Crypto World
What approval would actually change for crypto
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act just cleared its hardest committee test. If it becomes law, it ends the single most damaging fact of life for American crypto: not knowing who is in charge. But the version that reaches President Trump’s desk will be shaped by three fights still being waged in the Senate, and the outcome of those fights decides who wins and who loses.
Summary
- The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a 15 to 9 vote, moving the crypto market structure bill closer to a full Senate vote.
- The proposal would divide digital assets into categories overseen by the SEC and CFTC, while also creating a separate framework for payment stablecoins.
- Ethics rules tied to President Donald Trump’s crypto connections, stablecoin yield limits, and anti-money laundering provisions remain among the biggest unresolved issues before the bill can reach the White House.
The restaurant with two inspectors
Imagine running a restaurant where the health inspector and the fire marshal both insist your kitchen is theirs to police. Neither will put their rules in writing. And if you guess wrong about whose instructions to follow, the penalty is that they shut you down and sue you.
That, more or less, has been the experience of building a crypto company in the United States since around 2017. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have spent the better part of a decade in an unresolved turf war over digital assets, and the industry has lived in the gap between them. Tens of billions of dollars in fines have been paid. Founders have spent years in litigation just to extract an answer that regulators could have written down in advance. Most builders simply gave up and left, for Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland, anywhere a straight answer arrived in less than three years.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, universally shortened to the CLARITY Act, is Washington’s most serious attempt to end that era. And after months of stalemate, it just took its biggest step forward yet. On May 14, 2026, the Senate Banking Committee voted 15-9 to advance the bill to the Senate floor, with two Democrats crossing party lines to join every Republican on the panel.
That vote was not the finish line. It was the moment the bill stopped being a wishlist and became real legislation with a credible path to law. For anyone who trades, builds, invests in, or simply holds digital assets, the question is no longer whether to pay attention. It’s what, concretely, changes if this thing passes, and what the unresolved fights still being waged in the Senate will mean for the version that actually becomes law.
This is a long answer to that question.
What the bill actually does: three boxes, two regulators
Strip away the acronyms and the 270-plus pages, and the CLARITY Act does one structurally simple thing. It sorts every digital asset into one of three categories and assigns each category to a regulator.
Digital commodities. A token whose value comes from a functioning, sufficiently decentralized blockchain, where the network does something real and the token is the fuel that powers it. Bitcoin and Ether are the obvious cases, and both are widely expected to land here, formalizing what has been their de facto treatment for years. Digital commodities fall under the CFTC.
Investment contract assets. A token is sold the way startup equity is sold, where a centralized team raises money from the public and promises to build something with it. These stay with the SEC, which is where that agency has always had its firmest legal footing.
Permitted payment stablecoins. Dollar-pegged tokens designed to actually move money. These get a separate category with joint SEC and CFTC oversight, building on the GENIUS Act stablecoin framework that passed earlier.
Three boxes. Two regulators. The biggest reduction in legal fog the American crypto industry has ever been offered.
The mechanics behind that simple structure are what make the bill consequential. The CLARITY Act gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over the spot and cash markets for digital commodities, which is a dramatic expansion for an agency that has historically referred to derivatives rather than the underlying assets themselves. Exchanges, brokers, and dealers handling digital commodities would register with the CFTC through a new, purpose-built pathway, instead of trying to force themselves into securities rules written in 1933 and 1934 for a very different kind of asset.
The SEC, in turn, keeps authority over genuine securities offerings. The bill draws a line, in federal statute, between the moment a token is being sold as a fundraising instrument by a centralized team and the moment the underlying network has matured enough that the token trades as a commodity. That maturation test, the question of when a project becomes “decentralized” enough to graduate from SEC to CFTC oversight, is one of the most legally intricate parts of the bill, and one of the most important.
For developers, there’s a provision that may matter more than the jurisdictional sorting itself: protection for people who write open-source code but never have custody of user funds. Under the CLARITY Act, publishing a smart contract would stop being treated as the legal equivalent of running an unlicensed money-transmitting business. For a corner of the industry that has watched developers face personal legal exposure simply for shipping code, this is foundational.
What approval would mean, by who you are
A regulatory framework is not an abstraction. It lands differently depending on where you sit in the ecosystem. Here is the concrete picture.
If you are a developer or founder
The immediate change is the disappearance of a specific, paralyzing fear: that building in the open is itself a legal risk. A clear registration pathway means a US-based project can launch knowing which agency it answers to and what compliance looks like, rather than discovering the answer through an enforcement action two years later.
The decentralization maturity test gives projects something they have never had, which is a roadmap. A token can begin its life under SEC oversight as an investment contract asset and, as its network decentralizes, move into the digital commodity category. That transition used to be a matter of speeches, blog posts, and hope. Putting it into statute means a founder can plan around it.
The likely practical effect is repatriation. A meaningful share of the talent and capital that decamped to friendlier jurisdictions did so for one reason: those places offered a straight answer. Remove that disadvantage, and the math on building in the US changes.
