News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Block, B2C2 has obtained a crypto-asset service provider license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), enabling it—under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework—to offer over-the-counter (OTC) spot trading services across all EU member states and three European Economic Area (EEA) countries via the “passporting” mechanism. B2C2 stated that it has become the first globally operating OTC liquidity provider authorized under MiCA. Previously, B2C2 completed its registration as a virtual asset service provider (VASP) in Luxembourg in 2024.
According to The Block, the T3 Financial Crime Unit (T3 FCU), jointly established by Tether, TRON, and TRM Labs, announced that since its founding in 2024, it has frozen over $450 million worth of illicit crypto assets globally. In 2025, the unit’s interception of illicit proceeds increased by 43.9% year-on-year, covering 23 jurisdictions including the United States, Spain, and Germany, and has been recognized by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as “a critical resource for global law enforcement agencies.” The T3 FCU has participated in investigations across multiple crime categories, including exchange hacks, North Korea–related activities, terrorist financing, and violent crimes, and assisted Brazil’s Federal Police in freezing over $5.989 billion in assets—including 4.3 million USDT.
According to The Block, Anchorage Digital announced a partnership with Grupo Salinas, the conglomerate owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Grupo Salinas will access Anchorage Digital’s USD-pegged stablecoin infrastructure through its crypto division, Coinpro, to shorten cross-border payment settlement cycles, enable programmable real-time settlement, and meet the compliance and security requirements of large financial institutions.
According to The Block, Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, noted that three enterprise-grade blockchains—Arc (by Circle), Canton Network, and Tempo (by Stripe)—have collectively raised over $1 billion in funding recently. All three funding rounds occurred after the signing of the GENIUS Act in July 2025. Hougan believes this legislation broke a prior regulatory stalemate that had discouraged institutional capital from entering the space. Hougan identified three key signals: First, all three blockchains prioritize native privacy-preserving transactions as a core design feature, addressing institutions’ need for transaction confidentiality. Second, the implementation of the GENIUS Act has significantly reduced regulatory uncertainty; the next critical variable is the pending Clarity Act, from which stablecoins and tokenization infrastructure stand to benefit. Third, these blockchains are backed by top-tier institutions—including Goldman Sachs, Citadel, BlackRock, Stripe, and Visa—marking a stark contrast to Ethereum and Solana, which emerged from grassroots origins. Hougan stated that his firm’s capital remains primarily allocated to native crypto projects, and he believes these emerging enterprise chains will raise the overall competitive bar and attract additional capital inflows.
According to The Block, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held oral arguments in the appeal filed by Roman Sterlingov, the alleged operator of Bitcoin Fog. The court focused on whether prosecutors presented sufficient evidence that Bitcoin Fog operated in Washington, D.C., and whether U.S. unlicensed money transmission laws apply to global cryptocurrency service platforms serving U.S. users. Judges also questioned the reliability of FBI evidence linking Sterlingov to Bitcoin Fog based on “IP address overlap” analysis. Sterlingov was previously convicted in 2024 of conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmission business. The outcome of this case may influence the scope of U.S. enforcement actions—under Section 1960—against developers and service providers of cryptocurrency privacy tools.
According to The Block, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, Speaker of the Polish Sejm (lower house of parliament), announced that the Sejm has officially launched debates on four competing cryptocurrency-related bills—submitted respectively by the government, President Karol Nawrocki, the Poland 2050 party, and the Coalition Party—with the second reading scheduled for this Thursday. Previously, President Nawrocki had vetoed cryptocurrency legislation twice. The main point of contention between the government’s and the president’s proposals concerns the account-freezing authority of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) and the upper limit for fines: the president’s proposal retains the maximum fine at 20 million PLN (approximately USD 5.5 million), whereas the Ministry of Finance’s draft raises it to 25 million PLN (approximately USD 6.9 million). Meanwhile, lawmakers from the Law and Justice Party (PiS) withdrew their earlier market-regulation bill—originally submitted in April—on Monday and instead introduced a new proposal that would comprehensively ban cryptocurrency activities within Poland. Speaker Czarzasty stated that the ban proposal will only enter the legislative process after the four primary regulatory bills have been reviewed. He also raised questions regarding financial ties between the cryptocurrency exchange ZondaCrypto and Polish politicians, and probed the underlying motivations behind President Nawrocki’s two vetoes of cryptocurrency legislation.
