#crypto-regulation

#crypto-regulation

Ryan, who had worked for seven years at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), Ethereum's de facto governing body, suggested that Ethereum could be on the cusp of an era-defining shift. Since its founding in 2014, the foundation had prioritized technical upgrades and had avoided centralizing power while its user base was growing, but Ethereum had now grown up, and the cryptocurrency world around it had grown up, too.

Bitcoin cloud mining represents a critical stage in the year 2026. The escalating cost of hardware, surging power expenses and mounting regulatory transparency are transforming the manner in which investors engage in Bitcoin mining. Complex physical infrastructure is no longer managed by them, but it is replaced by cloud mining platforms, which are simple, transparent, and predictable returns. With the increasing competition, platforms whose infrastructure is robust, contracts are clear, and payouts are reliable are the only ones that stand to win.

The GENIUS Act was designed to keep stablecoins as payment tools rather than savings products. As a result, it bans issuers from paying interest or yield to stablecoin holders. Community banks argue that a loophole exists because exchanges and affiliated partners can still offer rewards on stablecoin balances, even if the issuer itself does not pay yield. Smaller banks are more concerned than large banks because they rely heavily on local deposits.

The revised guidance requires registered crypto outfits (REs) to implement strict client due diligence measures, at least for new customers, that require them to collect details of customers' identity documents, bank account details, occupation, and even income range. The regulation also requires REs to collect "Latitude and longitude coordinates of the onboarding location with date and timestamp along with IP address" and to secure a selfie of new customers to prove they are alive and a real person.

The document, described as a "closing offer and state of play," includes more than 30 revisions to Title I, which governs the legal classification of digital assets, as well as two new titles focused on investor protections and combating illicit finance, according to POLITICO. The proposal was sent to Democratic negotiators by Scott and fellow GOP senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio).

In a major regulatory win for the cryptocurrency sector, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted conditional approval for Circle Internet Group ( ) and Ripple to establish new national trust banks. The OCC also conditionally approved Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets to convert their existing state trust licenses into national charters. These five approvals mark a significant step toward integrating digital asset firms into the federal banking system.

According to Pakistan's finance ministry, the MoU with Binance will allow the government to assess tokenising sovereign bonds, treasury bills, and commodity reserves - including oil, gas, and metals - as it seeks new tools to boost liquidity and expand market reach. Tokenization would create digital representations of real-world assets on blockchain networks, potentially widening investor access and supporting secondary-market efficiency.

The review will focus on safeguards for both direct and indirect investments in crypto-assets by retail investors, regulators added. The decision came during a meeting of the Committee for Macroprudential Policies. The committee includes the heads of the Bank of Italy, market watchdog Consob, insurance and pension regulators, and the Treasury's director general, according to Reuters reporting. Committee members warned that risks from crypto-assets could rise. Growing connections between crypto and the wider financial system, along with inconsistent international regulations, could heighten vulnerabilities, they said.

While many of the findings - such as the Fed, FDIC, and OCC pressuring banks away from crypto through informal guidance, and the SEC's "enforce first, make rules never" approach - were previously known, the report now places them squarely in the Congressional record. The report identifies at least 30 entities that were effectively "debanked" through informal regulatory guidance and supervisory pressure. These businesses, the Committee claims, were forced out of the U.S. banking system without formal enforcement actions.

The proposal follows President Donald Trump's pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and seeks to eliminate what Khanna calls "blatant corruption" at the intersection of politics and crypto. "The pardon of Zhao is corrupt," Khanna said on MSNBC. "You've got a foreign billionaire engaged in money laundering and financing terrorism, who supports the president's son's cryptocurrency firm, and then the president pardons him. This is corruption in plain sight."

Harris highlighted the "borderless nature" of the crypto market, suggesting that a passporting system - where companies regulated in one jurisdiction can operate in another without undergoing a full authorization process - could enhance investor protection, reduce compliance costs, and improve market interoperability.