If you are an exchange, broker, or custodian
For the largest US platforms, the bill turns an existential ambiguity into an operational task. Instead of litigating whether the assets they list are securities, exchanges would register with the CFTC and operate under a defined rulebook. The bill includes an expedited registration process and provisional status, so platforms are not frozen out while the CFTC builds its full framework.
This is a double-edged outcome. Clarity is not the same as leniency. A registered exchange will face real, enumerated obligations: custody standards, disclosure requirements, conduct rules, and capital expectations. The era of regulatory vapor ends, but so does the era of regulatory absence. Compliance will have a cost. The industry’s bet is that a known, payable cost beats an unknowable, unbounded legal risk. For most serious operators, that bet is obviously correct.
If you are a retail investor or token holder
The benefits here are real but slower and less glamorous. Defined disclosure requirements for token issuers mean better information before you buy. Custody and conduct rules for registered intermediaries mean more protection for assets you hold on a platform. The legal status of the assets in your wallet becomes a settled question rather than an open one.
There’s also a subtler consequence. A credible US framework is the precondition for the next wave of institutional products, and for traditional financial institutions to offer crypto services to ordinary customers without regulatory peril. Approval doesn’t put crypto in your bank tomorrow. It removes the biggest single obstacle standing between today and that future.
If you hold or use stablecoins
This is where the bill’s politics get sharp, and the detail matters. The compromise negotiated by Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks draws a careful line. Intermediaries, exchanges, for instance, would be prohibited from paying yield on a customer’s idle, passive stablecoin holdings. The intent is explicit: a passive stablecoin balance must not be allowed to function like an interest-bearing bank deposit. But the same provision permits rewards tied to activity, meaning incentives connected to actually spending or using a stablecoin, as long as they don’t resemble passive interest.
If that distinction sounds narrow, it is. It’s also the fault line over which this entire bill nearly collapsed, and it explains a fight covered in the next section.
The three fights that will shape the final bill
The version of the CLARITY Act that passed committee is not the version that will become law. Three contested issues remain open, and each one will shape who benefits and by how much. Anyone trying to understand what approval “means” has to watch these, because the answer is still being written.
Fight one: ethics, and the shadow of the Trump family
This is the single biggest political wedge between the bill and final passage. Many Senate Democrats are demanding an ethics provision barring senior government officials from holding business ties to the crypto industry, a demand driven, unambiguously, by President Trump’s family’s extensive crypto ventures, including the World Liberty Financial project.
Republicans on the Banking Committee declined to include such language in the committee bill, arguing that ethics sits outside the committee’s remit and can be added later by floor amendment. The committee specifically voted down a Democratic ethics amendment. That rejection is the most direct explanation for why most Democrats voted no.
The arithmetic makes this unavoidable. On the Senate floor, the bill needs 60 votes. Assuming every Republican supports it, that means roughly seven Democrats have to come along. Crypto-friendly Democrats, including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Ruben Gallego, have stated plainly that they won’t provide those votes without an ethics provision. Industry advocates now describe some form of ethics language as “almost all but guaranteed” to be added before a floor vote.
But there’s a counter-pressure pulling the other way. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a key negotiator, warned that the President himself has to sign off, and that if the bill becomes, in her words, a cudgel aimed specifically at him, he’ll veto it without hesitation. The realistic landing zone is therefore an ethics provision strong enough to win seven Democratic votes but weak enough to survive a presidential signature. That’s a narrow target, and where exactly the language lands will tell you a great deal about how seriously the final law treats conflicts of interest.
Fight two: illicit finance and law enforcement
A coalition of law enforcement groups argues the bill doesn’t do enough to stop digital assets from being used in financial crime, and would make catching bad actors harder. The concern gained urgency from a Treasury FinCEN advisory flagging crypto platforms and stablecoins as a channel for sanctioned actors to launder illicit proceeds.
Senators have filed amendments to strengthen anti-money-laundering and sanctions provisions. Backers of the bill counter that it actually strengthens AML and sanctions rules and gives law enforcement better tools. How this gets resolved affects the compliance burden on every registered intermediary, and the bill’s credibility with the national-security-minded senators whose votes are in play.
Fight three: the banks
America’s banking industry is the bill’s most powerful organized opponent, and its objection is
fundamentally about deposits. If stablecoins can pay anything resembling yield, banks fear money will drain out of deposit accounts, the same deposits that fund lending. In the days before the committee vote, bank trade groups reportedly sent more than 8,000 letters to senators demanding revisions. Even after the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise, banking groups complain the activity-rewards language leaves room for workarounds.
This is not a sideshow. It’s a genuine clash between two financial industries over the future shape of money, and the banks have decades of lobbying infrastructure behind them. The final stablecoin language will be one of the most negotiated paragraphs in the entire bill.
The road from here
Even on an optimistic reading, the CLARITY Act has several gates left to clear.
