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Some of the most consequential financial rules begin with surprisingly little text. For example, on page 36 of the European Commission’s current MiCA review, item 66 asks whether Europe’s treatment of staking is adequate and, if it isn’t, what requirements should apply to companies providing staking services. The question is brief, but the consequences wouldn’t … Read more

The Bank of Russia has proposed a 1% crypto capital cap, limiting covered crypto and foreign-digital-instrument risk to a bank’s own funds while leaving some client custody positions outside the new calculation. The Sept. 18 proposal would create N31 for individual credit institutions and N32 for banking groups on a consolidated basis. Each ratio compares … Read more

Washington came surprisingly close this week to writing a dollar amount into one of its thorniest crypto ethics rule debates. Under the final Senate draft of the CLARITY Act, senior federal officials holding equity worth at least $15,000 in certain businesses that issue or sponsor digital assets would have had to sell that interest or … Read more

Brazil’s central bank will bar virtual assets, including stablecoins, from settling one specific type of international payment flow starting Oct. 1. Resolution 561 targets the settlement leg between regulated foreign-exchange providers and their overseas counterparties, requiring that leg to run through a licensed FX transaction or a qualifying non-resident real account. Individual international transfers using … Read more

The UK Financial Conduct Authority says overseas crypto providers can fall inside the country’s incoming authorization regime when they serve British consumers, even when the business is established abroad. A “UK consumer” for this purpose means an individual in the UK acting outside a trade, business or profession. The definition is a statutory territorial concept … Read more

The US sanctioned Iranian crypto exchange BitBank, widening its campaign against digital-asset infrastructure allegedly used to finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On Sept. 17, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said that the sanctioned Iranian financier Babak Zanjani used BitBank between June and July to facilitate hundreds of millions of … Read more

Two days after the US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, federal regulators opened two narrower routes for crypto-linked market access under existing law. The Securities and Exchange Commission created a five-year path for permissioned venues to trade tokenized US stocks through automated market makers. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission broadened staff no-action relief … Read more

Seven Democratic senators said Sept. 16 that CLARITY’s failed Senate vote was not the end. The crypto market-structure bill fell short 49-50 the previous day on a procedural motion that needed 60 votes to advance. Getting from that statement to a law now depends on a compressed legislative calendar, still-unresolved policy disputes, and a House … Read more