Key Takeaways

• The European Commission may reveal next week that Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services meet the threshold for Digital Markets Act regulation.
• A conclusive determination is anticipated by the close of 2025, although the schedule remains flexible.
• Upon formal classification, both platforms must comply with requirements regarding interoperability, preventing vendor lock-in, and eliminating preferential treatment of proprietary services.
• This investigation stems from a November 2024 EU declaration recognizing both corporations maintain “exceptionally dominant market positions” in cloud infrastructure.
• Multiple significant service disruptions affecting AWS and Azure have intensified regulatory focus on the sector.

The European Union is advancing toward subjecting Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services to regulatory oversight through its Digital Markets Act legislation. Bloomberg reports the European Commission may unveil its initial assessment within the coming week.

Microsoft Corporation, MSFT

The DMA framework specifically addresses major digital platforms that possess what European authorities characterize as “gatekeeper” market influence. Should Azure and AWS receive official gatekeeper status, they’ll be obligated to adhere to regulations crafted to ensure competitive fairness.

Implications of Gatekeeper Classification

Once designated under the DMA, both cloud platforms must satisfy interoperability standards. Additionally, they’ll encounter limitations designed to eliminate practices that trap customers within their ecosystems and prohibit giving preferential treatment to their own offerings over competitor alternatives.

Regulators expect to finalize their determination before 2025 concludes. Nevertheless, individuals with knowledge of the proceedings indicate the timeline remains subject to adjustment.

The examination began in November 2024 following the European Commission’s acknowledgment that Microsoft and Amazon maintain exceptionally strong market positions within cloud computing. This declaration initiated the official investigation process.

European lawmakers established the DMA to combat monopolistic practices among dominant technology companies operating across the continent. The legislation has previously been enforced against corporations including Apple and Google in different technology sectors.

Service Disruptions Intensify Regulatory Pressure

Regulatory attention on these cloud infrastructure leaders has intensified following several prominent service failures. AWS experienced an extended outage lasting approximately 15 hours that affected major clients including Apple, McDonald’s, and Epic Games. A distinct Azure disruption in October disabled Alaska Airlines’ passenger check-in infrastructure and interrupted legislative operations at the Scottish Parliament.

These technical failures highlighted the extent to which modern digital commerce relies upon a concentrated group of cloud service providers.

Both Microsoft and Amazon declined to provide statements when contacted for this report.

The Commission has yet to release its official assessment publicly. Should the initial conclusions remain unchanged, both organizations will receive an opportunity to submit responses prior to any binding determination.

Cloud computing infrastructure has emerged as a priority surveillance area for EU regulatory bodies, reflecting the sector’s rapid expansion and the extensive number of enterprises dependent upon these platforms.

This probe represents one component of the EU’s comprehensive effort to enforce competition standards across the largest operators in digital infrastructure services.

Prediction market Kalshi is reportedly in early, informal talks with investment banks about an initial public offering (IPO), despite increasing regulatory scrutiny over sports betting contracts on these platforms.

Kalshi is in early-stage talks to go public via an IPO after the platform surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, unidentified sources familiar with the matter told news outlet The Informant, according to a Friday report.

A spokesperson for Kalshi declined to comment on the matter.

The reported IPO discussions come as sports betting contracts account for more than half of Kalshi’s weekly notional trading volume, even as those markets face mounting legal challenges from US states.

Sports betting contracts were the leading category on Kalshi, representing about 53% of its weekly notional trading volume, according to Dune data. Sport-related betting was also the leading category on Polymarket, accounting for about 69% of its weekly trading volume.

Kalshi doubled its valuation to reach $22 billion after closing a $1 billion Series F funding round led by Coatue Management, Cointelegraph reported on May 7.

Kalshi weekly notional volume by category. Source: Dune

US regulators are cracking down on sports-related prediction market contracts

Kentucky became the latest state to sue five prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of “operating unlicensed and illegal sports betting and gambling platforms,” Cointelegraph reported on Thursday.

Related: Polymarket users cry foul after Strategy sale market resolves to ‘no’

At least 17 other states have taken prediction market operators to court, attracting the involvement of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

State authorities argue that sports event contracts require state-level licenses, while prediction markets claim their event contracts are swaps regulated under federal commodities law.

The CFTC also argued that event contracts qualify as “swaps” as they are based on binary events. On May 14, the CFTC issued a no-action letter seeking to ease event contract reporting rules.

CFTC no-action letter on prediction markets. Source: CFTC.gov

The CFTC has sued at least five states in a bid to cement its authority over prediction markets, including Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions  

Japan’s Financial Services Agency has suspended part of moomoo Securities’ operations for three months and ordered the brokerage to strengthen its internal controls after regulators found compliance, customer protection, anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity failures.