First, the Senate Banking Committee bill has to be merged with a parallel version produced by the Senate Agriculture Committee, since the two panels share jurisdiction over digital assets, into a single unified text. Industry insiders expect intense negotiation over the next several weeks, and this is the most likely vehicle for inserting the ethics compromise.
Second, the merged bill faces a full Senate floor vote requiring 60 senators.
Third, because the House passed its own version of the CLARITY Act back in July 2025, any Senate- passed bill containing new components, such as the stablecoin yield language, the DeFi provisions, or ethics rules, has to be reconciled with, or accepted by, the House before it can go to the President.
The timeline is genuinely tight. White House officials have floated a target of a signing on or around July 4, 2026. Industry advocates describe an effective “drop-dead deadline” before the August recess, after which the midterm elections and a potentially less crypto-friendly Congress raise the degree of difficulty considerably. Prediction markets have put the odds of passage in 2026 in the rough vicinity of two-in- three, while at least one Wall Street analyst has been more cautious, calling a successful floor vote “in play but not the expected outcome.”
In other words: reachable, not guaranteed.
What it means, in the end
It’s worth being precise about the nature of what is on offer here, because both boosters and skeptics tend to overstate it.
The CLARITY Act is not a gift to the crypto industry. It’s a rulebook. It hands the industry the thing it has asked for over and over, a definitive answer to “who regulates this?”, and the price of that answer is a genuine, enforceable obligation. Exchanges will register. Issuers will disclose. Intermediaries will be examined. For an industry that has at times romanticized its own lawlessness, the deepest meaning of approval is that the era of operating in the absence of rules ends, and the era of operating under them begins.
For the United States as a whole, the bill is a bet that a clear domestic framework will pull
Builders, capital, and talent back home, and that the alternative, ceding the next decade of financial infrastructure to other jurisdictions, is the worst outcome.
And for the ordinary participant, the developer shipping code, the trader on an exchange, the person holding a stablecoin, the change is less a single dramatic event than the removal of a decade-long background hum of uncertainty. The legal status of the asset in your wallet becomes a settled fact. The platform you use answers to a named regulator. The developer who wrote the protocol is not a criminal for having written it.
That’s what crypto purgatory ending actually looks like. Not paradise. Just, finally, a map.
The committee’s vote on May 14 was the moment the map stopped being a rumor. The next two months, the merged text, the ethics deal, the floor math, and the House vote will decide what the map actually says. Watch the floor math. Watch the ethics negotiations. And when the merged text lands, read it. The details are the story now.
This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. Legislative situations evolve quickly; the status described reflects developments as of mid-May 2026.
Crypto World
Japan’s megabanks post record profits, but analysts warn growth may slow as risks mount
The yen gained on Wednesday following a rally in Japan’s equities and bets on more fiscally responsible policies after Prime Minister Takaichi’s election win.
Yevgen Romanenko | Moment | Getty Images
Japan’s largest banks posted record annual profits in their latest financial results, but earnings growth could slow as credit costs rise and geopolitical risks cloud the outlook, analysts say.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the country’s largest lender, said net profit rose 30% from a year ago to 2.4 trillion yen for the fiscal year ended March 2026, a record high for the third consecutive year.
Similarly, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group also reported record annual profits in their latest earnings, rising 34% and 41% from a year ago, respectively.
“Higher yen rates are improving lending margins and supporting net interest income, while healthy corporate funding demand and stronger fee income are adding to revenue,” said Kaori Nishizawa, Director of Banks at Fitch Ratings.
Nomura reiterated its bullish stance on Japan’s major banks and named Sumitomo Mitsui and Mizuho as its top picks. The three megabanks — Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui and Mizuho — still “look undervalued relative to the strength of their earnings,” Nomura said.
However, analysts said the lenders could struggle to keep profits at record levels.
“Earnings growth is likely to moderate,” said Nishizawa, noting that recent upside has come from one-off items, including market-related gains and contributions from acquisitions.
Banks also face higher credit costs, competition for deposits and pressure from broader macroeconomic and geopolitical risks, according to Nishizawa.
“As such, sustainability of profit growth at current levels is likely to be challenged,” she added.
The earnings improvements appear more structural than in previous cycles, driven by higher domestic interest rates, inflation and stronger corporate funding demand, said Koichi Niwa, an analyst at UBS.
Stronger wholesale and corporate finance activity has benefited large Japanese banks and helped lift recent earnings amid renewed investor interest in the sector, Niwa said.
But financing mergers and acquisitions, large corporate lending, overseas loans and structured transactions often require more capital than domestic lending.
“As a result, even if profits are growing, banks also need to allocate more capital to support balance-sheet expansion,” he added.
Lorraine Tan, director of equity research in Asia for Morningstar, expects Mitsubishi UFJ’s earnings growth to slow to 5% from fiscal 2027, as global interest rates outside Japan are expected to ease.
“This, coupled with slowing contributions from associate Morgan Stanley, should eat into domestic growth,” Tan added.
