CFTC WINS NINTH CIRCUIT ROUND ON CRYPTO FUTURES The Ninth Circuit just handed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a decisive win in its eight-year fight against James Devlin Crombie, ruling that crypto futures contracts fall squarely under CFTC authority even when they’re marketed as decentralized or peer-to-peer. The decision slams the door on the “it’s…
U.S. banking agency gives blockchain bank OpenReserve initial OK to operate The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted a provisional national bank charter to OpenReserve, a crypto-focused startup planning to operate as a full-service bank with embedded onchain settlement. OpenReserve said it deliberately pursued a full national bank charter rather…
Robinhood isn’t backing down after AMC CEO demands halt to stock tokens Robinhood is facing fresh pushback over its tokenized stock offering after AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron called on the platform to stop offering stock-linked tokens tied to the movie theater chain. Aron’s demand highlights a growing tension around tokenized stocks—crypto assets designed to…
**Court Greenlights IRS Seizure of 24 Crypto Wallets** The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia just gave the IRS the green light to keep $2 million-plus in cryptocurrency that agents grabbed from 24 digital wallets. The ruling turns an obscure civil-forfeiture case into a live-fire test of how much financial privacy crypto actually…
SEC vs Binance: Judge Orders Trial on Core Crypto Charges A federal judge refused to throw out the SEC’s landmark lawsuit against Binance, ruling that the exchange’s flagship token BNB and its staking products are likely securities. The decision keeps the case alive through discovery and possible trial, sending a clear signal that courts are…
Strategy: Bitcoin Would Have to Fall 83% for STRC to Hit 1x BTC Rating Strategy said that Bitcoin would need to drop 83% for STRC to reach a “1x BTC rating,” a framing that describes how closely STRC would track Bitcoin under a severe drawdown scenario. The comment highlights the company’s view of STRC’s sensitivity…
Delaware Court Hands Crypto Firm Partial Win, Keeps Token Fight Alive Delaware’s Superior Court just refused to toss a crypto company’s lawsuit against its former partner, keeping alive a fight over who owns the rights to a blockchain-based identity system and whether a token is a security. The ruling matters because it shows how state…
Grayscale Beats SEC, Forces Spot-Bitcoin ETF Review The D.C. Circuit just handed Grayscale a decisive win, ordering the SEC to reconsider its rejection of the firm’s spot-Bitcoin ETF. For the first time, a federal appeals court has told the agency that its disparate treatment of similar products looks arbitrary, opening the door to the first…
CFTC WINS ON APPEAL — DONELSON’S COMMODITY FRAUD UPHELD The Seventh Circuit just affirmed a district court judgment against James Donelson, holding that his unregistered crypto-futures scheme violated the Commodity Exchange Act. The ruling strengthens the CFTC’s hand in policing off-exchange crypto derivatives, a market many traders thought lived in a gray zone. Donelson ran…
Anthropic Admits Security Failures Behind Claude Hacking Incidents Anthropic has acknowledged that security shortcomings contributed to a series of hacking incidents involving Claude, the company’s AI assistant. The admission centers on internal security failures that allowed unauthorized activity tied to the product. The company’s statement places responsibility on its own controls rather than outside factors,…
COURT SLAPS SEC FOR SKIPPING COINBASE RULEMAKING Coinbase just forced the SEC to answer for its refusal to write clear crypto rules, and the Third Circuit made the agency look like it was dodging its own process. In a sharp 2-1 ruling, the court said the Commission cannot simply ignore a formal petition for rulemaking…
IMF Now Says Donations Funded El Salvador’s Bitcoin Growth The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that donations helped fund the growth of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-related initiatives, according to the information provided. The detail matters because it adds clarity to a question that has followed El Salvador’s Bitcoin strategy since the country embraced it as…
‘Send Your Lawyers’: Robinhood Isn’t Backing Down From AMC Over Stock Tokens The information provided does not include any details beyond the headline, leaving key facts unclear, including what action AMC allegedly took, what Robinhood said in response, and which specific product or set of stock-linked tokens is involved. Without the underlying description or source…
XRP Ledger has fewer active accounts than last year, but bigger trades and more value The XRP Ledger is seeing a mixed set of network signals: activity across accounts has fallen compared with last year, even as transaction sizes and the amount of value moved through the network have increased. In practical terms, that means…
Court Hands Kalshi a Win as CFTC Faces Reversal The D.C. Circuit just refused the CFTC’s emergency request to freeze a lower-court order that let Kalshi list election contracts, sending a clear signal that the agency’s ban may not survive scrutiny. The ruling keeps live a market that was poised to handle hundreds of millions…
COURT SLAMS BRAKES ON BLOCKCHAIN MINER’S MANDAMUS PLAY Texas appeals court has denied Envy Blockchain’s emergency petition to block a lower-court discovery order, leaving the mining company exposed to civil litigation that could test whether its digital-asset operations qualify as regulated securities activity. The ruling signals that crypto businesses in Texas can no longer count…
CFTC LOSES GRIP ON KRAFT DOCUMENTS, MARKET WATCHES The Seventh Circuit just denied the CFTC’s emergency bid to claw back 3,000 pages of Kraft’s internal files, leaving the agency staring at a widening crack in its enforcement toolkit. The ruling matters because those documents could expose how one of America’s biggest food giants structured commodity…
Judge Slaps Bilzerian with 30-Year Ban A federal judge in Washington just hammered Paul Bilzerian with a permanent bar that blocks him from ever again touching the securities markets. The ruling locks in a 2001 injunction that the SEC has been trying to enforce for two decades. It matters because Bilzerian’s case has become a…
Court Rules Crypto Assets Are Not Inherently Securities Supreme Court hands SEC a major defeat in landmark crypto classification case, rejecting the agency’s broad attempt to label digital assets as securities under federal law. The ruling stems from an appeal by a major crypto exchange challenging the SEC’s enforcement action that sought to treat numerous…
Judge Slams CFTC Overreach in Conway Trust Case The Seventh Circuit just handed the CFTC a sharp rebuke in Conway Family Trust v. CFTC, ruling that the agency overstepped its authority by trying to punish a family trust for trading decisions it never made. At stake was whether the CFTC can treat passive investors as…
