The announcement followed the banking regulator finalizing its rules for the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin law to be implemented in January
South Korea Weighs Another Delay on 22% Crypto Tax, Pushing to 2029
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ECB’s Cipollone Says Digital Euro a Matter of Sovereignty
European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the digital euro that is set for a pilot next year has the potential to give the bloc “sovereignty” over a payments infrastructure that currently requires dependency on external, non-European third parties.
Cipollone said in an interview with Italy’s Milano Finance published by the central bank on Saturday that because the bloc is critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning. He did not cite specific third parties.
“In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties. We saw this with energy and we’re seeing it today with defense. And the same is true for payments,” he said.
The pilot will use real transactions by ECB and national central bank staff. With 36 market operators, including seven from Italy, collaborating on preparations, the ECB is inviting e-commerce and mobile-commerce operators to participate.
“The smooth functioning of payment systems is one of our responsibilities. If we are critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning,” Cipollone said.
To be sure, sovereignty doesn’t mean shutting third parties out, Cipollone said. “It means having the power to choose and knowing that, for an essential service like payments, Europe can also rely on its own strength.”
In an April public lecture held in Latvia, Cipollone said that Europe’s reliance on non-European payment providers creates a strategic vulnerability. He said two-thirds of euro-area card transactions are governed by non-European companies, and that the digital euro could reduce that dependence and provide European-controlled payment infrastructure.
The ECB Governing Council can only decide on issuing a digital euro only after legislative negotiations in Brussels conclude.
“We hope that the regulation will be adopted by the end of the year, enabling the ECB’s Governing Council to issue a formal decision on issuance,” Cipollone told Milano Finance .
Magazine: New DeepSeek ban in US, Swiss-Asia crypto ties deepen: Asia Express
Bybit Secures First Full Dubai Spot Trading Licence
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All news, reviews, and analyses are produced with full journalistic independence and integrity. For more details on our standards and processes, please read our Editorial Policy.
SEC flags tokenization as high-risk area in 2027 market examinations
The SEC’s latest priorities highlight tokenization as an emerging market risk, while cryptocurrencies remain absent as a standalone examination category.
IRS Targets 120-Day Tax Disclosure Process: Forbes
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is preparing to overhaul its voluntary disclosure program, with plans to reduce penalties and accelerate the resolution of tax violations, including those involving cryptocurrencies, according to a Friday report by Forbes.
IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman said the agency aims to introduce the revised program before December, with a target of resolving cases within 120 days of taxpayers completing the required submission process.
The overhaul would reportedly not establish a separate disclosure process for digital assets. Koopman told attendees at the UCLA Extension Tax Controversy Conference that the IRS would handle digital assets through the same voluntary disclosure procedures used for other forms of tax noncompliance.
The IRS official also indicated that penalties under the revised program would be substantially lower than those currently imposed, although he did not provide specific figures. The agency is considering allowing taxpayers to settle outstanding liabilities through installment plans or offers in compromise.
The proposed changes would mark a shift from the existing process, which can take a year or longer to complete, according to Forbes. The IRS’s current voluntary disclosure program is intended for taxpayers whose willful failure to comply with tax laws could expose them to criminal prosecution, rather than those who made unintentional reporting errors.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are considering a separate voluntary disclosure program aimed at crypto taxpayers, including those who made unintentional reporting errors. Section 502 of the proposed Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act would establish a process for correcting past violations with defined penalties, unlike the IRS’s existing program, which primarily addresses willful tax noncompliance. The bill cleared the House Ways and Means Committee in September.
Magazine: 5 alternatives to Ledger to store your Bitcoin
US Senate to Probe Tether Payments to Ex-Trump Adviser’s Company
Update (Oct. 23, 6:27 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from Tether.
Senator Richard Blumenthal has requested information from Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino after a Wall Street Journal report said that the stablecoin issuer had inked a $6.3 million deal with a marketing company co-founded by former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines.
In a Thursday letter to Ardoino, the Connecticut lawmaker said that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations demanded “records and information related to contracts, payments, communications, and lobbying” between Tether and Nxum, Hines’ company. The probe into Nxum, Tether and Hines, according to Blumental, was part of what the senator called the Trump administration’s “self-enrichment and self-dealings with cryptocurrency firms.”
“While Hines failed to divest his one-third stake in Nxum […] he worked closely over encrypted messaging applications with Nxum to coordinate lobbying, advocacy, and browbeating of members of Congress that were opposed to, or had sought changes to, pending stablecoin legislation,” said Blumenthal. “Those messages also reportedly demonstrate that Tether was directly coordinating Nxum’s lobbying efforts on the GENIUS Act which would regulate stablecoins, with CEO Paolo Ardoino demanding that Nxum ‘obliterate’ the legislation’s opponents.”
The lawmaker added:
“The highly unusual terms and nature of Tether’s business relationship with both Nxum and Bo Hines raise alarming ethical and legal concerns, indicating that Tether was likely well aware of the illegality and impropriety of issuing payments to a current White House official with such a direct role in shaping cryptocurrency legislation that was instrumental to its business.”