Tan also expects Sumitomo Mitsui’s earnings growth to slow to 9% through fiscal 2028, citing its exposure to a loan book with around 35% outside Japan, while Mizuho’s net interest margin gains could ease from fiscal 2027 as interest rates outside Japan resume an easing cycle.
Meanwhile, the Japanese lenders are also keeping a close eye on developments in the Middle East, which could weigh on their earnings outlook.
Junichi Hanzawa, MUFG’s chief executive, said at a recent earnings briefing that the bank’s bottom line could be negatively impacted if Middle East tensions continue to build. A further rise in oil prices before year-end could also weigh on global economic growth.
“Middle East-related risks, including potential spillover effects, are partly provisioned for and remain closely monitored,” Sumitomo Mitsui said in an earnings filing.
Mizuho also said that it “will continuously monitor the external environment & its potential impacts, and flexibly revise [its] financial outlook if necessary going forward.”
Coinbase and Flipcash have launched USDF, a Solana-based custom stablecoin fully backed by USDC, as Coinbase expands its branded stablecoin infrastructure business.
Summary
- Coinbase powers USDF on Solana, giving Flipcash a USDC-backed settlement asset for app currencies now.
- Flipcash chose Coinbase for reserves, onchain settlement, fiat access, and scalable USDC-linked rewards for users.
- Custom Stablecoins puts Coinbase deeper into branded dollar rails as stablecoin payment competition grows fast.
Coinbase said on May 20 that USDF was created through its Custom Stablecoin platform. The token is issued on Solana and fully backed by USDC. Coinbase described the launch as part of its effort to make stablecoin issuance easier for businesses.
Flipcash will use USDF inside its app, where users can create fixed-supply digital currencies. Each currency on the platform will be priced and settled in USDF, giving the app a single dollar asset for buying, selling, and using those currencies.
Coinbase targets branded stablecoin demand
Coinbase’s Custom Stablecoins product lets companies launch branded digital dollars without building the full blockchain, reserve, and settlement system themselves. The company says the product allows partners to issue stablecoins backed 1:1 by USDC and other dollar stablecoins.
The product page says Coinbase manages issuance, reserves, smart contracts, and onchain operations. It also says custom stablecoins are redeemable 1:1 with USDC, while partners can use the tokens for payments, treasury, rewards, and DeFi use cases.
“We launched USDF with Coinbase because they delivered everything we needed,” Flipcash founder and CEO Ted Livingston said in a quote published on Coinbase’s Custom Stablecoins page. He said Coinbase helped support the consumer experience Flipcash wanted to build.
Coinbase expands USDC use across payments and settlement
Related crypto.news coverage in December reported that Coinbase’s Custom Stablecoins service allows businesses to issue branded, USDC-backed tokens through Coinbase Business. That report said the service covers issuance, custody, and compliance support for participating companies.
Coinbase has also been growing USDC use in payments and settlement. Separate crypto.news coverage said Nium integrated Coinbase infrastructure to support USDC-based cross-border payments across more than 190 countries. That setup allows businesses to fund payouts in USDC and settle in stablecoins or local currencies.
Stablecoin infrastructure competition grows
USDF comes as more companies build stablecoin payment and settlement products. Coinbase is not only offering a stablecoin asset. It is offering the infrastructure that lets other companies place their own brand on a dollar-backed token.
The model places Coinbase in a growing market for white-label stablecoin tools. Businesses can use these systems to issue branded digital dollars while relying on larger providers for custody, reserves, access to fiat rails, and onchain operations.
For Flipcash, USDF gives the app a dollar unit for its user-created currencies. For Coinbase, the launch adds another live example of its stablecoin infrastructure strategy as companies test branded digital dollars for consumer apps, payments, and settlement.
MAPO, the native token of the Map Protocol, fell 96% on Wednesday after an exploit of the Butter Network cross-chain bridge, which allowed an attacker to mint a quadrillion MAPO tokens.
The malicious mint was tens of thousands of times larger than the legitimate supply of tokens, sending the value of MAPO from around $0.003 to $0.0001 in a matter of hours, according to CoinGecko.
The attacker used a new externally-owned account (EOA) to dump around a billion MAPO tokens, draining about 52 ETH, worth about $180,000, from Uniswap liquidity pools while retaining nearly a trillion tokens that continue to threaten other pools and potential exchange listings, reported Blockaid on Wednesday.
This latest exploit comes during a month in which at least 18 DeFi and blockchain protocols have been compromised, including THORChain, Verus Protocol’s Ethereum bridge, Transit Finance, TrustedVolumes, Ekubo, Echo Protocol and RetoSwap.
Map Protocol said the bug was in the Solidity contract layer, and it has paused the mainnet and has begun migration while the investigation continues. The Butter Network said it has paused ButterSwap, adding that user funds were not at risk.
In its latest post, the Map Protocol project said it would announce a new contract address and select an appropriate time to conduct an asset snapshot. “Any remaining tokens held by attacker-controlled addresses will be fully invalidated and will not be included in any future snapshot or conversion process,” it said.
