Update (May 11, 2026, at 13:17 UTC): This article has been updated to include responses from Mohammed Al Hakim, president and general manager for the UAE at Crypto.com.

Crypto.com has received a Stored Value Facilities license from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, allowing residents to pay Dubai government fees using cryptocurrencies via its platform, the company said Monday.

The company says the license allows users to fund payments in digital assets while settlements are made in UAE dirhams or in dirham-backed stablecoins approved by the central bank under the SVF framework.

Mohammed Al Hakim, president and general manager for the UAE at Crypto.com, told Cointelegraph that the approval followed a comprehensive supervisory and operational readiness assessment by the Central Bank of the UAE, including reviews of governance frameworks, anti-money laundering (AML) and counter financing of terrorism (CFT) controls, cybersecurity standards, transaction monitoring systems, safeguarding arrangements, and operational resilience.

The approval allows Crypto.com to activate its partnership with Dubai’s Department of Finance, giving the exchange access to provide digital asset payment services for government fees through its platform under Dubai’s cashless payments strategy.

The company said the license could also support future payment integrations with Emirates Airlines and Dubai Duty Free, though those services remain subject to further approvals from the UAE central bank.

Crypto.com secures SVF license. Source: Crypto.com

The SVF authorization applies to its local Dubai entity, Foris DAX Middle East FZE, which trades as Crypto.com. Al Hakim told Cointelegraph that Crypto.com operates under two distinct but complementary regulatory frameworks in the UAE: VARA’s Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) regime, which governs virtual asset activities such as trading and exchange services, and the Central Bank’s SVF framework, which regulates payment infrastructure and stored value services connected to the domestic financial system.

Related: Crypto.com gets into prediction markets through High Roller tie-up

Crypto.com expands UAE regulatory and payments push

The new authorization adds another layer to Crypto.com’s regulatory footprint in the UAE, where it already holds a Virtual Asset Service Provider license from VARA and promotes its platform as an institutional-grade, compliance-focused venue for digital assets.

Outside the UAE, the company has been building a similar regulated profile, including securing licensing to operate under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regime and obtaining conditional approval from the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter that would allow it to act as a qualified digital asset custodian.

At the same time, Crypto.com is expanding into event-based derivatives and prediction markets through a regulated US affiliate, part of a broader strategy to combine tighter regulatory oversight with a growing range of trading and payments products around cryptocurrencies.

Al Hakim added that the SVF approval positions Crypto.com to serve as a regulated bridge between virtual assets and traditional payment infrastructure in the UAE, enabling use cases such as government fee payments and merchant settlement within a unified regulatory framework.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

Morgan Stanley launched a crypto price war on E*Trade at 50 basis points, undercutting Coinbase and Schwab.

Morgan Stanley has launched a crypto trading pilot on its ETrade platform at 50 basis points per trade, immediately undercutting every major retail rival. Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana are available directly inside ETrade brokerage accounts via Zerohash, which handles liquidity, custody, and settlement.

The 50-basis-point fee sits below Schwab’s 75bps, Fidelity’s 1%, and Coinbase retail fees that can exceed 0.5% depending on tier and payment method. Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley’s head of wealth management, said the move is “much bigger than trading crypto at a cheaper rate,” describing it as a strategy to keep its 8.6 million clients inside its own ecosystem.

Why crypto exchanges are watching nervously

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas warned immediately after the launch that “crypto exchanges should be scared.” He drew a direct comparison to the fee race that followed the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs, which saw providers start at 50 basis points before Morgan Stanley undercut them all with a 14-basis-point offering.

“By the time the dust settles it’ll be pretty dirt cheap to trade crypto everywhere,” Balchunas said. Industry leaders pushing back noted the perspective is US-centric, with global platforms already diversified beyond spot-trading fees into derivatives, DeFi, and international markets.

Coinbase, which posted a $1.49-per-share quarterly loss for Q1 2026 on revenue of $1.41 billion, already launched commission-free stock trading in February as part of its “Everything Exchange” strategy to reduce dependence on crypto trading fees.

