News linked to this event type.
Odaily News: The Hungarian Parliament has passed Bill No. XXXVIII of 2026, abolishing legal provisions related to crypto asset conversion services, including the verification requirements that European exchanges had to pass before legally operating in Hungary. The bill was voted through on July 31 and went into effect on August 7.The abolition also removes two crypto asset-related criminal charges: unauthorized trading of high-value crypto assets, which carried a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, and providing crypto asset exchange services in violation of verification obligations, which carried a maximum sentence of 8 years in prison. These provisions were said to duplicate the EU's MiCA framework. (Bitcoin.com News)
Odaily News: Brian Armstrong posted on X platform that regulatory clarity seems inevitable either way: first, the U.S. Senate secured over 60 votes on September 15; second, the CFTC and SEC will release a new set of rules on September 16.
According to The New York Times, two Binance employees were recently intercepted by authorities at airports in the United Arab Emirates and briefly detained, but have since been released. One mid-level employee was taken to a police station and held overnight after transiting through Sharjah earlier this month, while an executive at Binance’s Dubai subsidiary was questioned by police in July. According to insiders, the actions stem from a local police investigation into suspected financial crimes involving the Binance platform. The UAE is home to Binance’s primary regulatory authority, and this incident underscores the mounting legal pressure the company faces in the region. Binance has long been scrutinized by law enforcement agencies in multiple countries for struggling to prevent criminals from exploiting its platform.
According to TechFlow research, Morgan Stanley's August 20 report noted that the U.S. Treasury will increase the size of its liquidity-supporting repo operations for the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year tenors from $2 billion per transaction to at least $4 billion, effective September 9. This marks the first adjustment to the repurchase volume outside of the quarterly refinancing window since the repo program launched in May 2024. The two tenors combined add $1.6 billion in notional amount, corresponding to approximately $19.3 million in DV01 (price change per one-basis-point move in rates), with a risk impact roughly double that of the November 2023 "supply surprise." Morgan Stanley stated that the Treasury's decision to expand repurchases ahead of schedule outside the quarterly refinancing window aims to signal close monitoring of long-end interest rate dynamics to the market, thereby buying time for the November refinancing window. The recent rise in the 10-year Treasury yield and curve steepening primarily reflect the market's repricing of energy prices and central bank policy trajectories, rather than concerns over deficits or supply. Morgan Stanley maintains its recommendation for a 7-year versus 30-year Treasury curve steepening trade, targeting a spread of 100 basis points (currently around 71 basis points). On the FX front, coordinated volatility in gold and the Swiss franc hit an annual peak on August 19; should the U.S. dollar policy narrative reassert itself, EUR/USD is likely to approach 1.2150.
Odaily News: At the inaugural meeting of the U.S. CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, Lighter CEO Vladimir Novakovski stated that DeFi has long been misunderstood and should not be viewed as an adversary to regulators. DeFi transactions are recorded on-chain in a verifiable manner, which helps regulators in areas such as transparency, consumer protection, and market fairness. Vladimir Novakovski noted that decentralized, verifiable finance has the potential to become an important part of the U.S. financial infrastructure in the future, particularly in terms of cybersecurity and operational resilience. He added that the industry should push for more technology to evolve toward open-source, verifiable tech stacks. He also stated that AI has the opportunity to drive financial democratization, allowing users to construct bundled trading or investment strategies through AI based on their own judgments about the macroeconomy, industries, and other fields—capabilities that were previously mainly available to high-net-worth individuals and professional fund managers.Vladimir Novakovski pointed out that the main risk AI faces in the financial sector is consumer protection risk—for example, users not understanding how AI models actually function, or models being promoted with misleading claims. Therefore, before AI models are deployed at scale for consumers, it is necessary to establish appropriate sandbox mechanisms and verify the validity and formal verifiability of the models.
According to The Defiant, Arbitrum officially activated the ArbOS 61 Elara upgrade on August 20, which was approved for deployment via an ArbitrumDAO governance vote. The core features of this upgrade include: introducing an optional protocol-level transaction filtering mechanism for Dedicated Chains, allowing chain owners to independently select external compliance service providers such as TRM Labs and Chainalysis to configure restricted address rules; the filter is disabled by default and does not affect existing Arbitrum One users; adding Priority Fee support, also disabled by default, with its activation on Arbitrum One still requiring a separate DAO constitutional vote; introducing the BaseFeeManager contract, which authorizes Offchain Labs to adjust the L2 minimum Gas fee within a DAO-approved range of 0.01 to 0.10 gwei over a two-year authorization period; additionally, the maximum code size limit for Stylus contracts has been increased from 24 KB to 96 KB, though this does not apply to Solidity contracts.
According to Forbes, Anthropic, Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs have jointly launched an AI-native enterprise services company named "Ode," backed by a $1.5 billion investment. Positioned as an AI implementation consulting firm, Ode's core offerings include identifying business processes suitable for AI transformation, deploying AI engineers, developing custom applications and AI agents, automating task workflows, and assisting enterprises with regulatory compliance issues. The company will prioritize driving the deployment of Anthropic's Claude models across its client base.
