Sep 28, 2026
Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission and Accounting and Financial Reporting Council signed a new memorandum of understanding extending their cooperation on financial reporting and audit oversight to cover licensed virtual asset service providers, applying the same standards used for traditional securities firms.
Crypto casino and sports betting platform Duelbits confirmed a hack that drained approximately $7 million from its hot wallets across multiple blockchain networks including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, and Bitcoin. The platform took its site offline following the suspected private key compromise, though it stated user funds remain safe.
Binance-owned CoinMarketCap acquired CoinGlass, a crypto derivatives data platform used by traders to monitor leverage, positioning and market risk. CoinGlass will continue operating independently with its brand, website, app, API and pricing unchanged.
Circle and Tether froze a wallet holding approximately $318,000 in stablecoins following a massive $351.6 million hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitget on Thursday. The freeze covers only a small fraction of the total stolen funds.
Crypto exchange Bitget confirmed unauthorized transfers affecting approximately $351.6 million in assets from hot wallets on September 24, temporarily suspending withdrawals across all assets while investigating the security breach.
Brooklyn man Ronald Spektor, 23, was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to all 31 counts related to a phishing operation that stole nearly $16 million from approximately 100 Coinbase users.
The New York Stock Exchange and crypto exchange Blockchain.com signed a memorandum of understanding to give Blockchain.com's 44 million users access to tokenized US-listed stocks and ETFs through NYSE's planned 24/7 digital trading venue.
Austrian banking group Raiffeisen Bank International is partnering with crypto brokerage Bitpanda to roll out bitcoin and crypto trading for its 18 million customers across Central and Eastern Europe, starting with Albania, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The Manhattan US attorney's office and DOJ's criminal division are examining whether Binance knowingly allowed trading that violated US sanctions on Iran, three years after the exchange agreed to $4.3 billion in penalties to settle similar charges.
Cryptocurrency platform Lemon has decided to shut down its Brazilian operations and terminate approximately 15,000 local accounts after determining that the country's new crypto licensing capital requirements are too expensive for its business model.
Coinbase filed with the CFTC through Coinbase Derivatives to list single-stock perpetual futures in the US, seeking to bring the popular crypto instrument to individual equities including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia.
Binance has expanded into the $9.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market by launching its first FX perpetual futures contract, offering round-the-clock trading of USD-Brazilian real pairs with up to 100x leverage, unlike traditional FX markets which operate on limited schedules.
TRON Inc., a TRX digital asset treasury firm, was receiving its TRX directly from an HTX wallet until shortly after HTX was sanctioned by the UK. Following the sanctions, TRON Inc. transitioned to receiving TRX from a wallet funded by HTX.
London-based digital asset technology platform Haruko suffered a targeted cyberattack that compromised exchange API details, trading data, and funds belonging to 15 cryptocurrency clients. Attackers obtained an access token that exposed sensitive exchange API information used by hedge funds to trade on crypto exchanges.
Crypto.com's US-regulated derivatives exchange Nadex registered with the SEC to trade security futures products through its OG.com platform. The registration enables the company to offer single-stock perpetuals to US customers.
South Korean cybersecurity company DCENT issued a critical security notice on September 16 telling users to transfer assets from its App Wallet immediately after detecting abnormal asset transfers. Initial findings indicate the security issue is limited to the App Wallet product.
Hamas' military wing Al Qassam Brigades advised potential donors to avoid using Binance for cryptocurrency transfers and instead use platforms including Bybit, OKX, Kast, and Redotpay, according to U.S. Department of Justice documents released in September 2026.
Celsius Network's bankruptcy estate filed suit against five BitMEX entities on September 12, seeking the return of 6,360.17 Bitcoin (worth approximately $495 million) over forced liquidations during the March 2020 market crash. The lawsuit comes just 11 days before BitMEX's scheduled permanent shutdown.
The Financial Conduct Authority published final guidance on which crypto activities require authorization and announced plans to consult on changes following Treasury proposals to exempt UK stablecoin payments. Meanwhile, UK banks continue restricting payments to cryptocurrency exchanges ahead of the FCA's new authorization gateway opening September 30.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has expanded its Capital Connect investment marketplace to eligible individual users for the first time, allowing wealthy clients with at least $1 million in assets to access professionally managed investment strategies previously reserved for institutional clients.
Federal prosecutors charged Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang with commodities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly using confidential information about upcoming Robinhood crypto listings to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid ahead of public announcements.
