Enforcement Actions

According to CFTC Chair Michael Selig, speaking Thursday, August 20, the agency will advance cryptocurrency market-structure rules regardless of whether Congress passes the CLARITY Act. Selig said the CFTC is already examining regulatory proposals that could provide a framework for digital-asset mar

CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy and Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara clashed over prediction-market regulation during a Commodity Futures Trading Commission meeting on Thursday. The confrontation centered on manipulation vulnerabilities in prediction markets and questioned why Kalshi could offer ce

CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy and Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara clashed over prediction-market regulation during a Commodity Futures Trading Commission meeting on Thursday. Duffy raised concerns that some prediction-market contracts could be manipulated and questioned why Kalshi could offer a

South Korean lawmakers filed a bill on Thursday to expand the Financial Intelligence Unit's authority over unregistered cryptocurrency businesses. People Power Party lawmaker Eom Tae-young and nine other lawmakers introduced the proposal to amend the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial

According to People Power Party lawmaker Eom Tae-young and nine other lawmakers, on Thursday they filed a bill to amend South Korea's financial law and expand the Financial Intelligence Unit's (FIU) authority to investigate unregistered crypto businesses. The proposal would allow public reporting

According to ChainCatcher, WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff disputed Sun Yuchen's account of the recent court proceedings, stating that multiple claims made by Sun Yuchen were false. While Sun Yuchen claimed the court supported his position and called the outcome a major victory, no ruling was

According to BlockBeats, Justin Sun's legal team attended a hearing in U.S. Federal Court in California on August 21, where the court rejected World Liberty Financial's request to move their dispute into secret arbitration and seal documents from public view. The court ruled that all of Sun's

In April, as part of its 21st package of sanctions against Russia, the European Union imposed restrictions on crypto platforms in third countries and on four entities linked to A7, including entities in Africa. These measures reflect the EU's efforts to disrupt the crypto channels through which Russia supports cross-border flows of technology, military materials, and funds following the imposition of military sanctions. According to a Kharon review, the bloc's strategy has changed rapidly—from l

Binance will begin blocking transactions with 11 crypto platforms on August 23, 2026, as part of a large-scale regulatory compliance campaign that began in August. In a notice dated August 14, the exchange instructed users not to send or receive funds or conduct transactions through Binance with the companies listed below after that date. According to the exchange, “Binance is required to comply with regulatory requirements in the jurisdictions in which it operates,” and the restrictions were in

A 44-year-old local resident set up a crypto farm with 11 mining devices in a garage on a plot of land belonging to an acquaintance in the Moscow region village of Pikino (Khimki urban district) and secretly connected the equipment to the power grid. Energy workers and police discovered the farm after inspecting the property due to abnormally high electricity consumption. During an inspection of the garage, three devices were operating at the time of the search. The man said he had purchased the

On August 20, attackers released malicious versions of the Rust packages arrayref, internment, and append-only-vec. arrayref is present in approximately three-quarters of Rust development environments and is widely used in Solana and Ethereum tooling. The malicious versions were removed within 86 minutes of their release, and the Rust security response team said the maintainers themselves may have been victims. Attack Mechanism: A Typosquatted proc-macro1 Dependency, Hidden Build Script, and Two

South Korea's National Assembly yesterday proposed amendments to the Special Finance Act (SFA) granting the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) direct enforcement authority over unreported cryptocurrency asset operators, according to a proposal sponsored by 10 legislators including Rep. Eom

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) resolved its civil enforcement proceedings against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang on Aug. 19, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York approved a supplemental consent order. Both were prohibited from trading commodities and related products under CFTC jurisdiction for 5 years. Specific Terms of the Supplemental Consent Order: 5-Year Trading Ban Under the supplemental consent o

Rapid7 Labs researchers Anna Širokova and Jan Recinsky published a report on August 17 exposing a cryptocurrency phishing operation codenamed “Operation ASTERIX.” The operation targeted 885,000 phone numbers, while a server misconfiguration exposed the attackers’ entire playbook; another 5,576 numbers were associated with Binance accounts and marked as attack targets. Complete Operation Playbook Exposed by Server Misconfiguration Due to a server misconfiguration, the attackers accidentally expos

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its midweek rebound, trading at around $74,430 as of August 21. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said that even if the CLARITY Act fails to pass, the crypto industry will still receive market structure rules. CME CEO Terrence Duffy, Selig, and a Kalshi executive engaged in a heated debate over prediction market regulation. Macro Events & Crypto Highlights Bloomberg reported that CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said the crypto industry will receive market structure rules even if Co

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on August 18 that it had filed a superseding indictment against 17 individuals allegedly affiliated with Iran’s Mabna Institute, accusing them of carrying out years of hacking attacks on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other Iranian government and university clients. Six of the defendants are implicated in the 2017 case involving the hacking of U.S. cable television network HBO and the demand for approximately $6 million in B