and audit readiness ahead of those milestones. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/ghana-legalizes-crypto-vasp-law/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

IRS Criminal Investigation built a repeatable toolkit that pairs large-scale blockchain analysis with subpoenas and device forensics to trace illicit crypto flows and recover funds. Analysts use vendor tools, clustering, heuristics, and machine learning across billions of transactions to map laundering patterns including peel chains, timing correlations, liquidity footprints, chain hopping, and automated wash paths. Investigators serve subpoenas to exchanges and payment processors to obtain KYC records, exchange logs, IP logs, device identifiers, tax forms, and deposit histories and to anchor on-chain signals to identified subjects; courts have narrowed broad account requests in specific cases from roughly 480,000 accounts to about 13,000 while preserving investigatory needs. Field operations seize phones, laptops, and hardware wallets and use forensic extraction, chip-off techniques, and live-device mirroring to recover seed phrases, wallet files, screenshots, VPN logs, and messaging histories that link on-chain activity to travel, purchases, and communications. IRS CI funds targeted research on privacy and layer-2 protocols, issuing prototype awards up to $625,000 for reproducible methods and datasets and supporting techniques such as traffic analysis, channel heuristics, and endpoint fingerprinting on payment hubs. Partial deanonymization signals aligned with custodial data and subpoenaed cloud artifacts have met thresholds for subpoenas and search warrants in multiple cases. IRS CI participated in operations that disrupted over $10 billion in illicit crypto activity, with public seizures including approximately $1 billion tied to Silk Road funds, about $3.6 billion connected to the 2016 Bitfinex laundering case, about $4 billion from OneCoin fraud, and a $25 million MEV manipulation case in New York. Operational recoveries rely on precise key recovery, exchange cooperation, and cold-storage procedures that preserve evidentiary value, and investigations can span years from exploit to final recovery; interagency task forces and cross-border data sharing have reduced time from exploit to identification. Operation Hidden Treasure coordinates tax-evasion enforcement by auditing mismatches between reported income and observed on-chain activity, identifying large fiat ramps inconsistent with returns, links to known illicit clusters, and unreported mining, staking, or trading income; willful evasion charges carry statutory penalties of up to five years imprisonment and fines around $100,000, plus restitution and supervised release, and civil penalties, accuracy-related tax penalties, and FBAR violations can add further exposure. Exchanges, custodians, and infrastructure providers are advised to implement strengthened KYC and travel-rule procedures, wallet screening and address risk scoring at intake and payout, immutable logs for deposits, withdrawals, staking, and rewards, subpoena response playbooks with counsel sign-off, monitoring of cross-chain bridge activity and chain-hopping near cash-out points, and preservation of provenance and cost-basis records to reduce investigation scope and preserve civil enforcement options. Regulatory proposals and funding initiatives target broader tax and exchange reporting, enhanced analytical tools for privacy-focused technologies and Lightning channels, and enforcement that focuses upstream on infrastructure-level actors and persistent laundering patterns across multiple chains. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/irs-ci-crypto-tracing/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On April 7 Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche disbanded the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and issued a memorandum redirecting federal crypto enforcement, ordering a pause or review of platform-focused investigations, moving crypto work out of the Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit, and directing personnel and resources away from routine platform probes. The memorandum instructs prosecutors to prioritize investment fraud and instances where digital assets facilitate terrorism, drug trafficking, cartels, human trafficking, ransomware and hacking, and organized crime, and to treat intermediary liability as dependent on deliberate, complicit behavior rather than as a default theory. The directive signals that DOJ will defer more to financial regulators for rulemaking and supervision and will reserve criminal prosecution for actors and conduct that meet the newly stated priority categories. Blanche was confirmed in March 2025, signed an ethics agreement to divest crypto holdings within 90 days and to recuse from matters that could directly and predictably affect his financial interests, and held more than $150,000 in digital assets when the memorandum was issued, prompting ethics scrutiny and questions under federal conflict-of-interest statutes, including 18 U.S.C. 208, and recusal rules. Companies and legal teams are advised that platform-focused criminal risk is reduced but not eliminated, that DOJ will continue to prosecute intermediaries knowingly complicit in investor fraud or in facilitating the listed priority crimes, and that regulatory enforcement of AML, KYC, sanctions, registration, and the travel rule by FinCEN, OFAC, the SEC, and the CFTC will continue and may involve multi-agency coordination. Operational actions recommended to teams include auditing features and controls against the memo’s priority crimes, mapping abuse paths and documenting mitigations, strengthening