Odaily News: As concerns grow across the United States over AI data centers' water usage, electricity consumption, and impact on local infrastructure, tech companies such as OpenAI and Meta are adding community relations staff to reduce the risk of local opposition to data center projects. A Gallup survey shows that about 70% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their areas, and in the first three months of this year, at least 75 data center projects with a total value of approximately $130 billion were blocked or delayed due to local opposition.Among them, OpenAI is hiring a head of community engagement to mitigate opposition to its data center projects in Ohio and Georgia, while Meta is recruiting a community engagement manager to build relationships with local officials and school districts. Additionally, OpenAI announced this week that it is investing $40 million to establish a community fund in Ohio, Meta has spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns promoting data centers, and Microsoft has stated it will no longer seek local tax incentives for new data center projects. (Bloomberg)
Odaily News: CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said this morning at a CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee meeting that trade.xyz and Hyperliquid are having a tangible impact on the U.S. market. trade.xyz, a leading market builder on the Hyperliquid chain, focuses on perpetual contracts for equities, commodities, and pre-IPO assets, and its trading volume already accounts for a significant share of Hyperliquid's activity. Terry Duffy has previously voiced concerns on multiple occasions regarding leverage and regulatory issues associated with such offshore platforms. Additionally, Terry Duffy clashed with CFTC Chairman Michael Selig and Kalshi Chief Operating Officer Luana Lopes Lara over prediction market regulation. Duffy noted that certain prediction market contracts carry manipulation risks, particularly those listed via self-certification. He pointed out that contracts tied to the content of the President's State of the Union address and the timing of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's departure from office may be susceptible to manipulation, adding that this is detrimental to the entire industry.
According to a Grayscale research report, as AI-driven financial monitoring capabilities continue to expand, the demand for financial privacy is experiencing a third wave of renewed interest, potentially benefiting Zcash (ZEC). The report notes that Zcash’s zero-knowledge proof-based shielded transaction technology conceals the sender, recipient, and transaction amount, establishing a differentiated positioning compared to Bitcoin’s transparent on-chain records. Current on-chain data shows that shielded transactions now account for approximately 90% of Zcash’s total network transaction volume, while shielded supply has reached around 4.2 million ZEC, representing 25% of the circulating supply, with both figures hitting all-time highs. In terms of valuation, ZEC holds a market capitalization of approximately $8 billion, accounting for only 0.6% of the total market cap within Grayscale's "Cryptocurrency Monetary Sector". If its market share increases to 5%, the theoretical valuation space would be roughly nine times the current level. The report also cautions that Zcash faces multiple risks, including regulatory compliance, legacy issues from historical trusted setups, quantum computing threats, and protocol upgrade execution challenges, requiring investors to conduct prudent assessments.
According to The Block, at a meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee, CME CEO Terrence Duffy publicly addressed the risks of manipulation in prediction market contracts, stating that "there are indeed people manipulating these contracts, which is extremely harmful to the industry," and expressing concern over the potential manipulation risks associated with numerous self-certified contracts, as well as those related to Trump's State of the Union address and Maduro's removal from office. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig promptly interrupted and rebutted this, noting that all the aforementioned contracts operate overseas and are not issues for the U.S. market. Subsequently, Kalshi COO Luana Lopes Lara challenged CME by asking whether it had also faced manipulation issues, leading to a heated exchange between both parties. Currently, the dispute over regulatory jurisdiction for prediction markets continues to escalate, with the CFTC asserting "exclusive jurisdiction" and having already filed lawsuits against several states, while pledging to advance revisions to consumer protection rules; meanwhile, some members of Congress have introduced legislation aimed at banning the listing and trading of prediction contracts tied to sports or gambling.
Odaily News: The inaugural Innovation Advisory Committee meeting of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was held this morning. Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, put forward three proposals at the meeting: First, establish a safe harbor or innovation exemption mechanism for emerging markets such as computing power derivatives, allowing developers to test new products and business models within a compliant framework; Second, support the adoption of compliant privacy and confidentiality tools in DeFi, ensuring transaction privacy for institutional investors while providing regulators with sufficient transparency to identify and manage systemic risks; Third, support the launch of Pre-IPO perpetual futures, enabling ordinary US investors to participate in the wealth growth of emerging industries such as AI, preventing them from being excluded due to private market access restrictions, or being forced to participate indirectly through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that lack transparency.Tushar Jain also stated that he had exchanges with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins on the same day, expressing optimism about regulators driving financial innovation and the future development of the United States.