A billion MAPO tokens were sent to Uniswap after a quadrillion tokens were minted. Source: Etherscan
The MAPO attacker first sent a legitimate oracle multisig-signed message before deploying a malicious contract at a specific address. The attacker then resent a modified “retry” message that appeared identical in hash but was actually fake. The cross-chain bridge verified it as valid and executed the massive token mint.
No private keys were stolen, and no light clients were broken; it was a classic Solidity vulnerability involving multiple dynamic fields, Blockaid explained.
Related: GitHub investigates unauthorized access to internal repositories
Map Protocol is an omnichain network for swapping Bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenized assets across blockchains, connecting the Bitcoin mainnet with ecosystems such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron and Solana.
TON-TAC issues a post-mortem for $2.7 million exploit
Meanwhile, the TON-TAC asset bridge, a cross-chain bridge designed as a network extension for The Open Network, issued a post-mortem on Thursday detailing its $2.68 million exploit that occurred on May 11.
It adds to a wave of cross-chain bridge exploits over the past few weeks, including the Verus-Ethereum Bridge, Echo Bridge, and Butter Network’s cross-chain bridge.
The “security incident” stemmed from missing validation in the sequencer software, which accepted a counterfeit wallet on TON that lacked proper code-hash and minter checks, leading to another unauthorized token mint.
Recovery efforts secured about 80% of the affected assets, but the bridge remains paused for an independent audit of the patched sequencer and liquidity restoration, it added.
Magazine: DeFi’s billion-dollar secret: The insiders responsible for hacks
US-based exchange-traded funds tied to HYPE recorded a 50% trading volume jump on Wednesday, in a rare move for newly debuted ETFs, according to analysts.
Two Hyperliquid (HYPE) ETFs from issuers Bitwise and 21Shares have recorded nearly $41 million in total value traded since their launches earlier this month, with trading volumes increasing since their debuts, according to SoSoValue.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in an X post Wednesday that such trading increases for ETFs are “very rare,” and many normally record a “big splash [on] day one then drop off OR oblivion for months until [people] notice it. Rare to build in first week like this.”
Balchunas pinned the ETFs’ growth on a “perfectly timed launch as EVERYTHING (stocks, bonds, gold, btc [Bitcoin], cryptos) is down lately except the HYPE.”
Source: Eric Balchunas
The Hyperliquid token has gained 120% so far this year and is up 18.5% in the past day to $56, according to CoinGecko. Traders have flocked to the token and the platform, with some analysts viewing it as the next trendy crypto play because it has captured a large portion of the crypto perpetual futures market.
Over the past year, the S&P 500 has gained 8.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has gained 16%, while Bitcoin has fallen 11%.
It comes a day after Bitwise, one of two issuers of a US-based HYPE ETF, said traders had mispriced HYPE, arguing the platform is more than just a crypto exchange, but a “super-app” encompassing multiple asset classes.
Related: Hyperliquid eyes 55% price rise after Silicon Valley investor’s ‘massive HYPE buy’
21Shares was the first to launch a HYPE fund in the US, launching its 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF (THYP) on May 12 and drawing $1.2 million in net inflows, far below other altcoin ETF launches such as those for Solana staking.
The Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF (BHYP) debuted later that week on May 14 to $750,000 in net inflows,
The two ETFs recorded their highest day of net inflows Wednesday, with a combined $25.5 million in net inflows. The 21Shares ETF recorded $16.6 million, while Bitwise’s ETF recorded $8.8 million.
Crypto asset manager Grayscale also filed for a Hyperliquid ETF in March, with the planned fund currently being processed by US regulators.
The X account Lookonchain said on Wednesday that two wallets linked to Grayscale had purchased $25 million worth of HYPE over the past week and staked it, but it is not known if the move is tied to the company’s planned ETF.
Magazine: Metric signals $250K Bitcoin is ‘best case,’ SOL, HYPE tipped for gains: Trade Secrets
The US securities regulator is delaying the launch of a recent wave of “novel ETFs,” including those that allow investors to bet on the outcome of events, to consider the implications of introducing the new products.
In a statement on Wednesday, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said that “novel products raise novel questions” and instructed his staff to seek public feedback on how the regulator should respond to these applications.
Bitwise filed in February for a series of prediction market ETFs under the PredictionShares brand to track US election results, while Roundhill Investments and GraniteShares also filed for prediction market ETFs that month.
Prediction markets have become one of crypto’s hottest use cases over the past 18 months and now consistently record more than $15 billion in monthly trading volume across markets spanning from sports and elections to financial results and cultural events.
A prediction market ETF would give investors a way to gain exposure to these binary event contracts directly through a traditional brokerage account. The journey mimics the institutionalization of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), which have seen billions in inflows into their respective crypto ETFs.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said the SEC is “clearly wrestling” with how to handle the new asset class, similar to how it navigated issues with spot crypto ETFs before approving them in January 2024.
The SEC wants to feel comfortable with prediction market ETFs before they “open the barn door,” Balchunas said.