The Financial Services Agency said on June 19 that moomoo Securities must stop soliciting and accepting applications for new accounts from June 19 through Sept. 18. The regulator also issued a business improvement order that requires the company to clarify management responsibility and submit a plan to prevent similar issues from recurring.

The action follows an investigation by Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, which concluded that the brokerage expanded its business and introduced new services without establishing adequate compliance and risk management systems.

FSA cites NISA misrepresentations and compliance failures

Regulators said moomoo Securities incorrectly presented investment products as eligible for Japan’s Nippon Individual Savings Account program even though the products did not qualify under the tax-advantaged scheme.

The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission found that between early 2025 and early 2026, the brokerage displayed 78 U.S. exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes as NISA-eligible assets on its smartphone trading platform. The commission said retail investors subsequently purchased products that did not qualify for tax-free treatment.

Japanese authorities stated that the firm did not adequately address the issue after discovering the mistake. Regulators said the company failed to proactively contact affected customers or restore annual investment allowances impacted by the transactions.

The watchdog also cited restrictions on domestic stock transfers. The commission said moomoo Securities had declined customer requests to move Japanese stocks to other brokerages since early 2024, limiting clients’ ability to transfer assets outside the platform.

Financial authorities said the company also failed to properly comply with anti-money laundering obligations. The commission found that more than 1,500 rejected or flagged account applicants had not undergone sufficient reviews for suspicious activity because the firm incorrectly believed screening requirements applied only to approved accounts.

Japanese regulators said the brokerage had not conducted required examinations or reporting related to suspicious transactions for an extended period.

Cybersecurity and governance concerns

The Financial Services Agency said cybersecurity controls were also inadequate. Regulators found that management failed to maintain a complete inventory of important transaction systems and did not properly assess vulnerabilities affecting critical infrastructure.

The agency ordered the company to establish clearer accountability among executives and strengthen its internal management framework. Moomoo Securities must submit a detailed business improvement plan to regulators by July 21.

Moomoo Securities is the Japanese subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Futu Holdings, an online brokerage group listed on the Nasdaq. The company has expanded rapidly through its mobile investment platform and has surpassed 2 million app downloads in Japan while promoting low-cost trading in U.S. stocks.

The enforcement action comes as other parts of the Futu group continue expanding overseas. Moomoo Crypto, a separate subsidiary under the Futu umbrella, recently extended its cryptocurrency trading services into Texas, adding to operations in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The U.S. platform offers trading in 52 digital assets and supports direct transfers between external crypto wallets and customer accounts.

The case adds to a period of heightened oversight of digital finance activities in Japan. Earlier this year, the Financial Services Agency proposed stricter standards for stablecoin reserve assets and introduced additional supervisory requirements for financial institutions involved in cryptocurrency-related services as part of broader reforms under the country’s updated digital asset framework.

Oman has launched Omanhash, a national Bitcoin mining pool for licensed crypto mining companies operating in the country. 

The pool was introduced under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology.

Under the approved regulatory structure, Omanhash will serve as the only official pool for licensed mining firms. Licensed miners are expected to connect to the pool rather than route hashrate through outside providers.

Pool targets 10 EH/s in first phase

Omanhash is expected to consolidate about 10 EH/s of computing power in its first phase. EH/s, or exahashes per second, measures the amount of computing work directed toward Bitcoin mining.

The pool is being managed with Frontier Technologies LLC, an Omani blockchain and Web3 company. Enegix Global is providing the technology platform and liquidity infrastructure.

Enegix Chief Business Development Officer Olzhas Amirov said, “This is our second sovereign mandate.” He added that clear licensing rules help miners operate legally and keep communication open with authorities.

Oman builds on mining investment

The launch follows years of mining and data-center investment in Oman. Enegix said mining and data-center infrastructure in the Salalah Free Zone has attracted more than $700 million since 2022.

The country has used crypto mining as part of a wider digital infrastructure strategy. Omanhash now gives the state more visibility over licensed mining activity, energy use, and pool-level reporting.

Oman is choosing regulation over a ban. The new model keeps licensed mining inside a formal system while giving authorities closer oversight of domestic hashrate.

As previously reported by crypto.news, Oman has already been discussed as part of the broader shift toward sustainable Bitcoin mining hubs. That coverage placed Oman alongside other regions exploring large-scale mining and energy-linked infrastructure.

The Omanhash launch also connects to a broader debate about miner incentives and network behavior. Crypto.news has covered research into selfish mining, where timing and pool behavior can affect how miners compete for block rewards.

Oman’s move does not change Bitcoin’s core rules. It does, however, create one of the clearest examples of a state-supervised mining pool model.

For a decade, no one could say whether a crypto token answered to the SEC or the CFTC, and the uncertainty defined the industry. The CLARITY Act is the bill written to settle that question. Here is what it does, how it works, where it stands, and what it would mean for you, in plain English.