Hines worked as executive director as President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets from January to August 2025, when he left the White House to join Tether as a “strategic adviser.” He later became CEO of Tether US. Harry Jung, another crypto adviser in the Trump administration, left his position in July 2026 and joined Nxum as a managing director in August.
A Tether spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company was aware of the allegations and an external counsel ”found no evidence of wrongdoing” after a previous ”in-depth internal investigation into the matter.”
Related: Trump didn‘t mention ‘crypto’ once in White House cybercrime roundtable
Trump, his family and members of his administration continue to face scrutiny over accusations that they are reaping financial windfalls from crypto policies on laws over which they have control or influence. The president disclosed earning $1.4 billion from investments related to crypto in 2025.
Crypto ties could be a factor in midterm elections
While Blumenthal has limited authority as the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the results of the 2026 midterm elections could potentially change party control in the House of Representatives and Senate. This could give the Connecticut lawmaker and other Democratic additional authority to conduct investigations into Trump and his administration’s ties to the crypto industry, including those which could present conflicts of interest.
As of Friday, event contracts on prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket favored Democrats retaking majority control of both chambers of Congress in 2027, with 92% and 68% chances on Kalshi for the House and Senate, respectively. US Election Day is on Nov. 3.
Magazine: New DeepSeek ban in US, Swiss-Asia crypto ties deepen: Asia Express
Pentagon bans US forces from using military info to bet in prediction markets
Hegseth warned that prediction market wagers could expose military operations to adversaries.
Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain Open Second Mentorship Cohort
- Up to 15 pre-seed and seed-stage teams will spend 12 weeks working with investors and operators from across the Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain ecosystems, with $100,000 in prizes and a Demo Day expected to bring together more than 50 investors
- More than 900 teams applied for the first cohort earlier this year and its founders have since raised more than $10 million in capital
The Arbitrum Foundation today opened applications for the second cohort of the Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain Mentorship Program. The 12-week program will select up to 15 pre-seed and seed-stage teams building on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain, pairing founders with investors and mentors from across the ecosystem and concluding with Demo Day in March 2027.
More than 900 teams applied for the first cohort, which ran for eight weeks from April earlier this year. Thirteen were selected, 10 pitched at Demo Day in July to more than 25 leading venture firms and the cohort has since raised more than $10 million in capital.
Carbon, LayerV, T3tris and Capa shared $100,000 in prizes at Demo Day. Since then, Carbon’s liquidity provider vault has passed $1 million in deposits, T3tris has reached $14 million in total value locked across Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain, and Capa has secured lead investors for its Series A.
“The mentorship program puts Arbitrum and Robinhood’s ecosystem investors and most experienced builders behind a small group of early-stage teams. Reaching those people is where founders at this stage lose the most time, so the program gives them that access from the first week,” said David Garcia, Ecosystem Lead at the Arbitrum Foundation.
“The second cohort has a wider group of mentors than the first, drawn from the investors and ecosystem partners on the program. We are looking for founders who already have a product live or close to launch and want to build it on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain.”
Cohort 2 extends the program from eight weeks to twelve. It opens with an internal demo day at which every company pitches to the mentor group, giving mentors a view of each business before the program begins. Investors and mentors then work with founders throughout the program on positioning, traction and the fundraising story, with the Foundation arranging introductions to venture funds ahead of Demo Day.
Partner-led working sessions address the operational questions of each company across areas including go-to-market, user acquisition, tokenomics, and stablecoin infrastructure. Partners confirmed for the cohort include Pantera, Pendle, Variational, USD.AI, Paxos, Entropy, Offchain and Robinhood Chain.
Robinhood Chain, the dedicated Arbitrum chain built by Robinhood, launched its public mainnet on July 1 and returns as a collaborator for the second cohort, with the Robinhood team working alongside founders throughout the program.
“Robinhood Chain gives builders an environment designed for financial services and tokenised real-world assets, connecting unique use cases to a thriving DeFi ecosystem. Five teams from the first cohort launched on the chain and two of them were among the winners, which tells us the program is attracting strong founders,” said Gaëtan Thabot, Director of Partnerships at Robinhood Crypto.
“Collaborating on a second cohort allows us to connect with the next group of teams building financial products onchain early and give them access to our ecosystem, expertise, and guidance at the outset.”
The program is the final stage of a builder pipeline that has run Open House buildathons and founder houses in Bangalore, New York, London and Singapore over the past year, with winners fast-tracked into the cohort.
“An ecosystem is measured by the businesses that run on it. Concentrating capital, mentors and partners on a small number of serious teams for three months is one of the highest-return things Arbitrum can do to produce more of them,” said A.J. Warner, Chief Strategy Officer at Offchain.
“Offchain builds the technology these companies run on, so working alongside the cohort for the length of the program is as useful to us as it is to the founders. The strongest of them will be among the protocols shaping Arbitrum in a few years’ time.”
Demo Day in March will put the cohort in front of an audience expected to include more than 50 investors, up from more than 25 venture firms in July.