Polish Sejm Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty announced the parliament has officially begun deliberations on four competing bills for crypto asset regulation, following President Karol Nawrocki's two vetoes of related legislation. The review involves legislative proposals from the government, the Presidential Office, the Poland 2050 party, and the Confederation party, with the second reading vote expected on Thursday. Key disagreements center on the scope of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority's (KNF) power to freeze accounts and the maximum penalties for violations. The president's draft sets a maximum fine of approximately 20 million zloty (about $5.5 million), while the Treasury's version raises it to 25 million zloty (about $6.9 million).Meanwhile, the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), after withdrawing support for an earlier regulatory proposal, submitted a separate bill on Monday advocating for a complete ban on crypto asset-related activities in Poland, further complicating the regulatory debate. Speaker Czarzasty stated that the PiS ban draft will enter the deliberation process only after the four main regulatory bills are completed, and questioned the links between crypto industry funds and political activities, specifically naming potential political funders including zondacrypto. (The Block)
According to The Block, global asset management firm Franklin Templeton and Payward—the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken—have announced a partnership to jointly explore tokenization pathways for traditional investment products. The collaboration spans tokenized equities, compliant custody, actively managed yield products, and institutional crypto liquidity services. The two parties plan to launch tokenized Franklin Templeton financial products targeting institutional clients, with potential expansion to Kraken’s broader user base depending on circumstances. Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward, stated that this partnership will pioneer entirely new product categories that were not feasible just three years ago. Meanwhile, Payward has applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust company charter to further expand its access within the U.S. financial system.
Odaily Planet Daily reported that Starknet, the Ethereum Layer 2 network developed by StarkWare, has officially launched strkBTC. This is a new Bitcoin-based asset designed to achieve private balances and anonymous transfers through zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology while maintaining composability with DeFi applications. After its launch, strkBTC supports "re-anonymization," allowing assets to be bridged back to entirely new, unlinked Bitcoin addresses, and also provides compliance audit and asset screening features. (The Block)
According to The Block, the Gross National Happiness (GNH) Mindful City (GMC) in Bhutan’s Special Administrative Region has officially launched its Accelerated Licensing Program for globally regulated digital asset enterprises. Companies holding licenses from major financial centers—such as Singapore, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and Hong Kong—can benefit from an integrated regulatory approval and bank account opening process, significantly shortening time-to-market and gaining direct access to corporate bank accounts via DK Bank. On taxation, GMC offers zero corporate tax (for priority sectors), zero capital gains tax, zero dividend tax, and zero inheritance tax. Foreign-investment tax exemptions remain in effect until 2030.
According to The Block, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking has released an updated 309-page version of the Clarity Act, scheduled for review and vote later this week. The new text includes language restricting stablecoin rewards and incorporates provisions from the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, clarifying that non-custodial developers are not considered money transmitters. Coinbase—which had previously withdrawn its support due to controversy over the stablecoin rewards provision—has now reversed its position and endorsed the bill; however, banking industry groups still deem the restrictions insufficient. Meanwhile, the bill still lacks ethics-related provisions targeting digital asset-related benefits received by the President and other federal officials. Democratic lawmakers have stated that, absent such compromises, the bill is unlikely to gain their support.
According to The Block, the Ethereum Foundation is restructuring its Protocol team, appointing Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as the new co-leads of the Protocol cluster. This reorganization comes as Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko plan to depart the organization, and Alex Stokes begins a sabbatical. The Protocol team is the Ethereum Foundation’s core team responsible for the design, research, development, and coordination of Ethereum’s base layer, covering areas such as security, cryptography, zkEVM, and peer-to-peer networking. The team is currently advancing Ethereum’s next major scalability upgrade, Glamsterdam, which aims to raise the gas limit ceiling and floor to 200 million and introduce ePBS. Subsequently, the team will shift its R&D focus toward the Hegotá upgrade and the FOCIL prototype to enhance Ethereum’s censorship resistance.
