Revolut and OpenReserve received preliminary OCC approval to form US national banks, with both planning cryptocurrency and stablecoin-related services. Revolut and Andreessen Horowitz-backed crypto banking startup OpenReserve have received preliminary US regulatory approval to establish national banks, with both companies planning to offer cryptocurrency and stablecoin-related services. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted preliminary conditional approval for Revolut to move forward with a proposed bank in Connecticut and OpenReserve with one in Utah, according to separate decisions published Wednesday. The OCC said Revolut wants its own US bank to provide services at lower cost and with greater efficiency than its current model, which relies on Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured partner banks. Read more
Crypto projects are spending hundreds of millions buying their own tokens. But are buybacks creating lasting value — or just making tokens look more valuable than they really are? As the industry matures and borrows more pages out of TradiFi’s playbook, crypto projects are starting to adopt some of the behaviors of public companies. The latest craze rocking cryptoville is token buybacks: using revenue to buy back your own token. So far in 2026, crypto projects have spent about $640 million on the practice, up around 17% from the same period the year prior, and an order of magnitude more than the $366,000 spent in 2024. Hyperliquid and Pump.fun accounting for almost 90% of the current spend. Read more