Celsius Founder Alex Mashinsky Gets Another Major Ban After Massive Crypto Fraud

SEC Chair Paul Atkins discussed potential changes to securities regulations for blockchain-based financial markets and AI-powered financial applications. Atkins emphasized the need to adapt rules to new technologies that combine trading, settlement, and financial functions in a single protocol.

Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has applied for a national trust company charter with the OCC to offer digital asset custody services to institutional clients. This move aligns with their belief in transparent regulation and complements their existing Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institution.

Brian Armstrong sold over $540 million worth of COIN stock between May 2025 and January 2026, surpassing Coinbase's Q1 loss of $394 million. Despite a 40% decrease in net transaction revenue, Armstrong's sales peaked in mid-2025.

Coinbase experienced hours of service disruptions due to Amazon Web Services failures, impacting core trading systems. The outage, linked to AWS Availability Zone use1-az4, affected multiple services, causing an extended outage. Users faced difficulties accessing the app, transferring funds, and executing trades.

ECB President Christine Lagarde expressed concerns about euro stablecoins, stating they are not an efficient way to boost the euro's global role. Lagarde highlighted risks such as financial instability and weakened monetary policy transmission due to stablecoins' structural weaknesses.

Revolut experienced a glitch causing Bitcoin to show a price near zero, leading to confusion among users. The error, attributed to a third-party service provider, was quickly fixed by the company.

XRP network activity has significantly decreased, with daily addresses dropping over 80% and monthly active supply declining more than 70%. Despite this, a coalition of financial institutions successfully completed a real-time cross-border settlement on the XRP Ledger, signaling a shift towards institutional usage.

Zcash is gearing up to combat quantum attacks by introducing quantum-recoverable wallets within a month and aiming for full post-quantum status in 12 to 18 months. The network also targets achieving throughput comparable to Mastercard and Visa, with recent technical advancements driving adoption of its privacy features.

Rain, a payments infrastructure platform, predicts stablecoin-based cards could make up double-digit percentages of cards in Latin American markets. Stablecoin card spend has grown significantly, with Rain providing infrastructure for card issuers and exploring on-chain settlement with Mastercard.

AUSTRAC is conducting two supervisory campaigns targeting crypto businesses in Australia to assess their readiness for regulatory reforms and evaluate their management of money laundering risks under the expanded framework.