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Wintermute gains U.S. broker status, eyes tokenized stocks

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Wintermute gains U.S. broker status, eyes tokenized stocks

Wintermute USA has registered as a broker dealer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and joined FINRA, giving the crypto market maker a regulated foothold in American securities markets. 

Summary

  • Wintermute USA registered with the SEC and FINRA, formally entering regulated U.S. securities markets nationwide.
  • The broker dealer can trade equities, equity options and provide proprietary liquidity across national exchanges.
  • Wintermute can pursue authorized participant roles for ETPs, including products tied directly to digital assets.
  • CEO Evgeny Gaevoy says Wintermute targets Wall Street market makers within three to five years.
  • Tokenized equities remain a future expansion area, subject to additional regulatory permission and market approvals.

Wintermute announced the registration on Aug. 6, saying the New York based affiliate will focus on proprietary trading and exchange traded product services.

The move brings Wintermute closer to traditional market making roles that were previously unavailable to its U.S. operation. The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm is now eligible to seek designated market maker status on exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. That status is not automatic and would require additional exchange approvals.

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Wintermute USA gains access to regulated securities trading

Under the new registration, Wintermute USA can trade traditional equities and equity options for its own account, provide liquidity to national securities exchanges and over the counter counterparties, and act as an authorized participant for exchange traded products. The company also said the unit can self clear digital asset securities transactions for its proprietary account.

Wintermute stressed that the U.S. business is focused exclusively on proprietary trading and ETP services. The registration places the entity under SEC oversight and FINRA membership requirements, including rules covering capital, supervision, recordkeeping and trading conduct. Wintermute also cautioned that FINRA registration should not be viewed as a regulatory endorsement.

The firm already has experience around U.S. crypto funds. SEC filings for Fidelity’s Bitcoin and Ether products have listed Wintermute Trading Ltd as a trading counterparty, while firms such as Jane Street and Virtu have served as authorized participants. Becoming a registered U.S. broker dealer creates a route for Wintermute USA to pursue roles that require securities market registration, although each fund or exchange relationship would still require separate agreements and approvals.

Wintermute wants a larger role in ETF market making

The Wall Street Journal reported that Wintermute USA has already secured ETF issuers as clients. CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said the company plans to start in markets close to its existing expertise, including commodities and digital asset ETFs, before considering a broader move into tokenized equities if regulators permit it.

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Gaevoy also set an ambitious competitive target. He said Wintermute wants to challenge established firms including Jump Trading, Jane Street and Citadel Securities “within three to five years.” That goal remains forward looking. Wintermute has not disclosed market share targets, expected U.S. revenue or a timetable for obtaining designated market maker status.

The company says its global group handles more than $10 billion in average daily trading volume across more than 60 centralized and decentralized venues. That scale gives Wintermute experience in automated pricing and liquidity provision, but regulated U.S. equity market making has different operational, capital and compliance requirements.

Tokenized equities form the longer term opportunity

Wintermute’s interest in tokenized stocks predates the broker dealer registration. In September 2025, the firm submitted feedback to the SEC Crypto Task Force asking regulators to clarify how registered dealers can trade tokenized securities for their own accounts, self custody those assets and settle transactions onchain.

The registration therefore gives Wintermute a regulated entity that could participate if U.S. rules for tokenized securities continue developing. NYSE has also pursued a framework for tokenized securities to trade alongside conventional shares while using established clearing infrastructure. Those initiatives show how crypto native trading firms and traditional exchanges are moving toward overlapping market structures.

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Wintermute had already been building its U.S. presence before securing the registration. As crypto.news reported in May 2025, it opened a New York headquarters and appointed former Blockchain Association executive Ron Hammond to lead advocacy.

What happens next for Wintermute USA

The immediate next step is execution rather than another automatic regulatory milestone. Wintermute USA can operate within the permissions described in its registration, but becoming an authorized participant for particular ETFs or a designated market maker on an exchange requires additional arrangements.

Likewise, the planned tokenized equity expansion depends on regulatory permission and market infrastructure that is still evolving. Wintermute’s own release described its tokenization ambitions as part of a future strategy rather than an approved business line.

For now, the broker dealer registration gives Wintermute a regulated platform for proprietary securities trading and ETP services in the U.S. It also narrows a structural gap between the firm’s crypto market making operation and traditional Wall Street firms that already sit inside ETF creation, redemption and exchange market making systems.