The CLARITY Act, formally the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, is the most serious attempt the United States has ever made to answer a single question that has shadowed crypto for more than a decade: which government agency is in charge of it. For years, that question had no clear answer, and the absence of one produced lawsuits, contradictory court rulings, enforcement actions, and a steady drift of crypto companies overseas to places with clearer rules. 

The CLARITY Act is Washington’s attempt to fix that by writing the rules into law, swapping a decade of regulation by enforcement for a statute that defines when a token is a commodity, when it is a security, who oversees the exchanges that trade it, and what protections users are owed. It passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 by a wide bipartisan margin and cleared a key Senate committee in May 2026, putting it closer to becoming law than any crypto market structure bill in American history.

This guide explains the CLARITY Act in plain English, with no assumed legal or crypto background. It covers the problem the bill is trying to solve and why that problem mattered so much, the three categories it sorts every digital asset into, the clever mechanism it uses to let a token change categories as its network matures, the consumer protections it builds in, who opposes it and why, where it stands in Congress right now, and what it would actually mean for ordinary crypto holders if it becomes law. 

By the end you will understand not just what the bill says but why it exists, why it has been so hard to pass, and why so much of the crypto industry treats it as the most important piece of legislation in its history.

Base has deployed its Beryl upgrade to the Sepolia testnet and has scheduled the release for mainnet activation on June 25, introducing a native token standard and reducing withdrawal times to Ethereum.

Base’s engineering team said in a blog post on Thursday that Beryl adds B20, a protocol-level token standard that allows issuers to create stablecoins and other assets directly within Base’s node software. The company said the upgrade also reduces the standard withdrawal period from Base to Ethereum from seven days to five days for the route most bridging providers currently use.

B20 brings native asset issuance to Base

Base said B20 supports the full ERC-20 specification and includes ERC-2612 permit functionality, which allows token holders to authorize spending through signatures rather than separate approval transactions. The company said existing wallets, exchanges, and indexers that support ERC-20 tokens can integrate B20 assets without modification.

Unlike traditional ERC-20 tokens that operate through smart contracts, B20 tokens run as precompiled contracts inside Base’s node software. Base said the token logic is written in Rust and executes directly within the protocol rather than through EVM bytecode.

The release includes an Issuer Toolkit with role-based permissions, minting and burning controls, optional supply limits, transfer restrictions, and freeze and seizure capabilities intended for regulated issuers. Base said issuers can choose between a general-purpose asset model and a stablecoin-specific model that uses six-decimal precision and a customizable currency code.

The company added that B20 is built on code audited by Base and security firm Spearbit. Future updates are expected to allow issuers to pay transaction fees with their own B20 tokens instead of ETH.

Withdrawal period shortened after Azul changes

Beryl extends work introduced through Azul, Base’s first independent network upgrade that reached mainnet in May. Azul introduced Multiproofs, a system that combines trusted execution environment proofs and zero-knowledge proofs to verify withdrawals and improve security.

Base said Multiproofs created a fast withdrawal route capable of finalizing transactions in about one day when both proof systems agree. The company added that the option has seen limited adoption because generating zero-knowledge proofs remains expensive.

Beryl focuses on the withdrawal route most users rely on. Base said the original seven-day delay came from its earlier fault-proof framework, which reserved time for challenges against disputed withdrawals. Multiproofs narrowed the role of that delay to identifying and disabling faulty provers, which allowed the company to reduce the waiting period further.

The upgrade also includes Reth V2, the latest version of the Rust-based execution client that Base adopted after replacing legacy OP Stack clients through Azul. Base said the software update reduces storage requirements for full, minimal, and archive nodes and enables higher block gas targets without overwhelming sequencer or RPC infrastructure.

Beryl reached the Sepolia testnet about four weeks after Azul’s mainnet launch. Base attributed the faster release cycle to its February decision to move away from a shared dependency on Optimism’s OP Stack and operate on its own unified technology stack.

The company said its next planned upgrade, Cobalt, is targeted for September. Base expects that release to introduce native account abstraction with protocol-level smart accounts, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, additional B20 functionality, and a unified node binary that combines consensus and execution clients.

Ethereum’s research and governance backbone has suffered another leadership loss, with Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang stepping down effective immediately after a recent sabbatical. Wang’s departure adds to a broader pattern of staff changes that has put the organization’s internal direction and talent retention under renewed scrutiny.

In a post on X, Wang said Ethereum has “always been bigger than any role,” and indicated she has not yet determined her next step. Her exit follows the earlier resignation of Tomasz Stanczak from an Ethereum Foundation leadership position earlier this year, underscoring how quickly senior experience is being reshuffled within the ecosystem’s core institution.