South Korea's proposed cryptocurrency ownership regulations could create a governance conflict for Naver Financial's planned acquisition of Upbit operator Dunamu if the company later becomes classified as a holding company, with Fair Trade Act rules clashing with proposed ownership caps.
CoinEx announced it will cease operations on December 22, 2026, nine years after launching. The closure comes less than three months after a Wall Street Journal investigation highlighted the exchange's role as a hub for illicit Iranian cash transactions, amid broader challenges in the cryptocurrency market.
CoinEx announced it will wind down operations, citing prolonged market downturn, declining trading volumes and liquidity, and rising regulatory costs. The exchange will halt new registrations and begin phasing out services.
The US Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint against $61 million in cryptocurrency held in Binance accounts, alleging the funds originated from black market Iranian oil sales and money laundering operations.
Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission approved consultation principles that would cap daily stablecoin transfers at 5 million baht ($150,000) through licensed crypto platforms, with transfers only allowed to accounts verified as the customer's own.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his fraud conviction and throw out the $11 billion forfeiture order. His legal team argues that evidence regarding the possibility of repaying FTX customers and the soundness of his investments was not fully considered during trial.
Bitcoin Suisse announced plans to eliminate up to 60 of its 120 positions in Switzerland and close its Copenhagen development site as part of a strategic reorganization to expand international operations. The crypto financial services firm, founded in Zug in 2013, is shifting operations abroad.
Coinbase is reverting its self-custodial app's name from Base App back to Coinbase Wallet approximately 14 months after the initial rebrand, acknowledging that its attempt to create a crypto social network failed to gain traction. The company is now shifting the app's focus toward trading and broader multichain functionality.
Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, valuing the firm at $21 billion. The deal will help build infrastructure for trading tokenized stocks, with Kraken set to distribute Nasdaq's tokenized securities that carry the same voting rights as traditional shares.
Nasdaq's venture arm is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, valuing the firm at $21 billion. Kraken will distribute tokenized Nasdaq-listed stocks that carry the same voting rights as traditional shares.
The Singapore Exchange (SGX) has obtained authorization from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Regulation 48.10 to offer bitcoin and ether perpetual futures to U.S. institutional investors. SGX reports cumulative trading volume of approximately 400,000 contracts and plans to launch dated futures and options within months.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that Bitcoin has bottomed for the current cycle and maintained his $400,000 price target by 2030. He also said the crypto industry will gain regulatory clarity regardless of the CLARITY Act vote outcome.
India's Financial Intelligence Unit issued notices to 15 offshore cryptocurrency platforms, including Weex, Blofin, Bitunix, DigiFinex, and Toobit, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act for serving Indian customers without meeting anti-money laundering compliance requirements. The action seeks takedowns of the platforms for operating without proper registration.
Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has obtained a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, completing an approval process that began nearly two years ago with in-principle approval. The license allows Gemini to provide digital payment token services and cross-border money transfer services in Singapore.
India's Financial Intelligence Unit issued non-compliance notices to 15 cryptocurrency platforms including Weex, Blofin, Bitunix, DigiFinex, and Toobit under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, ordering them to block public access to their apps and websites. The action raises concerns about sudden account lockouts for users.
Robinhood Markets agreed to acquire minority stakes in Crypto.com and its prediction-markets spinout OG.com, valued at $5 billion, while adding OG.com's yes-or-no event contracts to its trading platform. The multi-year deal makes OG.com an infrastructure and clearing provider for Robinhood's prediction markets platform, with football event contracts already being routed to Crypto.com's CFTC-regulated exchange.
Spain's largest cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me has established a specialized unit called Bit2Shield to assist police, courts, and financial institutions with tracing, seizing, storing, and liquidating cryptocurrency linked to criminal investigations.
Australia's financial intelligence agency announced it canceled, suspended, or refused to renew 45 registrations for crypto and remittance providers over the past year, including action against GetCoins linked to investment scams.
Polish prosecutors charged a fifth person in the Zondacrypto exchange investigation, with a Katowice court ordering pretrial detention. The probe involves an estimated $94-100 million in losses related to alleged fraud and organized crime at the exchange.
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has launched KCUSD, a new stablecoin product offering a base annual percentage rate of up to 4% with daily returns on eligible stablecoin balances. The company plans to expand KCUSD's functionality to include collateral and trading utility.