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Axon Stock Falls After AI, Drone Wins Fuel Q2 Earnings Beat

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Axon Stock Falls After AI, Drone Wins Fuel Q2 Earnings Beat

Axon Enterprise, the S&P 500 maker of Tasers, body cameras and software for law enforcement, topped Q2 earnings forecasts and raised its outlook as revenue growth accelerated amid surging demand for its AI Era software bundle and drone systems. Still, Axon stock turned lower after hours, retracing some of the big gains earlier this week heading into earnings. Axon Enterprise…

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Stock Market Today: Dow Rises To Record On Hormuz Progress But Nasdaq Falls

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Stock Market Today: Dow Rises To Record On Hormuz Progress But Nasdaq Falls

Wednesday’s mixed trading session left the Dow Jones Industrial Average with its highest close on record, following reports of a tentative agreement between Iran and Oman about operations in the Strait of Hormuz. Other major stock indexes failed to keep up with the blue-chip gauge and posted losses. On the stock market today, Shark Ninja (SN) soared on an earnings…

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Sui targets 2027 mainnet rollout for native quantum safe account authentication

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New BitMEX proposal challenges BIP-361 with reactive "early warning" system

Sui has added two NIST-approved post-quantum signature schemes to its blockchain roadmap as it prepares optional quantum-safe accounts and vaults for future network upgrades.

Summary

  • Sui plans to add two NIST approved post quantum signature schemes for accounts and smart contract vaults.
  • Existing recovery phrases and wallet addresses can be retained when users move to quantum safe authentication.
  • Quantum safe vaults are targeted for mainnet this year, with native accounts planned for testnet by the end of 2026.
  • ML DSA 65 and SLH DSA are designed to protect different types of assets using separate cryptographic approaches.
  • The announcement follows similar post quantum security work across Bitcoin custody, BNB Chain and other blockchain projects.

According to Sui’s latest announcement, the blockchain plans to introduce ML-DSA-65 as a native signature scheme for regular accounts and SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s for high-value smart contract vaults, giving users an optional way to protect accounts against future quantum computing risks without replacing their recovery phrases or moving assets.

The rollout comes as blockchain developers and infrastructure providers increasingly prepare for the possibility that future quantum computers could break today’s public-key cryptography. 

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Unlike traditional systems where public keys often remain hidden until needed, Sui said blockchain accounts expose public keys onchain once transactions occur, allowing attackers to collect them years before practical quantum computers exist.

The network warned that such “harvest-now-forge-later” attacks do not require quantum hardware today because attackers can simply archive exposed public keys and wait until sufficiently capable machines become available. 

Citing research from Google Quantum AI published in March 2026, Sui said recovering a private key from an exposed public key could eventually take minutes on a fault-tolerant quantum computer using fewer than 500,000 physical qubits.

Sui also pointed to changing government timelines around quantum security. The announcement noted that while the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology previously targeted 2030 to phase out classical cryptographic algorithms and 2035 to prohibit them, Executive Order 14412, signed in June 2026, requires U.S. federal agencies to deploy post-quantum key establishment by the end of 2030 and post-quantum digital signatures by the end of 2031 for sensitive systems.

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Sui has chosen two algorithms for different security needs

Instead of relying on one post-quantum algorithm, Sui said it selected two standardized signature schemes built on different mathematical foundations so that a weakness discovered in one would not affect the other.

For everyday user accounts, the blockchain will integrate ML-DSA-65, the Level 3 parameter set defined under NIST’s FIPS 204 standard, directly into the protocol.

The network said it intentionally selected the higher-security Level 3 option instead of Level 1 following a July 2026 incident in which researchers used an AI model to reduce the effective security of the HAWK post-quantum signature candidate after experts had previously reviewed it. According to Sui, the incident did not affect ML-DSA, but it reinforced the value of choosing stronger security margins rather than lower-cost parameters.

The announcement added that ML-DSA-65 has already gained support elsewhere. Chrome and Cloudflare use the same security level for post-quantum encryption protecting more than half of human-initiated web traffic, while AWS Key Management Service now supports ML-DSA signing and Android 17’s Keystore generates quantum-safe signatures using ML-DSA-65 inside secure hardware.

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Meanwhile, high-value assets will rely on SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s, the hash-based signature scheme standardized under FIPS 205. Rather than embedding it into the protocol itself, Sui will implement it through Move smart contracts, allowing vaults to remain compatible with future post-quantum standards without requiring changes to the network’s core protocol.