Source: Eric Balchunas
The decision to delay the applications also comes as prediction market platforms like Kalshi continue to face court challenges in several US state courts.
SEC has been more open to innovative ideas
Atkins said ETFs have been a “major driver” of innovation in the securities markets, boosting capital and broadening investor choice while noting that ETF assets have tripled since 2019.
Related: Trump-backed Truth Social pulls bids for crypto ETFs
The SEC has shown more flexibility in approving innovative products in recent years, particularly after introducing the generic listing standard model in September and replacing the process of reviewing applications on a case-by-case basis.
Meanwhile, the SEC is reportedly considering creating an “innovation exemption” to allow tokenized stock trading, which would put versions of Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA) and other stocks on crypto rails.
Magazine: 5 tech predictions the mainstream media got horribly wrong
[PRESS RELEASE – Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, May 20th, 2026]
A new protocol-level feature enables peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers on Sui without requiring users to hold SUI, dropping current stablecoin transfer fees to $0.00.
Sui, where money moves as freely as messages, today announced the launch of gasless stablecoin transfers, a new protocol-level feature that enables users and businesses to send supported stablecoins on Sui without paying gas fees or managing a separate SUI token balance. With the feature now rolling out to validators, stablecoin transfer fees are $0.00 on the Sui network.
With support live from major stablecoins, including USDsui, suiUSDe, AUSD, FDUSD, USDB, USDC, and USDY, the feature is designed to simplify payment workflows and remove one of the largest friction points in stablecoin mass adoption: the requirement to hold a separate token to complete transactions.
Fireblocks, the enterprise platform securing more than $14 trillion in digital asset transactions, has integrated the new solution prior to the rollout as part of Sui’s broader payments ecosystem expansion. In addition, many institutional custodians and retail-facing wallets will support gasless transactions at launch, enabling users to send select stablecoins without holding or spending SUI on transaction fees.
“Stablecoins are becoming a core part of global finance, but the infrastructure around them still creates unnecessary complexity,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-Founder and CPO of Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui. “From the start, we’ve said it should not cost individuals fees to move their own money. With gasless stablecoin transfers, we are one step closer in making Sui the global rail for payments, whether they are for businesses, AI agents, and consumers.”
Fireblocks’ support further strengthens the institutional accessibility of Sui’s payments infrastructure by enabling enterprises and financial service providers to securely access and manage stablecoin activity on the network through trusted digital asset infrastructure.
“The future of payments will run on stablecoin rails, but the experience for institutions still needs to catch up,” said Ran Goldi, SVP Payments & Network at Fireblocks. “Sui is making all the right moves, with gasless stablecoin transfers that removes a major point of friction for enterprises building onchain payment flows and customer experiences.”
Gasless stablecoin transfers represent a structural change to how single and batched peer-to-peer transfers of supported stablecoins operate on Sui Mainnet and are not a subsidy, sponsorship program, or temporary promotional initiative. In a competitive market where margins are everything, the launch positions Sui as the default stablecoin infrastructure for businesses looking to cut complexity and overhead costs, traders who are tired of failed transactions or the friction of fees, and AI agents, who will objectively choose the cheapest path of least resistance to execute autonomous payments.
Since August 2025, Sui has surpassed $1 trillion in stablecoin transfer volume, while its stablecoin ecosystem has continued to expand rapidly across institutional, retail, and developer use cases. Sui’s horizontally scalable architecture and object-centric design allow the network to support high-frequency payment activity with predictable performance and low operational overhead, making it well-suited for emerging payment applications, agentic commerce, and enterprise-grade financial systems.
These new protocol mechanisms work by dramatically cutting processing costs, and gasless stablecoin transfers build on that foundation to eliminate gas pre-funding and volatile treasury management entirely. The result is simpler infrastructure for institutions, and an operational and cost model that makes agentic commerce and autonomous systems work. Free transfers mean gas fees never rival or exceed the value of the payment itself, making micropayments viable at any scale.
Recent momentum across the Sui ecosystem underscores rising demand for scalable financial infrastructure and stablecoin-based payments. In 2026 alone, four SUI exchange-traded products from 21Shares, Grayscale, and Canary Capital launched globally, expanding institutional access to the Sui ecosystem. At the same time, marquee stablecoin initiatives, including Bridge-issued Sui Dollar (USDSui) and Ethena-issued eSui Dollar (SuiUSDe), have continued to expand Sui’s growing digital dollar ecosystem and strengthen its position as infrastructure for internet-scale finance.
Gasless stablecoin transfers are now rolling out on Sui Mainnet. To learn more about payments on Sui, visit https://www.sui.io/payments.
Contact: media@sui.io
About Sui
Sui, where money moves as freely as messages, is a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain built for scalable finance and global payments. Founded by the core team behind Meta’s stablecoin initiative and powered by an object-centric model, Sui makes assets, permissions, and user data programmable and ownable. Sui’s primitives offer builders everything they need to create high-performance payments and financial applications, including instant agentic payments. Users can learn more at sui.io.