XRP Healthcare disclosed that approximately 4,011 XRPH Wallet accounts were affected by unauthorized transactions beginning September 3, 2026, resulting in the theft of around $452,000 in XRP and related assets, including 267,664 XRP and 23.2 million XRPH tokens that have been traced on-chain.
Chilean crypto exchange Orionx, backed by Tether, is permanently closing after a forensic audit uncovered more than $7 million in customer assets moved to wallets outside the exchange's control. The company announced it is beginning a permanent shutdown process.
Orionx, one of Chile's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has permanently halted operations and suspended customer withdrawals after a forensic audit uncovered over $7 million in customer assets that were transferred to external wallets. The exchange has accused individuals of unauthorized transfers, while Chile's financial regulator states it lacks authority to oversee the closure or order customer repayments.
CFTC-regulated platform Kalshi expanded its cryptocurrency derivatives offerings on September 4 by launching perpetual futures contracts for BNB, Cardano, Worldcoin, Aave, and Venice Token, making these tokens available as regulated derivative products for eligible U.S. traders. The move comes as the CFTC asked a federal court to dismiss CME's challenge to Kalshi's Bitcoin perpetual contract.
Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has continued operating in the European Union despite failing to obtain required regulatory licenses under the bloc's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework. The company is reportedly using regulatory workarounds and offshore routing to maintain service for some EU customers.
Research from the Bank of Korea shows that dollar-backed stablecoins can put downward pressure on national currencies when exchanges offer direct fiat trading pairs, with Binance pairings reducing local stablecoin premiums by 0.33 to 0.38 percentage points.
Distressed-asset firm Echo Base has organized an ad hoc committee of BitMart claimholders to pursue recovery after the crypto exchange failed to respond to a $10 million offer to fund a court-supervised bankruptcy. BitMart announced it would cease operations on July 26, 2026.
Bybit Pay has integrated with crypto payments infrastructure provider Mesh, allowing the exchange's 80 million users to make payments and fund accounts across more than 300 platforms directly from their Bybit balances without withdrawing assets.
SoFi Technologies and Payward agreed to connect SoFi's banking network with Kraken's trading infrastructure. Kraken will list SoFiUSD stablecoin while SoFi will use Kraken Prime for crypto liquidity, expanding SoFi's real-time settlement system to digital assets.
Standard Chartered has rolled out deliverable spot trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum for institutional clients in the UAE, becoming the first global systemically important bank to provide the service in the region.
Cryptocurrency exchange Gate is entering the prediction market space by offering a white-label builder that allows businesses to add forecasting tools to their existing applications, responding to growing demand for prediction market features.
Coinbase filed a registration notice with the SEC on September 2 seeking approval to offer perpetual futures contracts on stocks with 24/7 trading and leverage, without requiring ownership of underlying shares. The filing represents a major push to bring crypto-style derivatives to traditional equities.
Core DAO is coordinating an emergency hard fork after a small group of validators exploited the blockchain to claim more CORE token rewards than the protocol was designed to issue. Several exchanges have halted CORE transfers in response to the incident.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has introduced physically settled options contracts tied to more than 1,000 US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds through a partnership. Unlike traditional US brokers, Binance's options do not exercise automatically, requiring manual instruction from traders.
The London Stock Exchange Group plans to launch tokenized stocks backed by shares of London-listed companies, partnering with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The initiative aims to expand global access to UK equities through digital assets and 24-hour trading.
Webull is launching cryptocurrency trading services in Canada, partnering with Coinbase to provide crypto infrastructure and custody capabilities. The expansion adds Canada to Webull's existing crypto footprint in the United States and Australia.
An arbitrator ruled that crypto exchange Gemini was not at fault for the collapse of its Earn lending program, finding that the company did not mislead users or neglect due diligence in its partnership with Genesis Global Capital. The ruling covers one claim by one user, though Earn customers lost promised interest despite recovering principal.
The Cronos blockchain, linked to Crypto.com, suspended operations on August 30, 2026, following an exploit of Tectonic, its largest DeFi lending protocol. The attack, which began with a 100x pump of the TONIC token, resulted in approximately $75 million in losses.
Charles Schwab announced plans to add Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK) to its crypto trading platform in the coming months, expanding beyond its current Bitcoin and Ethereum offerings to nearly 40 million brokerage accounts.
High-ranking Russian law enforcement officials have received lengthy prison sentences for stealing large amounts of money from clients of the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, which has been described as notorious.
