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Crypto’s biggest exchange fights back against allegations of moving billions of Iran-linked money

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Crypto’s biggest exchange fights back against allegations of moving billions of Iran-linked money

Crypto exchange Binance accused The Wall Street Journal Tuesday of publishing “false information” in a Monday article about the exchange allegedly firing employees investigating funds moving through the exchange to sanctioned entities.

Richard Teng, Binance co-CEO, accused the WSJ of “inaccurate reporting about our compliance program” in an X post. He included a letter to the news organization from the crypto exchange’s counsel in New York City, which said “The Wall Street Journal published defamatory claims,” despite the exchange’s attempts to “set the record straight.” The letter is similar to one Binance directed to Fortune last week over a similar article which said the exchange fired investigators who reported sanctions concerns.

The Journal’s article on Monday said the crypto exchanged fired staff investigators who identified $1 billion that moved to “a network funding Iran-backed terror groups.”. The report claimed to have Binance documents and statements from people familiar with Binance operations, saying that the crypto exchange dismantled the staff investigation into the $1 billion..

Binance claims staff were disciplined

The Journal article includes a statement from a Binance spokeswoman saying the investigators resigned and denied they were fired or suspended for raising compliance concerns.

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“Documents, foreign law-enforcement officials and the people familiar with Binance’s operations said the same conduct that broke the sanctions and anti-money-laundering laws has persisted at the exchange,” the Journal article said, referring to Binance’s 2023 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and other authorities, in which the exchange and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao admitted to violating federal money laundering statutes..

The news report also mentions $1.7 billion more in 2024 and 2025 that were transferred from Binance-registered Chinese clients to Iran-backed groups, including Yemen’s Houthi militants. The New York Times’ article also published on Feb. 23 alleges the same information.

Both influential U.S. newspapers said the four individuals “fired” by Binance, who worked in compliance and market oversight roles, were dismissed after the crypto exchange concluded they had failed to adequately escalate red flags related to suspicious trading activity and potential policy violations.

A Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk the exchange conducted an “internal review and did not find evidence of violations of applicable sanctions laws or regulations related to the transactions described.”

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However, the spokesperson, who stated no investigator was dismissed for raising compliance or potential sanctions issues, said suspicious activity was detected and reported, which is “evidence that our controls are working, not the opposite.”

Rachel Conlan, another spokesperson, told the Times, there is an ongoing investigation and that a full report will be sent to the U.S. Justice Department on Feb. 25.

Binance said in a blog post on Sunday that its “sanctions-related exposure is minimal.”

“Recent reporting on our top-tier compliance is, at best, inaccurate. It presents a distorted, jumbled account that relies on false claims by disgruntled former employees. This incomplete and flawed viewpoint reflects a lack of understanding of general compliance control processes for crypto exchanges,” the blog post, which was published prior to the Wall Street Journal’s report.

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Mastercard Hires for Crypto Just as Citrini Warns It Could Be Obsolete

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Mastercard Hires for Crypto Just as Citrini Warns It Could Be Obsolete

Mastercard is hiring a Director of Crypto Flows to lead stablecoin-linked card issuance, scale DeFi payment flows, and rewrite network rules for Web3 transactions.

The job posting, first surfaced by crypto journalist Frank Chaparro on Feb. 24, signals a structural push beyond the pilot-stage experiments the payments giant has run so far.

The Timing That Writes Itself

Days earlier, Citrini Research published “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” a doomsday scenario that rapidly went viral on Substack. The report maps a chain reaction in which AI agents progressively dismantle fee-based intermediaries — and payment networks sit squarely in the blast radius. Citrini specifically names Mastercard’s Q1 2027 earnings as a potential inflection point, the moment when agentic commerce begins routing around card interchange via stablecoins.

The logic is straightforward. When AI agents transact on behalf of consumers, a 2-3% card interchange fee becomes an irrational cost. Stablecoin rails settle the same transaction for near zero. In that world, Mastercard doesn’t lose to a competitor. It loses to a protocol.

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The gap Mastercard needs to close

The vulnerability is not hypothetical. Stablecoins transferred $18.4 trillion in value in 2024, surpassing both Visa ($15.7 trillion) and Mastercard ($9.8 trillion) in raw volume, according to Artemis Analytics. The comparison is imperfect — much of that is trading, not payments — but the directional signal is clear.

Mastercard’s own CEO, Michael Miebach, told analysts in January that the company is “leaning in” to stablecoins and agentic commerce, calling the latter a trend in which “the train is leaving the station.” Yet he framed stablecoins as “another currency we can support within our network.”

That framing is precisely what Citrini challenges. The doomsday thesis is not that stablecoins replace card payments at today’s checkout counter. It is that a new category of commerce — machine-to-machine, micropayment-dense, 24/7 — will emerge entirely outside the card network’s design envelope.

Building rails or getting routed around

The new role suggests Mastercard is beginning to internalize this risk. Mastercard has laid the groundwork: onboarding multiple stablecoins onto its network in June 2025, expanding Circle’s USDC settlement across the Middle East and Africa, and reportedly pursuing a $2 billion acquisition of crypto infrastructure startup zerohash.

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But the gap with Visa persists. Visa’s on-chain stablecoin settlement reached an annual run rate of $3.5 billion by late 2025. Crypto-native issuers like Rain and Reap built their card programs primarily on Visa rails, with Rain scaling to over $3 billion annualized after securing direct Visa membership. Industry analysis suggests Visa’s early crypto-native alignment translated into share, while Mastercard’s exchange-focused approach generated less volume.