About Fireblocks
Fireblocks is the world’s most trusted digital asset infrastructure company, empowering organizations of all sizes to build, manage and grow their business on the blockchain. With the industry’s most scalable and secure platform, we streamline stablecoin payments, settlement, custody, tokenization, trading, accounting operations, and compliance reporting — enabling everything from institutional finance to consumer-facing digital experiences across the largest ecosystem of banks, payment providers, stablecoin issuers, exchanges and custodians. Thousands of organizations — including Worldpay, BNY, Galaxy, and Revolut — trust Fireblocks to secure more than $14 trillion in digital asset transactions across 150+ blockchains. Users can learn more at fireblocks.com.
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Pi Network’s native token has halted the price free-falls at least for now, posting a 3-4% daily increase that pushed it to well over the psychological level of $0.15.
This rebound coincided with the overall altcoin rebound from several alts, as well as bullish news from OKX affecting the US market.
PI Bounces From Local Lows
After it was rejected at $0.20 at the end of the previous month, PI remained sideways at around $0.18 for a few weeks. It started to slowly lose value and entered a new lower range between $0.17-$0.18. A few more leg downs followed, driving the asset first to under $0.16 and then to a new three-month low of $0.146.
It tried to rebound earlier this week, but it was halted at $0.155 and driven south to under $0.15 once again. Nevertheless, the past 24 hours have been more positive for the asset, as it reclaimed that level following an impressive 4% surge.
Although it remains outside the top 50 alts by market capitalization, its own has risen above $1.6 billion on CoinGecko. The token unlocking schedule for the next month is rather contradictory. The following week or so will see the release of around 5 million coins per day. However, there will be an evident uptick to more than 15 million tokens per day by the end of the month and on June 2.
The landscape will calm after June 3, which should ease the immediate selling pressure from these investors, many of whom have been waiting for a long time for their assets.
PI in the US
Aside from the overall market revival in the past 24 hours, which has been rather selective as most of the larger caps have failed to post impressive rebounds, the other notable news that could be linked to PI’s jump past $0.15 is specifically aimed at Pi Network’s broader ecosystem and adoption.
The team behind the project announced that the native token has been made available to “millions of people in the US” for the first time ever through OKX. The veteran exchange has long listed the asset, but the new development here is the addition of “another access point to the Pi ecosystem for US users,” said the team.
They added that such moves mean “more users, more usage, [and] stronger network,” as the project continues to “expand its global network of Pioneers and partners.”
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Global financial technology firm Intuit will eliminate roughly 3,000 roles, about 17% of its global workforce.
The firm disclosed the cuts the same day it reported third-quarter revenue of $8.6 billion, up 10%.
Intuit Joins The AI Layoff Wave
The move comes as the firm seeks to focus on 3 key bets, including artificial intelligence and streamlining operations. Affected US staff will exit on July 31. They will receive 16 weeks of base pay, plus two weeks for each year of tenure.
“We have spent significant time evaluating how we focus the company with greater velocity and discipline to achieve what I outlined above. We believe we can serve more customers and deliver breakthrough products that fuel our customers’ success by reducing complexity and simplifying our structure to become a faster, leaner, and more focused company,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi said in the memo.
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The company flagged restructuring costs of about $300 million to $340 million, the bulk of which will be recognized in the fiscal fourth quarter, which closes July 31, 2026.
Intuit is also winding down offices in Reno, Nevada, and Woodland Hills, California. Despite the workforce reduction, Intuit raised its full-year revenue guidance to $21.34 billion to $21.37 billion, signaling 13% to 14% growth.
The Intuit announcement landed on the same day Meta cut roughly 8,000 jobs as part of its planned 10% workforce reduction.
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Standard Chartered, Block, Amazon, Dune, and Pinterest have all cited AI-driven efficiency in earlier rounds this year. According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 140 tech companies have shed over 111,000 roles in 2026.
The post Intuit Adds to Tech’s AI Layoff Tally, Cutting 17% of Workforce appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Glassnode data shows 4.12 million Bitcoin (BTC) are held in quantum-exposed addresses due to address reuse, partial spending, and custody practices, more than double the 1.92 million BTC exposed by Bitcoin’s older script types.
The on-chain firm splits Bitcoin’s quantum-exposed supply into structural risk stemming from the protocol’s design and the exposure of public keys, and operational risk arising from how holders manage their addresses and outputs.
Why Structural and Operational Exposure Are Not the Same
Structural exposure covers outputs where the public key appears on-chain by default. The bucket includes early Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) coins from the Satoshi era, bare multisig, and modern Pay-to-Taproot (P2TR) outputs.
Operational exposure works differently. Address types like Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) and Pay-to-Witness-Public-Key-Hash (P2WPKH) hide public keys behind hashes at rest. However, once a holder reuses an address or partially spends from it, that protection no longer applies to any remaining balance.
Glassnode puts the two buckets at 30.2% of all issued Bitcoin combined. Together, they show that the operational share is 2.1 times larger than the structural share.