Odaily Planet Daily reported that Lorenzo Valente, Head of Digital Asset Research at investment firm ARK Invest, stated that Hyperliquid is in discussions with the CFTC and SEC to facilitate the offering of perpetual futures on its public chain by U.S.-regulated companies. He suggested that Hyperliquid acquire Gemini to position it as a U.S.-regulated HIP-3/4 deployer. He noted that Gemini's current market value is approximately $450 million, representing a decline of over 85% from its $3.3 billion valuation at the time of its 2025 IPO. Hyperliquid could obtain Gemini's entire U.S. regulatory infrastructure—including the NYDFS Trust Charter, DCM, DCO, FCM, MTLs, and Broker-dealer—for approximately $450 million.He further proposed that Hyperliquid could use approximately 7.9 million HYPE tokens from its community reserve, valued at around $550 million at $70 per token, to complete the acquisition at a premium of roughly 20% over Gemini's current market value. Following the transaction, Gemini would handle KYC, custody, fiat on/off ramps, brokerage, clearing, and compliance for the U.S. market, while Hyperliquid L1 would provide the underlying market infrastructure, liquidity, and on-chain settlement. He cited Polymarket's acquisition of QCEX as a similar precedent for re-entering the U.S. market, and stated that the core of this potential deal is not acquiring an exchange, but rather securing the regulatory bridge for HIP-3/4 to enter the U.S. market.
According to Bloomberg, Franklin Templeton announced plans to introduce tokenized assets into traditional investment funds, stating that it has obtained the first U.S. regulatory approval permitting digital-native products for use in traditional funds. According to a letter published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company plans to embed its tokenized money market fund as holdings or collateral within ETFs and mutual fund products.
According to Bloomberg, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Michael Selig said on August 20 that the cryptocurrency industry will receive market structure regulatory rules even if Congress fails to pass related landmark legislation. In an interview with Bloomberg Television ahead of the CFTC's inaugural Innovation Advisory Committee meeting, Selig noted, "Market structure is very important; we can achieve it through rulemaking, or we can achieve it through legislation."
Odaily News: On August 20 local time, the White House announced that U.S. President Trump has signed a memorandum proposing that by 2030, U.S. space transportation ranges and related facilities should be capable of supporting more than 1,000 launch and reentry missions annually. The memorandum states that the U.S. will expand and improve space launch and reentry infrastructure, requiring relevant agencies to promote the opening of federal launch sites to commercial users, encourage commercial investment, public-private partnerships, and joint infrastructure development, while accelerating facility permitting and environmental reviews. NASA has also been tasked with developing a commercial lunar logistics architecture, exploring commercial robotic Mars landings, and related architectures for commercial crewed round-trip missions to Mars. (CCTV News)
Odaily News: Kraken's parent company, Payward, is considering applying for a "full banking" license in certain jurisdictions outside the U.S., aiming to expand beyond crypto trading into banking services, asset management, and financial infrastructure as part of its global growth strategy.Dave Ripley, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, stated at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026 that the company is exploring obtaining full banking licenses in select overseas markets, but the U.S. is unlikely to be the first choice in the near term. He did not disclose specific jurisdictions or license types.Ripley noted that Payward is currently focused on three core product areas: trading, banking, and asset management. He said that banking essentially encompasses payments and money transfers, lending, yield, and custody—services that Kraken already offers to varying degrees.Payward currently operates Kraken Financial, a Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) chartered in Wyoming, which has provided institutional clients with digital asset custody and deposit account services since March 2024. However, Kraken Financial still cannot lend client fiat currency like a traditional bank, nor does it have FDIC insurance.
Odaily News CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy, the operator of the world's largest futures exchange, and Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder of prediction market platform Kalshi, clashed verbally during a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) roundtable in Washington. Duffy questioned whether prediction markets face the same regulatory scrutiny as established exchanges and noted that certain contracts could be subject to manipulation.Terry Duffy stated that CME Group is not a "barker at the circus" and mocked some contracts offered by Kalshi, including the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest contract. Luana Lopes Lara responded that traditional markets and exchanges carry risks as well and that regulators are responsible for identifying and addressing such issues. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins subsequently called on both sides to stop attacking each other's business models.The dispute comes amid ongoing disagreements between federal regulators and states over the regulatory authority of prediction markets, with the central question being whether contracts involving sports, elections, and other real-world events are federally regulated derivatives or gambling products subject to state law. Last week, a Washington state judge ordered Kalshi to stop offering certain contracts. Two days ago, the CFTC instructed Kalshi to continue trading, pushing back against New York state's efforts to block its contracts. (Decrypt)
Odaily News: Brian Armstrong stated on the X platform that the world's first truly global economy is coming, and it's time to advance tokenization in the US. Coinbase has launched its non-US tokenized stock business. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins are making progress with the Reg Crypto announced this week and the Innovation Exemption expected to be unveiled soon. As these measures move forward, the Senate should follow suit and pass the Clarity Act in the fall to ensure long-term stability in US rules.
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee has advanced the Crypto Regulation Without Clarity Act, with CFTC Chairman Behnam criticizing the bill for failing to provide a clear regulatory framework and instead increasing market uncertainty.