The second-largest stablecoin by market cap will be overseen by French and EU authorities under its classification as a “significant e-money token.“ The European Banking Authority (EBA) has classified Circle’s USDC stablecoin as a significant e-money token under the region’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework. In a Wednesday notice, the banking regulator said the e-money token classification, granted to only 45 other projects, effectively means the USDC stablecoin will be jointly overseen by the EBA and France’s supervisory authority, the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution. The stablecoin is the second largest by market capitalization, at $73 billion compared to Tether USDt’s $184 billion. The “significant“ classification came as many EU-based token issuers pushed for…
Brooklyn prosecutors and the FBI seized 112 servers and shut down 241 websites linked to investment scams that targeted Russian-speaking Americans. Prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have disrupted an Eastern European cryptocurrency scam network accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars from Americans, primarily Russian-speakers. The operation, carried out last week and announced on Wednesday, resulted in the shutdown of 241 websites and the seizure of 112 servers hosted by companies in Eastern Europe and the United States, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. No arrests were made. “These criminals stole many millions of dollars from Russian-speaking victims through an elaborate investment scheme, then tried to…
The report from the US banking regulator did not include specific examples of debanking related to crypto, but mentioned it alongside ties to oil, gas and firearms. The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a report on debanking efforts, including ties to digital assets as activities that influenced banks to limit financial services. In a report released Wednesday, the OCC said certain banks had “public and nonpublic policies” restricting services for many industries, including oil and gas, tobacco, firearms and digital assets. According to the banking regulator, the report was in accordance with an August 2025 executive order from US President Donald Trump to prevent what he called “unlawful debanking.” “Many institutions also placed restrictions on banking digital a…
The bank identified four distinct stablecoin markets, with USDC leading payments and AI transactions as competition intensifies over reserve yields. Standard Chartered says stablecoin transaction activity continues to grow even as the market’s overall value has stalled, suggesting existing stablecoins are circulating more frequently rather than new supply driving growth. In a report shared with Cointelegraph, the bank said it now expects stablecoin market capitalization to reach $2 trillion by 2030, two years later than initially projected, after the market plateaued at roughly $309 billion this year. Geoffrey Kendrick, StanChart’s head of digital assets research, said stablecoin usage continues to expand despite slower supply growth, with existing stablecoins changing hands more frequentl…
Bitcoin fell below $82,000 while bond yields targeted new 24-year highs on the back of hot US CPI inflation. Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $82,000 after Wednesday’s Wall Street open as US consumer inflation beat expectations. Key points: Data from TradingView showed crypto, gold and stock-market futures dropping after the release of Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September.
Even if Justin Drake’s prediction that AI could break cryptography proves correct, critics say “bunker mode” is an impractical suggestion that’s unlikely to protect your crypto. If rising geopolitical tensions weren’t enough cause for concern, now it’s crypto’s turn to go nuclear. The industry is busy debating a cryptography doomsday scenario in which attackers derive private keys from public keys using a formerly far-fetched, but now potentially credible, AI scenario that places everyone’s crypto at risk. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake called for “bunker mode” planning last Wednesday, citing “humbling” advances in artificial intelligence that could accelerate the discovery of mathematical attacks and ultimately “break” cryptography:
Remittance-sized crypto transfers from Canada to three Asian countries reached $2.36 billion, while transfers to the Philippines alone rose 28% to $61 million. Remittance-sized crypto transfers from Canada to India, China and the Philippines surged 141% year-over-year to $2.36 billion, as digital asset payments expanded across the three major remittance corridors. According to a new Chainalysis report, the three countries accounted for 19.4% of Canada’s outbound cross-border stablecoin value, up from 10.9% in the previous year. Transfers totaled 3.56 million transactions in the 12 months ending June 2026, averaging $663 per transaction. Referring to additional data shared with Cointelegraph, Chainalysis head of research Eric Jardine said Canada-to-Philippines crypto remittances alone rea…
Qivalis said the Electronic Money Institution authorization enables it to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin, with issuance planned for the coming months, subject to additional MiCA requirements. European banking consortium Qivalis received Electronic Money Institution (EMI) authorization from the Dutch central bank, bringing it closer to issuing a euro-denominated stablecoin. The Amsterdam-based company revealed the license from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) in a Wednesday announcement shared with Cointelegraph. Qivalis said the EMI license subjects it to ongoing supervision by the central bank and makes it eligible to issue euro-denominated electronic money tokens.
Payward expects to close the acquisition in 2027, enabling it to expand its traditional banking services into four EU operating markets already served by Saldo Bank. Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken’s parent company, Payward, will buy Lithuania-based Saldo Bank as part of its expansion into traditional financial services, calling it “a deliberate next step in an infrastructure strategy we’ve been building for years.” Payward signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Finance Oy, a Finnish holding company whose subsidiary, Saldo Bank UAB, is a digital bank licensed in Lithuania, according to a Wednesday announcement. Payward said Saldo Bank’s EU banking license and footprint will enable it to expand into four operating markets, including Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, where the b…
Ledger hardware wallet implants have renewed scrutiny of the middlemen handling devices before they reach buyers, even through authorized sellers. Ordinary cryptocurrency owners cannot realistically be expected to detect sophisticated tampering with hardware wallets, security researcher Joe Grand told Cointelegraph on Tuesday. Grand specializes in hardware security and has helped recover cryptocurrency from locked wallets. His work includes developing techniques to bypass security protections and extract data from memory chips used in wallets made by Trezor and KeepKey. “It’s really hard to explain to people how they’re supposed to look at their devices, because even technical people like me are not looking at every single device to see if it’s been tampered with,” Grand said.