Coincidence or confirmation

Regardless of whether Mastercard’s hiring push was triggered by Citrini’s report, the more important reading is that the diagnosis is converging. A research outfit writing from 2028 and a payments giant hiring in 2026 point at the same fault line. Card networks that cannot accommodate stablecoin-native commerce will be bypassed, not disrupted.

The canary, as Citrini wrote, is still alive. The question is whether Mastercard is building a bridge to close the gap—or just hiring someone to watch it widen.

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index falls 2% as nearly all constituents decline

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9am CoinDesk 20 Update for 2026-02-24: vertical

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 1816.14, down 2.0% (-36.33) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.

One of the 20 assets is trading higher.

9am CoinDesk 20 Update for 2026-02-24: vertical

Leaders: ICP (+1.2%) and NEAR (-0.3%).

Laggards: BCH (-4.2%) and SUI (-2.5%).

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The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

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Ethereum Foundation begins staking 70,000 ETH from treasury

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Ethereum Foundation begins staking 70,000 ETH from treasury

The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking a portion of its treasury holdings, marking a significant shift in how the organization manages its ETH reserves.

Summary

  • The Ethereum Foundation has begun staking its treasury, starting with a 2,016 ETH deposit and planning to stake approximately 70,000 ETH in total.
  • Staking rewards will be directed back to the foundation’s treasury to help fund core operations, including protocol R&D, ecosystem grants and community development.
  • The validator setup uses open-source tools from Attestant, including Dirk and Vouch, with a focus on distributed signing, minority clients and multi-jurisdiction infrastructure.

Ethereum Foundation puts treasury to work with 70K ETH staking plan

In a post on X, the foundation said it has made an initial deposit of 2,016 Ethereum (ETH) and plans to stake approximately 70,000 ETH in total, with staking rewards directed back into its treasury. The move follows a Treasury Policy announced last year and is designed to both support network security and help fund the foundation’s core operations.

The staking setup is being implemented using open-source tools developed by Attestant, including Dirk and Vouch.

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Dirk functions as a distributed signer, allowing validators to be operated across multiple jurisdictions and reducing the risk of a single point of failure.

Vouch enables the use of multiple consensus and execution client pairings, helping mitigate client diversity risks, a key concern for Ethereum’s decentralization model. The foundation said its validator setup incorporates minority clients and a mix of hosted infrastructure and self-managed hardware spread across several regions.

The announcement comes at a notable moment for Ethereum. Recently co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold roughly $7 million worth of ETH amid a broader price pullback, sparking discussion about treasury management and market signals.

At the same time, the foundation has been expanding ecosystem support through new grant initiatives, including updates to its Ecosystem Support Program aimed at funding protocol research, community development and public goods projects.

By staking a portion of its holdings, the foundation is effectively putting dormant ETH to work, generating yield while reinforcing validator participation. The move aligns the treasury more closely with Ethereum’s proof-of-stake design and provides an additional funding stream for long-term development efforts without relying solely on asset sales.

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Stripe Eyes PayPal Acquisition as Stock Hits Multi-Year Low

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Stripe Eyes PayPal Acquisition as Stock Hits Multi-Year Low

Payment processing firm Stripe is reportedly considering an acquisition of all or parts of its rival PayPal Holdings.

Stripe is in early talks and has expressed preliminary interest in PayPal or parts of its business, though no deal is guaranteed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

It comes as Stripe, which enables enterprises to accept payments, make payouts, and automate financial processes, said on Tuesday that it was valued at $159 billion in a tender offer to shareholders and employees, a 74% jump from a year ago.

The move comes as PayPal has been reportedly struggling to compete with the likes of Google Pay and Apple Pay, which are embedded in consumer smartphones.

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Stripe president John Collison told Bloomberg that “PayPal has had, obviously, a tough time over the past few years, and the landscape has changed quite a bit with Apple Pay and Google Pay and everything like that.”

“I can’t talk about any, you know, M&A [mergers and acquisitions] hypotheticals, but they’ve definitely had a tough time,” he added. 

PayPal stock gains on the day

PayPal is also in leadership transition, with new CEO Enrique Lores set to take over on March 1 following the ouster of Alex Chriss, amid missed earnings estimates and slowing payment volumes.

Related: PayPal draws takeover interest following 46% stock slide: Report

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PayPal stock (PYPL) gained 6.74% on Tuesday to end the day trading at $47.02, according to Google Finance. However, shares in the payments platform have declined almost 20% since the beginning of this year and are down 85% from their 2021 all-time high of just over $300. 

PayPal shareholders have had a rough ride this year. Source: Google Finance

PayPal, Stripe have serious stablecoin ambitions 

PayPal began offering crypto trading in the US in 2020 and launched its own stablecoin PYUSD in 2023. The dollar-pegged asset has gained traction in recent months with its market capitalization topping $4 billion for the first time on Feb. 14.

Stripe has also been dabbling in crypto with its stablecoin platform Bridge, which received conditional approval to operate as a federally chartered national trust bank under the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Feb. 17. 

Stripe first offered stablecoin-based accounts globally in May 2025. A merger could see the new entity become a serious player in the stablecoin market. 

Magazine: Bitdeer sells all Bitcoin, Metaplanet rejects misconduct claims: Asia Express

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