fraud detection, disclosures, incident response, and investor remediation, maintaining engagement with SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, and OFAC, and tracking the status of DOJ matters to adjust litigation reserves, disclosures, and product roadmaps. Open issues to monitor include whether Blanche completed divestment within 90 days and honored recusal commitments, how many platform investigations will be reopened, closed, or redirected, and whether state attorneys general or foreign authorities will increase enforcement; internally DOJ will reallocate personnel and budgets, retrain prosecutors to apply investigative tools to prioritized crimes, and redeploy analytics toward national security targets. Markets and builders should expect near-term case review and reclassification activity, potential impacts on liquidity, listings, and banking access as legal overhangs change, continued compliance obligations under financial regulators, and an opportunity to harden controls, update disclosures, and resolve legacy exposures while monitoring a fluid enforcement environment. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/doj-crypto-shift-blanche-scrutiny/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: JPMorgan is running a program to test institutional spot bitcoin execution and a limited set of crypto derivatives while assessing product scope, risk controls, and regulatory fit before any launch decision. Internal workstreams are mapping where spot trading, futures, and options would sit within existing desks and approvals and are designing to integrate crypto access into the bank's existing risk, compliance, and capital frameworks. The bank does not plan to offer custody and would allow clients to pledge bitcoin and ether as collateral for secured lending and financing subject to eligibility lists, haircuts, and legal enforceability, with custody remaining with established custodians. A JPMorgan survey showed electronic traders active in crypto rose to 13 percent from 9 percent and those planning to engage increased to 16 percent from 12 percent, which is informing product consideration. U.S. policy guidance permits national banks to act as riskless intermediaries for crypto transactions under compliance and supervision, and JPMorgan is aligning dealer models, booking practices, and counterparty onboarding with that framework. Markets, risk, and legal teams are testing revenue sensitivity, client demand thresholds, capital usage, documentation, governance, and control frameworks; the program has no go-live date and remains gated by internal approvals. JPMorgan is using prior tokenized work, including structuring and settling a short-term commercial paper issue on Solana, to inform trade lifecycle controls, reconciliations, and counterparty risk practices. Existing bank dealers and prime brokers, including Standard Chartered in the U.K. and Goldman Sachs on derivatives, currently offer crypto services; if JPMorgan proceeds it would add routing choices and balance sheet intermediation options for large orders and hedging strategies. Institutions could see increased liquidity, reduced slippage for large orders, expanded hedging tools, and the ability to use bitcoin and ether as collateral for financing, subject to haircuts and eligibility rules. JPMorgan will monitor client adoption, collateral eligibility and haircut schedules, trade booking and capitalization practices, and adherence to regulatory guardrails, and final availability will depend on sustained client flows and cleared internal risk approvals. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/jpmorgan-institutional-crypto-trade/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Charles Hoskinson publicly backed Night and described it as a fourth‑generation cryptocurrency. Night launched on December 9, 2025. The token recorded a 24‑hour gain of 24.2 percent and a seven‑day gain of 54 percent, with 24‑hour trading volume of about $8.558 billion, market capitalization near $1.75 billion, and fully diluted value near $2.5 billion. On‑chain activity showed over 11,000 transactions and more than 1,500 makers across a recent 12‑day window, and the token’s early price movement showed low correlation to Bitcoin. Midnight describes Night’s technical design as a hybrid proof‑of‑stake architecture that aims to produce predictable finality, higher throughput, and bounded resource use to stabilize fees. Midnight positions Night to provide standardized proofs, verifiable data flows, and identity‑aware workflows for use cases including compliant tokenized asset issuance, permissioned settlements, attestations, and reporting, and describes the stack as modular and upgradable. Testnet activity is live, a mainnet target is set, and a Glacier distribution drop is planned with eligibility broadened to holders of BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA, and XRP. Wider institutional adoption is contingent on third‑party audits, custody coverage, exchange listings, developer tooling, enterprise pilots, asset manager partnerships, and cloud provider alignment. Delivering sustained low fees and high throughput under real‑world load remains a delivery risk until independent usage and dashboards confirm performance. Multiple competitors are pursuing scaling, privacy‑preserving computation, and identity‑aware access, and regulatory posture and custody readiness will affect institutional flows. Technical market levels cited to monitor sentiment include acceptance above $0.10 for continuation, pullback zones around $0.075, and an invalidation level near $0.06. For builders, opportunities exist to provide tooling, compliance layers, custody integrations, and enterprise pilots that enable institutional use. Night’s token mechanics anchor governance and utility within Midnight, making protocol upgrade paths, auditability, and change management material for institutional evaluation. Liquidity is currently substantial, and its durability depends on exchange depth, broad custody support, and enterprise distribution deals. Credibility of the fourth‑generation characterization depends on whether Midnight delivers a hybrid consensus that sustains low fees under load and an auditable universal proof layer that institutions can integrate; if those outcomes do not materialize, market repricing could follow once usage and regulatory clarity are assessed. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/hoskinson-night-fourth-gen-crypto/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Research finds futures contracts on major venues traded at an average premium to spot of roughly 7 percent annualized from 2019 through 2024. The basis behaved as a market-segmentation signal driven by differing pools of demand, leverage rules, and venue microstructure rather than a classical model-driven cost of carry. The basis widened during retail-driven bull runs and compressed after liquidation events, with perpetual swaps and quarterly futures showing different dynamics due to funding cadence and contract structure. Regulated venues such as the CME exhibited lower and less volatile basis levels, while crypto-native exchanges with higher allowable leverage and looser margin regimes showed larger and more variable premiums, indicating segmentation between institutional capital and smaller levered retail flows. Expansion of access via lower minimum contract sizes and micro futures correlated with increases in the basis. Fundamental factors including policy rates, volatility, and stablecoin funding explained part of cross-venue variation, while a substantial residual aligned with arbitrage capacity limits and operational costs such as KYC, capital controls, custody limits, transfer delays, and differing haircut regimes. Cash-and-carry arbitrage often proved unscalable in practice because funding, margin, and settlement frictions increased costs and slowed cross-market execution. Carry strategies produced positive average premiums but exposed allocators to funding liquidity risk and mark-to-market swings that created asymmetric drawdowns when margin calls, credit retractions, or haircut increases occurred. Empirical work documented venue-level distortions including thin liquidity, weak surveillance, wash-trading patterns, and price pushes by participants with cheaper funding that amplified basis levels on some venues. Policy prescriptions included harmonizing margin, collateral, and custody rules, broadening standardized access to regulated derivatives, and improving cross-market settlement and clearing to reduce frictions. Trading recommendations included treating the basis as a time-varying compensated risk, sizing positions to survive sudden basis spikes, precommitting de-risk thresholds, optimizing collateral across rails, diversifying funding lines, preferring venues with reliable margin and settlement mechanics, stress testing for historical basis blowouts including tightened credit and transfer delays, and building financing optionality with multiple lenders. Key metrics to monitor included cross-venue basis spreads and their stress correlations, term structure and perp funding rates, futures open interest by account size, roll slippage across venues, and stablecoin issuance and redemption activity. Near-term expectations included incremental policy harmonization, improved prime-brokerage services, and broader regulated retail access that may compress the gap over time while operational and cross-border settlement frictions persist. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/crypto-carry-market-segmentation/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Federal authorities and international partners dismantled E Note and seized production servers, prior server copies, full customer and transaction databases, mobile applications, and domains including e-note.com, e-note.ws, and jabb.mn, along with full ledgers, message logs, and service notes tied to more than $70 million in alleged laundering since 2017. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan unsealed an indictment naming Russian national Mykhalio Petrovich Chudnovets as the alleged operator and charging him with money laundering conspiracy carrying a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The FBI led the operation with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Michigan, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, Michigan State Police, and the Michigan Cyber Command Center. Investigators prioritized cutting off live service, preserving logs and identifiers, and collecting historical artifacts to enable reconstruction of fund flow paths across wallets, intermediaries, and cashout partners and to support tracing, arrests, and asset recovery. Authorities allege E Note operated from 2011 through 2025, combined automated exchange workflows with hands-on brokering and a help desk to move funds quickly with limited customer screening, and facilitated fast conversions and brokered liquidity used by ransomware affiliates and other illicit actors. Recommended mitigation steps presented include confirming licensing and registration for fiat and crypto ramps, strengthening KYC and sanctions screening, implementing on-chain and off-chain transaction monitoring and wallet screening, and preparing playbooks for rapid legal response, data preservation, and cooperation with law enforcement. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/fbi-dismantles-e-note-exchange/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sterling Heights will vote on January 6, 2026, on a proposed ordinance that would establish a two-tier licensing framework and operational rules for virtual currency machines. The ordinance would require new installs to obtain a host endorsement tied to the physical business location and a separate operator license issued by the City Clerk, with annual renewals and fees set through the city's appropriations process. Existing machines and operators would have to comply by March 31, 2026. Required operational standards would mandate photo ID checks at machines, prominent fraud warnings and consumer disclosures displayed on or near kiosks, printed receipts for every transaction containing date, amount, and a machine identifier, and a live customer service phone line maintained by operators. The proposal would introduce transaction controls including lower initial limits for first-time users, with local reporting citing an example cap near $1,000 per 24 hours for new users and final numeric caps to be set in the ordinance and administrative rules. Enforcement and oversight would be shared between the City Clerk and the Police Department, and violations could lead to suspension or revocation of host endorsements and operator licenses, with inspections, documentation checks, and requirements to produce records tying transactions to receipts and customer service interactions. The policy response follows 23 local cases this year linked to cryptocurrency machines with reported losses exceeding $500,000 and seniors disproportionately affected. Host businesses would have to hold an active city business license and obtain a machine-specific endorsement, and operators would have to implement or update KYC workflows to support photo ID checks, install signage and receipt mechanisms, staff or contract a live customer support line, and budget for application and renewal fees. The City Council could amend fee levels, first-time limits, and enforcement triggers during the council process, and other Michigan municipalities may consider adopting similar frameworks in 2026. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/sterling-heights-crypto-atm-rules/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Bhutan announced an upper limit allocation of 10,000 bitcoin from sovereign reserves to finance Gelephu Mindfulness City, a planned special administrative region near the Indian border focused on mindfulness, sustainability, and innovation. The allocation was valued at roughly $860 million to $1 billion depending on bitcoin market price at reporting. Bhutan accumulated its bitcoin reserves through state-backed mining using hydropower since 2021, with state entities such as Druk Holding and Investments participating. The financing plan prioritizes collateralized and yield-managed structures over spot sales and identifies preferred mechanisms including secured credit lines collateralized by BTC, stablecoin liquidity facilities, and programmatic yield strategies sized to limit drawdown and avoid forced liquidations. Project design pairs physical infrastructure with tokenization and digital policy, including issuance of a gold-linked sovereign token called TER on Solana and preparatory legal and digital identity frameworks for the Gelephu zone. Gelephu is being positioned to attract investment in fintech sandboxes, green data centers, healthcare and agricultural pilots, and tourism, with a governance model that includes a regulatory perimeter, a governing board, an appointed governor, and a city-level master plan with digital identity and compliance layers. Officials and market participants identified financing terms, counterparty selection criteria, independent audits of sovereign crypto reserves, and final statutory texts as near-term disclosure items that will affect investor appetite and funding costs. Key risks cited include bitcoin price volatility affecting collateral ratios and financing costs, governance gaps or limited disclosure increasing sovereign balance-sheet risk, and execution delays similar to past bitcoin-city proposals. Near-term milestones include publication of financing term sheets and reserve transparency reports, finalization of regulatory statutes and governing board appointments, confirmation of the governor, utility and site-level buildout, timelines for pilot data centers and green mining deployments, partner roster announcements, and independent audits. Guidance for founders and corporate treasury teams includes monitoring collateral frameworks and disclosure schedules, aligning offerings with stated sector priorities such as fintech infrastructure and green data centers paired with efficient mining or cloud services, and preparing for partnership models involving blended public-private financing, tokenized instruments, and compliance tied to a digital identity layer. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/bhutan-10000-btc-mindfulness-city/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: On December 17, Coinbase announced it will add equities trading to its core app and web experience, integrate Kalshi-powered prediction markets, and brand the initiative Everything Exchange; the company will let users manage stocks alongside bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, and other tokens in a single account and interface. Funding and settlement rails will tie into users' crypto wallets and the platform will support buying stocks with USDC, while Coinbase will provide unified balances, a single identity, and a consistent order entry experience across asset classes. Kalshi-powered event contracts will provide regulated exposure to outcomes such as economic indicators, interest rate decisions, and election timelines within the same account used for crypto and equities. Coinbase signaled a roadmap that includes tokenized stocks and a single onboarding flow with consolidated rails. The company said the changes can expand investable options, streamline treasury and portfolio allocations, enable stock funding with stablecoins, and add nearer-term hedging and price-discovery instruments for crypto-exposed positions. Coinbase identified execution risks including integration of balances, collateral, and real-time risk across asset classes; liquidity depth and fee competitiveness; system reliability under mixed workloads; and regulatory compliance for event contracts and any tokenized or synthetic equities. Stakeholders should monitor regional rollouts, asset coverage cadence, how USDC and other stablecoins are treated for collateral and settlement, initial liquidity and fee structures, institution-grade workflows and custody integrations, partner expansion beyond Kalshi, and regulatory signals on tokenized equities and event markets. Coinbase said the move broadens its addressable revenue across trading, custody, payments, data, and financing and positions the firm as an access layer for multiple asset classes. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/coinbase-stocks-prediction-markets/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Lincoln, Nebraska added Chapter 9.70 to the city code requiring a standardized Lincoln Police Department warning to be posted at the point of transaction on every crypto and Bitcoin ATM within city limits. The ordinance responds to reported losses exceeding $11,000,000 in the first eleven months of 2025. The rule defines crypto and Bitcoin ATMs and assigns shared responsibility to host businesses and device operators to display the notice where plainly seen during transactions and not obscured. The City Council passed the ordinance unanimously in November 2025 and set a compliance deadline of December 24, 2025. City staff will verify notice presence and legibility during routine checks and will enforce missing or obscured labels consistent with municipal code practices. The Lincoln Police Department and AARP Nebraska are conducting an education and labeling campaign, and volunteers and LPD staff began placing standardized warning stickers on kiosks across the city in December 2025. The LPD guidance lists common scam scripts including imposter schemes claiming overdue taxes, frozen bank accounts, or emergencies involving relatives and instructs consumers that no government agency, bank, or legitimate business requests payment in cryptocurrency or gift cards. LPD’s Technical Investigations Unit currently includes one sergeant and four investigators focused on tracing funds, preserving surveillance and ATM logs, and coordinating with platforms and exchanges, and an additional investigator will join in January 2026. Operators must also comply with Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance oversight and with the Controllable Electronic Record Fraud Prevention Act (LB609), effective September 2025, which added disclosures, transaction limits, holds, and defined refund rights in covered cases. Operators and hosts are instructed to inventory all Lincoln machines, obtain the official LPD written warning, post it on every machine by December 24, 2025, train field technicians and store staff to maintain visible and legible warnings, implement periodic audits with photo verification and maintenance logs, and retain records of inspections and installations. Consumers are directed to stop transactions if pressured to pay in crypto, verify requests with trusted sources before sending funds, and report suspected fraud to local police, the FBI, the FTC, and the National Elder Fraud Hotline. The ordinance does not ban crypto ATMs; machines may continue to operate if they meet the city posting requirement and applicable state rules. City officials expect continued municipal scrutiny as investigative capacity and outreach expand and expect state-level rules like LB609 to influence refund and reporting processes. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/lincoln-crypto-atm-warnings/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: A post-election change in Washington correlated with reduced regulatory pressure on Crypto.com, and the SEC closed its investigation by late March without recommending an enforcement action. Reporting and company statements connected the decline in enforcement risk to shifting agency priorities after the 2024 election. Public disclosures show President Trump held more than $1 million in Ethereum, received up to $1 million in NFT revenue, accepted a multi‑million‑dollar MAGA‑themed token gift, and his campaign accepted more than $25 million in crypto donations during 2024. The administration announced policies to make the United States a crypto capital, refrain from selling government Bitcoin reserves, support domestic mining, and appoint leaders to coordinate cross‑agency policy on digital assets and AI. Market participants interpreted these developments as indicating a shift toward negotiated outcomes, guidance, and settlements rather than aggressive litigation, which can reprice enforcement exposure for founders, CEOs, and investors. Practical implications include potential shifts in enforcement discretion and settlement posture; greater importance of senior agency appointments for custody rules, exchange registration, token listings, stablecoin frameworks, and staking and market‑structure regulation; and the role of timing and transparency in shaping market reactions and concerns about conflicts and market