Key takeaways

• Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her immediate resignation after a sabbatical, leaving a top leadership vacancy.
• Vitalik Buterin acknowledged Wang’s role as one of the “most challenging positions” in the Ethereum Foundation, while referencing Stanczak’s earlier step down.
• Estimated overall departures this year—reported as 19 layoffs and exits—are occurring amid ongoing debate over Ethereum Foundation governance and strategy.
• The Foundation’s stated mandate emphasizes decentralization and aims for Ethereum to remain functional even without the organization’s leadership.
• Broader disagreements—especially around the direction of Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling approach—continue to shape public debate around who should “steer” the ecosystem.

A leadership exit highlights ongoing governance scrutiny

Wang’s announcement on X confirms an abrupt transition at one of the Ethereum Foundation’s highest levels. The timing—effective immediately and coming right after a sabbatical—suggests an intentional handoff rather than a termination. However, the practical effect is still significant: leadership continuity at the Foundation matters not only for internal operations, but also for how the broader Ethereum community interprets institutional priorities.

Buterin’s response to Wang’s post placed her work in a wider context. He characterized the co-executive director position as among the “most challenging” leadership roles within the Foundation, a framing that implicitly points to the organizational pressures that accompany Ethereum’s growth and decentralization expectations. Buterin also referenced Stanczak’s earlier departure, reinforcing that the Foundation has recently lost multiple senior figures.

Departures amid debate over how Ethereum should be steered

Separately, the Ethereum Foundation has reportedly logged an estimated 19 layoffs and departures this year. While any staffing reduction can be attributed to budgets, restructuring, or personal decisions, the senior nature of these exits has drawn disproportionate attention—particularly because Ethereum’s governance model has become a high-stakes topic for investors, builders, and users.

According to Cointelegraph coverage, the backdrop includes intensifying competition, ongoing disagreement about Ethereum’s governance philosophy, and pressure tied to Ether’s market performance. In other words, the staff changes are unfolding while external narratives about Ethereum’s long-term direction are actively evolving.

The debate is not limited to internal community forums. Buterin has also pushed back against critics who argue that the Foundation should play a more active role in promoting Ethereum. In May, Buterin said the foundation “is not the ‘center of Ethereum’” and compared it to “one node, with a defined purpose,” alongside other nodes—an argument that directly challenges the idea that the Foundation should be treated as the main driver of adoption or messaging.

Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted these tensions, including a dispute about whether the Foundation is doing enough to shape public perception and growth. The pattern suggests that staff exits may be occurring in a landscape where public expectations of leadership—what it should do, and how visible it should be—are being contested.

The Foundation’s mandate: decentralization over centralized authority

Ethereum Foundation’s current institutional posture is rooted in its own stated mandate. In March, the Foundation reaffirmed its role as a steward of the Ethereum ecosystem and released a revised mandate that—according to the Foundation—places increased emphasis on decentralization.

In that mandate, the Foundation highlighted a “walkaway test,” stating the protocol and core application layers should be robust and trustless enough to continue functioning and evolving even if the Foundation and today’s core developers were to disappear. The statement is more than a slogan: it sets a measurable standard for institutional design. If the ecosystem depends on a specific entity for its survival, that dependency would conflict with the Foundation’s decentralization goals.

For investors and ecosystem participants, this matters because it changes how stakeholders might evaluate the Foundation. Rather than assessing the organization primarily by its ability to manage price outcomes or public narratives, the mandate frames success around resilience, decentralization, and continuity of the technical ecosystem.

Layer-2 strategy debate resurfaces as leadership changes

Wang’s departure arrives amid continued discussions about Ethereum’s scaling path—particularly the role of layer-2 networks. The Foundation’s decentralization-centered approach intersects with these disputes because scaling involves trade-offs between performance, security assumptions, and how independently systems can operate.

Buterin’s stance has evolved publicly on layer-2s. Cointelegraph previously reported that he argued the original vision for layer-2 networks “no longer makes sense,” suggesting that many have not achieved meaningful decentralization. He has pointed instead toward improvements to Ethereum mainnet as a more suitable long-term scaling route.

This viewpoint is important for builders deciding where to allocate engineering resources, and for traders who track whether network development trends are moving toward credible decentralization benchmarks or more centralized scaling intermediaries. At the same time, the “walkaway test” philosophy implies that no single scaling strategy—layer-2 or mainnet—should be treated as a permanent substitute for a resilient, decentralized base.

Going forward, readers should watch how the Ethereum Foundation addresses leadership continuity and whether staff changes coincide with any refinements to its governance and decentralization priorities. The open question is not only who fills senior roles, but also how the institution balances its stewardship mandate with the community’s competing expectations about how much coordination should be visible and how quickly strategy should adapt.