According to the announcement, using separate lattice-based and hash-based cryptographic families reduces the chance that a single cryptographic breakthrough would affect every protected asset.

Existing recovery phrases will continue to work

Instead of requiring users to generate completely new wallets, Sui said its deterministic key architecture allows quantum-safe private keys to be derived from the same recovery phrases users already store today.

Wallet backup and restoration therefore continue to work through existing seed phrases, while new derivation paths generate ML-DSA-65 keys.

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Existing accounts will also avoid transferring assets to new addresses. Address aliases, which have already been deployed on Sui, let users replace their authorization keys with post-quantum keys while keeping the same wallet address and asset balances.

According to the network, larger signatures remain the main trade-off. Post-quantum signatures and public keys occupy substantially more space than Ed25519 keys, increasing transaction sizes across the network.

Verification costs, however, remain much closer to existing Ed25519 signatures than the larger key sizes might suggest. Sui said transaction size limits and programmable transaction blocks can accommodate the additional data while further optimization work continues.

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Rollout starts with vaults before native accounts

The blockchain said its core implementation has already been completed and benchmarked, although independent security audits are currently underway.

Quantum-safe vaults are scheduled for mainnet deployment later this year. Native ML-DSA-65 accounts are expected to reach testnet before the end of 2026, while native account authentication on mainnet is targeted for the first quarter of 2027 alongside wallet, software development kit and command-line interface support.

The rollout remains optional, following the same deployment model previously used for zkLogin and passkeys. Existing accounts, applications and smart contracts continue operating without modification, and developers do not need to update applications immediately, according to the announcement.

Support for ML-DSA-65 will also extend to Sui’s multisignature authenticator, allowing accounts to require both a classical Ed25519 signature and a post-quantum ML-DSA-65 signature before authorizing transactions.

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Other blockchain projects have also accelerated quantum-security work

Sui’s announcement follows a series of post-quantum security initiatives announced across the digital asset industry during recent months.

In May, BNB Chain reported successful testing of ML-DSA-44 transaction signatures and pqSTARK consensus aggregation for BSC. While the blockchain concluded that post-quantum migration could work with existing wallets and infrastructure, testing also showed signature sizes growing from 65 bytes to roughly 2,420 bytes, reducing transaction throughput by about 40% to 50% because of larger blocks and increased network traffic.

Institutional custody providers have also started focusing on future quantum risks rather than immediate attacks. BitGo introduced quantum-risk management tools in July that measure public-key exposure, group UTXOs to avoid leaving exposed balances behind, and help institutions move assets into fresh addresses after public keys become visible onchain.

Another proposal came from AmericanFortress, which published its Zero-Knowledge Proof of Seed Provenance design through the International Association for Cryptologic Research’s ePrint archive. 

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The proposal would allow existing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana wallet addresses to prove ownership using zero-knowledge proofs without requiring users to rotate keys or transfer funds, although deployment would still depend on blockchain protocol upgrades and adoption by wallet providers. The proposal also cited Google’s recent quantum research while noting that current quantum computers remain incapable of carrying out such attacks today.

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US Senate Delays CLARITY Act Vote to September

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Crypto Breaking News

Senate Republican leaders are expected to head into the August recess without bringing the CLARITY Act to a vote, according to a report from Politico. Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed the chamber would not vote before the recess, setting up a renewed push for consideration when senators return next month.

The delay leaves a major legislative milestone unresolved for the U.S. crypto sector’s most prominent push for a clearer market-structure framework. It also compresses the remaining calendar for lawmakers to secure enough support for a measure that—absent broader consensus—may face procedural hurdles that typically require a high voting threshold.

Key takeaways

  • Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the CLARITY Act will not be voted on before August recess, with action expected when senators return next month.
  • Politico reports Democrats have not yet provided sufficient support, and negotiations over timing arrangements have not closed.
  • Without adequate backing, Republicans may struggle to reach the level of support often needed to overcome a filibuster.
  • The CLARITY Act’s goal is to establish a federal framework for digital asset markets and clarify SEC vs. CFTC oversight.

Thune confirms no pre-recess vote

Thune’s position, as described in comments his office provided to Cointelegraph, centers on Senate scheduling and the current state of bipartisan agreement. He pointed to Democratic opposition to procedural timing and said the bill would be prioritized when senators return.

“The Dems are insistent on no Clarity vote,” Thune said, according to remarks his office shared with Cointelegraph. He also indicated that work with the bill’s sponsors is close enough to move quickly once the chamber is back in session, adding that Sen. Cynthia Lummis “was great” during the negotiations and that the effort is “queued up first thing when we come back.”