Kraken temporarily froze customer accounts after nearly 12,000 unsolicited small cryptocurrency transfers from wallets linked to sanctioned exchange HTX reached the platform between August 17-24. The dust attack triggered Kraken's compliance screening systems, though the exchange has since restored access to affected accounts.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis organized Operation Light Shine, a multi-day investigation with support from Binance and Coinbase that identified more than 7,700 suspect accounts linked to child sexual abuse material networks.
Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has activated native XRP Ledger deposits and withdrawals for its Singapore customers on August 25, 2026, expanding beyond its previous buy, sell, and hold-only XRP offering in the region.
Pakistan's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has opened its licensing portal after notifying regulations governing crypto exchanges and other virtual asset service providers, with a September 5 deadline for compliance.
Two Binance employees were detained by police in the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks amid inquiries into possible financial crimes on the cryptocurrency platform. Binance confirmed on Aug. 20 that both employees had been cleared and released after answering questions about third-party fund flows.
Laser Digital Japan, backed by Nomura Holdings, completed registration with Japanese regulators as a Crypto Asset Exchange Service Provider. This marks the first new crypto exchange approval in Japan since 2022.
MANTRA Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain focused on real-world asset tokenization, has frozen all transactions and halted network operations as a precautionary measure while investigating an unidentified incident. The MANTRA token fell approximately 9-10% following the announcement, and major exchange MEXC suspended deposits and withdrawals.
Two Binance employees were detained at UAE airports in recent weeks amid police inquiries into possible financial crimes on the cryptocurrency platform, according to the New York Times. Both have since been released.
Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, is considering obtaining a full banking license outside the United States as it expands beyond crypto trading into broader financial services including asset management and banking.
Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, is considering obtaining a full banking license outside the United States as it expands beyond crypto trading into broader financial services including asset management and banking.
XRP rallied nearly 40% over seven days to around $1.39, outperforming Bitcoin and Ethereum as trading volume on South Korea's Upbit exchange spiked 273% to $1.84 billion. The token became the most-traded asset on the platform amid broader crypto market strength.
South Korean authorities have clarified that their planned 22% digital asset tax, set to take effect January 1, 2027, will cover cryptocurrency income from private wallets and overseas exchanges, not just domestic platforms. The expanded tax regime will require enhanced information gathering from international platforms.
Binance has launched Agent OS, a developer platform that allows AI applications and agents to access market data, monitor user accounts, and execute cryptocurrency trades on the exchange. The platform includes APIs, Wallet Agentic Hub, Binance x402, and Skill Hub, with integration for AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT.
Industry leaders are warning that AI agents could enable crypto hacks far exceeding today's billion-dollar breaches, even as major platforms like Binance begin integrating AI agents for automated trading. Fidelity Digital Assets identified key risks to the sector's AI thesis, including the possibility that AI agents may not converge on public blockchains.
BitGo Korea has received virtual asset service provider (VASP) registration from South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit, becoming the first overseas crypto company to build a local entity from scratch and complete the registration process directly. The joint venture is backed by Hana Financial Group and SK Telecom.
Digital-asset payments company MoonPay has added Cash App Pay as a payment method, allowing eligible U.S. customers to purchase cryptocurrencies including Ether, Solana, and XRP directly from their Cash App balances. The integration enables Cash App users to fund external wallets like MetaMask through MoonPay's checkout system.
Crypto exchange Kraken has rolled out access to over 7,000 US stocks to eligible customers across the European Economic Area, offering traditional equities alongside tokenized assets and cryptocurrencies on a single platform. The exchange claims to be the first trading platform to offer Europeans traditional US stocks and tokenized assets side-by-side.
Kraken parent company Payward joined Anthropic's Project Glasswing and gained access to Claude Mythos 5 for cybersecurity, using the AI model to scan systems for vulnerabilities with findings reviewed by human security teams.
Austria's financial regulator FMA fined crypto platform Bitpanda €70,000 for MiCA breaches related to a white paper submitted in early 2025, marking the first published enforcement action under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.
People claiming to be BitMart employees took control of the exchange's Chinese X account, demanding the CEO provide answers by August 19 about frozen user funds and unpaid wages after the exchange shut down.
President Donald Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting on August 19 with executives from major cryptocurrency companies including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood, and prediction market firms. The meeting kicks off a week of regulatory discussions involving the SEC and CFTC.