Coins.ph says its Philippine central bank license remains intact amid reports of possible revocation over alleged offshore gambling transactions. [Update, 11:00 am UTC: Added a follow-up response from a Coins.ph spokesperson.] Coins.ph said it remains licensed by the country’s central bank following reports that it could face license revocation over alleged transactions involving restricted offshore gambling operators. Coins.ph is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the Philippines, recording approximately $52 million in 24-hour spot trading volume on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko. The reported license risk follows restrictions imposed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on incoming InstaPay and PESONet transfers involving DCPay Philippines, the entity operating Coins.ph’s pes…
Bitcoin onchain analysis eyed a “potential bottom” for BTC price action in early October as demand weathered external headwinds. Bitcoin (BTC) can still preserve its traditionally strong October performance, as onchain data points to a local BTC price bottom forming. Key points: New analysis published on crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant Monday show onchain conditions in a state of “cautious optimism.”
Should US high court justices grant review of the case, they could release a decision as early as June 2027. After being convicted in 2023, losing his appeal to a Second Circuit court in 2026 and awaiting a decision on a presidential pardon that may never come, former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried is hoping to take his criminal case to the US Supreme Court. Jeffrey Fisher, counsel at the law firm Hecker Fink LLP and representing Bankman-Fried in his Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) appeal, spoke to Cointelegraph about the potential timeline surrounding the former FTX executive’s case and what onlookers could expect to see should the justices choose to accept his petition for a writ of certiorari, possibly resulting in a new trial. Bankman-Fried is pursuing the high court’s rev…
Saifedean Ammous argues that Bitcoin already functions as money when held as a store of value; expects it will become larger and less volatile than gold as it matures. Saifedean Ammous, the author of the 2018 academic book “The Bitcoin Standard,” said that Bitcoin already functions as a medium of exchange and that volatility’s effect on that is likely to diminish. Bitcoin (BTC) can serve as a medium of exchange as it becomes less volatile than gold while surpassing the market capitalization of the largest precious metal, wrote Ammous in a Tuesday X post. “Holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin as money, and its lack of widespread use as a method of payment is no evidence against its monetization unfolding,” added Ammous.
Standard Chartered expanded its spot crypto trading services to professional investors in the UAE region, with plans to offer access to more market participants. Standard Chartered has expanded Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) trading to wealthy clients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who qualify as professional investors. Eligible investors can trade these assets within their existing Standard Chartered bank accounts, the London-headquartered multinational bank announced Wednesday. Standard Chartered’s eligibility criteria require individuals to have at least 4 million dirhams (about $1.1 million) in net assets, excluding their main residence, and sufficient investment knowledge and experience or representation by a licensed entity.
Starknet’s Shadow Accounts allow users to obscure connections between their main wallets and DeFi activity, though transactions remain visible onchain. Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet has launched a wallet privacy feature that lets users interact with decentralized finance (DeFi) apps without publicly linking activities to their main wallets. StarkWare, the team behind Starknet, said that its new Shadow Accounts feature creates separate, persistent addresses for individual applications. Users can fund the accounts using shielded balances held in the network’s STRK20 privacy pool. This allows them to maintain lending, trading or other DeFi positions under different onchain identities. The new privacy feature obscures the connection between the shadow account and the wallet funding it. H…
New York Fed President John Williams’ comments came as he reaffirmed his view that the US Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates once more this year. New York Fed President John Williams said AI equipment supply could take more than two years to catch up with demand, which could add to inflationary pressure. Williams made the comments during an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, saying that the buildout of AI infrastructure is pushing up chip prices and goods that use them. Asked whether supply and demand within AI would become more balanced over the next two years, Williams said: “I think it’s going to take longer. Assuming the demand kind of impulse continues as expected, and that’s a big assumption.”
Bitwise’s Matt Hougan said nearly every fundamental indicator that Bitwise tracks spiked sharply higher. Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says Q3 may have been “one of the best quarters in crypto’s history,” arguing a sharp rebound in crypto prices and growing onchain markets point to the start of “crypto spring.” In its quarterly market review published Thursday, Bitwise reported a 46.4% quarterly gain in its large-cap crypto index, along with $6 billion in US spot Bitcoin ETF inflows that brought year-to-date net flows back into positive territory. The growth extended beyond the price of cryptocurrencies. The value of tokenized equities rose 65.5% to nearly $3.2 billion, while open interest on decentralized perpetual futures hit a new record near $26 billion, with a growing…
The wallet maker requested that devices be removed from shelves while investigators work to establish where tampering occurred. Ledger has requested sellers and distributors of its devices in six Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong to suspend sales and remove its hardware wallets from shelves as it investigates reports of tampered devices. In a post on X on Tuesday, Ledger said the request covers resellers in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong. “To be clear, as the investigation continues, the only confirmed incidents remain contained to Southeast Asia. We have not verified a drain linked to a device bought elsewhere,” said Ledger.
Tokenized equities have reached nearly $3.3 billion in value as investors embrace round-the-clock access beyond Wall Street hours. Most trading in tokenized stocks on major blockchains now takes place outside regular US market hours, offering an early indication that around-the-clock trading could be one of the biggest advantages of putting equities onchain. According to Blockworks data cited by The Kobeissi Letter, more than 70% of tokenized stock trading volume on BNB Chain occurs outside the traditional 9:30 am to 4 pm Eastern trading session. The figure is 63% on Solana and nearly 60% on Base.