That matters for investors and developers because the CLARITY Act is intended to reduce uncertainty in U.S. digital-asset market oversight—particularly how regulatory responsibilities are divided between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While market participants have long navigated a patchwork of guidance and enforcement, a statutory framework would potentially offer a more durable basis for compliance planning and product design.

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Republicans race a shrinking timetable

Politico’s reporting suggests Democratic support remains the central bottleneck. The outlet cited three people familiar with the matter in saying the CLARITY Act lacks Democratic support and that negotiations were still underway as the August schedule tightened.

In the reporting, the challenge is not only whether the bill can reach the floor, but whether Senate leaders can move the remaining pre-recess business without extending the session deeper into the next week—something Politico says would generally require unanimous consent from all 100 senators to complete outstanding items.

One possibility discussed in the reporting is whether Thune could file cloture before the recess. Cloture, if pursued, can be used to limit debate and set up a floor vote later; however, Politico reported that even if cloture were filed, it would not itself be a direct vote on the legislation before senators depart.

Cointelegraph also reported that it requested clarification from Thune’s office on whether he intended to file cloture before the Senate leaves for recess, but did not receive a response by publication.

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What the CLARITY Act would change

The CLARITY Act would create a federal framework for digital asset markets and—importantly—clarify how oversight is allocated between the SEC and the CFTC. That division has been a continuing focus for the industry, as regulatory treatment can affect everything from token classification and custody rules to the structure of trading venues and derivatives products.

From an editorial perspective, this is the heart of why the scheduling matters: when lawmakers cannot align quickly enough to bring the bill forward, the U.S. regulatory timeline remains dependent on ongoing agency interpretations and enforcement actions. Those are often slower to resolve and can vary in application, increasing compliance uncertainty for market participants operating in a highly competitive global environment.

Industry reaction: urgency persists

Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim called the postponement “disappointing,” according to comments provided to Cointelegraph. He said the legislation’s direction has not changed, but warned that delays continue to impose real-world costs on U.S. users and builders.

“Every day without such a framework pushes American users and builders offshore and leaves consumers at risk,” Kim said.

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That critique reflects a common argument within the industry: when legislative clarity stalls, companies may rationally consider relocating or prioritizing non-U.S. markets to reduce regulatory exposure and uncertainty. At the same time, policymakers opposing the bill may be concerned about how any statutory language would codify regulatory power or shift responsibilities between agencies.

Next steps after the recess

Thune’s statement, combined with Politico’s reporting, points to a renewed attempt to move the CLARITY Act when senators return in mid-September. Readers should watch whether Republicans can secure Democratic buy-in for procedural timing—especially any time agreements needed to reach the floor—and whether the chamber can gather the level of support likely required for the bill to advance without running into the most difficult Senate obstacles.

Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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Analysts Detail Good, Bad From SpaceX Earnings. SPCX Stock Gets Ugly.

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Analysts Detail Good, Bad From SpaceX Earnings. SPCX Stock Gets Ugly.

SpaceX stock tumbled back toward post-IPO lows Wednesday after its Q2 earnings report. The company cleared estimates for its first results as a publicly traded company. But analysts are divided on the near-term outlook as costs rise and a wave of insider shares unlock for trade on Thursday. Other space stocks trended lower Wednesday. SpaceX (SPCX) late Tuesday reported its…

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Bitcoin Active Addresses Surge to 8-Month High After Coldcard Panic

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Bitcoin (BTC) active addresses reached roughly 0.98 million a day on July 31, the highest daily count since December 2024, after attackers began sweeping wallets whose seeds were generated on defective Coldcard firmware.

Glassnode published the figure on August 6 and called the surge “fear-driven on-chain activity.” The analytics firm stated that “holders migrating seeds and moving funds to alternative custody reflects an operational security response, not a change in market conviction.”

Exchange Balances Climb 22,135 BTC

Coin Metrics recorded 967,546 active addresses that day, 54% above the July average of 627,061. The last higher reading on that series was 985,635 on December 10, 2024.

Bitcoin held on exchanges rose from 2,654,863 on July 29 to 2,676,998 on August 3, a build of 22,135 coins or 0.83%, according to Coin Metrics. The balance eased to 2,667,058 by August 5, leaving roughly 12,200 of those coins on exchanges.