“The main insight is that most current at-rest exposure is not simply a legacy script-design problem – it is a key- and address-management problem,” the firm said.
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Where Wallet Behavior Shows Up On-Chain
The report revealed that exchanges form the largest identifiable subset of operationally exposed BTC. They hold about 1.66 million BTC, roughly 40% of the pool.
“It also appears high in relative terms: roughly half of labeled exchange-held BTC falls into the susceptible bucket, compared with less than 30% of non-exchange supply,” Glassnode said.
Exposure varies sharply between custodians. Glassnode marks Coinbase balances at 5% exposed. Meanwhile, Binance sits near 85% and Bitfinex at 100%.
Other Bitcoin holding entities also diverge. WisdomTree appears fully exposed. Grayscale holds about half its supply in exposed outputs. However, sovereign wallets in the US, UK, and El Salvador show zero exposure.
Glassnode notes exchange-held BTC has drifted from roughly 55% operationally safe in 2018 to about 45% today.
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP-360) would harden Taproot. However, much of the operational bucket can shrink today through address rotation and avoided reuse, without any consensus change.
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The post Glassnode Finds 20% of Bitcoin Quantum-Exposed by Behavior, Not Code appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
Prop trading firms weigh building custom technology versus licensing ready-made infrastructure in 2026.
Summary
- Prop trading firms now choose between building custom tech stacks or licensing white-label systems for faster market entry.
- Custom prop firm platforms offer control but require $500K+ and 6–12 months of development before launch.
- Licensed prop trading systems enable faster launch, lower risk, and built-in crypto-ready infrastructure for new operators.
The proprietary trading industry has gone from a niche segment to a multibillion-dollar industry in a few years. With that growth comes a question every new operator faces early: Should they build a prop firm technology from scratch, or license a proven system and go live faster?
The answer depends on where the user wants to spend their time and capital. Getting it wrong is one of the most expensive mistakes an operator can make.
The case for building from scratch
Building a prop technology stack gives full control over every part of the business. Operators can design custom risk engines, shape the trader experience from onboarding to payout, and own the underlying code exclusively. For firms with deep technical talent and a genuine technology edge, this path can set a firm apart over time.
The trade-offs are significant. A custom build typically requires 6 to 12 months of development before a single trader logs in. The upfront investment frequently exceeds $500,000 when factoring in engineering, QA, platform integrations, payment gateway development, and risk detection systems. Ongoing maintenance, security patches, and other updates add recurring costs that add up as the firm scales.
The real risk is much subtler than the price tag. Custom builds carry delivery risk. Timelines can slip, and features tend to go live unfinished. Every week spent debugging a checkout flow or reconciling a payout ledger is a week the firm is not getting traders or generating revenue.
The case for licensing
White-label solutions have matured exponentially in recent years. A modern licensed stack typically includes: trader dashboards, CRM, challenge management, risk monitoring, KYC workflows, payment processing, and capital backing. Meanwhile, operators retain full control of their brand and customer relationships while the tech provider handles the backend.
The primary advantage is speed. Firms using a licensed approach can go live in as little as one week, compared to months spent on a custom build. That speed translates directly into earlier revenue, faster market validation, and lower capital burn during the critical launch window.
Licensing also shifts capital exposure. Because most turnkey providers handle funded account backing, the operator does not need to personally underwrite trader payouts. This changes the risk profile of the business entirely, particularly for first-time operators who may underestimate how quickly payout liability can grow during a strong trading month.
The crypto factor
The rise of crypto trading has accelerated this decision. Operators need systems that handle crypto payments, high-volume onboarding, and risk monitoring across asset classes. Building that from scratch adds months. Licensing it removes the complexity without limiting the offer.
Where operators get it wrong
The most common mistake is treating the tech decision as a permanent one. Firms often start licensed, validate their model, and only build custom once they know which components justify the investment. Building everything from day one, before there is real traction, has ended more prop firms than bad marketing.
A second common failure point is payment processing. Firms that build their own payment layer without expertise in chargeback management and multi-rail redundancy often find this part more costly than the rest of the stack combined.
According to Grand View Research, the global algorithmic trading market was valued at $21.06 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $42.99 billion by 2030, growing at a 12.9% compound annual growth rate. More entrepreneurs are entering the prop firm space as a result. The firms that scale will spend capital on what sets them apart, not replicating what already exists.
Choosing the right path
Operators entering the industry in 2026 should evaluate their launch path against three criteria: time to revenue, total cost of ownership, and the operational burden each option places on a team.
Licensing the backend and focusing on brand, community, and trader experience is typically the most efficient strategy for new firms entering the market. Some providers, including PropAccount.com, offer turnkey prop firm solutions with integrated payment processing and capital support, enabling faster market entry and eliminating the need for complex in-house development.
The strategic question is not whether a firm can build the technology. It is whether building is the strongest use of that capital.
Disclosure: This content is provided by a third party. Neither crypto.news nor the author of this article endorses any product mentioned on this page. Users should conduct their own research before taking any action related to the company.
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