According to The Block, Lee Reiners—a lecturer in law at Duke University and former examiner at the New York Federal Reserve—published a post on May 8 stating that WLFI, the governance token issued by the DeFi project World Liberty Financial—which is closely associated with the Trump family—may constitute an unregistered security. Reiners cited the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recently released token classification framework, arguing that WLFI is not a “pure digital commodity” and therefore falls under SEC regulatory scrutiny. He contends that WLFI was publicly presold—approximately 25 billion tokens—prior to the protocol’s launch and was marketed leveraging the Trump family’s brand, leading buyers to reasonably expect profits—a key element of the SEC’s “Howey Test” for determining whether an asset qualifies as a security. Regarding decentralization claims, Reiners referenced litigation filed by Justin Sun, noting that World Liberty unilaterally froze Sun’s tokens and revoked his governance rights—revealing a high degree of centralized control. Additionally, he highlighted clear conflicts of interest: the project borrowed $75 million in stablecoins from the Dolomite protocol, using 5 billion WLFI tokens as collateral; notably, a co-founder of Dolomite also serves as an advisor to World Liberty, and part of the borrowed stablecoins flowed directly to World Liberty itself.
According to The Block, South Korea’s National Assembly has passed an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act, requiring enterprises engaged in cross-border inflows and outflows of crypto assets to register with the Minister of Economy and Finance to strengthen systematic oversight of cross-border crypto asset flows. The amendment introduces a new definition of “virtual asset transfer business,” covering activities involving the transfer of crypto assets between South Korea and overseas jurisdictions through buying, selling, or exchanging—such as those conducted by cryptocurrency exchanges and digital asset custodians. Separately, it is reported that South Korea’s Financial Services Commission plans to extend the Travel Rule to all crypto transactions; South Korea also intends to impose a 22% tax on crypto asset gains exceeding 2.5 million KRW starting January 2027.
According to The Block, BNY announced the expansion of its crypto custody business into the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) in the UAE through partnerships with Finstreet and the ADI Foundation, offering institutional clients crypto-asset custody services. Initially, the service will support custody for BTC and ETH. The three parties will subsequently explore extending these services to the ADI Foundation’s underlying blockchain infrastructure and gradually expand to stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and other regulated digital instruments.
According to The Block, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with SSI Digital (SSID), the blockchain subsidiary of Vietnam’s largest securities firm, SSI. Under the MOU, the two parties will jointly establish and operate a digital asset exchange in Vietnam, covering areas including wallet and custody systems, security risk management, regulatory compliance, and product development. The agreement was signed in March this year and officially announced today. Bithumb stated that, subject to approval by local regulatory authorities, it may make a strategic investment in SSID’s cryptocurrency exchange project.
According to The Block, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stated clearly on Wednesday at the Consensus Miami conference that she would not support the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act unless it includes an ethics provision. She emphasized that members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and senior executive branch officials must not profit from the industry by virtue of their insider status, bluntly declaring, “Without this provision, corruption will destroy this industry.” Previously, before the presidential inauguration, both Donald Trump and his wife launched meme coins. Their family-led DeFi and stablecoin project, World Liberty Financial, has also sparked widespread controversy. Bloomberg estimates that Trump has already earned at least $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency-related businesses.
According to The Block, Kraken has launched CFTC-regulated crypto spot margin trading for U.S. retail users. Users can use their held crypto assets as collateral to trade with up to 10x leverage—without needing to first sell assets to obtain liquidity. This product is the first offering launched by Kraken’s parent company, Payward, following its acquisition of crypto derivatives platform Bitnomial and leveraging Bitnomial’s regulatory license. Payward previously stated that it plans to roll out regulated perpetual contracts and options products for U.S. users in the future.
According to The Block, cryptocurrency exchange Bullish announced on Tuesday that it will acquire global transfer agent Equiniti from private equity firm Siris for $4.2 billion, aiming to integrate its tokenization infrastructure with a compliant shareholder services company that processes $500 billion in payments annually.
Coinbase Australia has launched a dedicated support service for Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF), providing Australian trustees with a compliant and secure digital asset investment solution to help incorporate crypto assets like Bitcoin into retirement portfolios.According to Coinbase's official blog, the service leverages its recently obtained Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) and local team capabilities, offering entity verification processes tailored to Australian fund structures, downloadable audit reports compliant with local accounting standards, and institutional-grade security measures.Data from the Australian Taxation Office shows there are currently over 653,000 SMSFs in Australia, managing assets worth A$1.05 trillion and serving more than 1.2 million members. Coinbase stated that SMSFs are among the few retirement structures globally that allow individuals to directly manage digital assets, becoming a key gateway for investors to include cryptocurrencies in their long-term retirement strategies. (The Block)