The transaction count moved the other way. The network processed 607,581 transactions on July 31, below the July average of 656,321, while active addresses ran 54% above their monthly average.

Coin Metrics logged 730,433 active addresses on August 5, roughly 16% above the July average and the seventh straight day above it.

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Losses Pass $100 Million

Coinkite, the Canadian firm behind Coldcard, disclosed that seeds created on Mk2 and Mk3 firmware version 4.0.1, released in March 2021, through version 4.1.9 carry weakened randomness.

Likewise, seeds generated on Mk4, Mk5, and Q devices before the patched releases hold about 72 bits of entropy against the 128 bits intended. Fixed firmware shipped as version 4.2.0 for Mk2 and Mk3, 5.6.0 for Mk4 and Mk5, and 1.5.0Q for Q.

Something to notice is that seeds built with at least 50 fair, independent, and private dice rolls drew enough entropy from the dice alone, and a strong, unique BIP-39 passphrase forces an attacker to discover the passphrase as well.

Moreover, Coinkite noted that a passphrase “does not repair the affected seed” and told those users to migrate anyway. Installing the patch does not fix a seed already created.

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The first sweep took 594.5 BTC across 1,324 UTXOs from about 500 single-signature addresses in four consecutive blocks on July 30. Median loss per victim was 0.41 BTC, and the largest single loss was 29.9 BTC.

Galaxy Research counts 1,596 BTC confirmed stolen from about 7,300 addresses, rising to 2,055 BTC once suspected sweeps are included. As CryptoPotato reported, the confirmed haul passed $100 million last week.

Santiment measured 0.58 bullish comments for every bearish one across social channels, the lowest positive-to-negative ratio since the firm began tracking. Coinkite has told every owner who generated a seed on affected firmware to move funds to a new seed on patched hardware. Bitcoin traded at $64,606 on August 6.

The post Bitcoin Active Addresses Surge to 8-Month High After Coldcard Panic appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Robinhood Chain Tops Solana in Tokenized Stock Volume Via Memecoin Pairs

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Robinhood Chain Tops Solana in Tokenized Stock Volume Via Memecoin Pairs


Tokenized stocks on Robinhood Chain averaged $29.7 million in daily DEX volume over the past seven days, according to a Dune dashboard maintained by OKX's Web3 wallet team — more than Solana's two stock-trading venues, xStocks at $11.1 million and Backpack's Sunrise at $13.4 million, combined…. Read the full story at The Defiant

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Bitcoin whales load up on $1.2 billion in BTC as ETFs attract $750 million

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A bitcoin whale that went silent in 2013 moves $40 million in BTC

The U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have pulled in $754.69 million in investor funds this week, according to data source SoSoValue. That puts these funds on track for their best week since April.

“The clearest shift has come in institutional flows,” Liya Kalchev, Analyst at Nexo, said, explaining the ETF inflows.

“Spot Bitcoin ETFs have taken in more than half a billion dollars so far in August, with inflows building through the week and Wednesday alone contributing over $240 million — a sharp reversal from June, when the funds recorded their worst month on record,” Kalchev added.

Note that despite the on-chain and ETF accumulation, BTC’s spot price has not yet been able to chalk out a meaningful rally. That, according to Kalchev, is a telltale sign of the kind of buyer stepping into the market right now.

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“That the reversal has not yet lifted price meaningfully is itself informative: some desks argue the marginal buyer looks more tactical than convicted, and that a genuine recovery narrative likely needs a decisive close above $65,000 to take hold,” Kalchev explained.

BTC’s price chart patterns point to a potential for a notable price rally. At the same time, the fact that the U.S. Senate is unlikely to vote on the Clarity Act this month presents a headwind. The Clarity Act is widely seen as the one unlocking a massive institutional bid for the cryptocurrencies.

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Crypto Hacks Hit Record 212 Incidents in H1 2026: Blockaid

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Crypto Hacks Hit Record 212 Incidents in H1 2026: Blockaid


Attackers stole more than $1.1 billion across 212 verified exploits in the first half of 2026, the highest incident count on record for any half-year, according to Blockaid's H1 2026 Onchain Security Report, published Tuesday. The record count lands even as dollar losses came in below the same… Read the full story at The Defiant

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Japan FSA pushes crypto withdrawal delays after scam surge

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Japan’s SBI partners with Solana on stablecoins, RWAs, payments

Japan’s Financial Services Agency and National Police Agency asked cryptocurrency exchanges on Aug. 6 to introduce withdrawal delays, address registration and stronger fraud controls as authorities respond to rising scam losses involving digital assets. 