integrity. Early signals to monitor include senior appointments and advisory roles, campaign finance and inaugural committee filings, public visitor logs showing meetings between officials and industry actors, investigation and settlement outcomes, staff legal bulletins, and any formal guidance linking surveillance sharing to spot listing approvals. Operational actions advised for teams include strengthening compliance readiness, segregating custody, documenting controls for staking and token handling, formalizing AML programs, hedging jurisdictional exposure, maintaining disclosures and governance, and engaging with rulemaking processes while pressing for transparent safeguards. Policy risk now includes both reduced enforcement exposure in some cases and increased reputational and integrity risks when private interests and public policy intersect, creating the potential for faster approvals alongside elevated scrutiny if transactions or personnel raise conflict concerns. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/trump-cryptocom-conflict-risks/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Investigators follow crypto money trails through mixers, coinjoin aggregation, privacy coins, OTC desks, unlicensed venues, peer‑to‑peer channels, cash OTC deals, and cross‑chain bridges to trace illicit flows and pursue seizures. They convert on‑chain transactions into paths, clusters, and risk scores using graphing, heuristics, clustering, change‑address detection, peel‑chain analysis, fee and script fingerprinting, and triage systems that prioritize flows by speed, fragmentation, and contact with labeled entities. Analysts label clusters with commercial and open datasets, court records, and voluntary disclosures, issue real‑time alerts when risky flows hit monitored deposit addresses or exchanges, and link cross‑chain events by matching bridge deposits with mints, correlating swap quotes with contract events, and using mempool and validator logs for timing anchors. Authorities and analysts obtain KYC files, IP logs, login metadata, device fingerprints, and transaction histories via FIU reports, SARs, subpoenas, and cooperation with exchanges and banks to corroborate on‑chain hypotheses and enable freezes, account holds, recoveries, arrests, and asset seizures when legal thresholds are met. Case systems preserve provenance by recording labels, tool versions, and analyst notes, analysts perform peer review of cluster logic, and teams pre‑stage legal templates, exchange contact lists, and runbooks to shorten time from detection to action. Enforcement actions and international investigations that combine blockchain tracing with exchange records have led to arrests, fines, and asset seizures by linking wallets to individuals through consistent on‑chain patterns supplemented by off‑chain records. Firms implement KYC procedures, wallet screening tied to attribution datasets, real‑time alerts, incident response procedures for law enforcement requests, source‑of‑fund documentation, cross‑chain risk monitoring, and reproducible investigative outputs. Operational steps include instrumenting wallet onboarding with automated screening, logging and retaining transaction metadata and exportable case artifacts, pre‑staging legal and compliance playbooks with counsel and exchange contacts, training analysts on protocol mechanics and manual tracing, independently verifying tool outputs, and applying chain‑of‑custody practices. Authorities and firms plan broader adoption of cross‑chain analytics, expanded attribution data from compliant virtual asset service providers, and standardized legal requests to shorten time to freeze assets, and actors that trace across chains, coordinate internationally, and act quickly at compliant off‑ramps can match funds across ecosystems and execute freezes or recoveries when legal conditions are satisfied. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/follow-crypto-money-trails/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Michigan’s House Economic Competitiveness Committee advanced Representative Bill G. Schuette’s package of cryptocurrency bills on a party-line vote. The package includes HB 4510, HB 4511, and HB 4513. HB 4510 would authorize the State Treasurer to allocate a capped share of public retirement assets to cryptocurrencies, describe a cap reported at up to five percent of a retirement fund’s portfolio, and include eligibility screens limiting investments to large-cap assets that meet a market capitalization floor, with custody and reporting requirements deferred to implementing guidance. HB 4511 would prohibit state and local governments from prohibiting individuals from owning or using cryptocurrencies and would direct tax parity so certain crypto transactions receive treatment comparable to fiat for state tax purposes. HB 4513 would establish tax incentives for mined Bitcoin that meets program rules, authorize repurposing of abandoned or underused industrial sites for mining operations, and condition incentives on environmental remediation and grid-impact requirements set in program rules. Committee materials describe safeguards including percentage caps, market-cap floors, and asset-eligibility screens, and sponsors and analysts highlighted custody, reporting, and compliance standards for fiduciary management. The committee vote divided along party lines. Stakeholders including pension boards, business groups, labor unions, municipal officials, and environmental groups have submitted or are preparing testimony and written comments to the committee. Next procedural steps include consideration by the full House, potential committee of the whole review and amendments, a House vote, transmission to the Senate, and potential signature or veto by the Governor, followed by state agency implementation guidance that would set final eligibility criteria, reporting requirements, and compliance timelines. Key open issues for legislative and implementation phases include the final investment cap level, definitions of eligible assets, custody and reporting standards, and the scope of preemption over local zoning and operational rules. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/michigan-crypto-bills-advance/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: The government will introduce a bill this week to bring digital asset firms under financial services law and shift oversight from anti-money-laundering registration to Financial Conduct Authority supervision by October 2027. Lawmakers plan to finalize detailed rules by the end of 2026 and to run consultations through 2026 on trading venues, custody, stablecoin payments and related topics. The Financial Conduct Authority, working with HM Treasury, will extend governance, consumer protection, market conduct and operational resilience requirements that currently apply to banks, broker-dealers and payment firms to crypto exchanges, dealers and agents. The new framework will require formal authorization routes, fit and proper assessments for senior managers, prudential and conduct rulebooks, client asset protections, trade surveillance, incident reporting, and ongoing supervisory engagement. Custody providers will face segregation and reconciliation duties and market conduct rules will cover disclosures, order handling, conflicts of interest and pricing obligations. The Bank of England and the FCA will coordinate on stablecoin issuance and payment use while the Bank of England’s review will assess systemic risks, interoperability with payment systems, reserve composition and possible limits on certain wholesale uses or holdings. Supervision will include proactive supervisory cycles, thematic reviews and enforcement powers for market abuse, conduct failures and consumer redress, and regulators will be able to mandate skilled person reviews or other remediation. Firms should prepare gap assessments, authorization roadmaps, custody and reconciliation reviews, enhanced trade surveillance and incident reporting capabilities, and engagement with consultations; global firms should map the UK regime against other jurisdictions to identify licensing overlaps and gaps. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/uk-crypto-regulation-2027-deadline/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show description: Texas executed a $5 million purchase of the BlackRock iShares spot Bitcoin ETF as the first tranche of a $10 million allocation authorized under Senate Bill 21, which created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve administered by the Comptroller's office. Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock described the ETF position as a temporary placeholder while procurement proceeds for a dedicated crypto custody contract. The state routed dollars through a regulated ETF vehicle that holds bitcoin on behalf of shareholders and the Comptroller's office said this approach facilitates execution, audit, and monthly reporting during the pilot phase and allows time to design custody standards, insurance, segregation of duties, and valuation and audit rules for a direct-hold program. The $5 million position sits against an approximately $28 billion rainy day fund and a biennial budget of about $338 billion. Supporters framed the program as a tool to strengthen the state balance sheet and to attract mining operations and other crypto capital, citing Texas's power, land, and grid-flex programs. Industry groups welcomed the move as a magnet for investment and jobs. Critics said placing the reserve outside the state treasury reduces legislative oversight and could limit real-time visibility into trades, holdings, and performance and noted that the ETF does not remove price volatility risks. The Comptroller's office has issued requests for information and will run a procurement for a custody vendor with procurement milestones that include published custody standards, segregation of duties, insurance and recovery plans, valuation methodologies, and a defined reporting cadence. About $5 million of the original appropriation remains unspent and decisions on follow-on purchases will hinge on the custody competition outcome, agreed governance procedures, and market conditions. Key near-term items include legislative hearings and public reporting that clarify governance and performance disclosure, the custody award for details on custody architecture and counterparty risk limits, any further allocations from the remaining appropriation, and market reactions during reporting cycles. The central operational tests are selecting a custodian, publishing investment and reporting policies, and demonstrating transparency for lawmakers and market participants. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/texas-bitcoin-reserve-5m-etf/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spotify launched Prompted Playlists, a beta feature that uses artificial intelligence to create playlists based on user prompts and listening history. The feature, initially available in New Zealand, allows users to specify playlist details and set automatic refreshes with new songs. Spotify also updated its AI DJ to accept voice prompts and continues to expand user control over content, aligning with similar trends in digital platforms such as Instagram. The development highlights a broader industry movement toward increased personalization and user-driven algorithms.

Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.