“The demand for a place in the first cohort and where those companies are now say more about how much is being built on Arbitrum than any dashboard metric. The mentorship program is where the strongest of those teams get the ecosystem’s full attention for the length of the program,” said Brendan Ma, Head of Investment Strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation.
“Teams from the first cohort have gone on to raise institutional capital, which is the clearest validation of the model. The second cohort should add to that, both in the quality of the companies coming through and in the depth of deal flow available to investors across the ecosystem.”
Applications are open to pre-seed and seed-stage teams that have a working prototype or early live product and are committed to building on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain. They are reviewed on a rolling basis and close on December 6, with the program starting on January 5. Participation, including eligibility for prizes, is subject to the program terms. Further information is available at mentorship.arbitrum.io.
Read Also: This is the First U.S.-Chartered Depository Bank to Offer Stablecoin Invoicing
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BraveX Joins the Open Standard OUSD Partner Network
Global businesses need more than a way to send and receive money. They need flexible payment infrastructure that connects traditional financial systems with digital assets, supports international operations, and helps them manage cross-border transactions efficiently.
At BraveX, we believe that connecting these capabilities is an important step toward a more accessible and flexible global financial ecosystem.
We are pleased to announce that BraveX has joined the Open USD (OUSD) partner network within the Open Standard ecosystem, marking an opportunity to explore new possibilities in digital dollar settlement and global payments.
What Does This Partnership Mean for BraveX?
BraveX is building financial infrastructure for businesses operating across borders. Our platform brings together business banking capabilities, stablecoin funding, global card programs, and international payouts to help businesses manage their financial operations through a connected platform.
Joining the Open Standard OUSD partner network gives us an opportunity to explore how open, programmable dollar settlement infrastructure could complement these services.
As businesses increasingly operate across multiple countries and payment systems, flexibility in how funds are received, managed, and settled becomes increasingly important.
We see potential in exploring new settlement options that can support different business needs while maintaining appropriate controls, risk management, and compliance requirements.
Connecting Stablecoins With Business Payments
Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC already play an important role in digital asset funding and settlement.
For businesses operating internationally, stablecoins can provide another way to move dollar-denominated value between supported services and markets. They are also becoming increasingly relevant to payment infrastructure, including card funding, merchant settlement, and international payouts.
At BraveX, USDT and USDC already support funding and settlement across our global card issuing solutions, white-label card programs, and real-time global payouts.
Our participation in the OUSD partner network creates an opportunity to explore how programmable dollar settlement capabilities could expand the options available to businesses.
The focus is not simply on adding another digital asset. It is on exploring how different financial systems and settlement mechanisms can work together to support practical business use cases.
Why Programmable Dollar Settlement Matters
Traditional cross-border payment processes can involve multiple financial institutions, intermediaries, currencies, and settlement steps. Depending on the markets and payment rails involved, businesses may face operational complexity, processing delays, and limited flexibility.
Programmable dollar settlement offers a different approach by introducing software-based rules and permissions into the movement and settlement of digital dollar value.
Depending on the implementation, these capabilities may support:
- More flexible settlement workflows: Businesses can explore different ways to coordinate payment funding and settlement.
- Improved integration opportunities: Programmable infrastructure can create new possibilities for connecting payment systems and digital asset services.
- Greater operational flexibility: Businesses may be able to select settlement approaches that better fit their transaction flows and operating requirements.
- More structured controls: Payment permissions, compliance processes, and risk controls remain important considerations when designing financial infrastructure.
These capabilities are not a replacement for regulatory compliance, sound risk management, or appropriate operational safeguards. Their value depends on how they are implemented and integrated into real business payment flows.
Supporting Businesses Across Borders
Modern businesses increasingly work with international clients, suppliers, employees, and partners. E-commerce companies, technology providers, international trading firms, and digital businesses may all need to receive funds in one market and pay expenses in another.
BraveX aims to simplify these financial operations by connecting business banking capabilities with stablecoin payment infrastructure and global payout services.
Our focus is on giving businesses more flexibility in how they fund and settle transactions across supported markets, while helping them manage their payment operations through a connected platform.
Exploring programmable dollar settlement is part of this broader direction: developing financial infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of businesses operating in an increasingly interconnected economy.
Building With Compliance and Control in Mind
Innovation in payments must go hand in hand with responsible operations.
For businesses, the ability to move funds efficiently is only one part of the equation. They also need appropriate transaction controls, clear payment permissions, risk management, and compliance processes suited to the markets in which they operate.
As BraveX explores opportunities within the Open Standard ecosystem, these considerations remain central to our approach.
The objective is to evaluate new settlement possibilities in a way that aligns with business requirements and applicable compliance obligations, rather than treating technology alone as the solution.
Looking Ahead
Joining the Open USD partner network is an opportunity for BraveX to engage with an ecosystem exploring open and programmable dollar settlement.
We look forward to exploring how these capabilities may complement our existing business payments infrastructure and create additional options for companies managing international financial operations.
Source: BraveX