Summary

  • Japan’s FSA asked crypto exchanges to delay certain withdrawals as authorities respond to rising scams.
  • Exchanges should pre-register withdrawal addresses and impose waiting periods before newly added destinations become usable.
  • Japan recorded 18,067 fraud cases through May, with losses reaching 151.47 billion yen.
  • The FSA wants stronger monitoring, phishing-resistant authentication, personalized limits and faster freezing of suspicious accounts.
  • No uniform withdrawal period was mandated, leaving implementation details to individual exchanges and risk profiles.

The request went to the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association, the industry’s self-regulatory body.The measures are requests rather than a binding rule. The FSA did not set a nationwide waiting period. Exchanges should tailor controls to their services and risk profiles. System changes may be phased.

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Withdrawal delays are part of an 11-point anti-fraud package

The FSA wants exchanges to restrict crypto withdrawals for a period after customers deposit fiat currency or buy digital assets. It also asked platforms to require users to register withdrawal destinations in advance and impose another waiting period after a new address is added. The regulator did not specify either period’s length.

Exchanges were also asked to set withdrawal limits using customer risk, assets held, transaction purposes and previous activity. Regulators want firms to review customers who rapidly make large or frequent withdrawals after restrictions end, adding friction where scam proceeds can leave an exchange.

The request goes beyond withdrawal timing. Exchanges should strengthen transaction and access monitoring, detect activity inconsistent with customer profiles and identify accounts using devices linked to known misuse. Authorities also want suspicious transactions handled faster through holds, withdrawal restrictions or account freezes.

For higher-risk activity, regulators requested phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and stronger impersonation checks. Platforms should compare the name of a bank remitter with the crypto account holder and respond to mismatches. Exchanges are also expected to share fraud indicators and provide information rapidly to police.

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Scam losses explain Japan’s tougher exchange controls

The National Police Agency’s latest published figures show why regulators are increasing pressure. Through May 2026, Japan recorded 18,067 special fraud cases, with losses reaching 151.47 billion yen. SNS investment scams accounted for 5,099 cases and 70.04 billion yen in losses, while SNS romance scams caused another 20.2 billion yen.

The trend was already visible in 2025. Police recorded 9,523 SNS investment scam cases with 128.8 billion yen lost. Romance scams reached 5,645 cases and 54.64 billion yen. Crypto-transfer romance scams rose to 2,177 cases, with 24.77 billion yen lost, helping explain the focus on digital-asset transfers.

Japan had already targeted the banking side. In February 2024, the FSA and police urged financial institutions to block transfers to crypto exchange accounts when the sender name differed from the originating bank account and strengthen monitoring of suspicious transfers. The latest request extends similar safeguards into exchange withdrawal systems.

As previously reported, Japan has also been tightening crypto oversight while moving digital assets closer to mainstream financial regulation. The withdrawal initiative fits that wider emphasis on investor protection and compliance.

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What changes for Japanese crypto exchange users

The immediate effect will depend on each exchange. Because the FSA prescribed no single waiting period, users should not assume every Japanese platform will apply identical delays. Some operators already maintain withdrawal restrictions. SBI VC Trade, for example, says funds tied to certain quick deposits cannot be withdrawn or transferred as crypto until the eighth day.

For users, visible changes could include slower first-time withdrawals, mandatory address registration, personalized limits and more verification when activity differs from normal behavior. A customer adding a new wallet and immediately attempting a large transfer could face additional checks or a temporary hold.

The safeguards may also affect legitimate users who need rapid access to self-custody wallets. However, the FSA says implementation should reflect each operator’s business model and misuse experience. It does not order exchanges to impose a blanket freeze on every withdrawal.

Travel Rule requirements already require exchanges to collect and share identifying information for certain transfers. Japan’s newest request adds transaction friction and behavioral monitoring to those identity-based controls.

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What happens next for Japan’s crypto exchanges

The FSA and police asked the JVCEA and member exchanges to strengthen the measures from August. Exchanges must assess which controls require policy or system changes and how quickly they can deploy them. The official request says planned implementation is acceptable where immediate technical changes are difficult.

No uniform start date or mandatory delay length was announced. The next developments to watch are exchange-specific notices, possible JVCEA guidance and any later move by the FSA to convert parts of the request into formal supervisory requirements. Until then, implementation is likely to vary by platform in practice.

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