The scale of Morgan Stanley’s distribution advantage

Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 financial advisors oversee $9.3 trillion in client assets, a distribution channel crypto-native platforms cannot match. The pilot is small for now, but the bank plans to roll out access to all 8.6 million E*Trade clients later in 2026 alongside a proprietary digital wallet capable of holding crypto alongside tokenized stocks, bonds, and real estate.

The move follows Morgan Stanley’s April 8 launch of its own spot Bitcoin ETF, MSBT, which charges just 14 basis points and avoided outflows throughout its entire first month of trading, a record no other spot Bitcoin ETF matched during the same period.

Crypto compliance demand is surging as AI fraud evolves faster than firms can respond, Sumsub CEO Andrew Sever says.

Crypto compliance firms are reporting a sharp rise in demand as AI fraud attacks become faster, more sophisticated, and harder to stop. Sumsub co-founder and CEO Andrew Sever told Consensus Miami that fraud is evolving faster than the industry can respond.

“Before, the main things were verification speed and conversion rate,” Sever said. “Today, the majority of companies prioritize verification accuracy.” High-quality AI fraud attacks on crypto surged 180% year over year, with sophisticated attacks now using deepfakes, synthetic identities, and automated phishing networks that can bypass standard verification systems.

What is driving the compliance surge

Sever warned that bad actors now use large language models to launch thousands of personalised phishing attempts per minute, mimicking legitimate exchanges without detectable errors. “Imagine a bad actor trying to penetrate the system using a deepfake. If it fails, they try again in two minutes,” he said.

Only 23% of crypto companies are currently ready to comply with incoming identity and fraud regulations, according to Sumsub’s State of the Crypto Industry 2026 report. Sever noted that 72% of firms told Sumsub they would change their internal compliance processes as a result of the pressure.

Illicit crypto reached $154 billion in 2025 according to Chainalysis, up 162% from the prior year, with scammers and sanctioned entities both driving volume higher. The scale of the problem is pushing compliance teams toward automated systems.

How the industry is responding

Chainalysis launched blockchain intelligence agents in March designed to absorb the growing alert load facing compliance teams, triaging, gathering context, and surfacing conclusions faster than human analysts working alone. Emmanuel Marot, vice president of products at Chainalysis, said the company wants to “automate the tasks of our customers as much as possible.”

A DOJ rollback of crypto enforcement in early 2026, flagged by senators citing the same Chainalysis data, has added further pressure on private-sector compliance teams to fill the gap left by reduced federal oversight.

Tom Lee has slowed Bitmine ETH purchases after the firm amassed over 5.2 million tokens and 4.3% of Ethereum’s supply.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) bought 26,659 ETH last week worth roughly $63 million, sharply down from the more than 100,000 ETH it had been acquiring each week for months. The purchase lifted total holdings to over 5.2 million ETH, worth approximately $12.1 billion, making Bitmine the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company.

Chairman Tom Lee said the firm had deliberately reduced its pace. “We have decided to slow down our pace of weekly accumulation from over 100,000 per week,” he said. “Our previous pace of buys would have us reach 5% by mid-July.”

Why Bitmine is pulling back on purchases

Bitmine originally expected to reach its 5% Ethereum supply target in late 2026. The aggressive accumulation pace shortened that timeline to weeks, prompting a reassessment. The company now holds 4.31% of Ethereum’s circulating supply of approximately 120.7 million ETH.

Lee reiterated his view that “crypto spring” has begun, pointing to Ethereum’s recent price recovery. “If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain. This has never been seen in a crypto bear market,” he said.

Since the start of 2026, Bitmine has acquired more than 1 million ETH. Its total crypto, cash, and equity holdings stood at $13.4 billion as of May 10, including 201 Bitcoin, a $200 million stake in Beast Industries, and $775 million in cash.

Staking strategy and what comes next

Bitmine has staked 4,712,917 ETH, representing more than 90% of its total holdings and generating an estimated $319 million in annualised staking rewards based on a 2.86% seven-day yield. That makes it the largest ETH staker of any public company globally.

The company’s MAVAN staking platform, launched earlier in 2026, is being positioned to serve institutional clients alongside Bitmine’s own treasury operations.

Lee said Ethereum’s two primary drivers going forward are Wall Street’s move to tokenization and the rise of agentic AI systems relying on public blockchains for payments and verification.